[Trollbabe] One out of three ain't bad: a musing on Numbers
Kordeth:
So, it's been said (although I can't find a thread or errata document or anything where Ron officially says so) that the Trollbabe rules should be changed so that your trollbabe's social rolls are the smaller range of your Number. That makes sense--with the rules as written in the book, if a player wants to play, say, a purely "fighty-type" trollbabe he might as well just make his number 9 and be good at basically everything he's likely to want to do.
The one thing this rule doesn't allow for is a trollbabe who is best at social interaction--the best you can do is a 60/40 shot with a Number of 5. I'd like to be able to play a trollbabe who isn't particularly great in a fight and isn't a master of magic, but who can fast-talk her way through conflicts.
What I'm thinking is this: When you're choosing your trollbabe's Number, you can choose to "swap" the places of Fighting and Social activities. In other words, you might be:
- Fighting under, Magic over, Social worst of the two.
- or -
- Social under, Magic over, Fighting worst of the two.
Any thoughts?
jburneko:
I don't have a firm enough grasp on Trollbabe to comment on what effect that rule would have but I would like to point out something you may have missed.
Fighting and Magic are number EXCLUSIVE. That is if your number is 5, 1-4 succeeds at one and 6-7 succeeds at the other . Rolling a 5 fails at both.
Social is number INCLUSIVE. So with 5, you succeed on a 1-5.
Jesse
jburneko:
Damn. Typo.
6-7 in my previous post should be 6-10.
Jesse
Kordeth:
Yep, I accounted for that, although I just realized my math was wrong when I said 60/40 split. The best Social ability you can get is a straight 50% shot, with 40% on both Fighting and Magic. So it's actually a 50/40/40 breakdown.
angelfromanotherpin:
In the original text, Social was always your best chance, and as a result players had a serious incentive to resolve matters with Social actions. In the revised version, Social is (almost) always your second-best (and second-worst) chance, and players have an incentive to fall back on it if their main schtick fails or is inappropriate. In both cases, it is not possible to do the classic powergamer thing where you 'dump' your social capability, whereas with your modification it would be. Not that this would be mechanically optimal the way it was in (say) D&D, but I think not having that option is actually a big deal in terms of the game's headspace.
The other implication that your modification would have is that fighting and magic would no longer oppose each other, i.e. those who were reliable magically would no longer be necessarily unreliable in combat, and vice versa. Since Fighting and Magic are appropriate in different (and often exclusive) circumstances, and Social is appropriate (in my experience) in a wider range of circumstances, it seems fitting that Social as the fallback in terms of competence is also more likely to be appropriate should the main schtick not be.
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