Making the Lore (Law) Skill Interestingly Useful

This is the third post in what has apparently become a series on how to make skills interesting and useful. This discussion is something I wrote up a long time ago, back in the days of 2e. I thought the three-tiered approach to skill progression introduced there, and now continued by Zweihänder, was interesting because it reflected the medieval guild levels of apprentice, journeyman and master. I felt that some more use could be made of those levels, which I called Mastery, other than just +10% success.

I also felt that in an unjust society like the Empire, skill at Law would not determine the outcome so much as who was doing the judging. I therefore concentrated on the usefulness of the skill in getting a favourable jurisdiction or set of laws. The actual outcome of the trial would be determined by charm, connections, bribes and the like.

I’ve updated the discussion somewhat for 4e, but the basic assumption of three Mastery levels remains. In the case of Lore (Law), this could in the new system be reflected in levels in the Savant (Law) Talent.

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Dietary Restrictions and WFRP Religions

So dietary restrictions are a pretty common feature of RL religions, often specifically regarding meat in some or all forms. There’s very little mentioned in official supplements for WFRP religions, so here’s my attempt at some suggestions. Even a single RL religion isn’t always consistent or equally strict for everyone, so I’ll try to list some options in descending order of stringency. Maybe the strictest is only for clerics/monks, or perhaps there are regional or sectarian differences (like between Tilean and Estalian Myrmidians). Note also that restrictions may not apply to pregnant women, small children, the sick, soldiers at war or travellers.

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Passive Perception

I should probably rename this blog, ‘The Annual Empire’…

That being said, here’s a little idea I had while rereading the Zweihänder rulebook recently.

One of the rules issues that’s bothered me for years is how to run what Zweihänder calls “Secret Tests”. The classic example of this is the test to spot an ambush: it’s the kind of test the player needs to roll, but the very act of rolling tips the player off to what the PC is trying to achieve. Spotting whether an NPC is telling the truth is another example.

Zweihänder has a nice little solution, by having the player roll, but the GM doesn’t reveal the difficulty modifier: the player rolls, the GM describes the result, and in edge cases, at least, the player won’t know how far to trust the GM.

There are, inevitably, weaknesses to this method. It penalises near-successes, for example. But generally, I think it’s a pretty cool way to maintain suspense.

But another way to resolve these issues in a d100 system would be to make more use of the respective digits. I’m a fan of d100 precisely because it can do cool stuff with the various numbers it produces in a single roll (e.g. the d100, the result reversed, the two face digits – other possibilities exist, like the 2d10 sum; the d100 is super-flexible).

So maybe the GM sets a difficulty number from 1-10 to spot an ambush, avoid a guard, detect a lie, or the like, with higher being more difficult. In the case of a roll against an opponent, the base difficulty might be the tens digit of that opponent’s respective skill. So a guard with an awareness of 42 would set a base difficulty of 4, perhaps modified for weather, light, etc.

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Old Money

First of all, apologies for the lack of posting recently. No excuse!

Secondly, a recent thread on rpg.net on things you like that no-one else does reminded me that I really like the 1 Crown = 20 Shillings = 240 Pence system. I’m nowhere near old enough to remember the old money in the UK, but it’s actually a very intuitive system, dividing neatly, as it does, into thirds, quarters, sixths and eighths. Once you’ve got your head round having to calculate in fractions, it’s pretty easy.

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