Reduced attributes?

[Croaker]

It just occured to me than, through ADRPG, there's talk of attributes being reduced by wounds, exertion, or other factors.

Did this occur in your games? In what circumstances? How did you handle it?

[warp9]

There are specific mechanics for those sorts of thing in other games that I've played.

But, in Amber, I probably wouldn't use any specific mechanics (at least if I was playing Amber anything like it was written). In Amber DRPG, things are pretty unspecific already, so I'd just sort of "wing it."

[Croaker]

Sure, but the idea is... Have people actually done it? Considered that, say, a Ranked character in Warfare could only operate at Amber rank?
In what circumstances? How did you do? Did you really apply it? To what extand? It happened to corwin, but did it happen to you?

I'm under the impression that, if, say, a character is Amber in Warfare, people will more-or-less always have him operate at Amber rank, and that he'll never be effectively decreased to, say, human rank.

[Malleus Aforethought]

I do this in my current campaign. Nothing formal, just winging it. No one's complained so far. Last example, I reduced the effective Endurance for exertion for a character seriously wounded (they were sprinting all-out for an extended period to escape a threat).

[warp9]

I'm under the impression that, if, say, a character is Amber in Warfare, people will more-or-less always have him operate at Amber rank, and that he'll never be effectively decreased to, say, human rank.

I would think that a character who was almost dead would not be as effective as normal. It seems like such a thing could drop a character (in temporary terms) from Amber to Chaos, or maybe even down to Human rank.
   
Note: The only good thing about being human rank is that you can't go any lower. But then normal humans are tough that way, in that they can go through hell without having any stat reductions, unlike a lowly Amberite.

Yet, off hand, I can't think of a place where it actually came up in a game that a character had such stat reduction problems. Part of that is because characters who are almost dead don't go around picking fights.

[Croaker]

Well, this is far from "almost dead".

I think this notion came from when corwin escaped prison. He wasn't in any danger of dying, far from it but was (to him) severely impeded in both Strenght and Endurance, as his prison time had weakened him.

It's just that this comes up several times in ADRPG, which makes it seem quite a possible, if not probable, occurence of life, and yet...

[warp9]

Well, this is far from "almost dead".

I think this notion came from when corwin escaped prison. He wasn't in any danger of dying, far from it but was (to him) severely impeded in both Strenght and Endurance, as his prison time had weakened him.

It's just that this comes up several times in ADRPG, which makes it seem quite a possible, if not probable, occurence of life, and yet...

Ah, I misunderstood.

I'm not sure I'd put Corwin's problems after escape to "wounds," or "exertion," (Which you mentioned in your original post). That was the sort of thing I was thinking of.

Actually though, if we consider Corwin's problems as being due to "atrophy," that leads us into whole areas largely untouched by RPGs.

I follow mixed martial arts competitions, and there are a number of examples of fighters who take time off for other projects, and don't do so well when they try to come back to the ring. There is even a term for that: "ring rust."

RPGs generally take the position that, once a character achieves a level of ability, that ability stays, and the character is free to do other training. But, in real life, experts often have to train just to maintain their level of ability.

Imagine that an expert swordsman in Amber goes to a fast time shadow and devotes all his time there to some field of intellectual study. In that case, it might seem logical that, when he gets back, his combat effectiveness will have decreased due to "ring rust." Corwin was just a more extreme example of that effect.

One of the interesting things about this concept is that it implies that there are only so many things you can be your best at. A master of combat will have to spend a certain amount of time every day (even in a fast time shadow) just maintaining his current abilities, and that leaves a lot less time for other types of training.

[Croaker]

Well, wounds, exertion, torture, prison, whatever... Attribute reduction is just mentionned enough in the rulebook that I thought why didn't it seemed to occur more frequently.

One of the interesting things about this concept is that it implies that there are only so many things you can be your best at. A master of combat will have to spend a certain amount of time every day (even in a fast time shadow) just maintaining his current abilities, and that leaves a lot less time for other types of training.

This is interesting!!!

As it might solve the skills problem.

Let's say, for each attribute (but mostly warfare...), you will have a set of generic skills, such as Games, Guns, Close contact weapons, stealth, flying vehicules, landed vehicules...
Then, each player might have to chose, say, 5 skills they maintain at a good level (attribute), 5 skills they are still good at (say, attribute reduced by 1-2 ranks), the rest being neglected (say, attribute minus 3-4 ranks).

The skills could be shifted around by spending enough time refreshing them.
That'd encourage consideration and planning from the player's part.

[jibbajibba]

Mayny years ago in a land far far away, well actually it was pretty close to here but I digress... I made up a homebrew modern warfare game (I called it No Mercy if you are interested) that had a tree based skill system with the concept of 4 ranks of skills: active , trained, rusty and lapsed. You increased the difficulty of any skill check by 1 as you dropped categories (in fact trained was the "default" and active was presented as a benefit to PCs).
At the start of a game you flagged 3 skills as active, 5 as trained, 8 as rusty and the remainder were lapsed.
As you used a skill 5 times in play it jumped a category. If you used an active skill 5 times you could roll to increase it (percentage based you had to roll over your skill to increase it by 1 point).  

Worked okay but was really fiddly and took loads of bookkeeping. Would work well as a mechanic in a computer based game though.

[RPGPundit]

In Lords of Olympus, certain environmental, exhaustion, injury, or magical factors can effectively reduce or increase the Ability Class of player characters.

RPGPundit

[Croaker]

:worship:
That's great!

[RPGPundit]

Glad you like it!

RPGPundit