Editing Samsara:Checks (section)

==Varieties of Checks==
There are two kinds of checks: temporary and severe.  The distinction is made only to provide some kind of rules-differentiation between results that only apply to a particular contest and those that will be carried around for a while.  If you don’t want to bother with the distinction, or only want to use it sometimes, that’s fine.

When a check is received in a contest, it is always a temporary check.  Temporary checks only apply to that contest.  When the contest ends, the checks disappear.  The fact that that guy’s Bible blocked your sword-thrust ten minutes ago has no bearing on whether or not you compose a great song to your lady-fair.

But for every 3 temporary checks received in a contest, you also received 1 severe check.  This is worked out at the end of the contest.  Round down, so that if an actor received 2 temp checks, for example, then he has no severe checks.  At this point, the GM and the player must decide to which sphere of action the severe check will apply.  This should be from whatever sphere the contest occurred in, but sometimes there will be options.  A severe check, unlike a temp check, only applies to further efforts in that sphere.

The idea here is that anything can help or hinder an actor in the midst of a contest.  A fighter can be distracted by a rude comment and troubadour thrown off by a punch.  These are temporary checks.  But if the fighter takes the insult to heart, he now has a severe check in the Social sphere, but that won’t apply to his brawl.  Similarly, if the troubadour gets whiplash, that might hurt him in the Physical sphere, but won’t affect him the next time he tries to sing.  

As always, there’s a fuzzy area here, which will call for arbitration.  But that’s a good thing as it allows freedom of interpretation.  Maybe you decide that the insult was about the fighter’s battle skills and, in taking it to heart, he’s lost confidence in his martial prowess.  Then say the severe check is Physical and not Social.  Maybe the troubadour took the punch in the mouth and it really does hurt his social skills, but doesn’t stop him running and jumping.

How do you recover?  Severe checks will naturally heal at a rate of 1 per game day.  If you want.  Or 2 if your characters are more heroic.  Or every other day if you playing are playing up the struggle to survive.  But you could have guessed that sort of answer by now.


Contents

[[Samsara:Main Page|Main Page]]

1.[[Samsara:Fundamentals|Fundamentals]]

2.[[Samsara:Contests|Contests]]

3.[[Samsara:Modifiers|Modifiers and the Character]]

4.[[Samsara:Attributes|Attributes]]

5.[[Samsara:Abilities|Abilities]]

6.[[Samsara:Motives|Motives]]

7.[[Samsara:Checks|Checks]]

8.[[Samsara:Character generation|Character Generation]]

9.[[Samsara:Samsara points|Samsara Points]]

10.[[Samsara:Long term play|Long Term Play]]

11.[[Samsara:Examples of play|Examples of Play]]

12.[[Samsara:Ultramundane abilities|Appendix A - Ultramundane Abilities]]

13.[[Samsara:Settings|Appendix B – Settings]]