[PnP] Eloquence revisited

[pming at northwestel.net]

Hiya!

  I use Eloquence all the time. I generally try and pair a 
"physical" characteristic with a "mental" characteristic for any 
rolls I have players make if I can. For example, a "surprise" 
check would have a base of A+E/2. That would be adjusted by any 
EL's appropriate to the situation (most likely, the current 
environment Survival EL).

  I also sometimes just outright "decide" certain things based on 
the characters Eloquence. Not often, but sometimes dice rolling 
isn't necissary or important. For example, a description of 
talking to an NPC may have me RP'ing him for a minute, then 
asking the player "What's your characters Eloquence?". Depending 
on his answer, I'll give him some insight into the NPC..."You are 
finding it really hard to continue a conversation with this 
fellow. He takes a long time to finish a sentence, and sometimes 
he just stops a sentence midway and starts another" (for a PC 
with decent E and NPC with low E).

  My daughter is autistic. She'd have a fairly low Eloquence from 
what I can determine (she's only 5.5 years old), but her 
Intelligence is definitly higher. We can talk to her and 
generally converse, but sometimes it takes longer for her to 
"get" what we're asking her...like it's taking her brain a longer 
time to parse every concievable meaning of the words we used and 
come up with the most likely meaning. I see P&P's Eloquence 
having the same type of general effect on someone's behaviour.

^_^

Paul L. Ming






***** ORIGINAL MESSAGE FOLLOWS *****

Eloquence - A Character’s mental dexterity. It can be viewed as 
his ability to think quickly. Problems that require a person to 
be convincing in interpersonal relations, think quickly or 
respond with mental rapidity require Eloquence.
This is from the back of the Book 1 v2...

It seems to me that Eloquence as used in this game is 
underutilized.  Most people seem to only use it for their 
influence chance.  Many don't bother to put more than a 1.5 
multiplier to it since it has so little affect on the game.  But 
what if there were other ways to use it...?

Perhaps it could be used to determine a quick reaction...such as 
to a door you are trying to open 'clicks'...and you attempt to 
duck out of the way of what's coming...one roll to see if you do 
react (E or E+Em/2) vs a difficulty factor determined by the GM, 
and one roll to see if your body can keep up with your mind.



Perhaps the successful use of E could help a mage keep track of 
how long his spell might last...instead of them always knowing to 
the second...especially if he is busy casting a new spell or 
otherwise distracted by the big monster trying to make a snack of 
his marrow.



Perhaps a high E rating could be used to identify an opening in 
an opponents defenses...and give a chance to exploit that 
weakness.

I was wondering if any of you had additional ideas.



Dave

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