Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="TheHirumaChico" data-source="post: 9139799" data-attributes="member: 7022501">I'm curious as to how my fellow WOIN GMs feel about setting Difficulty Benchmarks and their players perceptions of what their characters should be able to do easily or not.  I had an example of this type of misalignment of expectations in a recent play session of my ongoing WOIN NOW campaign.  One of my players wanted his character to try and spoof a Wi-Fi security camera by hacking into it remotely via a nano-drone that he parked next to the camera.  His character has the "CCTV" exploit from 2 career levels in Hacker, so I allowed his character to automatically gain access to the camera's video and audio feed via this exploit, but not to automatically spoof the camera.  His character has 3d6 from LOG 7 attribute and 2d6 from the 3 ranks in the Computers skill.  I ruled that he could not use his high-quality electronics tool kit to give him an equipment bonus since he was making the spoof attempt remotely and he agreed that was reasonable.  On p. 134 of the NOW Core rulebook, it gives some example difficulty benchmarks, and I set a target of 17, because picking a lock is suggested to be a Difficult 16 benchmark and I figured (rightly or wrongly, I'd welcome other opinions) that this is slightly harder than picking a lock.  He made the target number by rolling a 17 exactly on 5d6, yay!  I shared that he succeeded exactly as I had some initial confusion in my GM notes and thought I had the set the DC to 18, but then realized I had misread my notes.  The player character then tells his teammates that these must be very high grade cameras and that perhaps the security is much more than meets the eye because they were so hard to hack and his character is very adept at this.These are Grade 10 MDP 7d6 characters, and I would note that he has intended his character to be the team's hacker & electronics expert, but also a dual-pistol-wielding Gun Fu artist.  And he seems to think that his Grade 10 character with 2d6 skill in Computers (1d6 in Electronics) plus a 7 LOG (3d6) score (Grade 5 characters start with a 3 score = 2d6 in all attributes except CHI/SUP/PSI) makes him a very skilled hacker, when 5d6 total without LUC only gives a 61% chance of success vs. a Difficult 17 target number, and 6d6 by adding one LUC die gives an 86% chance of success.  Am I off-base here in thinking that his character is pretty good, but isn't really great, at these particular skills, just better than the other characters who have no skill ranks in computers and electronics?  In the meantime, he has got INTU of 12 (4d6) and a pistols skill of 6 (3d6), which does mean his character is definitely very good at pistols, and his thinking so is warranted.But I want to try to convey this misconception to him, because I feel he is then drawing potentially incorrect conclusions about the story/plot/mission and the other players seem to be thinking along the same lines.  And this may cause us some misalignment of expectation issues as we move forward in the campaign.  Thanks in advance for reading this.  I look forward to your input!</blockquote>

Verification