Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6877106" data-attributes="member: 42582">Maxperson, I don't understand why you keep bringing up this idea that Eloelle was lied to by her patron. That is not part of the scenario that Elfcrusher described in the OP.When Elfcrusher says Eloelle does not know the answer to the Riddle, what is meant is something like the following:* Eloelle has 5 INT; * Therefore, when Eloelle's player makes a check based on INT, the GM typically gives him/her no information, or false information - because that is what happens when a player does poorly on an INT check; * Therefore, by the rules and conventions of the game, Eloelle's player is stuck in this position of ignorance or error as far as gameplay goes.Most of the time, it is a disadvantage to be stuck in a position of ignorance or error, because the context and consequences of action declarations are harder to work out.Sometimes, though, it is an advantage to be stuck in such a position. ZoT (and ESP, and Domination used to interrogate, etc) is an instance of this: because if Eloelle's player is stuck in a position of ignorance or error as far as gameplay goes, when an evil cleric casts ZoT on Eloelle then all the evil cleric can get is ignorance and error!Up to this point, I have said nothing about how Eloelle's player narrates her ignorance and error. Let's now add in that narration:* Eloelle is mired in ignorance in error not because she is a fool, but because she is a genius who nevertheless follows the dictates of her patron to keep all truths hidden - hence she appears to be a fool; * This appearance of folly continues even when s/he is subject to enchantments like ZoT, domination used to interrogate, etc, because her patron shield her from the magic and continues to demand that she spout ignorance and error.The overlay of that narrative does not change the gameplay of INT checks, or of ZoT, at the table. Eloelle's player does not have access to any more knowledge than that to which s/he is entitled in virtue of having a 5 INT PC. The GM's evil cleric does not have access to any less knowledge than that to which s/he is entitled in virtue of casting ZoT on a 5 INT PC.Elfcrusher has tried to illustrate this by way of various thought experiments: Eloelle's player's narration could all be taking place on a blog; or be kept hidden from most of the players at the table; or be prefaced by an announcement: "I'm now going to do my Eloelle thing"; and nothing would change as far as gameplay is concerned.As I've posted upthread, you are evaluating the wrong counterfactual.If Eloelle revealed all the truths she (as a genius) knows, of course the evil cleric would react differently. But that was never an option. And the reason it was never an option was because Eloelle has 5 INT, and hence the rules and conventions of the game mean that extracting information from her can't get you anything better than ignorance and error.In other words, the outcome - that the evil cleric learns nothing useful - has to be held constant, because that is a mechanical and gameplay consequence of Eloelle having 5 INT. All that can change is the narration of why the evil cleric learns nothing. The default narration is that it is because Eloelle knows nothing (or, at least, knows nothing useful - she has 5 INT). Elfcrusher is suggesting an alternative, more baroque, narration that leads to the same gameplay result although it takes a slightly more circuitous path to get there.I can't speak for [MENTION=6801328]Elfcrusher[/MENTION], but this is not how I read it.I take it that Elfcrusher is providing these thought experiments of the story-telling being divorced from play simply to drive home the point that the Eloelle narration is not a factor in action declaration or action resolution. In that sense, it is epiphenomenal.However, I don't think that has to mean that it is epiphenomenal in all respects. I've already given one example upthread: Eloelle reads a Tome of Clear Though, or acquires a Gem of Insight, and hence improves her INT (mechanics) and also realises that she is the victim of manipulation by her patron (narrative), and therefore starts to reveal more of the truths that she has access to.Another would be the GM establishing some sort of story arc whereby Eloelle realises the evil of her patron, and hence decides to lobotomise herself to cease being his pawn - and thus retains her 5 INT but changes the narration around it.Yet another would be another character (PC or NPC) realising that Eloelle has all the truths that she won't speak, and can't be forced to speak (due to the intercession of her patron) and hence coming up with some spell or ritual to extract them from her: mechanically, that would be something comparable to a Contact Other Planes or Commune Spell, and hence it wouldn't break anything to allow it to use Eloelle as the source of the information rather than other-planar beings.Part of the reason that I am sympathetic to the Eloelle narration is that I have something comparable in my 4e campaign. In that game, one of the PCs is a Deva invoker/wizard Sage of Ages. As a Deva, the PC has the Memory of a Thousand Lifetimes ability. As a Sage of Ages, the PC has +6 to all knowledge skills. At our table, the narration of the two is intertwined - the rationale for the player's successful knowledge checks, which give him (and his PC) access to information that can't be explained in terms of the actual play of the game (eg the character never visited the relevant library, or spoke to the relevant sage), is that he is recalling it from one of his thousand prior lives.What would happen to this character in a ZoT? At the table, we have put no limits on what he can know from his prior lives - it is all narrated post hoc to give context to, and make sense of, successful knowledge checks. Is the player allowed to say, in response to queries under ZoT to which he doesn't know the answer, "I don't know", or is he obliged to roll a knowledge check which will almost always be an automatic success?During the play of the game, there is a huge practical difference between could know everything and does know everything - the player is almost guaranteed to succeed on any knowledge check that he declares, but he only declares a few of them per session, because playing time is finite and other things are going on. So we don't need to decide whether the mechanical fact that he can know almost any bit of backstory that he wants to means that, in the fiction, the PC knows everything.But ZoT would force that issue to be confronted. And it's not obvious to me that the only rules-consistent option is to say that the PC does know everything, and hence that there are no limits to what can be extracted via a ZoT spell. If the player simply wanted to declare "I don't know - in all my lifetimes I have never encountered that", I don't think that I - as the GM - could oblige him to make a knowledge check, which will almost certainly succeed (perhaps failing only on a 1 or 2, depending on the skill), and then hand over the information to the evil cleric.This is not identical to Eloelle - in fact, it's something of the opposite (a genius wanting to play the fool despite having +40 knowledge skills) - but I see the issues, of the relationship between mechanics and narration in the context of the extraction of information from a PC, being somewhat similar.</blockquote>

Verification