Zarkhovian_Rhythm said:

I can see easily why they cleared it up and agree with that setup. When I first looked at it and how it would work for BS/WS I made the arbitrary judegement in my mind that the bonus would only mitigate the long and extreme range catagories if they took aim but the 10...so in effecct kinda like an impromptu telescopic sight. Sharp eyes don't make it any easier at close distances but at a good range they could, and it wouldn't work in conjunction with a telescopic sight cause there would be overlap of just what they do.

Definitely a good call though.

Graver said:

And trying to keep that even handedness in a fair way was how I was trying to approach the issue by looking at the spirit of what it could mean and apply it to the letter. And mitigating one point of damage isn't going to necessarily set any huge broken precedents except perhaps if enemies are nickle and diming a PC into critical damage that one extra point might make the difference between a slowly creeping death and a more stalled death till they realize that 'Joe The Knee Cappa' and his revolver seems to be doing better off than 'Nicky and Robard the Las-light twins' las weapons

As for the avoidance, yeah it could allow a whole bunch of WTF moments. I like your Gandhi example and it is good, but how about a counter example of say the French Resistance and guerilla warfare? They did resist by avoiding the enemy and striking when they could. One of the reasons why I could see it (albeit rarely now that I think our consensus is coming to the best case scenario of a toughness bonus to keep it even) is not from it saying resist or avoid but also saying '...through past exposure, gruelling physical training or luck of genetics...' Course my eye goes to the gruelling physical training bit in the middle as a way of explaining in a story way how any of the resistances work when a person comes up against their resistance.

When I think about Resistance Fear, Cold, Heat, Psychic Powers, and Poisions the two easiest in my mind to reconcile are Fear and Poison. It's easy to see how Fear is overcome by will, and poison is overcome through having a tough body or mind to combat it. Cold, Heat, and Psychic Powers though get murky because they could expand in many directions. Is their skin genetically flame retardant from chemicals that they have been exposed to in the Underhive over countless generations? Do they come from an arctic civilization and the fat deposits insulate them better from the effects of freezing temepratures? Or do they resist by sliding by the offending thing? They are not special and don't have any sort of genetic advantage and it's just pure luck. For that split second the scum would would have cowered in a ball becoming an easy kill for the daemon thinks about a lost love or a lost scam. The guardsman was sure he was going to take the firebolt in the face but he tripped on a rock and fell. Taking the part of least resistance, but still they resist. If you have a good GM I personally think the +10 could be easily applied depending on the situation, and not necessarily always just as an "Ughhhh, thank god it didn't hurt as much as I thought it would."

All in all the simpler way, the path of least resistance is just to apply it when in question to the toughness as a simple bump to reduce the incoming damage. The other takes good judgement by both GM's and players as they try to explain out what happens. Get a slimy player or GM and the results could get really whacked...which I think is more easily seen in another thread where some rank 1's took out...well I shudder every time I think about it and not in a good way.

xenobiotica said:

Ignore the dictionary definitions for one moment .

For all intents and purposes - disregarding the name of the damned thing, the talent allows characters and creatures, in an undefined manner which naturally should vary immensely (that is, the methods by which a person might resist, overcome or avoid heat are necessarily and inherently different to those by which you resist, overcome or avoid poison), a greater-than-normal chance to not suffer the deleterious effects of certain things.

How that ability manifests should not be set in stone, nor should it be subject to pedantic word-wrangling or self-important references to one's dictionary of choice in order to try and "win" this ludicrous argument.

A character with resistance to psychic powers could be doing so actively (by being able to prepare for or avoid the effects), or passively (by interfering with the energies of the warp in his vicinity, consciously or not). It might be because it's a Greater Daemon of Khorne and "sorcery" just bounces off... or it might be some quirk of genetics that means a character is somehow inexplicably less susceptible to psychic assault. It could be anything - and thusly the source of the resistance the talents provide should remain deliberately unstated in order to allow for such narrative flexibility.

N0-1_H3r3 said:

Well, well, aren't we a bit testy.

Yes, by all means, why don't we just ignore the words in the book and interpret the spirit of the talent in any way we see fit, or in a manner that best corresponds with our own feelings. Hipshooting is just a word, it shouldn't have anything to do with the act of firing a weapon in close proximity to a certain part of the body. And speaking of words, aren't dictionaries just the worst invention since war? I mean to think that words could actually have definate meaning and not be freely used however we want, attaching whatever meaning we wish, that's practically fascism, don't you think?

Oh, and by the way, since text alone carries some limitation, maybe I should point out that there was a tiny hint of sarcasm in the above paragraph.

As a player I could certainly welcome to oppertunity to gain +10 in a whole buch of different situations because of my various Resistance talents, I just don't think that's how it would work, and I am always the first one to "shoot myself in the foot", as it were, when encountered with a situation in which I have an advantage I don't think I should have.

Your reasoning of how resistance should work postulates alot of "maybes", and invites other Resistance talents to be interpreted just as loosely, and I think we've shown the following in coutless (or at least several) examples: that way madness lies.

And about the whole citing of dictionary definitions, I had no idea that was a real definition of "resist", I looked it up when he gave me a link and have to admitt he didn't make it up. The problem however is that it was a definition synonymous with the word "defy", and if the correct interpretation of any word would include any other word, that is in anyway, synonymous with the original word, then language would be hard pressed to make sense in most situations. And he also admitted that it was a joke, of sorts.

If you wish to define words with arbitraty examples and postulations instead of trying to understand which meaning the word was meant to have, be my guest, I for one, would simple prefer not to.

Actually, hip shooting origionally meant to literally shoot from the hip, to save time. Its come to mean more now though, but hip shooting can be actually shooting a gun at your hip.

Also, various guns are shot from the hip (with a sling over your shoulder), like some sub machine guns in WW2, to lay down fire while moving.

Varius said:

That's actually what I meant. Maybe I should have said "firing a weapon while holding it in close proximity to a certain body part" so there was no confusion. I do know the meaning of the expression, I apologize if I led you to beleive otherwise.

xenobiotica said:

My point is, you can literally shoot from your hip with the shoot from the hip talent. You dont have to, but you can if you want.

And speaking of words, aren't dictionaries just the worst invention since war? I mean to think that words could actually have definate meaning and not be freely used however we want, attaching whatever meaning we wish, that's practically fascism, don't you think?

The Rap community would agree.

Varius said:

Ah, ok, sorry, it would seem I was the one who read wrong.

Varius said:

Hahaha!

Varius said:

Wow Shawty. Wow...

xenobiotica said:

Well, when rules discussions devolve into people hurling dictionary definitions at each other (remembering that, in more than a few cases, dictionary definitions vary depending on which one you happen to be looking at, especially when dealing with different variations of English, so they're hardly an ironclad defence of one's position), things tend to look like they're getting out of hand.

xenobiotica said:

Really? I would never have guessed...

xenobiotica said:

Yes, it postulates a lot of maybes, variables and loose interpretations... I know it does. That is, afterall, my intent here. No RPG is written in stone, nor can they account for every eventuality. Consequently, many things must be interpreted loosely and with whatever common sense can be mustered.

The talents are vaguely defined, and have no attached background; consequently, it stands to reason that they exist to represent any form of 'resistance' to something that can be conceived of, as appropriate for the creature possessing it, from asbestos skin and antifreeze in the blood to low-level Untouchableness, an acquired immunity to toxins, and any other quirk, daemonic, genetic or technological, that could explain why a creature is somewhat less susceptible to X effect than other people are. Mechanically, those things are interchangeable... from a narrative perspective, they get described differently with every situation and every character, and thus trying to tie them down to a single narrow definition is, IMO, a sizeable mistake that leads to rules bloat as those narrow definitions result in a need for more and more similar and largely redundant rules to represent slightly different ways of accomplishing the same end.

N0-1_H3r3 said:

In my mind, the definition is cruical, at least in the case of Resistance. I don't really care if different players have their own story or idea about what, in narrative terms, gave them the resistance in question (in fact, I like it when players involve themselves with their character in ways like that), as long as there is a consensus of in which cases they gain +10 to a test. This is mainly because of my style of playing (and therefore the style of the people I play with, since it was I who introcued them to RPGs to begin with, so they've pretty much adopted mine), which is pretty democratic; everyone has a say, and while the GM's word is law, he must still be able to defend his point of view. It more or less has to be like that, we all have very strong opinions (not to mention huge egos), so the sollution to a problem can take sometimes take a while because we need to come to a mutually agreeable one. This can be the source of serious time being cut from gameplay when there's a disagreement about how to solve a not-so-well (or no at all) defined rule or situation, and someone needs convincing that they're wrong. The upside of our system is of course that no rule comes up in discussion twice (if we can remember the verdict, which, sadly, isn't always the case), and there is no resentment towards a GM that thinks his way is better and just shoots your idea down even though he might be wrong. I know this might be an unusual aproach, but having played RPGs more than half my life, and with the same people for 10 of those up until now, always with the same aproach, it's unlikely to change.

For me, the crucial thing is metaphysics. In my game, resistance is like a kind of physical or mental hardiness to some particular thing.

In the case of psychic powers, it is a mental resistance to psychic attack, which is why I basically go with the OP in interpreting its effects. Where you can resist a power with your WP normally, then the resistant character gets a bonus.

In the case of heat, it's a physical hardiness to... well, heat. That doesn't include fire, because the heat of a fire is rather beyond the sort of thing that you can ignore by being a bit more hardy than the norm. Or putting it another way, a desert warrior who is used to spending all day in the beating sun can resist exhaustion and even damage from high temperatures, but not from actually being incinerated.

I don't allow avoidance, because it doesn't fit with my metaphysic. There's no special ability to sense a firebolt coming, that is the domain of psykers. There's no coincidentally ducking at the right moment, other than through the use of a fate point. (Which, incidentally, has no metaphysical role at all in my game - it is a pure external factor and represents the maxim that nobody wants to read a story where the main characters die in the first five minutes and that's the end of the story.)

Technically, there is no "hit" or "miss" in DH. There are successful attacks and unsuccessful attacks, and degrees of success (and sometimes degree of failure). Greater degrees of success represent more solid/accurate attacks. A successful attack that does not have a degree of success did not connect as accurately or solidly as one with several degrees of success.

A successful attack is actually an attack that is able to cause damage to the target (whether it actually does or not depends on the damage roll, targets T and armor, etc).

In the case of a fireball then, for example, it is quite possible for a barely "successful" attack roll (no degrees of success) to represent the fireball not striking the target directly, but getting close enough to cause heat damage to the target. Resistance(Heat) could easily represent the fact that the target requires the flame/heat source to strike more directly (ie, get a greater degree of success when attacking) before receiving damage from that source. Whether it is their skin is tougher, they instinctively flinch from fire faster, etc.

I see no reason not to allow Resistance(X) to allow avoiding an attack of the appropriate element, since the rules clearly say they apply to avoiding that element. With the example of the poisoned blade, for example. The attack is not by the poison itself, but by the blade, thus Resistance(Poison) would not apply to the dodge. A spray of poison, however, is an attack by the poison unaided, and the resistance would apply.

Seems quite reasonable to me.

dvang said:

I like Cardinalsin's interpretation. It makes more sense than being hardy enough to avoid a poison cloud and then resist the effects of the poison if you don't get out of the way in time. Avoiding an attack sounds suspiciously like Dodging don't you think?

While CardinalSin's interpretation is fine for his game ... there is nothing in the rules that says it is actually that way.

I agree with NO-1_H3R3's posts.

The rules for resistance specifically say that they aid in avoiding X. Obviously, this means the Resistance talent isn't just about physical/mental hardiness. It just represents a nebulous increased difficulty for X to have any effect on the character. Whether this occurs through actual physical/mental hardiness, instinctive reflexes, DNA, warp influence, etc. Heck, it could even be plain old luck.

Example of a flamer. AGI test to avoid being set on fire. There is no roll to hit or anything on the user's end. Resistance(Fire) should give a +10 bonus to avoid getting set on fire. What happens if somone makes their AGI test (with or without the Resistance bonus)? This does not necessarily mean that the person was automatically covered in flaming fuel yet their skin repelled/doused it because they are hardy. It could mean an awful lot of different things, just that the end result was that the character was not set on fire ... it is not necessarily anything to do with physical hardiness.

Example of a character ingesting a poison. Character gets a T test to avoid the effects of the poison. A success could represent their bodyfighting off the poison. It could also mean that they had a reaction and threw up, expelling the poison before it could do any damage. A creative GM could even say that the combination of food they ate earlier in the day neutralized the worst of the poison. And so on.

The point is that Resistance is not necessarily representative of only physical or mental hardiness. What it represents, when all is said and done, is an increased difficulty (by 1 success/failure level, i.e. +10) for the character to be affected by what they are resistant to.