I’m really not sure that I understand this portion of the Alert trait (BWG, p. 312): “Therefore, if your character hesitates for two actions in Fight, he may shit himself and get two aiming dice.”
Can anyone point me at either logic or rules which make this requirement more clear?
I think it’s more like a flavour aid. He’s still scared but even that doesn’t stop him.
Read the options for the failed Steel test–pretty much all of them refer to the PC shitting themselves in some way. One actually consists of fainting in about the most unheroic way ever. There’s no additional obstacle penalty for having a full load or anything.
There’s an image I could do without.
I didn’t want to go quoting too much out of the book, but the type of hesitation mentioned in the Alert trait specifically is Stand and Drool, which seems to have no bowel-clearing requirements in Gold. I re-checked pp. 360-362, and don’t see anything in there about the necessity of dropping the kids off at the pool. Maybe Luke pulled a lot of shit out of Gold.
I’ll take this is “flavor text”, and hope none of the people I play with get too rules-lawyer’y and try to require actual dump’idge.
It’s color. BW is full of that sort of thing. I don’t think that you have to actually drool if you choose Stand and Drool, either.
I was hoping this was one of those great confusing "is the ‘you’ referring to the player or the character? " things you found in oldskool rpgs.
Yes you do. If you take the “Dry Mouth” character trait, you’ll need a canteen in order to choose that Hesitation option.
What if you have an Instinct to always leave your mouth hanging open, thus having a dry mouth? The way I read Instincts, that should let you choose this option without being required to drool.
You would gain an infamous reputation as a “Mouth-breather” and I would nominate you for the “Fly Catcher” trait, which would make you choke at key moments in a DoW.
Even so, you would be unable to gasp out a coherent syllable while Standing and Catching Flies.