A question about helping with Beginner’s Luck in conflicts.
According to Luke’s clarification in this thread, you can use Nature to help in conflicts. I had assumed that the rules rules for “Helping in Conflicts” (p. 73) were worded to exclude Nature and Beginner’s Luck, in addition to other skills:
Helpers may only help if they have the ability or skill listed for the current action. If they do not, they can use the I Am Wise rule (if appropriate) or sit out this action.
So, Nature is in. Can you use Beginner’s Luck as well?
Abilities helped by: same abilities (Will, Health, Resources, Circles)
Skills helped by: Skills, Nature if the test situation falls under a descriptor
Beginners Luck helped by: Beginners Luck, Skill, Nature if test falls under a descriptor
Nature (as stand-in for a skill) helped by: Skill, Nature if test falls under a descriptor
Nature (in service of a descriptor ) helped by: Nature if test falls under a descriptor, skill if appropriate?
That’s how we’ve done it so far. Although a quick look at the helping section has me second guessing whether anything but Nature can help Nature. By the letter, it seems not. When people have substituted Nature for a missing skill it just made since that the actual skill could be used to help, but we may have been wrong there.
That said, I kind of wish BL couldn’t help BL. It can create this weird little spot at the low end of the skill ranks where its better for a beginner to test with everyone helping than it is for the skilled party member to test without the help of the beginners.
But this is a feature, not a bug. Otherwise, you have the tyranny of the skilled player in which unskilled players sit on their hands while the highly skilled do everything. Instead, you have situations in which everyone is helping the beginners.
I think that it’s also interesting from a roleplay perspective. The scene should play out no differently at the table than in real life when a bunch of people who don’t know what the hell they’re doing all try to accomplish something new for the first time.
Aid from a Wise is not technically help. You can use a Wise to provide a die even when you’re Afraid, or when one of your companions is using an Instinct.
What exactly does this mean? Does a character need a test recorded for Beginner’s Luck in Peasant in order to help another character make a Beginner’s Luck test in Peasant? Or, does it simply mean that a character untested in Peasant can help with the relevant ability for the skill (in this case Health)? I have been running my game the second way based on the “Helping Beginners” section.
