That’s … absurd. If the Guard isn’t “for talking”, then why are nearly half of the Conflict types based on social skills? Why is there so much emphasis in the Resolution section of the handbook on teaching players how to use Attacks, Feints, Maneuvers, and Defends in situations outside combat? I don’t personally believe (and I refuse to) that the purpose of the Guard is to simply hack animals apart. Not everyone in the Territories loves the Guard; Midnight’s Rebellion should be proof enough of that. In the wake of his defeat, I think the Guard needs skilled Negotiators more than just about anything. It needs Mice who can help win the hearts and minds of the people they meet. It needs Mice who can negotiate contracts between Lockhaven and the rest of the Territories, to secure a lasting peace that is beneficial to all parties.
Or do we assume that Gwendolyn’s the only character in the Guard who can do those things?
Look, it’s pretty obvious I’m the only person who thinks it’s an issue. I’m not particularly interested in arguing about it any longer. If the current system doesn’t bother anyone else, feel free to run the rules as written. I have absolutely no problem issuing House Rules in my games, and I think I’m pretty keen to take that route in this situation. Just don’t try to convince me that the Guard’s sole purpose is to defend social NPCs from wild animals.
[edit] Can’t say that it thrills me when a developer looks at an honest critique of the system and sees only “complaining”, by the way.
Still, what are you missing from the mouse i posted? I was quite happy with how i build him…
Especially the ability to create fiction from his wises are pretty cool…
I do want to avoid baiting, so please take my comments with a dash of salt.
If, in making a character, any player at my group focuses on Fighter and Hunter, or Pathfinder and Scout, or Haggler and Persuader, while leaving other skills to his patrolmates, I am going to suspect he wants a certain story to come out. I’m going to suspect that he wants the tale of a mouse overspecialized and incompetent at the many duties of the guard.
As a GM, I’m going to needle those missing skills again and again to illustrate what is missing. I’m going to presume that he is very successful at those skills which have been pumped up high and rarely make a challenge of those things. I’m going to stick my nuckle in the ribs about the skills which were ignored and/or avoided.
It makes a better story for the skills to be spread and balanced. 4-5 in a skill is an excellent level of skill. 2-3 is a fair bit of skill. I’d rather see a mouse with 3 for nearly all skills than a mouse with 4 or 5 for a handful of skills.
This is a fairly valid point. In few ranks can a mouse gain a great deal of skill in these interpersonal skills. They are important to the game, but designing these to remain low indicates they will lead to compromises, twists, and conditions more often. The roleplay of thsoe skills becomes more influential.
The Haggler skill doesn’t seem like it is so important that you should be looking for loop-hole house rules that increase the availability. It is used for dealing with hiring services, buying goods, and selling products. Those are not often on the list of duties for the guard. I can’t imagine that the well resourced PGs and PLs are focused in such a skill either, but I can understand the Gm being more interested in thrifty use of resources.
It seems you are agitated about this, so I’m sorry you feel that way. What has made the concept of Haggler so important to your campaign? How high should you be able to reach in number of ranks for Haggler to fit the concept you have in mind?
It’s not especially-important to my story. I’ve just always been a player that’s more interested in social conflicts than martial encounters. When I sat down to make some of my first Mouse Guard characters (mostly just to familiarize myself with the system), I looked over some of the Conflict types so I knew what skills would be important. I saw that Haggler was not only used to help determine your Disposition in Negotiation Conflicts, but also that it was used for Attack and Defense. I knew I wanted my character to be a skilled Negotiator, so Haggler was something I placed priority on.
It was frustrating, I suppose, because the Swordsmouse character I created went really smoothly. As did the Scout. All of their skills ended up pretty much right where I wanted them. But then I had to jump through all these hoops to get a Negotiator that felt half-way close to what I’d imagined as a concept. I’m happy to be from Copperwood. I like Copperwood. And I don’t mind spending my “naturally talented” point on Haggler at all. But that puts me at a 3, a rank that the book even says is decent; one rank above “barely skilled”.
In contrast, my Scout-mouse ended up with a great skill spread: 5 ranks in Scout came easily enough (naturally-talented, mentor focus, 2 points from experience, and a specialty), and that still left me with plenty of points to spread around to Pathfinder, Hunter, Loremouse, Survivalist, etc. The character is pretty much exactly the way I imagined him at the concept stage.
My Haggler character was not. In fact, I had to take him in a completely different direction mid-way through creation, because I simply didn’t have the option to make him any better than “decent” at the one thing I wanted him to be good at.
How many hours of haggling per day does a Guardsmouse really get to do? A merchant who sells in a market stall is haggling every day and he does well, or he doesn’t eat. He’s a finely tuned haggling machine. He got a rocking Haggle skill. A scout out on the trail fends for himself or he doesn’t come back. Things are out to kill him. He better be on his game. He’s got Scout way up there, or he didn’t make it past tenderpaw.
A guards mouse being able to start the game as a decent haggler seems about right. Maybe he used to be pretty good before he joined the guard, but he’s a bit rusty from lack of practice.
Remember, once you have completed skills during character creation, you can adjust skill points between the skills you have (before adding 1 to each, cannot add new skills, and nothing below 1 or above 5, iirc). All you need to do is lower Fighter skill and add the deduction to Haggler and/or Persuader as you like.
Alternately, if you’re ‘ignoring’ rules, why not throw out character generation altogether and just allow players to choose whatever skills they want at watever rating works for you, then just assign whatever Guard rank each player wants to play?
This is my original point. What if a character was a great Haggler before he joined the Guard? Maybe he was a merchant? My initial question was, basically, “If a Guardmouse can consider Haggler part of their Guard experience, why can’t a Patrol Guard or Patrol Leader?” And I still don’t think there’s been an answer, other than, “He just can’t.” If we’re to imagine that Tenderpaws have a particular skill they’re good at (Laborer), and Guardsmice have a particular skill they’re good at (Haggler), and Patrol Guards have a particular skill they’re good at (Cooking), then why wouldn’t a Patrol Leader, who’s spent time at each of those ranks, consider those skills as part of his Guard experience?
Why can’t a Patrol Guard consider Haggler part of his starting skills, if a Guardmouse can?
I can understand why it doesn’t go the other way around: a Guardmouse can’t consider Orator or Militarist part of their starting skills, because those are restricted to Guard Captains and whatnot. They haven’t achieved that rank yet. But higher-ranked characters, who have spent time at lower ranks, should just logically have access to skills from lower ranks.
I’m fairly certain that’s not the case. I just looked through the Recruitment chapter and I didn’t see anything about being able to do that. It would kind of defeat the point of recruitment if you make all these choices about what your parents did, what you’re good at, what your mentor focused on and then just re-distribute those points however you want.
That’s what I thought, too. It would kind of defeat the purpose of Mouse Guard’s unique character creation system to allow players to just shift points around before they finalize. I don’t think I’ve ever read that rule before, to be honest, but I’ll keep looking.
I believe he’s thinking of “Template Tweaking” as described on pp. 272-273, which is for customizing the pre-generated characters provided in the book.
Maybe the guard just accepts young recruits and not older mice. Tenderpaws are 15-17 if i recall.
Even more important, if you are a good merchant, why did you join the guard?
And even maybe, if you joined the guard with your experience as a Haggler, you succeded in your Tenderpaw training but never archived a higher rank. You still can Haggle but you can’t fight and pathind as good.
My point was not to fit the numbers to the fiction, but to fit the fiction to the numbers. If the most you can get is 3, which is decent but not great, then I would bend the story to fit that. As a young’n he was around merchants, but he’s been away from that for so long that he’s alright but no match for the village fishmonger. He knows enough to stay out of the deep end.