Rules questions: skill helping, and when you can spend persona to tap Nature

[viktor_haag]

A couple of fine points that came up during the game last night, which I couldn’t find specific answers for in the rules:

• Can a Mouse help him/herself on a test, with a relevant skill? I judged that the answer was no – a Mouse can add dice to his/her own test pool with traits, and with wises, but not with other skills: only other Mice can do that. Was that correct?

• Can a Mouse use Nature when testing to ascertain disposition at the start of a conflict? I judged that you could spend persona to add +xD, but you couldn’t tap Nature – because the test was explicitly against Ob0, there was no risk of failure, so tapping Nature didn’t really make sense (i.e. disposition isn’t really a “test to determine success or failure” (although, I suppose you could call it a “positioning” test which one could fail)). Related question – what happens if you have 0 dice for disposition? I judged you just got whatever your base was in that case. Related question again – can a Mouse use Nature instead of a relevant skill for Disposition? Related question – for Chases, can Mice use Nature as the base, even though the rules say Mice should never use Nature as a base in conflicts?

• Can a Mouse use Nature when testing in other circumstances where you’re testing against Ob0 and just trying to generate a MoS (i.e. in conflict when you end up with an independent test v 0b0, or where the opponent “isn’t allowed to test”) – I said yes, because the PC rightly had no real way of being sure that they’d be in this situation, and so there was some risk involved.

It really made sense to me that tapping Nature, or using Nature instead of a relevant skill, had to be in tests where there was some risk of failure, and Ob0 tests don’t seem to qualify…

Anyone have some advice on these questions? Thanks!

[Totally_Guy]

@viktor_haag

• Can a Mouse help him/herself on a test, with a relevant skill? I judged that the answer was no – a Mouse can add dice to his/her own test pool with traits, and with wises, but not with other skills: only other Mice can do that. Was that correct?

That’s correct. A mouse can only aid his own roll with a relevant wise.

@viktor_haag

• Can a Mouse use Nature when testing to ascertain disposition at the start of a conflict? I judged that you could spend persona to add +xD, but you couldn’t tap Nature – because the test was explicitly against Ob0, there was no risk of failure, so tapping Nature didn’t really make sense (i.e. disposition isn’t really a “test to determine success or failure” (although, I suppose you could call it a “positioning” test which one could fail)).

I beileve that you can tap nature for disposition. I think it needs to be rolled on a conflict goal that is within nature to avoid being taxed.

@viktor_haag

• Related question – what happens if you have 0 dice for disposition? I judged you just got whatever your base was in that case. Related question again – can a Mouse use Nature instead of a relevant skill for Disposition? Related question – for Chases, can Mice use Nature as the base, even though the rules say Mice should never use Nature as a base in conflicts?

You can’t end up with zero disposition. You roll for disposition with the skill and add those successes to your health, will or nature rating. The stat rating isn’t rolled so it is always greater than zero.

@viktor_haag

• Can a Mouse use Nature when testing in other circumstances where you’re testing against Ob0 and just trying to generate a MoS (i.e. in conflict when you end up with an independent test v 0b0, or where the opponent “isn’t allowed to test”) – I said yes, because the PC rightly had no real way of being sure that they’d be in this situation, and so there was some risk involved.

You can roll nature freely for these tests when acting within nature. You also can roll nature when acting outside your nature. For advancement and tax purposes 0 successes is a failure even on an independent test like an attack.