Astral Sight and Thread Weaving

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Mataxes
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Re: Astral Sight and Thread Weaving

Post by Mataxes » Sat May 20, 2017 3:30 pm

Jaracove wrote:
Sat May 20, 2017 7:51 am
Astral Sight still suffers from being too wide open an 'investigative' skill that can reveal anything.
It can't "reveal anything." There's plenty of information that Astral Sight is no good at revealing. It can't tell you who climbed in the tavern window and stole the questor's relic. It won't let you track the person. If the culprit recently, blatantly, and carelessly used magic in the course of the crime, it might offer some leads or clues to follow, but it shouldn't solve your mystery for you.

But the same goes for plain old Awareness.

It gives you clues. It still requires the viewer to interpret those clues.

Kind of like a windling's flight, it can throw a wrinkle into things -- requiring a bit more forethought and prep. But then, there are a number of talents and abilities that can make short work of traditional obstacles.

Hell, I remember a convention game I ran where there wasn't a Thief in the group, and a locked door barred the way. The Weaponsmith broke out his Craftsman skill to (very effectively) take the door off its hinges.
Concerning your question what exactly am I looking for:

"With a single success, you can see the target is an adept. With two successes, you can determine their tier (novice/journeyman/etc). With three, you can identify their Discipline..."?

This is exactly the kind of information I am thinking of concerning Astral Sight.
Well... you're probably not going to get that as a general rule. In a scripted adventure, you might see a list of results, or something like that, because then the specifics are related to the scene or investigation in question. But the basic principles are the same: What are they trying to learn? Determine the difficulty (using the guidelines in the book - usually related to Mystic Defense), and go from there.
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Re: Astral Sight and Thread Weaving

Post by Slimcreeper » Sat May 20, 2017 8:55 pm

You could go ahead and think of some general situations where a character might use Astral Sight: in combat, when examining a possibly-trapped chest, scanning a room for magical items, and so on. Then make a list of things that the character might be able to learn from each success. If you are worried, err on the side of less information. You can always become more generous later.

I'm not going to make it, because I wouldn't use it.

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