Questions About things like Pneumatic Limbs

[thefinaltuba]

Heya, so one of my Fated has decided with his new knowledge of the game, he wants to reroll his character. Make a new guy that more aligns with his interests in the game, you know? I mentioned things like pneumatic limbs and stuff and he got really excited about that, so he wanted to make a drudge. We were looking at the book together, and noticed it talking about operation costs, etc. That a pneumatic limb typically takes some soulstone dust to run. Then we started looking at enchanting spells, which is another wrinkle he wants to add to his character. I notice that "Animate Limb" is a spell that he could get access to, provided he had the right grimoire. So, all that to say... What's to stop a character from just saying "screw paying for soulstone dust, I'm just going to keep trying to cast animate limb until it succeeds. Flip, fail, flip, fail, flip fail.... flip, aha, a 10 of rams!" At that point is it just the sort of thing where I should just say "as long as you have that grimoire, your limb works."? Seems like the logical answer to me, but what have you guys done? This is our first experience with Pneumatic Limbs. 

Also, as long as I'm here... My group has a couple of lassos and they keep wanting to like, subdue bad guys, hog-tie them, if you will. I threw some crooked men at them the other day and rather than just kill them as I would assume, a couple of them were like "we should lasso it, and basically capture it until the morning to see if anything happens to it in the daylight!" I don't want to be the guy that says no to my players, especially when they seem interested in something, but I get the sense that's not really the intention behind the lasso weapon. Any thoughts for how to handle a situation like this? Appreciate it as always.

[diki]

I've played in a game that had a house rule that outside of dramatic time casting the same spell with same target etc accumulated a penalty. If you don;t want a rule like that, then flipping for spells outside of combat is basically pointless and you may as well just say it succeeds.

Using Lasso to capture things seems logical, assuming you can keep them tied up, they don;t have some power to free themselves and their friends don't help them etc. I havent looked at the rule book though, is there a specific characteristic of lasso that makes them game breaking?

[thefinaltuba]

Those make sense and help, I'll have to give them a think. As for lassos, yeah no, there's nothing in the rules that says anything about tying up. My PCs (who are relatively new to RPGs) are basically like "well, it's a lasso. Why couldn't we tie him up?" And I'm having a hard time finding a reason to say no that isn't "Um, because it's not in the rules, duh!"

[diki]

I don't think the rules really cover it in anyway.

I think it would probably turn to grapple rules maybe? Assuming you've managed to get a lasso around someone they can still resist and if they are stronger than you or a fire gamin etc the situation is unlikley to go how you want it to.

If you lasso a minion or enforcer I think if you got them to negative wounds it's nice and flavourful to say you've tied them up. Getting a lasso around someone isnt neccisarily going to stop them shooting you with a gun in their hand, also you need to hold the lasso to stop them going anywhere so theirs lots of things to consider.

I think you need to find rules that enables the playstyle they want without being to powerful (to start with at least ) - They might want to take an elemental weapon style manifest power for lasso (with ice/paralyse) or a destiny step ability that helps.

 

[thefinaltuba]

that's all super helpful, thanks. I think the main takeaway I like is that "you get it around them, but they ain't going easy" so you do the damage flip as normal, and then if it's still on them when they go negative, you can tie em. I like that. Also like the idea of a manifested power. That's why I come here, lots of creative solutions!

[solkan]

As far as spell casting outside of dramatic time goes, I’m fine with it.  The thing to keep in mind is that you’re basically looking at “I takes you X minutes of exertion comparable to jogging to cast this spell.”  And then make sure they realize that the player realizes that that will eventually make a difference.

I say this as someone who currently has a job with a pretty fixed schedule and has discovered all sorts of important things like “how long does it take to patch up that old pair of boots each morning.”  
 

“Hold on, I ain’t got my leg on yet” is the downside to continually casting animate limb.   

[Preposition_the_Noun]

For casting outside of dramatic time(or arguably using any skill) you could take inspiration from D&D 3rd edition's "Take 20" mechanic.  When trying to do something while not under any threat and there's no significant consequence for failure, your task takes 20 times longer to do in exchange for an automatic success.  In D&D, it's representative of rolling the dice a bunch of times until it comes up 20;  here, it would be the same thing as flipping through the whole deck until you get the TN/suit combination you want, but this method can also be used to bypass players trying to rack up Twist cards through their On the Pursuit abilities by flipping so much or trying to play the deck out of cards.  Generally speaking though regardless of system, if failure is uninteresting or doesn't have any stakes in the narrative then simply let your players succeed.