Doubt Protagonists

[Username17]

The player characters in Doubt have limited abilities to affect reality. The manipulations are so subtle that they are incapable of directly seeing evidence that they have occurred. They can deflect a bullet from hitting them, but only because they couldn't see the bullet's path - they couldn't deflect a fist from punching them in the face, for example.

Each player character in Doubt is also persecuted somehow by The Conspiracy. They do not know why they are a target (although their powers may have something to do with it). At the beginning of the game, the player character's full abilities are unknown to the player, and they get developed and "discovered" over the course of the initial investigation. In part this is to get the game going quickly so that you don't lose a session of play (or more) while players hash out the spending of limited resources and designing "builds", and partially just as a cheap stunt to get the players as off-balance and unsure as the characters they are playing.

However, one thing the player does get to select is their "class". That needs a better name, but "clan", "tribe", and "order" aren't any better. "Caste" almost works. But regardless, we'll call it a class until I think of something better. Your class represents what The Conspiracy did/is doing to you to make you decide to go be a paranoid investigator in the first place. It also gives you a line on what your powers do. Functionally, it's a lot like a Vampire Clan from Vampire - a soft class that comes with concrete advantages and disadvantages and power options. I am not sure how many of these classes there should be. The minimum is five, and 13 is too many. Right now I have five, but am considering more (and may dump some of the ones I have):

The Asynchronous
“Elevator doors don't open for me. It's like they aren't real. Or I am not.”

Asynchs are characters who are ignored by technology. The character doesn't show up in recordings, can't get the automatic doors to open, and so on. When they pick up the phone, they hear nothing but static or tangential conversations between strangers. This motif has been used in numerous Twilight Zone episodes and the like, where it often turns out that the protagonist has been dead the whole time or something.

The Mediums
“Did you see that guy? No... never mind.”

Mediums are characters who interact with additional objects and people that are not apparently perceivable to other people. Some of these are helpful, some are dangerous, but reacting to them in any way just makes other people think you're crazy. This has been used in movies like Jacob's Ladder where it turns out that the protagonist is dead, but also effectively in things like Twin Peaks, where someone else is.

The Nameless
“Of course someone lived here. I lived here. Yesterday.”

Nameless are characters whose recorded existence has been erased. Their girlfriend does not recognize them, their birth certificate does not exist, and so on. This could be a Manchurian Candidate / Nowhere Man setup where the character's memories are lies, or a recent removal of all the documents from the character's real life like in Dollhouse.

The Replaced
“Someone else has stolen my identity. Don't believe anything I write to you.”

Replaced are characters who have evidence that someone else is living their life at the same time as they are. People recognize them from events they never attended, their signature appears on forms they never saw, and their credit rating includes purchases they are unaware of. This has been done very well in Fight Club (where the protagonist is actually doing other stuff while he "sleeps") and Serial Experiments Lain (where there is literally an extra copy of the main character who lives in the internet and bleeds into the real world).

The Wanted
“Now the whole damn country thinks I killed that girl.”

Wanted characters have very recently been put on lots of terrorist watch lists and accused of some ghastly crime. Suddenly "everyone knows" that they are a dangerous criminal mastermind. Which means that they have street cred with real criminals, but it also means that the cops are after you. Like in The Fugitive, or The Bourne Identity.

---

Anyway, I am very tempted to call the PCs "Analysts". An update to the word "Investigator" which is what they are called in Call of Cthulhu. But if someone has a better idea, I'm down with that.

-Username17

[CatharzGodfoot]

"Analyst" sounds a bit professional.

[Doom]

Consider calling the PCs "Protagonists", or "Protags" for short.

Now you can call the classes "Tags" (which would also work for various bad groups..."I tag that guy as a Hollow Man").

The Wanted seems problematic as a class, too close to reality, maybe. Try:

The Amnesiac.
"How did I break both those guys' arms?"

The Amnesiac have some extraordinary capability and/or knowledge...but have no idea how they gained it, don't know anything about their past, and are forever being harassed by a nameless but powerful organization that inexplicably fears and desires the character (eg, Bourne Identity), making it impossible for them to accumulate resources or have a stable life.


The Dopplegangers.
"Yeah. I get that alot."

Dopplegangers look, sound, and act like someone well-known, to the point that even people that know the Doppleganger can be fooled sometimes, and can usually get better treatment than a 'nobody', even without faking their true identity. Curiously, Dopplegangers never ever physically meet their lookalikes, random events always seem to get in the way. (Sorry, can't recall movie names where this sort of thing comes up)

[Orion]

The "soft classes" should be called either types or if you need a less-generic word, strains.

A PC could be an "observer" if "analyst" is too formal/important. A PC group could seriously be called a "forum."

EDIT:

Classes: Type, Strain, Curse, Mark, Perspective
a PC: Subject, Observer
the group: Forum, Panel, Circle

[Josh_Kablack]

However, one thing the player does get to select is their "class". That needs a better name, but "clan", "tribe", and "order" aren't any better. "Caste" almost works. But regardless, we'll call it a class until I think of something better.
Your class represents what The Conspiracy did/is doing to you to make you decide to go be a paranoid investigator in the first place. It also gives you a line on what your powers do.

In that case, I think my vote would be for "Hook", as it is both the hook to hang your character on and the circumstance that drew you into the world of Doubt.

Other potential options:

• Deal (as in "what's his deal?"),
• Past or Memory (since it represents what happened to you)
• Vision (as a less loaded term for "delusion")

[Manxome]

However, one thing the player does get to select is their "class". That needs a better name

Ideas: archetype, origin, root, hook, twist, story (as in, "so what's your story?"), nature, anomaly, gift/curse...


I'm a little unclear on The Asynchronous; all of the elevator doors I've personally encountered don't directly react to people unless they're physically blocking the door closing. Do you mean that elevator buttons don't respond to them? More generally, I'm unclear on where to draw the line of "interacting with technology"...can they ring doorbells? Do lasers (or bullets) pass straight through them? Do they show up in mirrors? What happens if they step onto an escalator?

The Asynchronous also seems out of place because his effect seems reasonably demonstrable to others. The Mediums interact with things that could be hallucinations for all an outside observer can tell, and the rest all have stories that a reasonable observer will never believe without incredibly elaborate proof, but showing someone that you don't appear on a video monitor seems pretty straightforward. It's potentially deniable in the case of stereotypically "flaky" technology that randomly fails even for normal people, like automatic doors, but even then you'd only need a few minutes to give a statistically persuasive demonstration. Why hasn't one of them won the Randi prize already?

[Ganbare Gincun]

Call it a character's Nature? I'm still good with Investigator.

[Orca]

Cassandras: They have visions of the future which are never believed/remembered except by other Investigators (aka other Enlightened, Analysts, whatever).

Thinking about it, I like Enlightened as a term. What is your Enlightenment? I'm a Medium. Works for me.

[Username17]

In that case, I think my vote would be for "Hook", as it is both the hook to hang your character on and the circumstance that drew you into the world of Doubt.

That's a good direction. After all, in-character you aren't selecting a vocation, you'r being drawn into a web of intrigue that leaves you as a co-protagonist in a psychological thriller. So maybe something like "Motive" would be better than something found by running "type" or "group" through a thesaurus.

The Amnesiac.
"How did I break both those guys' arms?"

The thing is: every character has skills, abilities, contacts, and enemies that they cannot account for in their memories. Still, you're right. Amnesia is simply too common a trope, from Jason Bourne to Dark City, to leave as some sort of optional add-on in the negative qualities/flaws/disadvantages/whatever section. So honestly, these guys should be the equivalent of Caitiff. That is: you might still be Wanted or a Medium or something, but throwing yourself in as one of the Lost lets you punt on the whole chargen segment and get right in the game.

Probably put a suggestion in that if anyone gets added to the game later, that they get to play one of The Lost unless there is some special time with just the player and th MC to get a backstory together.

-Username17

[Username17]

Magic Powers. So some of the parts of your character are seeded by what is happening to you. If you're one of the Wanted, you can make use of incredible intimidation based on people believing you are capable of anything; or draw on vast criminal connections that respect you for... some reason... to get contraband or even scare up minions to pull "jobs". If you're one of the Replaced, you can get recognized by complete strangers and call upon funds from your shadow accounts.

But you also have a schtick. A thing you do that is probably magical in nature, but is hard to nail down. I'm thinking that this extra path of magic should be selected during chargen and should probably have overly elaborate names like White Wolf powers. Some of these will also want to be universally accessible.

Innumermancy
An unknown number could be high or low. Using Innumermancy, a character could get enough change from couch cushions to buy a soda or continue firing bullets from a pistol without reloading. So long as the amount stays unknown, it can always be sufficient for the character's needs.

Imperium
People react to authority. They don't necessarily read badges or know what the limits of a police request are, but they in general try to do things that they are ordered to do. Using Imperium, a character can order people to do things and people will do them as long as the orders seem vaguely plausible.

Dousing
If you don't know where something is, you could find it anywhere. And using Dousing, you do.

Intimancy
It is well known that people respond well to kind words. But are there things that people wouldn't do for someone who flirted with them and asked nicely? If you're James Bond or a user of Intimancy, seemingly not.

Equivocation
People trade goods and favors all the time, and people will trade things that they would never consider selling for money. A user of Equivocation can offer people ostensibly evenish trades for items or assistance in virtually any circumstance and have people take them up on these offers.

Avoidance
The vast majority of things that are seen are not noticed or remembered. Details of people's behaviors are consciously or unconsciously ignored by people around them. Most people are regarded with civil disinterest by those around them, making them effectively alone even while in crowds. Using Avoidance, a character is ignored and forgotten even if they appear or are doing something memorable.

Obviously, I'm going to need some more.

-Username17

[Vebyast]

MacGyver
What are the chances you happen to be carrying the 1k-ohm resistor, 555 timer chip, LED, and 5V battery you need to blind an IR motion detector, or that among your pocket lint you have the bent paper clip and screwdriver you need to pick a lock? Well, whatever the chances are, they don't really matter. When you're a MacGyver, as long as the parts could be there, they are.

Wild Mass Guessing
Trying to remember a fact, or get the password to some security system? Just make something up! With luck, the universe will remember that you were right all along.

[Doom]

Serendipity

You don't know why that little piece of plastic you just picked up is important...but it's key. Your eyes focus on that one guy in the crowd...he's the important one. If there's some detail that's important in a mass of information, you find it, even if you don't necessarily know why the detail is important.

Fragility

Even a modern gun misfires sometimes. The car refuses to start even though the villain had it in the shop just last week. When a hacker tries to e-mail you a virus, his own computer is more likely to get it than yours. Machines, especially complicated ones, just seem to want to break down rather than work against you.

Weather

It never rains on your parade, and you never get caught in the rain, unless that's what you want. Every day you go to the beach is a good day, and your lawn is always green because it rains enough. Hurricanes might hit in your area, but your block is always the least affected, and you were out of town that week anyway. Bottom line, the weather is always the last of your things to worry about.

Timing

You're never stopped by trains, the only time it's close is when you're being followed by people that want to hurt you (and they get stopped, of course). You can't even remember the last time you were first at a red light (although sometimes you get stuck behind others not so lucky). You can mail order packages on December 24th and they still end up arriving by Christmas, and the pizzas always arrive when you expect them, never late.

Permanence

Your car hasn't had an oil change since you bought it, 5 years ago, and it runs just fine. Your whole neighborhood just had new roofs put on, and you still never get flat tires. Your shoes still look new, even though you can't even remember when you bought them. Things just don't wear out for you, and resist breaking even under harsh circumstances.

Clairvoyance

You can make great guesses as to what's behind the door. You know who's calling you when the phone rings (more impressive years ago, I admit!). You hold an envelope in your hand, and know what it's about.

Bargain Hunter

You can always find ridiculously good deals. You haven't paid for a hotel room in years, and you've never paid more than half blue book value for a car. When you go to a garage sale, there's usually something there both rare and cheaply priced (My mom seems to have this, fwiw). Whenever you need something, there just happens to be a great sale for it, today only, near you.

[fectin]

Equivocation
People trade goods and favors all the time, and people will trade things that they would never consider selling for money. A user of Equivocation can offer people ostensibly evenish trades for items or assistance in virtually any circumstance and have people take them up on these offers.

Remember your point on other games about how once a normal human interaction requires a feat, that game sucks? Same point here. It's an awsome schtick, but you're going to want that behavior as part of the game, not as a character-specific power.
What about turning it into "scrounging", and it includes being good at this, some of the "MacGyver" that Vebyast posted, and is mostly like that guy from the Great Escape?

Similar concern with Imperium. I get the concept, but it seems like it needs to be more so, otherwise you're stepping on the toes of every Mission Impossible-style caper. Maybe Imperium slides into people automatically believing everything you say (short term)? That could combine with Intimacy (which seems more likely to steal spotlight than be directly bad, but still) and be "Mesmerism" instead.

[Manxome]

I don't see any way that "Wild Mass Guessing" can be restricted enough to avoid massive game breakage without significantly altering the flavor of the ability. "Hm...I'm going to guess that the bad guy is tied up and gagged behind that door, the macguffin is in his pocket, and I'm going to win the lottery and retire tomorrow." Notice that it also does everything Clairvoyance does, except you open reality in read+write mode instead of just read mode.

Clairvoyance is probably not in the spirit of the game, because it's reasonably demonstrable to others; you could easily set up a controlled trial where you guess numbers generated by a roulette wheel and written in envelopes, for example. If even one person in the entire world with this power wants to publicize the existence of magic, they can convince most of the world in fairly short order.

Serendipity might make it harder to use Frank's recommended technique of handing out clues and making up explanations for them later. "Wait, if that was so important, why didn't I notice it yesterday with my power?" Then again, it might be possible to manage the details in such a way that it doesn't become an issue. It's still worth considering whether you'd prefer for powers to be activated when the PCs choose rather than relying on the MC to proactively trigger them, though.


Many of the suggested powers will, at minimum, be subject to wild swings in power and details of use, depending on the MC, unless you have a fairly in-depth discussion somewhere about what qualifies as "unknown" information.

For example, with Innumermancy:

• Your opponent is counting your bullets, but you're not. Do you run out?
• Your gun holds 9 bullets. There are 12 separate enemies. Is it possible to shoot all of them without reloading? If so, what happens when a sleeper counts the bodies?
• No one is counting bullets right now, but there's a video camera recording everything. Do you run out? If not, what does the sleeper who watches the tape think happened? (I realize there are lots of reasons that recording might evaporate, but if it doesn't?)

Or with Dousing (though you actually mean Dowsing):

• A top-notch team just searched the room thoroughly, but you weren't watching. Can you find something in a place they looked? Does it matter if they're still present or not?
• You weren't paying any attention to the widget, but someone who wants it really badly stole it from you and has been clutching it tightly with both hands and staring at it for the hour since then. Can you find it in your desk drawer? If so, what does the thief experience?

Of course, telling people that their powers can fail due to circumstances they don't know about and probably never will (e.g. a hollow man happens to be looking at the object when you try to dowse it) might be in line with the whole "Doubt" theme. You could even make it vague exactly what circumstances block the powers. But I'd still recommend some fairly detailed advice for the MC about how to handle it.

[Vebyast]

Sorry, I should have phrased Wild Mass Guessing more cleanly. If Clairvoyance is opening the universe in read-mode, WMG is opening it in write-mode and scribbling blindly. You could balance this in a few ways; I guess that my intended way was to "fix" things that another Analyst has already interacted with. If someone has already used Clairvoyance to learn something about the universe, then you can't "undo" that using WMG, so any attempts will automatically fail.


Dowsing has more problems than just weird observer effects. For example, can I keep a smartphone around, connect to a database containing every word in the English language, and "Dowse" random knowledge?

[Orion]

[*]You weren't paying any attention to the widget, but someone who wants it really badly stole it from you and has been clutching it tightly with both hands and staring at it for the hour since then. Can you find it in your desk drawer? If so, what does the thief experience?[/list]
Of course, telling people that their powers can fail due to circumstances they don't know about and probably never will (e.g. a hollow man happens to be looking at the object when you try to dowse it) might be in line with the whole "Doubt" theme. You could even make it vague exactly what circumstances block the powers. But I'd still recommend some fairly detailed advice for the MC about how to handle it.

If you find it in your desk, then it was never stolen. If you knew it was stolen, you wouldn't find it. Since you did find it, no PC will ever find evidence that it was ever removed.

In fact, you should really make a rule that anything known to any PC can't be manipulated by any other PC. Write some flavor text about shared hallucinations/conspiracies targeting groups, and have ti be a thing where sometimes a group of analysts find themselves in a consistent reality.

[Username17]

Equivocation
People trade goods and favors all the time, and people will trade things that they would never consider selling for money. A user of Equivocation can offer people ostensibly evenish trades for items or assistance in virtually any circumstance and have people take them up on these offers.

Remember your point on other games about how once a normal human interaction requires a feat, that game sucks? Same point here. It's an awsome schtick, but you're going to want that behavior as part of the game, not as a character-specific power.
What about turning it into "scrounging", and it includes being good at this, some of the "MacGyver" that Vebyast posted, and is mostly like that guy from the Great Escape?

Similar concern with Imperium. I get the concept, but it seems like it needs to be more so, otherwise you're stepping on the toes of every Mission Impossible-style caper. Maybe Imperium slides into people automatically believing everything you say (short term)? That could combine with Intimacy (which seems more likely to steal spotlight than be directly bad, but still) and be "Mesmerism" instead.

The point is actually the opposite. However good the "social disciplines" are, they have to be plausibly replicable by people who don't have them. People really will do things for a favor trade that they wouldn't do for money, people really will follow instructions given to them by people who claim to be FBI agents. Those sorts of social interactions are plausible and achievable by characters who don't have them - otherwise the power wouldn't be doubtable. Every ability has to produce results that are within the range of possible results for people who don't have the ability.

So a social "power" just makes you get away with audacious and risky but plausible social gambits. You could still do them and possibly succeed either way.

-Username17

[Doom]

Clairvoyance is probably not in the spirit of the game, because it's reasonably demonstrable to others; you could easily set up a controlled trial where you guess numbers generated by a roulette wheel and written in envelopes, for example. If even one person in the entire world with this power wants to publicize the existence of magic, they can convince most of the world in fairly short order.

Stage magicians have been doing this sort of thing for ages (cf "mentalist"), Penn & Teller have quite a few tricks like this.

[Vebyast]

Clairvoyance is probably not in the spirit of the game, because it's reasonably demonstrable to others; you could easily set up a controlled trial where you guess numbers generated by a roulette wheel and written in envelopes, for example. If even one person in the entire world with this power wants to publicize the existence of magic, they can convince most of the world in fairly short order.

Stage magicians have been doing this sort of thing for ages (cf "mentalist"), Penn & Teller have quite a few tricks like this.

Additionally, aren't there talents that can retroactively erase history, or explicitly prevent such disclosures? I can pretty easily an organization made of Analysts dedicated to stopping, erasing, or disguising past revelations using their own powers. The person that tries to demonstrate Clairvoyance on a TV gets shadowed around by an Analyst with Avoidance and Fragility until they give up, for example.

(also, I attempted to edit in some clarifications to my earlier two posts, but I didn't expect four posts to bury it before I could finish the edit, and I didn't want to dedicate an entire post to such trivial clarifications.)

[Manxome]

Sorry, I should have phrased Wild Mass Guessing more cleanly. I meant it to be restricted to information that's already known by something you're interacting with. You can't predict anything, but you can guess passwords or randomly invoke the right Names in High Places. You might also be able to extend this to things like historic or encyclopedic knowledge, depending on how you want to play it.

You're glossing over whether the player or the MC determines the information, and also the very important point of how you know that there is a "right Name" to invoke or that any possible series of digits on the keypad will actually open the door. You're also going to need to rigorously define what you mean by "known".

But even assuming maximum restrictiveness on those points, I think you're a long way off from making this work. Consider:

• You automatically and perfectly know the true allegiance of anyone you talk to. "I know you're really working for <wild guess>."
• You know the master plan of any villain who steps into the same room as you. "Even if you manage to <succeed in your immediate goal>, you'll never <accomplish your ultimate aim>, because I know you're headed for <your next objective>."
• You're an awesome diplomancer and bargainer. "Look, we both know you're ultimately going to accept any deal where you get <wild guess>. So here's what we're going to do..."

Even if you restrict "known" to people (meaning you can't, e.g. guess the combination to a safe, if no one in the room knows it), it's still essentially a trump card on all social interaction.

If you find it in your desk, then it was never stolen. If you knew it was stolen, you wouldn't find it. Since you did find it, no PC will ever find evidence that it was ever removed.

You could do that, but then the MC is actually forbidden by rule from knowing what's going on off-camera, because the PCs are allowed to arbitrarily overwrite it at any point. "Oh, look, the sheriff left his keys in this desk we've been watching the whole time; that means he couldn't possibly have been the traitor who let the bad guy out of his cell."

That's probably not desirable.

Stage magicians have been doing this sort of thing for ages (cf "mentalist"), Penn & Teller have quite a few tricks like this.

Not under controlled conditions. There are large cash prizes available to someone who can demonstrate such an ability in a controlled experiment; see, for example, the Randi Prize.

Additionally, aren't there talents that can retroactively erase history? I can pretty easily an organization made of Analysts dedicated to stopping, erasing, or disguising past revelations using their own powers. The person that tries to demonstrate Clairvoyance on a TV gets shadowed around by an Analyst with Avoidance and Fragility until they give up, for example.

Sure, if you postulate a vast world-spanning conspiracy that is constantly devoting a preposterous amount of resources to maintaining the masquerade. But (A) that's kind of dumb, (B) Frank hasn't suggested anything like that so far, IIRC, and (C) if the PCs are constantly hounded by an organization that can and will foil a prolonged and concerted attempt to do something so simple, what the hell can they reasonably expect to accomplish in the game?

[Vebyast]

Sorry, I should have phrased Wild Mass Guessing more cleanly. I meant it to be restricted to information that's already known by something you're interacting with. You can't predict anything, but you can guess passwords or randomly invoke the right Names in High Places. You might also be able to extend this to things like historic or encyclopedic knowledge, depending on how you want to play it.

You're glossing over whether the player or the MC determines the information, and also the very important point of how you know that there is a "right Name" to invoke or that any possible series of digits on the keypad will actually open the door. You're also going to need to rigorously define what you mean by "known".

But even assuming maximum restrictiveness on those points, I think you're a long way off from making this work. Consider:

• You automatically and perfectly know the true allegiance of anyone you talk to. "I know you're really working for <wild guess>."
• You know the master plan of any villain who steps into the same room as you. "Even if you manage to <succeed in your immediate goal>, you'll never <accomplish your ultimate aim>, because I know you're headed for <your next objective>."
• You're an awesome diplomancer and bargainer. "Look, we both know you're ultimately going to accept any deal where you get <wild guess>. So here's what we're going to do..."

Even if you restrict "known" to people (meaning you can't, e.g. guess the combination to a safe, if no one in the room knows it), it's still essentially a trump card on all social interaction.

Yeah. You can instantly determine - not know, but actually change to suit your will - the goals, master plans, or so on of any mooks that aren't immune to your Wild Mass Guessing. Comparably, Innumermancy can change the number of guns a mook is carrying to zero, Dowsing and Clairvoyance give you a constant-time halting oracle (which might as well give you infinite computational resources), Timing lets you dodge any attack you know about, and Permanence probably makes you and anybody you hang out with immortal.

In other words, anybody without Doubt powers of their own is utterly powerless against someone that does have Doubt powers. Doesn't matter what those powers are, or what resources the mook has. Analysts operate on a level that Mooks simply can't compete with. WMG is no exception.

There's also a huge downside to WMG: using it requires you to declare your expectations, and there is no safety net. If you flub a wild-mass-guess, the person you were trying to write over knows exactly what you tried to do and what outcome you wanted.

---

Personally, I think that analysts being immune to other analysts' powers is a fundamental requirement of the system. Since most of the Doubt powers are quantum-ish, reality-revisionist, or entirely illusory or probabilistic, Analysts being able to use their powers directly against each other is an impossibility. Sure, you can undo the last ten minutes of the game to hide some information, but you can't make the players forget the last ten minutes of gameplay. Even if you did they'd just redo it to get that info back. As a result, any result that depends on something un-happening to conceal information is useless against PCs. Same with abilities that modify numbers that PCs are tracking on their character sheets, or abilities that mess with facts the PCs are maintaining using their own powers. Heck, back in the original Doubt threat we came up with Fnord-O-Vision or Awareness, which was explicitly resistance or immunity to doubt powers and which was possessed by definition by every single Analyst.

[Manxome]

Comparably, Innumermancy can change the number of guns a mook is carrying to zero, Dowsing and Clairvoyance give you a constant-time halting oracle (which might as well give you infinite computational resources), Timing lets you dodge any attack you know about, and Permanence probably makes you and anybody you hang out with immortal.

Maybe you understood those write-ups completely differently from me, but my take was:

• Innumermancy probably only lets you adjust the quantity of something, not its existence or nonexistence, so you can't change the number to or from zero (in the case of your gun running out or not, you actually used the power at least one bullet earlier). Even if it does let you change to or from zero, it only lets you adjust the number of concealed weapons, so you need to use it before the enemy draws on you, which probably only happens if they were trying and failing to convince you they were peaceful. Also, if you can only adjust the number within "universal uncertainty" (as opposed to your personal uncertainty), then it only works if the mook doesn't remember whether they were carrying a weapon or not. Lots of other limitations are possible.
• I don't see how either Dowsing or Clairvoyance can be used to construct a constant-time halting oracle (though I already argued that Clairvoyance gives you too much information). Even if they did, while you could do some interesting stuff with that, I fail to see how that renders mooks powerless before you.
• If Permanence works on living things at all, it only gives you weak immortality (i.e. you won't die of old age), which is just a flavor power. It doesn't give either your windshield or your skin the ability to stop bullets.
• Timing is vague and possibly problematic, but I think there are several ways you can run with that concept without giving someone perfect dodge.

There's also a huge downside to WMG: using it requires you to declare your expectations, and there is no safety net. If you flub a wild-mass-guess, the person you were trying to write over knows exactly what you tried to do and what outcome you wanted.

"You must declare your expectations" was not listed as a restriction in any of your previous write-ups (and I assume there's some sort of arbitrary "loudly, in plain English" clause, since otherwise it's trivially bypassable). You're also assuming a significant chance of completely random failure, which I don't think has been decided yet. In order for the target to know what you tried to do, they'd need to know that that magic power exists, which most people won't. And there are a lot of situations where that's not a meaningful drawback even if they do.

[Vebyast]

I admit that I was stretching a bit to make my case, but:

Maybe you understood those write-ups completely differently from me, but my take was:

• Innumermancy probably only lets you adjust the quantity of something, not its existence or nonexistence, so you can't change the number to or from zero (in the case of your gun running out or not, you actually used the power at least one bullet earlier). Even if it does let you change to or from zero, it only lets you adjust the number of concealed weapons, so you need to use it before the enemy draws on you, which probably only happens if they were trying and failing to convince you they were peaceful. Also, if you can only adjust the number within "universal uncertainty" (as opposed to your personal uncertainty), then it only works if the mook doesn't remember whether they were carrying a weapon or not. Lots of other limitations are possible.

True. However, then the metagame starts to directly impact the game - the DM or the player that writes down more hard facts is less vulnerable to Innumermancy. If you know that only your enemies are ever going to have it (for example, if none of the PCs have it), you start writing down everything, and that just bogs the game down.

[*]I don't see how either Dowsing or Clairvoyance can be used to construct a constant-time halting oracle (though I already argued that Clairvoyance gives you too much information). Even if they did, while you could do some interesting stuff with that, I fail to see how that renders mooks powerless before you.

Thinking about it, the halting oracle is a bad example; I'm studying for an algorithms test right now, and my default reaction for anything is to reduce it to a known problem (in this case, "Where is the nearest piece of paper with the answer to the following question: does the following function halt?"). A better idea: just ask the question. Dowsing reduces to Clairvoyance via a dictionary and "Where is the nth word in the sentence that best answers this question:?".

As for power, it again requires some creativity. I agree that you can't use them to shoot a mook in the face. However, they defeat any security measure based on secret-keeping (can't manufacture a piece of metal to fit a lock, but you can manufacture the private key for Verisign's Root Certificate), they instantly defeat any attempts to obscure the truth ("where is the macguffin?"), and so on. They render mooks powerless against you in any situation you can reasonably apply it to.

[*]If Permanence works on living things at all, it only gives you weak immortality (i.e. you won't die of old age), which is just a flavor power. It doesn't give either your windshield or your skin the ability to stop bullets.

I suppose. As you say, Permanence depends on how you interpret it, and over what time scales it acts.

[*]Timing is vague and possibly problematic, but I think there are several ways you can run with that concept without giving someone perfect dodge.[/list]

I'm not sure it's quite that simple; again, it depends on what kind of time scale the power acts on. Why would it affect a machine gun's cycle as it sweeps by you any less than it does a red light?

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There's also a huge downside to WMG: using it requires you to declare your expectations, and there is no safety net. If you flub a wild-mass-guess, the person you were trying to write over knows exactly what you tried to do and what outcome you wanted.

"You must declare your expectations" was not listed as a restriction in any of your previous write-ups (and I assume there's some sort of arbitrary "loudly, in plain English" clause, since otherwise it's trivially bypassable). You're also assuming a significant chance of completely random failure, which I don't think has been decided yet. In order for the target to know what you tried to do, they'd need to know that that magic power exists, which most people won't. And there are a lot of situations where that's not a meaningful drawback even if they do.

Using it usually requires you to reveal your wild mass guess, especially in social situations. You can't test a password without putting it in, which means that you set off alarms if you fail. You can't try to intimidate someone with the right names without trying to intimidate them, which means that if you fail they probably won't be intimidate. You can't try to convince a spy that you're an undercover CIA agent without actually saying the code words you guessed. You can act on what you decide without revealing it sometimes ("I'm guessing that he's a vampire, so I just need to get him out into the sunlight somehow"), but even then you run into issues.

From what I recall of the original thread, one of the primary features of Doubt was a significant chance of random, undetectable failure. That was one of the entire points of the game: there is a reasonable Doubt about what your abilities are, and in some formulations even whether they exist. Not just as a character, either; we spent a while trying to come up with ways for even the player to doubt a PC's powers.

[Kaelik]

Stage magicians have been doing this sort of thing for ages (cf "mentalist"), Penn & Teller have quite a few tricks like this.

Not under controlled conditions. There are large cash prizes available to someone who can demonstrate such an ability in a controlled experiment; see, for example, the Randi Prize.

How much of your life is under controlled conditions?

0%.

All these powers can be demonstrated under controlled conditions, because they are actual magic powers. But the point is that outside of controlled conditions, it's hard to tell whether you have a power, or are just really lucky/skilled/whatever.

[RobbyPants]

Innumermancy
An unknown number could be high or low. Using Innumermancy, a character could get enough change from couch cushions to buy a soda or continue firing bullets from a pistol without reloading. So long as the amount stays unknown, it can always be sufficient for the character's needs.

So, is the idea here, if you have a gun that can hold eight bullets, but you don't know how many are in it, you could be able to fire it eight times, so long as you don't check? Also, if you don't know the capacity, you might be able to get a few more than normal?

This is interesting, and it seems to reward slightly absent-minded play. How much of this is known by the player and how much by MC? It seems hard to hide this type of mechanic from a player who would normally meticulously track their ammo.