First off, my interpretation has nothing to do with situational modifiers. I thought that would be an easier way to describe what I was going for, but it just caused you to say I was violating the spirit of the game. Any situational modifier can easily be modeled as a declaration with a tag for +2.
"Partial successes" are not, as it turns out, arbitrarily decided solely on the whims of the GM. The DFRPG is a collaborative game, when the player thinks he should be entitled to a "partial success" he should ask the GM about that. Note that it is not actually a partial success, it is a success, that only barely beats the difficulty, and thus only garners a bit of information, such as a general direction or area, as opposed to a success that actually beats the veil, and gets an exact position.
An Alertness roll of 1 is not a success "that only barely beats the difficulty," it is
a failure. It is the GM's decision, in this case, that a 2-shift
failure to beat the roll still allows the Gruff to attack, in your interpretation. After
failing to beat the veil's block, you give the Gruff an action that should not have a chance of succeeding at all without him beating the veil's block.
It is clearly not a number vs. number calculation. You have clearly stated that in order for your method to make a 3 shift veil effective, the enemy has to be a "low-level mob" that the GM chooses not to play optimally.
Nope. That's not what I have stated at all. I have said that a 3-shift veil is effective, and that a low-level mob is not going to be doing a mess of declarations, in response to your apparent belief that any character is entitled to such a declaration, and that any character is entitled to the chance of success even in a situation where said chance makes no sense.
Not only does he have to not play optimally, he has to purposefully disregard sections of rules that say they are entitled to declarations and tags.
Declarations and tags are, as I said before,
optional. Nobody is "entitled" to any of them. There is nothing in the rules that says the GM
has to have every enemy get declarations about
anything.
It is also pretty clear from your statement that you see the GM as playing favorites. "Molly and Harry are the players; the Gruffs are nameless first-level goons,"
No, that's a statement of fact, and about scaling difficulty. What the heck gave you the idea that this game is about creating a fair and balanced contest that both sides of a conflict have an equal chance of winning?
Again, do you give your first-level goons the full range of consequences? Do your PCs have to cause a minor elf a mild, moderate, severe, and extreme consequence before they take them out? By your logic, doing anything less is "playing favorites" and deciding arbitrarily to "not play optimally".
therefore I let Molly win/escape mostly unscathed, even though the Gruffs could easily have inflicted serious damage to Molly.
Yes, they could have inflicted serious damage.
If.
They.
Could.
Find.
Her.Not beating the veil's block means
they cannot find her. Because Molly has taken a deliberate step to block them from doing so.
It doesn't matter if she threw something. It doesn't matter if she walked up and kicked the Gruff between the danglies.
If the Gruff doesn't make his Alertness roll to beat the veil's strength, that means
he does not find her. That is the entire point and purpose of the veil, and the veil's strength is the difficulty by which you judge if the Gruff finds her or not. If he doesn't find her, if his only clue is "she's somewhere in that general direction in snowball-throwing range," then no, wildly swinging his fists is not going to be a viable method of targeting and attacking her.
Let's crunch some numbers.
With your method, a Gruff that doesn't beat the 3-shift veil (and thus does not know where Molly is aside from "somewhere thataway"), has a 61.73% chance of hitting her. Which is exactly the same probability of hitting her if she rolls evenly on her regular Athletics defense.
The Elder Gruff, who has the same Alertness roll and thus the same chances of seeing through Molly's veil, has a
93.83% chance of hitting the girl he cannot see, hear, or otherwise locate.
Not taking every single advantage you can come up with is not "playing favorites." You are not GMing to beat the PCs. You are GMing to provide reasonable challenge, facilitate the story, and, yes, occasionally, to give the PCs something that their tactics will
succeed against.
That is true, but how willing the GM is to allow something is based on how much sense it makes, and with a veil, these declarations make a lot of sense. Further, the block strength is the block strength, the declarations are gravy. I don't know when you decided that a 3 shift block should defend you from a powerful fae with no extra narrative work work, but I do not think that is the case (the fact that the 3 shift block worked for Molly clearly means she put in that extra narrative work).
I decided no such thing. I decided that a 3-shift block
against perception should, if your opponent does not beat the block,
keep you from being perceived. And
not being perceived means you are
not a viable target. Not being a viable target means
you are not directly attacked.
A 3-shift block working for Molly doesn't "clearly" mean she put in "that extra narrative work." It "clearly" means that her opponents couldn't beat that 3-shift block to find her.
As I quoted above I feel I am representing your point accurately.
And you are wrong.
You yourself said words to the effect of "The GM should not use all of the options at his disposal, because the Gruffs are low level mobs."
No. I said words to the effect of, "The GM isn't going to use all the options at his disposal, because it's not his job to make sure the PCs fail."
Once again: Do you give every encounter your PCs face the full range of consequences? If you do, then I have difficulty imagining it's a fun game. If you do not, then by your logic you are cheating the nameless goons out of all of their available options and are playing favorites.
I'd really like you to answer that. I've asked it a couple times now, and I don't believe you've answered it.
If he does use all his options, your system fails to model what you said it does.
And if he uses all of his options, the simplest fight becomes a long, tedious slugfest as the PCs have to exhaust every single consequence that his opponents can have, and the PCs are going to be hard pressed to win anything.
This does not make a fun game. That is the GM's job, to make sure the game is fun and fair to the PCs, not to make sure that every goon is a tough, clever badass who is going to take every advantage he can possibly come up with.
Therefore your system's success is contingent upon the whims of the GM.
Having the Gruff make a declaration
of any kind is the whim of the GM. As far as I know, nowhere in the book does it say the GM
has to make a declaration on behalf of an NPC in response to anything. Acting at all is the whim of the GM--letting the numbers play out as they do is letting the game mechanics decide things without other input.
The GM making such a declaration is the GM saying that he wants the Gruff to succeed in beating the block. This is fine, and something I've done occasionally to spice up an encounter--but there is nothing saying that I have to do so.
Having the gruff's
failure to beat the veil count as a partial success is the whim of the GM that is not in line with other direct character conflicts (i.e., attack roll vs. defense roll) described in the game. Does someone rolling a 3 and failing to beat a 4-shift shield spell mean he gets a partial success too?
Let's say you have a character who is very athletic--an expert, in fact, in freerunning who has an Athletics score of Superb, but Discipline score of only Fair. He has to jump across a gap. A Malvora vampire shows up and hits him with Incite Emotion as a block, instilling a debilitating fear of heights in the guy of 3 shifts, which he does not beat with his Discipline score.
Does he get to jump anyway with his Athletics roll to beat the block, despite the fact that the block is not physical in nature?
Edit: Thinking about it again, I suppose if you absolutely
have to have the Gruff attack, treat it like a reverse ambush. If failing to detect the ambushers means you defend rolling from 0, then failing to detect your target could mean you roll your attack from 0 instead, against the defender's normal defense roll.