This is a basic question, but I never remember the correct way. In World of Darkness (both 1e and 2e), you can alter the pool dice with modifiers, from -5 to +5, which are applied after the pool dice formed with attribute + skill.
What to do if player change her mind on the roll after knowing the modifier?
I'm only interested on dealing with negative modifiers, and I have 3 cases possible:
- The player knows ahead of time the negative modifier. For example, if she's going to fire a gun on a storm, she knows she will have a negative modifier because of low visibility. In this case, I suspect is OK to let the player to change her mind, or even ask beforehand about the modifier.
- The player forgot about a modifier. Let's suppose the player got a condition a while ago that penalizes with -2 dice actions taken at full moon. But the player forgot about that and tried to roll an action on a full moon, thus I had to tell her to subtract 2 dice on the pool. Should she be able to change her mind? Story-wise, I guess it would make a good scene to apply the penalty, as it would be like the character forgot about her condition.
- The modifier isn't on player's knowledge. For example, the argument action is
Intelligence + Expression - victim's Resolve
. If she knows that I'm telling her to subtract 3 dice, she will know the resolve of the victim. Should I let her change her mind after knowing this? My opinion is that this makes a good opportunity to teach players not to go and try actions on everybody, without proper inspection.
Is there something in the books that tells how to deal with these situations?