When Life Hands You Lemons (Invoking Your Own Consequences For Fun And Profit)

[Arcane]

Was thinking about Consequences and it occured to me that while the book only talks about they can be used against you by an opponent via tagging, invoking and compelling, since they're basically aspects (albeit a special kind of aspect) they could potentially invoked by a player to benefit their character in applicable situations.  For example, invoking a Physical Consequence like "Walks With Limp" to get a bonus in attempts to distract someone by playing on their sympathy and have them preoccupied with helping you, or invoking a Social Consequence like "Rejected By Conventional Society" to get a bonus for seducing a girl who's into "bad boys."

Is there any reason this can't or shouldn't be done, or would you agree it's pretty much ok?

[Veet]

I've allowed it in my game before. I tend to be a little more critical of how it's invoked than a standard character aspect but a sufficiently creative reason should be rewarded.

[UmbraLux]

Yep, looks good to me.  I would also make sure it fits the situation but if it does, go for it!

[wyvern]

Edit: Doh.  Misread your question as about trouble aspect, rather than consequences.
Still, I'd agree: yes, you can invoke consequences, though doing so should (as others have mentioned) be a bit more difficult than normal.  For an example of this in the rules, consider the death curse, where you explicitly get a free tag off of any consequence you've already suffered.

<sub>Oh, absolutely.  It's an aspect like any other; if you can get some advantage from it, go for it.  Of course, any time you do invoke it, should be a cue to your GM that it should also be complicating things...

For example, a character with a "hero complex" might invoke that to help fight a denarian... but could then be compelled to let the villain go when it pulls a standard "Do you want to finish me... or save those innocent civilians that are about to be crushed by a collapsing building?"

Or a character whose trouble aspect is "curiosity" might invoke that to get more information out of an investigation or contacts roll... but could then be compelled to go just a bit too far and, say, tip off the villains that someone was looking into things.

As I see it, the main purpose of the trouble aspect is for the player to tell the GM: this is the big thing I want to have causing problems for my character.  And it accomplishes *that* just by being written down; no need to limit its use as an aspect.</sub>

[admiralducksauce]

Had a player "Deafened By Gunfire" invoke his own consequence to defend against an enemy's Intimidation maneuver, so yeah, when it comes up, it works well enough.

[BumblingBear]

Had a player "Deafened By Gunfire" invoke his own consequence to defend against an enemy's Intimidation maneuver, so yeah, when it comes up, it works well enough.

That is awesome.