I love compels. And you could use them here if you really wanted to. But I do not think it is appropriate. The problem is that compels can be refused. I do not think it is appropriate that refusing a compel for your veil to fail when you open the door means that no one detects you when you open the door. It just means that you do not automatically fail. In my opinion, compels should be used to enforce/reward players playing in line with their aspects when that is not the easiest/most optimal course of action. A good example would be a curious player being compelled to open the door, and loose their veil, even though the player knows this is likely non-optimal. I think "You opened the door, take a compel for the guard to see the door open" is fairly weak/boring. It feels mechanical, and compels to me are about narrative moments and progressing the story.
Then your idea of compels is at odds with what they're for in the book. Compels are, essentially, the mechanic for making things happen a certain way despite what the dice say. If you're detected even though nobody around you can see through your veil, that's a fate point your way. Likewise, if you want to make that headshot even though the Random Number God flipped you the bird, that's a fate point you have to spend.
Though I will say I do agree that compels should be proactive instead of responsive. The compel that I would do is more along the lines of, "If you try to open that door, you'll be detected" than "You opened the door, so now you're detected."
"Compels can be refused"? Well, yes. And the players can spend a fate point to negate the arbitrary penalties you're assigning.
Player choice is the most important thing. Saying you don't like compels because it means that they can be refused just means "I want this to happen no matter what" and that is straight up railroading.
Buying out of the compel doesn't mean you open the door right in front of everyone and nobody notices. It just means you get through the door without anyone noticing--maybe there's a convenient distraction, or someone else comes through and leaves it open just long enough, whatever. A compel/refusal is about the
situation as a whole, not just one aspect of it.
Hell, even
taking the compel should have potential for remaining hidden. Maybe the compel causes the player to sit and wait for the right opportunity to get through the door undetected, and that costs them crucial time and mental stress in maintaining the veil.
If you're making a player fail despite them succeeding by the mechanics of the game (and that is
exactly what letting them be attacked without the veil failing is) then you are cheating them out of the choice the entire system is built around and doing them a huge disservice.
Your point about how blocks work, a block prevents a specific action/actions, any of the affected actions can be used to overcome the block.
The directly affected actions, yes. If you're bound, gagged, and blindfolded, that's a physical block that would stop your perception rolls too, but you can't roll Alertness real high to break out of the bonds.
Certain blocks like blocks against movement stopping mele attacks work because mele attacks require (explicitly) that you be in the same zone. On the other hand no where does it say that seeing/knowing for sure where a target is is a prerequisite for you to attack them.
Only because it's basic common sense.
It certainly makes it harder if you do not, but it isn't required. Just like you do not have to know exactly (or even close) to where a person is to shoot them, you are capable of thought, inference, and guessing.
Again, you are confusing things. A veil or stealth roll
is not solely about sight. It's about detecting the person is there at all. If you have any idea of where to shoot, close enough that you can hit them, that means
the Alertness roll succeeded. Not that the alertness roll failed, the veil held up, and you still get to attack them.
I do not feel alertness rolls are appropriate substitutes for a spray and pray attempt with a hand gun. Both likely have the same result, but one is more interesting.
And one makes sense and one does not. One should be the main mechanic of a game, and the other should be a compel. "A compel can be refused" is
not reason to muck up the mechanics of the game to railroad your players.
I do not feel piercing the veil is required to have a good idea of where someone is.
Then, to be perfectly blunt, you are
wrong. It's like saying, "I do not feel beating the defense roll is required to cause stress." The veil exists explicitly to keep someone from knowing where you are. That is its whole purpose. If you have a good idea of where someone is, that means the veil failed.
A successful alertness roll to notice the effects of actions they chose to take (knowing you could see the effects) should be sufficient to allow a guess as to their position and act on it, even if you cannot see them/perceive them themselves. Veils are not blocks against someone guessing where you are based on the information they possess, it is a block against them directly detecting you.
"Based on the information they possess"
is a declaration or a compel. A modification of the Alertness roll to make that educated guess. It is
not an automatic reason to land a successful attack, unless you're giving a fate point over to the player who's being detected.
When guards know someone is around here somewhere, that is the result of a successful alertness roll. Just because they didn't detect you doesn't mean that they didn't detect something that aroused their suspicions, and the veil specifically does not block that.
The suspicion that "someone is around here somewhere" is not justification to make an accurate attack. It's justification for the guards to start maneuvering and declaring to boost their investigative rolls.
Just because someone is firing their gun at you, and has the potential to cause stress, does not mean you have been detected.
Yes it does. If you haven't been detected,
why are they shooting? If they are the type of guard who think every little noise has to be answered with a hail of gunfire throughout the whole room, that is the
exception to the rule, and therefore
is a compel.
Anyway, we have gone from a point where I thought we could maybe agree on something to a point where I feel you are interpreting some my statements way out of context, ignoring some of them, or acknowledging all of my statements peicemeal and not looking at the big picture. To me that big picture is that sometimes, people shoot their guns at the air in an attempt to hit someone they know is somewhere (maybe not often in real life, but I have seen it in so many movies and TV shows, it certainly exists in fantasy). That means that they get to make an attack roll.
If they know someone is somewhere accurately enough to shoot them, that means either they made their Alertness roll, or the player is getting a fate point because the unique circumstances are making their otherwise-good veil fail at keeping them from being detected.
It isn't effective. They do not detect you.
If they know where you are close enough to start shooting, they have detected you, and the veil has failed. "Detect you" doesn't necessarily mean "they know exactly where you are standing and can actually see you." It means "They know you are here, accurately enough to start attacking."
But they find out you are here (with alertness based on the action you chose to perform that tipped them off). And once they know you are somewhere, aggressive/stupid goons may try to hurt you, without seeing/smelling/hearing you. Sometimes this is a compel (likely one to make you veil fail when you do something risky), sometimes the compel is refused, or it doesn't feel appropriate. In those cases, it can be an attack roll with poor circumstances.
If the compel is refused, is not appropriate, and the guards have no mechanical reason to know the person is there, accurately enough to attack, then they should not be able to attack. You're saying that the person being veiled should still be forced to take stress, even when there is no mechanical or narrative reason for them to do so, without them getting a fate point.
Once again, "Once they know you are here" is the definition of a successful Alertness check.
When the player's goal (don't be attacked) fails without those plans ever being mechanically beaten (through a roll), then they deserve a fate point for it. What you are arguing for is forcing the player to fail without any compensation for it, and that is wrong.
The game even has a section that says maneuvers and aspects are "the death of situational modifiers" for this system, and you're trying to introduce a bunch of situational modifiers for exceptional situations.
Unless you want to give real consideration to what I am saying and stop arguing in circles I am done here. As I admitted before, I do not feel I can agree with what you are saying, I feel it is wrong and extremely unbalanced, and extremely unfun/uninteresting. Nothing you have said has changed my mind on that.
I can say the exact same thing to you. Your proposal, quite frankly, screws the person using the veil out of the whole purpose of the veil, without even the courtesy of offering a fate point for it. It is railroading the player into failure despite them mechanically succeeding.
I feel this system better models what it is trying to do, and is more in keeping with what is written in the book and is more fun for everyone, including the player using veils.
You're describing a system where a player who specializes in veils, whose veils are never pierced, and who--by the numbers--is never detected by his enemies, can still be gunned down, without so much as being offered a fate point for his troubles. How is it fun for him, when the system is built to make him fail no matter what he does?
I do not feel you will be able to change my mind on that either. So unless you want clarification from me on what I mean (and I think you do need that in order to make a persuasive argument, because right now I feel you just do not understand what I am saying), I am done with this thread.
I think I've got a clear idea of what you're saying, and, quite frankly, I think it's the wrong way to play the game. What it seems you're saying is that a player who uses veils should be railroaded into being attacked, even when his enemies can't beat his veil and therefore do not know where he is.
Edit: One last thing. The section on evocation blocks (YS252) outright says that veils are not blocks against damage. The section on Spirit as an element (YS255) says a veil's strength in particular "serves as the difficulty for using skills or other magic to
detect anything that’s concealed by the veil" (Emphasis mine). Not the difficulty of hitting something, or a block against causing damage like you've been suggesting, but a block against being detected at all--so if the veil isn't surpassed, whoever's looking doesn't discern your presence. The book refers to veils as an alternative approach to defense, and even a "special type" of block. The book is, in fact, pretty clear that a veil is a different way to prevent getting hit from a usual shield-type spell.