Either I’m doing it wrong, or I really intensely dislike the new resist system.

Either I’m doing it wrong, or I really intensely dislike the new resist system.

Either I’m doing it wrong, or I really intensely dislike the new resist system.

I had a ghost backhand a guy off a balcony, he fell almost two stories and crashed down on rotted seats. Roll a resist test with Vigor. Rolled a 6. Eh, no big thing.

A ghost attacks from behind, slashing with an electroplasmic machete blade to cut your damn fool head off. Roll a resist test; got a 5? One stress to avoid.

All night it was like this.

There is no way to scale how hard it is to resist the roll. No way to use controlled, risky, or desperate difficulties. No way to apply fine items to help you. And if the dice are kind, it doesn’t matter how desperate the danger was, you shrug and it’s evaded.

I am a big fan of letting players choose between stress and consequence. HOWEVER, there absolutely needs to be a way to scale how much stress it costs to avoid a danger. Absolutely. Some things are a LOT more dangerous or hard to avoid than others.

The session was still great fun, but this is a problem that sticks in my craw.

15 thoughts on “Either I’m doing it wrong, or I really intensely dislike the new resist system.”

  1. It’s helpful to think of Stress not as Hit Points as they’re used in D&D (where they represent, among other things, some dodging and luck and things, yet for some reason it’s therefore harder to dodge or luckily avoid a greataxe than a fist), but as an actual measure of avoidance.

    You got slapped off the balcony: Using Stress to resist the harm means you caught yourself on the way down, rolled with it, broke your fall, etc. 

    How much Stress that costs is a measure of how much of your luck you’ve used up. If your luck runs out, then tough bikkies, boyo.

  2. I found when I was running my hack, that resistance rolls were actually distracting from the action. After running a session without them I found that as long as my consequences were interesting and managable, players didn’t miss the choice of taking the consequence or taking the stress equivalent. I’m trying out a new system (next week) where consequences just happen or not based on the roll, but characters gain the stress equivalent for not taking care of the consequences. I think this might do the trick because you can put more segments on the nastier consequences from desperate actions.

  3. I’ve been playing around with simply adding or subtracting from the base “6”, depending upon the difficulty of what caused the Resist (or, let’s face it, whim). I’m not thinking more than -1 through +2 (5-8).

    Another thought is that you add +1 to the Resist value for each consecutive time that you avoid all Stress (it resets when you suffer Stress or a Consequence). I might start it at 4 or 5, but be a bit more heavy-handed with the consequences.

  4. I sometimes just say take 3 stress or Breach a legg. The energy chanels through your body? Take 2 stress AND a Minor injury etc.

    No reason to stick to much to the rules.

    My Hound (the immortan 😀 ) rolled only 6 in atacks and resistances….

  5. Benjamin Davis I get how it is supposed to work. I don’t like that there’s no scaling it. Also, you can just roll well and ignore it altogether, whether it’s a minor threat you could reasonably shrug off or a big one that really should do SOMETHING to you.

    David Rothfeder I know you like to just enforce the consequences, but I would struggle with that. I like hitting them with crippling or lethal consequences sometimes, and letting them tap dance out of it. Also, I see the consequence/stress question like a devil’s bargain; the goal is to make it interesting enough either way that they have a tough choice to make.

    Geoffrey Lamb That is a not-unworkable solution. My hesitation is that you can automatically trash a character who is halfway up the stress track and has something big happen, and the player has no interesting choices left.  The down side to making it more and more difficult to resist until it resets is just keeping track of it. We’re still struggling to remember to mark down every desperate roll towards experience. =)

    Josephe Vandel You make a good point and that’s worth exploring for me. Just charge what you want. I think the focus should remain on making consequences like a devil’s bargain, where there are tough choices as often as possible (whether they are minor or major.)

  6. To me “resist” is not a character action to avoid a consequence. Instead it’s a player option to oppose the narrative. Stress is then merely the currency with which the player’s narrative control is bought.

  7. Christopher Rinderspacher I feel if it was just a player thing not rooted in the character, then it would be like benny points. But Resist is built into the dice pools of the character. The character’s make up affects their chances on the roll. So, I feel it is more of a character thing than a player thing.

    Still, the point that it is about the narrative rather than actions does make sense. There is an old computer game narrated by your victorious character, and every time you die, during the load screen, he says “Of course, that’s not what REALLY happened…”

  8. It might be simpler to charge 0, 1, 2, or 3 stress based on magnitude, then have a resist roll to see if that’s +0, +1, +2, of +3. (Critical, 6, 4-5, 1-3.)

    That way the GM brings some hurt to the roll, and the player’s dice bring the rest. You end up with a result of 0-6.

    However, if it is 0, then it was no big thing to begin with, so that’s cool. And if it ends up 6, it was big danger to start, and then your dice screwed you, so yeah.

  9. You’ll see this in the new doc soon, but briefly:

    The GM now has the option to decide if a resistance rolls completely avoids the consequence or only reduces the consequence. So that gives you a dial to turn.

    You might say, “Okay, you fall four stories onto cobblestones. That’s a fatal consequence. Roll Prowess to resist, and you can reduce the severity to a level 3 harm.”

  10. What about that: (l’m gonna try for my hack tonight). You suffer roll-1 stress. On a 1-3 you softened a bit the consequences. On a 4-5, you avoid most of it. On a 6 you avoid all consequences.ï»ż

    That way, you cannot cancel consequences for no cost and losing lot of stress on a single roll is always worth it.

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