I’m currently thinking about teamwork moves and would like to discuss On Point: Setup and Backup: Assist. In the fiction, these two moves seem more or less interchangeable, one PC helps another with an action and gives them some sort of advantage. But which character is on point makes a pretty large mechanical difference and I’m not sure I understand why. I’ll give two examples in play.
Adam the Lurk is on point and wants to prowl past a guard into an enemy base. Beth the Slide is backup and decides to assist Adam by distracting the guard using sway. Beth succeeds and Adam now makes his prowl action roll with a better position.
Beth the Slide is on point and knows that Adam the Lurk needs to sneak past a guard into an enemy base. She decides to setup Adam’s prowl action by using a sway action on the guard. Beth succeeds and now Adam is on point and makes his prowl action roll with better effect.
I’m not sure I understand the rationale of these two pretty similar situations ending up with different mechanical benefits. I can imagine PCs awkwardly trying to juggle who is on point in certain situations because they really want a better position on an action, or they really need better effect. It looks to me like you want who is on point to transfer pretty seamlessly, but if Beth was on point and Adam really wants a better position on his roll they might try to force Adam to be on point with an unnecessary special maneuver to achieve that result.
Thoughts?
In my view, having a better position primarily means less risk. So Backup: Assist means reducing risk for the one on point. To me it’s more immediate, simple, and short term. (also I’m used to older versions where the assisting PC doesn’t have to roll or anything other than narrate how they help. I’m not sure if that’s still the case).
Meanwhile, On Point: Set Up (improving someone’s effect later on) primarily means making complex tasks less involved, or rather, helping someone make further headway than they could just working alone. So to me, that’s like creating opportunities whereby more complex tasks later on become simpler, or some initial part of the process is already taken care of.
Set Up is also what you can do when you’re on point but don’t have applicable or ideal stats. Finally, Set Up is what you can do to even the odds against a greater danger (like being outnumbered or outmatched), or gain advantage against an otherwise equal danger (in the sense that massing with effect is like altering factors involved in a situation).
Adam Minnie I’m fairly certain that Backup: Assist requires an action roll in the new rules. First of all the rules text uses the phrase “if you accomplish it”, and the word ‘if’ usually means it requires a roll of some sort. Second, assisting used to just be a bonus die, which is a smallish bump in power, but now assisting increases your position which is huge and should require a roll.
And seeing how my two play examples are nearly identical fictionally and both require the same action roll, does it make sense that they provide different mechanical bonuses?
It seems like you’re saying that assist and setup let you give different magnitudes of help. Assist is for small things and setup is for big things? I’m not sure that makes sense with the current mechanics (increasing position is not small), and I don’t think the fiction says one way or the other. Given my above example, do you think Beth’s actions are more appropriate to be assisting or setting up, because I don’t think it’s obviously one or the other?
Mark Griffin good points about magnitude. To me it still divides more by type of help than magnitude. Are you trying to reduce risk (Assist) or reduce complexity of the task (Set up).
That’s a small distinction. Perhaps they could be one mechanical action that provides a choice of “Either improve the position OR increase the effect.” If that happened though, would you lose the flow of teamwork, since would that new combined move be a point action or a backup action (or both)?
In your example, both could work (with different flavors based primarily on whoever’s on Point, since the point-person “has the initiative” though). If Adam is on point now, he can say, “Hey Beth you want to help me out?” then she’s doing an assist. Adam’s on point so there’s not really the option for Beth to take point and set Adam up. But if Beth is on point right now, she can see the situation and initiate, “Hey Adam, I’m setting you up” then that’s a set up. In that sense, assisting is reactive, while setting up seems proactive. Adam takes point, assesses the fictional situation, and then says “Dang that corridor is more exposed than I thought. Beth, could I get an assist?”
Adam Minnie I understand what you’re saying about reducing risk vs reducing complexity, but I don’t understand why someone on Backup can ONLY reduce risk and someone On Point can ONLY reduce complexity? That seems an arbitrary distinction to me.
Maybe an arbitrary distinction is okay because Assisting and Setting-Up doing different things makes choosing a point person a tactical decision. However, I think if I were a PC I might try and arrange who is On Point to whatever is most mechanically advantageous at the time and that could lead to weird unnecessary special maneuvers to switch the On Point person.
Ah, I see this is a bit confusing because I took out the rule about switching roles, and never really fixed it in the QS text. Right now it looks like the only way to switch who’s on point is with a teamwork maneuver.
I’ll clarify that.
Ah, so Point: Set Up becomes the means to “shift point.”
Sorry to belabor the point Mark Griffin.
Position is about how much danger you face by doing something; effect is what you can actually do. Assist makes whatever it is that the point is doing less dangerous; set up allows the point to do things that they otherwise would not be able to do.
Taelor Mcclurg Yes, I understand the difference between position and effect, the question is why assisting can only increase your position and setting up can only increase your effect.
Now that John mentions it, I do recall an earlier version maybe had a line about switching who was on point by taking a stress or something? That would alleviate my problem with PCs artificially performing actions to get the mechanical bonus they most want in the moment. It’s still a little weird that you can only give someone a bonus to effect while you’re backup, but it’s a minor mental disconnect rather than an awkward problem if it’s easy to switch who is on point.
For me, when you’re on point, you lead the group and so have to make some progress, directly with Lead a group action or indirectly with Set up.
So Set up permit you to boost the progress of the next character on point, by giving a +1 effect level.
When you assist, the goal is different, you want to help the character on point and for that you put him in a better position.
Tom Z That is an arbitrary distinction that you’re making to explain the mechanics as they currently exist.
If the On Point character is setting up a prowl action to slip through an open door by distracting the guard standing in front of it, that seems more like a position bump to me than an effect bump. Did that setup help him slip through the door more completely, or did it make him less likely to suffer harsh consequences?
That’s just one example, and it’s easy to come up with examples that make more sense (to me anyway) to increase position or effect. As always, the rules seem like they’re set up to make adjudicating things quick and painless, but abstraction sometimes results in mechanics that don’t quite seem right. It’s simple to say Set-Up is always an effect bump, but sometimes the GM might want to rule that Set-Up is more likely to increase position.
It was just something I was thinking about.
Yeah, that totally makes sense, Mark. I’m revising the teamwork stuff right now to get rid of this speed bump.