7 thoughts on “When taking a group action with a desperate roll, who marks XP?”

  1. Huh! Good question! I think I would also say the leader only, otherwise it could add up rather quickly.

    Also the leader is the one normally taking all the risk in a desperate group action, and that’s what the XP gain is all about.

    Still, if circumstances warranted, and the entire group is basically taking a huge risk, I might grant it to everyone.

  2. In this case, the group did manage to roll five 1’s, so everyone ended up taking a nasty hit, but I made the call on XP before the roll happened. It seemed weird to change who gets XP based on the outcome of the roll, so I didn’t.

  3. I think you should all mark xp! Making a desperate action has consequences for the whole group doing the action. The leader is just the one taking the stress of herding cats.

    To quote: The group action result covers everyone who rolled in the attempt. If you don’t roll, your character doesn’t get the effects of the action.

    That, to me, says that they should all suffer the consequences, or they should all benefit from the rewards, including xp.

    Another way you could do it is give xp to whomever rolled a miss.

  4. John Love Yeah, that’s the argument for giving it to everyone, since they could all suffer the consequences.

    On the other side, the leader risks the most in a group action, so perhaps they deserves a better reward.

    From a pure mechanics perspective I lean towards just the leader because it seems like a simple way to farm XP while minimizing risk. With a large number of PCs or a small number of skilled PCs you could easily get up 7 or more dice which means you’re likely to succeed without much stress expenditure. If that’s an uncommon occurrence it’s no problem, but it feels a little exploitable.

  5. But you gotta take the “fiction first” approach. Making desperate rolls isn’t always the player’s choice. Sometimes the fiction just doesn’t make sense. Sometimes doing a group action doesn’t always make sense. You gotta follow what is established in the fiction, not what the players are grubbing for

    Also, it’s not really exploitable because the leader will just overstress themselves eventually. That’s a ton of stress to be putting on yourself, for not very much reward. 7 people rolling dice has the potential to lay on 7 stress!(or 6? Not sure here) and that is a path to early retirement! Remember, pass or fail, everyone who fails gives stress to the leader.

    Also, if you DO fail, you are ALL taking some major consequences for, what, an extra xp? I do think it’s quite balanced

  6. You know how John Harper says that group actions are the way to do “everyone sneaks in”?

    A group that fails a couple desperate group actions is how the GM does “rocks fall, you all die”

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