I couldn’t immediately put my hand on the effect of spending Coin to assist with a stress reduction down time action. So, I figured Coin being as precious as it is, it would replace a roll and allow the character to just clear all stress.
Pay 1 Coin, clear all stress.
It is such a vital function (clearing stress) that I figured that would allow those who were more risk averse to pay a pretty steep cost, and protect the character.
What’s the official rule on spending Coin for stress?
In the future, it would be great to have a reference in the “Stress and Trauma” section with a page number for how you clear stress off.
At first blush, that seems pretty powerful as compared to “spend one Coin for an extra downtime action and reduce Stress based on a die roll.”
I mean, maybe spend a Coin for a flat reduce 3 Stress (slightly worse than the expectation on a d6) might be okay. There’s a balance to address in the economy, though.
I think you’re being way too generous for 1 coin. Not only are you clearing all stress, but you’re letting them do it safely. No chance to overindulge at all. Which defeats the coupling of stress and vice, one of the mechanics that makes BitD so cool.
Stick with the suggestion from Mischa’s first paragraph.
To be consistent with other expenditures of coin on downtime activities: If you rolled a 1-3 to clear stress, treat it as a 4. If you rolled a 4-5, treat it as a 6. If you rolled a 6, treat it as a critical. (I’m not sure what a critical should do for clearing stress; maybe clear it all with no chance to overindulge?)
I think there are two issues at play here for me. One is that clearing stress is a unique mechanic. It is a reverse resist roll! So you’re clearing 1-6 stress in a go. That mechanic is not reflected anywhere else, so we’re already dealing with something different from normal down time projects or other mechanics. So, to me, it’s less compelling to compare it to how other Coin costs work.
Second, stress is the sanity, hit points, and fictional persistence of the character. Stress is a measure of their ability to hang in there during a heist. They can never improve how much they can take, and they can never make its use cheaper. It is a fixed pool. As GM, I want them to go on heists, I want to encourage them to go out and do things as scoundrels. Providing a costly way for them to get that fictional abstract reset and get back out there serves me two ways. They lose money and get hungry again (or flex their financial muscle and show they’re awesome enough to not care about 1 Coin) AND we get back into the heist with a clean slate so they can dirty it up again.
To me that overcomes any objection about forcing them to take risks or being overly generous. The point is to drain cash and get them back in the game, and it’s easy to remember.
Plus, if they don’t have the Coin, or don’t want to spend it, there’s a way to take a riskier approach. The risk isn’t gone, it’s just riskier to be poor, which is VERY in the spirit of the game. =)
A Coin is also a lot of money; enough to assure individual attention and enough conspicuous consumption to relax, without overextending. So fictionally I can totally see it too; you get enough up front to take the edge off, instead of chasing just a little more until you’re around the bend.
Will Scott that’s the way we’ve been doing it, and, I think, also the way it’s supposed to be according to the rules (following the Bloodletters AP).
So, Will Scott and MisterTia86, how does that line up with page 19, which talks about an attribute roll using the character’s lowest attribute rating, clearing an amount of stress equal to the highest die result? You can’t score criticals with that. Also, getting a simple +1 on the result is a dangerous investment as if you go over the amount of stress you have, that forces overindulgence.
That’s really expensive, and adds maybe a help but also maybe a penalty.
I could also see spending 1 Coin to grant plus or minus up to 2 on the roll. So, you can modify the roll by up to 2 in either direction. That way if it is low, you can be guaranteed at least 3 stress clear. If it overindulges, you may be able to pull it back down.
Or, to be even more cheap, spending a Coin allows the player to choose their favorite result from the dice they roll. Not so useful when rolling 1 die, but maybe when rolling 2 or 3 that could help clear enough stress without going over.
I also feel an element that is totally missing here is group actions and assists to clear stress. These people should party together, and if they are looking out for each other, they should be able to help keep it safe but also more fun than drinking alone. Where is the mechanic to let three rogues out for a night on the town look out for each other and have more fun, more safely?
How would you go over your stress by spending coin? I have always assumed that spending coin to boost downtime rolls was done after the roll was made, so if you roll just what you need, you don’t spend coin.
Also, John has explicitly stated that when you upgrade a die via coin, you are changing the actual die result- so if you rolled a 2 and wanted a 4, one coin would get you there.
I agree with the prevailing sentiment here that “clear all stress for one coin”is way too cheap and easy.
Mike Pureka I make them spend Coin before they roll, so you’re nicer than I am on that front (where they only spend it if they need to.)
If the Coin grants +1 on the roll, how does a 2 go to a 4 with 1 Coin? I’ve missed something. The vice roll is not fail/flawed success/success/critical structure, it’s generating a number between 1 and 6.
I guess for me the play is the thing, and I want to get out there and get at it. I empathize with the annoyance of having low stress that is hard to clear off safely, but limits what characters can do in the field. That’s more compelling to me than making sure I’m harsh enough with vice costs. It’s about priorities, and ours are in different places.
The game belongs to each of us. Do the thing that works for you. I could definitely see that mechanic working really well for some groups (either ones that really hate going into the score with 1-2 stress, and also groups that really horde coin), and not working for others.
Mark Griffin I think the official rules should address the issue of spending Coin on vice, even if the bottom line is to offer options and choice. I do think it likely that for something of this mechanical weight John will put SOMETHING in–I am confident he has opinions, and may have already addressed this somewhere I’m not seeing it.
If the game was published and out and done, then there’s little value to the conversation. If there’s a chance this conversation gets the two issues of spending Coin on vice, and using group actions on vice, then it’s totally valuable!
I don’t need the official game to agree with me, but I do think it would be super helpful for the official game to put SOME position in on those two issues.
Andrew Shields I am following the rules, per page 31:
After the roll, you may increase the result level by one for each coin spent, by hiring assistance, paying a bribe, etc. (so, a 1-3 result becomes a 4/5, 4/5 becomes 6, 6 becomes Critical).
So it’s supposed to be done after the roll, and paying coin does not give “+1” to the roll, it gives +1 “result level”. And yes, John has already said that you can still increase the roll by one ‘Result level” even if the result levels themselves aren’t meaningful. So you can make a 1 into 5 for one coin, by going up from “1-3” to “4-5” and choosing “5”.
I think this is pretty clear cut.
Is the part about increasing a 1-3 result to a 4-5 result even if it is not a “result level” roll anywhere in the rules? I missed that conversation, anyway. And that just seems weird to me.
Always something new to find in the nuances. I was lucky to get familiar enough to run the game, I hadn’t touched it in months.
Yep, Mike and Will have it right.
You can spend Coin for more stress relief (either by bumping up your result number, or by paying for another downtime action and choosing to indulge your vice again).
Teamwork actions are not prohibited in downtime, so there are already mechanics for indulging vices together (assuming they can be done as a group in the fiction).
So if you indulge your vice, and roll a 2 and a 3, you can spend one Coin to increase the 3 to a 4 or a 5 depending on which one works better for you?
I can see how you could take 1 stress to grant another character +1d, but how would a group action work? Everybody rolls their lowest attribute, and the group as a whole picks the result they like best (not automatically the highest) and everyone clears that much stress? That’s really not exactly the same as a normal group action, as getting a 6 may be as bad as good. And does the leader take 1 stress for everyone that rolls a 1-3, even if 3 is a perfectly reasonable roll to clear a little stress?
It’s different enough I guess I don’t see it as clear-cut and would be helped with a little more.
I don’t think that group vice rolls need special rules: they’re kinda messy, as vice should be (if you’re the one leading them, you take stress to drag those who “under-indulge”).
I think that they could be worth the risk if you consider that maybe only one of the character (probably the leader) is using a downtime action.
MisterTia86 And I assumed everyone would need to take an action to participate, as in a normal group action.
I guess this just further convinces me that the application of group rules to this activity isn’t obvious, and there could be benefit in providing a more explicit suggestion of how that works.
I forgot you could spend Coin to bump up rolls. Is it the value or the result?
Teamwork maneuvers are always available. They may not always be a good idea or always work out in your favor, though. That’s not a guarantee in this game.
Apply the rule as normal. If this means that a group 6 result is ‘bad’ for someone (due to overindulgence or whatever) then that’s what happens. If that possibility is unacceptable, then don’t participate in the group roll.
This is the general philosophy of rules in Blades. They’re set up in a way to drive events in the game — not to always ‘work out’ in a specific way or along an ideal arc. Sometimes they’ll have very good results for the group. Sometimes they’ll have bad results. You don’t need to manage this and make sure that the ‘right thing’ happens. Follow the fiction, engage the rules, and play to find out what happens.
Sometimes the crew will get by easy and win a lot with little effort. This isn’t OP or broken. This is good fortune and they should enjoy it when it happens. Sometimes the game will smash them down and keep on kicking them. Or anything in between.
There’s a whole spectrum of possible play in Blades. It gets weird when someone decides that this needs to be managed. When the GM decides that the Crew needs to be ‘hungry’ and so starts to manage the Coin they get from jobs — not too much, but not too little. This is unnecessary. The game is built so the whole range is fun to play. They can have surplus or want. It all still works.
Anyway, no, there’s no special case here or exception to the rule. Apply teamwork as normal. Sometimes it will be a benefit, and sometimes it won’t.
Thanks John!
If there’s one takeaway from this discussion though, I’d say that it might be a good idea to have a parenthetical or something to clarify that, yes, even if the roll doesn’t have “Result levels” you can still pay coin, and yes, you can pick 4 OR 5 when you do it.
So to clarify, a result of 1-3 still causes a stress on the leader for each person who rolls it, even though it’s not a roll that generates effect level but instead generates a number between 1-6. (So 1-3 doesn’t mean failure, it’s just a lower roll.)
Also, how does spending a Coin work for that group roll? One person spends a coin and gets +1 on their highest roll?
When you spend a Coin on a roll in downtime, A roll of 1-3 becomes a 4 or 5. A 4 or 5 becomes a 6. A 6 becomes a critical (two sixes).
(This rule refers to the numbers on the dice. It applies to the numbers on the dice.)
What happens if you get a ‘critical’ on a Vice roll? The rules don’t indicate anything, so nothing happens.
What happens if it’s a group roll? The rules don’t indicate any special exceptions, so there aren’t any. If you spend Coin on a group roll in downtime, increase your rolled number as per the usual rule.