Question about Resistance Roll:
Is this a success roll like an action roll or do I resist already by stating that I do a resist?
Example: I resist with 2 dice, rolling 1 and 2. I pay 6-2 = 4 stress.
Is the effect resisted or must I roll at least a 4 (= you do it) to make the resist succesful?
Thanks for helping me with that one. I assume that I already did that wrong twice and therefore want to be sure.
Arrg. Never mind. Just found the example on page 7 which clearifies it:
During a knife fight, Daniel’s character, Cross, gets
stabbed in the chest. Daniel rolls his Prowess rating
to resist, and gets a 2. It costs 6 stress, minus 2 (the result of the resistance roll) to resist the consequences. Daniel marks off 4 stress and describes how Cross survives the attack.
Depending on severity a deadly event can turn into a heavy injury, or a small consequence vanishes completely.
Yep, Resistance roll are one of the clever genre-enforcing part of Blades: you can always resist automatically, as long as you have stress for it (if you don’t, you still resist bu take Trauma).
Which is a delightful change from what I get from other games! Resisting means the character can avoid one consequence completely when it makes sense, and other times they only reduce the consequence.
With the way resist works in this game (if the player wants, something is reduced by its declaration alone) I find something quite unique and I am surprised more people haven’t mentioned it. I love it: not only do I have the freedom to hit my players with the brutal realism of their characters getting shot “to death” when they have it coming (since I know they can just resist), but the players agency to resist that isn’t all-powerful, it just deepens the fiction of what is happening. As in.. when I need to hurt them, and they want to resist, there isn’t a rule that fits all that stops the conversation – and we end up naturally clarifying the fiction to move forward instead of deciding based on the text alone.
This is a thing where it shines. I am only not entirely happy with the Effect/Potency/Size/Quality rules. Its smoothen out lucky strikes mostly for me.