First things first, this group is terrific! A real model for how these sort of gamer communities should work. Ironic in a game about backstabbing villains that.
Second, as our group is about to sit down and try this, would someone here kindly help walk me through the action roll sequence? Or point me to a sterling example of same?
I think I’ve got my head around everything else, but am unsure on how to know what Effect a player is aiming for and which they get.. Every answer I’ve come up with seems fairly hand-wavey compared to how clear every other part is… Does the GM just announce that “it looks like you’re going for great/minor/etc. Effect?”
You don’t really aim for Effect. The player states what they’re trying to do, and by looking at the fiction you determine effect. I start off with the assumption that a successful action roll results in a standard effect (2 ticks on a clock, or a reasonable success). Then you look at other factors in the fiction. Tier/quality and scale are relatively straightforward, but potency can be tricky. Potency is kind of a catch all for if there is any reason that what they’re doing should be more or less effective. Taking into account the circumstance you modulate the effect up or down, landing somewhere between no effect (0 ticks) or great effect (3 ticks), and you tell the player what the effect and position of the roll is. They can then push themselves to increase their effect or perhaps try a different action with a different effect. I forget if this is in the rules, but frequently people also allow lowering the position of a roll to increase the effect if it’s possible to achieve better results by putting yourself in more danger (ie. making an all out desperate attack rather than a more reserved defensive one).
I would also recommend easing your players into the blades rule set, and not introducing all the mechanics in a single sitting. Effect is one of the rules I usually leave until night 2 or 3.
That’s good advice. Thank you. So most likely example..
Player: “I shank that guy!”
GM: He was ready for said shanking, That’s a risky position and a skirmish/hunt/finesse roll (depending on situation, ideally the player suggests.)
Player: I got a 5!
GM: The guy has been shanked! He bleeds out on the floor but you suffer a minor consequence, like say he scratches your face and arms up in the struggle.(If he was important to the plot, he might have had a clock)
Is that all there is to it? Did I miss a step?
And then the player could optionally roll to resist the scratchings.
Or decide he actually want a badass scar and accept it ^__~
(I have a player that, on principle, never resist the collateral damage of his Tempest, because he’s a piromaniac piromancer, and rejoice when everything is on fire)
I’m glad Galen got to this obstacle as I’m tripping over it myself. Thanks for the above explanations. Quick afterward – can effect go higher than +3? Say the character has potency, scale, tier and even a fictional upper hand?
Adam Brimmer yes, you can go higher, especially when crits are involved. However if the player had as many advantages as you mentioned, I probably wouldn’t even call for a roll. They just do it.
Also please remember that no matter how high your success is, it still doesn’t let you do impossible/nonsensical things – and that can sometimes including filling too many segments of a clock at once.
There was a big argument a while back about someone using a clock to represent “the manor house guards” and someone rolling a success with potency and fine weapon and cutter stuff and being all “I fill in the whole clock!” which is fine, except that there were only two guards present for him to kill. So there is no way he could have eliminated all the guards with that roll.
Mike Pureka I don’t know if I agree with reducing the effect after a roll to justify the persistence of a clock.
The clock is an abstraction of the “manor house guards” obstacle.
If killing two guards fills the clock (which implies that the clock was a simple 4-tick clock) then there weren’t many guards to begin with and the GM should ask himself: “are there any more guards? If yes: why they aren’t an obstacle anymore?”
Added:…or wait a complication to introduce more guards as an obstacle: until then, they’re not a threat.
I disagree. I don’t think the players are entitled to success just because they stacked a lot of bonuses.
This is the “I jump to the moon” problem. You can’t jump to the moon by rolling a 20 on your athletics check. And you can’t kill all the guards if all the guards aren’t there. It’s really that simple.
Unrelated to the point you’re discussing, but in Blades you can absolutely kill all the guards even if they aren’t there. All it takes is some creative flashbackery and, optionally, arcane powers.
Mike Pureka it’s not the same problem: “jumping to the moon” is simply not possible: in that case, there’s no roll nor clock involved.
If the GM thought that the guards couldn’t be killed in a single action, than it would have created a 6+ tick clock. If the obstacle is a simple 4-tick clock, then the GM thinks it could be resolved in a single action and there are a lot of ways to explain that (in contrast with “jumping to the moon): maybe the rest of the guards are asleep and/or completely drunk, maybe there are fewer guards than initially expected (and the “why is that?” could be interesting), maybe the rest of the guards were about to change station in that moment and the cutter kills them too, or maybe (as Mark Griffin suggest) some of the kills were actually made in a flashback.
Who said it was a 4 tick clock? You can fill a 4 tick clock without even scratching the surface of bonuses.
The other guards hear the shot, come running, and then get shot themselves.
I agree that an action roll cannot accomplish an impossible feat. What is and is not possible depends on the exact situation that you’re in, and discussing a specific example isn’t that helpful because we lack the richness of an established fiction.
Mark Griffin you’re probably right: didn’t mean to go OT.
Mike Pureka then I interpret the rules differently from you: I’ve always assumed that Extreme Effect (4) is the best Effect you could get (regardless of bonus).
An example we discussed as a group was this – a player was rushing up a staircase in disguise. Blocking his path were two brutes, alert and weapons drawn looking for a threat. The player wanted to rush them. I threw in a 6 point clock – I had described them as alert and tough looking and they have the higher ground. The player (a lurk) has a disguise and the element of surprise. He rolls a 4, thats a success (2 ticks) and the disguise could give him effect of +1 tick. However we opt for reduced effect (one of the brutes is sharper than expected) and so we take a -1 resulting in a clock at 2 of 6 ticks. On to round 2… Now I remarked that had this been the cutter I might have just called for it to be a 4 point clock, or had the lurk used the environment better (there was a blackout and he had dark sight goggles) I’d have given him one roll to take them out at once. How am I doing?
Mike Pureka +MisterTia86
I think you two are not talking about the same thing…
A guards clock is an abstract representation of all guards in the building. Two guards in a room are a specific problem.
The question is: is the player addressing the abstract clock or the specific problem with his action?
Just killing the two guards means that the effect level is only for this specific situation and the guards clock is only given a tick our two as a side effect.
If on the other hand the player wants to attack all guards he encounters and therefore uses his attack action to deal with the guards clock (and maybe solve the whole clock in one go), his position and effect level is of course completely different.
Adam Brimmer I think it’s important to be clear what name that 6 tick clock has. If it’s “The Guards are dead” then maybe that’s okay. If the lurk just wants to get on the other side of the guards, 6 ticks could be excessive just to get around them. I generally only use clocks for combat with large groups, combat with important enemies, large goals that can’t be accomplished with a single action (Patrols at Bluecoat HQ), countdowns (The Demon is Summoned), or LTPs.
In your specific example I’d be unlikely to use a clock at all unless dealing with those two brutes ticked a large goal clock (but I’d only tick that clock after this encounter was over, the clock has no bearing on this specific encounter), or they were particularly noteworthy opponents.
If the lurk wants to kill or disable the brutes, I’d ballpark that a single great success would kill one and just have him roll and tell him his partial success resulted in one Brute taking a serious wound and the second tackling him to the floor(feel free to resist!).
If the lurk wanted to bypass the brutes via speed, stealth or deception I’d probably let any success succeed, but add in complications as necessary for partials.
This has answered all of my questions and then some. Thank you, everyone. It all works more or less as read, so I feel on top of the rules. Still, it’s going to take some doing to get my players around the ideas of a fight being the same structure of skill roll as say, diplomacy or witchcraft.
Heh, it will be good for them.
Ditto Galen.
Lots of good advice here.
Don’t forget to have fun with the fiction.