If a player declares a heavy load and have 6 items marked, can they carry more without dropping things (ie fictional limits are the actual restraint on what can be carried), or is 6 meant to be the hard limit?
If a player declares a heavy load and have 6 items marked, can they carry more without dropping things (ie fictional…
If a player declares a heavy load and have 6 items marked, can they carry more without dropping things (ie fictional…
Hmm. Do you have an example or two? I’m inclined to say “it depends” which feels like a huge cop-out.
I think there was a similar discussion on a previous thread. I think general consensus was that carrying more than the upper limit of the category you were at me you appear to be the next category when you were in the light and medium categories. For heavy plus more, I would probably be imposing disadvantages and penalties if further weight was being carried and nothing was being dropped, otherwise why couldn’t I just decide that I was always carrying seven or eight items?
Mark Cleveland Massengale, did you have an opinion one way or the other? What have you been doing so far?
Maybe a devil’s bargain would work here? Sure you can carry that extra sword but…
Or, maybe ask why they want to carry something extra? If it’s just to be prepared, then that’s what flashbacks are for
I’d say nope, it’s a hard limit. You can’t change your load while your in the middle of a score because load is a kind of flashback. It gives you the flexibility to say “I’ve always been carrying this” in the middle of the score, within the bounds of what you can carry discreetly. For that’s the cost: do you look like a citizen, a scoundrel or a war dog. Though that cost is pretty minor, it establishes your look from the beginning of the score and you probably shouldn’t change that retrospectively. If you did allow to change look retrospectively, I’d give a stress cost and reconsider how people would have reacted to the character up to now.
I suppose I’d allow a player to pick overloaded (7+ load) from the start and wear that penalty from the start of the score, at least until their character deliberately puts something down. But I’d give overloading stiffer penalties then just appearance, probably increasing penalties to action rolls. And I’d definitely say that dice penalties shouldn’t be applied retrospectively.
I might allow a character to change their load if they’re picking up something new, something they just found. Then I might let them become overloaded, with a penalty to action rolls like reduced effect or riskier positioning from then on. Or if they just went over the light load they selected, then maybe they now definitely look like a scoundrel. Or if they choose to drop something they’ve been carrying all along, maybe heat would increase for the crew as evidence of their passing is left behind, or maybe they’ve now lost that dropped item permanently.
Steven Dodds Sure: PC is out of slots and marked heavy load already, but wants to pick up a coin worth of loot, or a suit of armor.
Jason Lee I run it as a hard limit basically. Then I offer possibilities like: they can drop things (removing the load, not caring about the lost items), they can give them to an ally or cohort (if they have available load), or they can take action to unmark the items safely. What they describe as their solution could also trigger a flashback (usual 0-2 stress costs) or might spur a fortune roll depending on the circumstances.
Swapping out a weapon or damaged armor for another set of armor makes sense to me, as long as you’re not carrying the damaged version (for … some reason), and you managed to get the new armor without damaging it somehow, and of course changing takes a fair amount of time.
I think overburdening could be a thing, because realistically people don’t just stop moving–cough, Skyrim, cough–when they pick up slightly more gear than their cap. But major or elaborate actions would be at a penalty, like people have said, or maybe the rules for getting help / pushing yourself for stress could apply, depending.
As for changing load, I think mostly the load mechanic represents your preparation. You prepared to have 3/5/6 items-worth. Realistically, you could have walked in with 3, flashed back to stash +2 somewhere, and +1 somewhere else to pick up later, and that makes sense to me. I guess you could keep flashing back like that, past +3 extra load, when I think about it. Just costs more stress for the flashbacks as your GM says “really?” progressively louder and more incredulously.
Oliver Granger I like your interpretation. I ran it almost exactly like that for my player who did this, but I also hadn’t figured out what to do for exceeding load yet. And now that you mention your Overloaded idea, it makes sense – and suddenly lesser harm by that name seems like such an obvious solution.
They just had all the items marked, plus they wanted more loots to carry back. But they were all at load 6, all items marked, and I said.. “okay well, your options are…eh, well.. I don’t know. 6 is supposed to be the max; right? hm.. just push yourself” but then I immediately wanted to place a limit of 1 on it.
whoops, didn’t tag Steven Dodds ^ is at you
Haha, I was going to respond anyway.
Hmm, for just looting? If they aren’t under any time constraints, or outside threat, I’d just let them have it. Maybe something like +1 heat because “everyone saw you dressed for war, carrying extra loot on your backs after the job. and people talk.” But it doesn’t feel too bad to me to let them do that. Maybe flash back to having a loot cart or carriage waiting.
My group doesn’t really loot, because, well, for one, we haven’t been playing for very long. But also I told them I don’t want them to feel like if they don’t loot the room, they’re missing out on something. So my opinion is much more hypothetical.
Well, they were still mid score too, or I wouldn’t have cared so much. They were vying for side loots (the mission was about murder).
I also bring this up because I have seen the extreme end of “carrying things” examples (I watched a Blades game where one PC tried to carry a human-sized hull alone while the others distracted the security lol) and I was like “hmm.. what would I have said if my players tried the same thing?” / also “Does the text forbid this wihtout dropping things?”
I would think that if a crew went into a score thinking they might grab loot, they’d go in lighter. If you’re going in heavy…literally…I feel you’re expecting to do some focused work. If you do come across something you want, you swap your load or take steps to hide it for later or such. Personally, barring FFG’s Star Wars, I’ve found encumbrance rules to be more annoying than useful, beyond common sense. My two, admittedly, inexperienced cents.
Steven Dodds I’m not really a fan of allowing players to change their load directly through a flashback. Picking items within your load as you need them is what represents your character’s preparation and planning. Picking the load actually represents how conspicuous your character is going into the score. And that means that a flashback to change your load is actually a flashback to change how your character looks right now, not just in the past. So it’s not really a flashback, or even a retcon; it’s changing what’s already been established in the fiction.
Now, sometimes the character’s look doesn’t matter for the score, so it might not be a big deal to give the player a break. But sometimes it really does. For example, infiltrating a noble’s garden party through the front door. The guards should only let you in if you look like a citizen (light load). After getting past the guards, I wouldn’t let the player flashback to change their character’s load to now be heavy. That would change not just the prep before the score, but change the events in the score so far. Now it doesn’t make sense how the characters got past the guards.
An alternate flashback to achieve the same end could be seeing the character stash gear in a bush in the noble’s garden earlier that day. No more narrative dissonance and all the same benefits. I’d allow the characters to pick up gear past their light load, changing their load to normal or heavy as required, because that would just mean that from now on everyone could see they were definitely a scoundrel.
Oliver Granger, extremely well said. Thank you.
It feels to me then that adding to the load mid-job by collecting extra loot establishes a point in the fiction that can’t be rewritten.
Yes, you can loot extra and increase your load, but that means you can’t have already been carrying those additional tools and gear.
Going off the end of the load track, that’s some penalties. Things stick out, catch on each other and the environment. Stuff rattles and jangles and clatters. You spend so much attention trying to keep it under control, you miss the obvious danger. It’s just darn heavy. Etc.
Well, the light/medium/heavy system is not meant to be interpreted as an encumbrance-rule, because otherwise there would be checkboxes for loot on the character sheets.
If you feel that the characters should be hindered by stuff they picked up, just consider it when determining position and effect level on actions. Or use the opportunity for some devil’s bargains. Or consequences.
I don’t think that any elaborate rules are really necessary.
After all, BitD is not like D&D, where collecting magical things in a dungeon is part of the character development. 🙂
I may be wrong but it seems the parcel of coin costing one load is tripping people up.
Load is a hard limit for me in terms of pulling out their own gear. It’s not actually about what you can carry, it’s about what you planned for. My players have never actually gone around picking up loot, they know they’re going to get whatever coin at the end of their job, and talking about picking up random valuables isn’t going to change that amount at all. The point of coin is to be abstract. The only time I want my players picking up and carrying things around is if it’s specifically part of the mission. Last session my players were trying to steal a 2 ton stone alter. Getting it out was all part of the plan and if they stole some silver candlesticks during the job I don’t care.
If my cutter already pulled out her 6 load worth of weapons and armor and saw a nasty halberd on the wall and wanted to start cleaving people in half with it? Sure thing, sounds fun. If they wanted to strap on more armor they found lying around? No thanks, that’s not about fun, that’s about weaseling out of taking harm after you’d already spent your load.
Mark Griffin yes, but (re: extra armour) how are explaining that to your players in the context of the rules of the game and the fiction as established? What actually stops the cutter from gearing up on the job if opportunity presents?
I wouldn’t talk to the player about the rules or the fiction, I would talk to the player about what kind of game Blades isn’t. It’s not in the spirit of the game for your character to avoid every harm by scavenging a new breastplate every 20 minutes. Blades is already extremely generous in giving players control over their own fate with load, flashbacks, resistance rolls and trauma (it’s impossible for the GM to kill a blades PC unless the player agrees or they already have 4 trauma), but it is very much not a game of stripping your enemies for spare armor after every fight. That’s boring and adds nothing to the game but safety.
If they really must be pointed to something in the rules open to page 31. It says in big bold letters, Don’t be a weasel. There is certainly more than one way to do that.