Question re. outcomes of a 1-3 roll and resisting:
The 1-3 roll lists several possible outcomes: severe harm, unintended consequences, etc. and instructs GMs to use some or all of these, as appropriate to the fiction.
If a GM goes with “all”, does a single resistance roll apply to each of these outcomes, or does one resist cover the lot? The latter seems like it has the potential to be fictionally incoherent, while the former seems mechanically… rough. You can end up burning a lot of stress on one bad roll.
The typical way to handle it is that one resistance roll reduces/negates one consequence. Sure, that could burn up a lot of stress, but dealing with all of those consequence should be stressful. Besides that, you are not forced to resist, you can always accept that a consequence actually happens and/or mitigate it a different way.
You resist consequences individually, I believe. And yeah, it can be rough! Turns out you can’t juggle that many plates — pick and choose what really matters to you.
It’s the former.
Two things:
1. They don’t have to choose to resist everything. They might just accept some of the consequences.
2. On a desperate roll don’t hit them with level three harm AND have them lose an opportunity AND be knocked to the ground. Think of the consequences as adding up to level 3 harm, so you might have them suffer level 2 harm and lose an opportunity or suffer a level 1 harm: burned, and a level 2 harm: bleeding.
One p. 32 we have “The GM may also threaten several consequences at once, then the player may choose which ones to resist (and make rolls for each).
“She stabs you and then leaps off the balcony. Level 2 harm and you lose the opportunity to catch her with fighting.”
“I’ll resist losing the opportunity by grappling her as she attacks. She can stab me, but I don’t want to let her escape.””
This implies that you have to resist the consequences seperately and yes, this means a lot of (potential) stress.
Therefor we had that discussion lately and I was asked to deal out serveral consquences sparely and only on special/threating occasions.
Now, as I again think of it I see another compromise coming from the fiction: Depending on how you avoid the consquence you may avoid multiple consquences with one roll. Example: I resit harm jumping of that bridge and that avoids the complication that the guard recognized me as well.
(Edit: Looks like these guys beat me to the punch! I’ll leave my post in case the longer example is helpful.)
My understanding (without the book in front of me) is that you roll resistance against each consequence individually. If I remember right it says that on the page about resistance rolls, but hopefully someone with the book handy can provide a page number.
So say we have a character, let’s call him Michter. Now, Michter is climbing a rain-slicked tower, despite the GM’s warning that this is an extraordinarily dangerous climb. The narrative tension is high here.
Michter rolls a Desperate Prowl, and comes up with a 3. The GM describes how Michter’s fingers slip on the wet stones, and Michter goes tumbling to the ground. Michter lands with a sharp crack as his leg shatters beneath him (Severe Harm), and he looks up to see that he’s landed at the feet of a patrol (Complication with Desperate Position).
Michter has a few options here.
He can take his licks, marking down the severe harm and rolling an action to deal with the new complication presented by the patrol.
He might choose to resist only one consequence, probably due to high stress levels. He could roll Prowess to reduce his harm to Level 2 Harm (and maybe mark armor to reduce it to Level 1), saying that he instinctively rolls as he lands to reduce the impact. He’s still on his back at the feet of the patrol though.
Or, stress permitting, he could resist both consequences. He first rolls Prowess to reduce his harm as above, but then he rolls Prowess again to say that he actually managed to land on his feet. The patrol is still there — it was introduced as a consequence of the action roll — but by resisting he can improve his position for dealing with them (Standard instead of Desperate).
At least that’s how I understand it — someone should definitely correct me if I’m wrong.
You might potentially have a whole bunch of consequences for one action — I generally use the fictional positioning to figure out how many should apply. I like to reward those tense moments with more complications — even though they’re technically negative, they’re also exciting and allow that tension to release in a satisfying way.
Due to stress, characters definitely can’t resist everything. If an action has multiple consequences, they’re probably better off prioritizing one or two to resist, and taking their licks for the rest.
Thanks for asking this J Stein.
As Jason says, it was his experience that prompted the question. I overlooked the passage that stated that you resist each consequence separately.
It definitely makes sense in the fiction, I just overlooked that passage, and my intuition threw up a flag. But, hey, I guess that’s what Stress is for.
Ben Norby if landing at the feet of a patrol is a consequence, it can be resisted; the player just needs to give an explanation. Maybe Michter could hold on just long enough until the patrol had passed, or he immediately rolled into the shadows after his fall and he was not spotted.
(Although the GM has the option to rule that the patrol is not completely avoided, just the severity reduced… true. But two consequences that both can’t be completely avoided sound a bit harsh to me)
Did you maybe mix it up with flashbacks?
Michter’s player cannot use a flashback to murder this patrol, because it is already established that they are here; but he may use a flashback to have them bribed earlier.
Jörg Mintel Ah! I may indeed have mixed that up with Flashbacks (maybe because of that caveat with Resistance rolls that the GM could rule that they’re not wholly avoided). I’ll have to review it before my game tonight. Thanks!
(This is the post I made that J Stein mentions above. I posted it, then decided to take it down and run it by our GM to make sure he was ok with it. Since he is, here it is.)
For context, my character just jumped off a bridge on to a moving barge full of Billhooks to distract them and set up the crew on the bridge to be able to get an ambush in.
Except Kite managed to tank his roll and so missed the boat, broke his leg on the shallow bottom (or the side of the boat or whatever) and stirred up the ghosts we had been trying to summon.
This, kids, is why only rolling one die on a Desperate roll can be problematic (and pretty funny).
At least I’ll get some good XP out of it. If Kite survives.
As an update, we settled on him landing on the boat unheard (so not causing the distraction he wanted), but with a big chunk of brickwork from the bridge falling on him, pinning and injuring him temporarily (lost opportunity, armour reduced injury, one tick to a clock for a related thing). Seemed reasonable to me.
Jason Lee I hope I didn’t give the impression that I thought the GM was being *un*reasonable. I posted the question here not because I intend(ed) to rules-lawyer in the game; I’m just still learning the system, and asked the question to get people’s thoughts.
No, I didn’t get that impression from your post. I also wondered what general consensus was. I’m hoping to GM sometime soon, and I had no idea what a correct level on consequence for a desperate failure was either, so I’m glad you asked.
Jason Lee J Stein Just want to say thanks for the question and the given thoughts because our group discussed the same topic. Now I know that other good folks are having the same issues.
Makes my feel more better (no irony here) 🙂
No problem, Stefan Struck. What did your group come out with in the end?
I downgraded the consequences. It seemed a bit harsh to apply all of the
Desperate consequences at once, so I gave a Lost Opportunity (can’t really
downgrade that), a Moderate Harm (magnitude 2) and a 1-tick Minor
Complication to a clock (magnitude 1). I liked the idea of having
consequences as a kind of menu, but it was a bit tricky to separate them in
the fiction – i.e. make them so that they can be resisted individually, but
still make sense.
Jason Lee Still have to play to find out. I’m planning to use less consquences, allow one resist for several consquences if the fiction is valid, use downgraded consquences like Marcus Shepherd said. We have to see if this is working for everybody.