Tonight, I ran our first Blades session, but I had a tough time with a couple things:
1) Running NPCs in combat. How do you figure out what it should take to kill an NPC. How do you judge positon and effect for them? When should you use damage clocks? When does scale come in to effect? 2, 3, or 5 opponents?
Situation A: PCs land their blimp near two Bluecloaks, who come to the door thinking they’re there to rescue them. The Spider chats them up to set up the Cutter. The Cutter stabs the Bluecoats to murder them both. Because there are two, I decide it is Desperate; because it is a surprise it is Standard. The Player rolls a 5. So the Bluecoats die, but the cutter takes severe harm, which is resisted, but takes out Armour and Heavy Armour WDUT? Should the Cutter’s blades helped? Should Standard be enough to kill instantly?
2) What does gear provide to actions? When should it increase effect, decrease position, or just act as permission.
Situation B: The Whisper is capturing a ghost stuck in a drain with a spirit bottle. He has a hook, a bottle, and a Spirit Mask. Does the gear help? How much?
3) What does the quality of gear change. Fine weapons, fine tools, and special weapons.
Situation C: The Cutter picks up a machine gun and uses it to shoot two bluecoats. I consider it to compensate for scale, the multiple NPCs. So I call it risky standard, the rolled 5. Means one dives behind cover while the other one is killed.
4) Asset cost. At the end of the session the Spider wants a Cohort to help with combat. The book says you can buy them as temporary Assets, but I can’t find a price. How much does it cost to hires some goons?
I can easily answer 4) -> one downtime action to acquire an asset for a signle score. (Quality = Tier roll (1-3 : tier -1, 4,5: Tier, 6: Tier +1, crit: tier+2); each additional coin spent increases quality by 1.
So you did good!
There is no ‘hard and fast’ answer to any of your questions. But maybe one at a time I can provide some commentary:
1. Sounds like a desperate play as you surmised. But ballsy! Did the whispers set-up provide any help? You don’t have to roll the same action to help. Also, I’d have probably set the Bluecoats up as an obstacle with a clock – say 6 segments. Plus I would have plonked down a danger clock entitled ‘raise the alarm’ of 4 segments, that I would tick every time the players acted loudly or with boisterous nature.
So the players would have 4 ticks of actions before the alarm was raised. Since the Cutter rolled a 5 with a standard effect, this would have probably killed one, but not the other (thus the threat of serious harm) and ticked a countdown on the danger clock. I’d probably offer the (obvious) devils bargain of ticking one more ‘raise the alarm’ tick for an extra die.
Not to say that your approach was wrong! Far from it: It was fine, just another way to approach the sitch.
Much of blades is left up to party interpretation and the changes that you and your crew have made to the setting. Below are my thoughts on the matter, there is almost no wrong way to run this game.
1) I always argue that the PCs are more competent than your average goons at equal tier. While tier zero is somewhat of a pain in that approach, it has worked well for me. Personally in my games I would argue a great effect would be required to take down two guards at once (possibly acquired through a devils bargain or inventive setup)
I almost never use clocks for goon health unless they are in a large group or are goons of a vastly higher rank than the players (and even then in small groups) as I tend to pit scoundrels as a cut above.
2) I always handle gear as a logical thing and use my best judgement. If my players make a good argument, I’ll allow their idea to effect position, effect, and permission. And remember, not every item is limited to only one of these.
In your example, I would say the spirit bottle enables the whisperer to capture the spirit, the lighting hook increases position and would probably bump a limited effect (from a stronger, higher tier, spirit) to a standard effect. Meanwhile the mask provides some protection which would prevent higher tier spirits from having an edge and stabilizes the whisperers position.
(Sans bottle I may not let the whisperer try capturing it unless it was a weak spirit, Sans Lightning hook the Whisperer would likely have a hard time and could easily be attacked, Sans mask the whisperer lacks protection that could save it from a powerful spirit)
3) Quality’s primary effect is against tier. If your scoundrels are up against a challenge of a higher tier, this may penalize them (Ex: A crude tier 0 knife may cut into the scrap-work, sewn together eel leather armor of the tier 0 thug, but it won’t cut as well against properly constructed, single piece of tier 1 guards armor.) Quality means your gear counts as 1 tier higher than normal, so that guards armor poses less of problem, while the scoundrel may be able to wreck the tier 0 armor pretty easily.
4) Was already explained, its an acquire asset roll (based of tier) modified by any coin your willing to cough up. Typically for something like a cohort I would have the cost be based on both quality and scale (So if my crew of Tier 1 acquires asset and rolls a 6 (Giving them a Quality of 2) then they spend 2 coin (Bumping it up to a 4) they could temporarily acquire:
a gang of Quality 2, Scale 2 mercenaries
a gang of Quality 1, Scale 3 Street thugs
A pair of Quality 3, Scale 1 Elites
Or the services of a Quality 4 Expert
Naturally just paying out for Quality and scale can have some issues. Thugs won’t be very loyal, mercenaries will have records, and the expert may have other agendas. Naturally some extra coin may solve some or all of these issues.
As an aside, performing an acquire asset roll can certainly lead to free assets. If you tier 2 crew is trying to get some quality 1 thugs to cause a distraction and gets a 6 (For quality 3) they can just pick up the quality 1, scale 2 thugs without spending anything. They just so happen to have enough pull and spare slugs to pull it off. Now if they are doing this every run and getting a dozen thugs killed each time, they could lose some rep and may be unable to fully leverage their position to make the same acquire asset roll. Alternatively, if making them mad is worse than pitting your luck against the bluecoats in a fight then they might just be able to keep making them.
Either way, I’ve found the best way to get past any of these issues is by running the game more, then thinking back on what you’ve done and how to improve it. Don’t be afraid to ask your crew how they feel about the game and what kind of changes they would like. Feel free to manipulate the the difficulty and power level of the game. Some players like a grim and gritty struggle for survival. While other want to play as steampunk batman.
Thanks Jamie Collette and Nathan Pollard about #4. Honestly I saw the tier math and didn’t understand what it meant at the moment; notation, right.
Thanks Nathan Roberts and Nathan Pollard for the other advice… It makes sense; I need to think what effect is required by the number and tier of the opposition. Then allow players to use gear and pushing themselves/bargains to tactically increase that effect. I didn’t really understand that balance beam from my first reading, con play, or watching the game on youTube. I guess it is that far in the GMs wheel house. Understanding the balance beam of Effect will also keep me from forgetting to announce the position and effect of tasks.
_To summarize for my own (& others) understanding: _
Position: How dangerous the situation is to the the PC
Effect: How the PCs action will do against the stated opposition, taking into account numbers, tier, and situation. Adding tools and powers can increase the effect. Some PC intentions will require certain effects.
Kill all the dudes requires greater effect then kill some of them.