Let’s talk a little about resistance rolls. The rules give a range of options, which is cool, but I’m wondering what people have actually done in practice.
When you’ve played, and level 3 harm happens, and someone resists, do you have a ‘default’ assumption for what that means? Is it usually 1 level harm less, or usually harm is avoided completely? Or half each way? Varies from episode to episode, or from series to series?
Likewise, if a bad roll results in several negative outcomes, do you tend to have one resistance roll deal with all of them, or expect separate rolls for each?
And, naturally, why are those your defaults or tendancies, and what effect do you find it has on the game?
I usually let the fiction decide – but “fiction” is a slippery thing, and depends on what the players describe.
I err on the side of being generous (after all, I can always throw more threats at them later) – so if the players describe a way to resist the harm that could plausibly mean they get off freely, then that’s what I do.
They’re already “paying” for it with the stress cost, or making armor, to be allowed to roll resistance.
Of course, it does still depend on the fiction. If they want to resist an oncoming train by leaping to the side I’d allow them to resist it entirely. If they want to resist it by blocking with their body (implausible as that is) I’d still give them harm, just maybe not the full amount – but that might come with fictional benefits (such as now clinging to the front of the train, if their goal was to get onto the moving train.)
I’ll rarely give multiple negative outcomes, unless they obviously go together (e.g. a sniper shooting them will cause physical harm and also the gunshot will alert the other guards.)
If it does cause multiple outcomes, if it’s plausible that their fictional action resists them both, I’ll only ask for the one roll. If their resistance description doesn’t really apply, then it only helps with the outcome it applies to. They can then resist again for the other negative outcome, or decide to only resist once.
(So if they want to dodge that sniper, because they saw the glint of sunlight off the rifle – that’ll allow them to resist the harm, but not to resist the other guards being alerted. If they wanted to dodge the sniper and also ring the church bells to drown out the gunshot, that would be two rolls – maybe by two different PCs. If they wanted to resist by being so stealthy that the sniper never spots them in the first place, that would resist both the physical harm and alerting the other guards with the one roll.)
In my games, almost always resisting will reduce harm by 1 level, and armour will allow you to reduce it a further 1 level. But all of my games have been pretty high grit high lethality kinda thing. The rules for how to use armour changed in the final release version, and so I dno, maybe I should be more forgiving.
This is mostly an issue of tone setting and will necessarily vary from table to table. But having done it several ways I have opinions/experience on this subject to share.
Also worth nothing is that some people easily conflate/misinterpret what is resisted by resistance roll. It might avoid or reduce the consequences of something that just happened, but should only do when its possible to do it without rewinding the fiction itself. Rewinding the story to edit things is handled with flashbacks, a special mechanic, for a reason.
So if a PC were Hunting armed thugs in a Desperate action and situation, and after 1-3, I rule they were lining up a shot and got surprised so they lose opportunity and take severe harm… well, then they don’t resist to avoid the surprise (ie: Insight roll). The surprise is the primary fiction brought by the 1-3, and the consequences of that are the things you can resist.
Now assuming they resisted the harm first, it matters whether this is all-or-nothing harm or not. In the case I described, they could only reduce it by a level through resistance (that is, Prowess because physical harm, and they could resist multiple times to reduce it by multiple levels – perhaps to 0). They could also roll to resist the lost opportunity so the specific opening they saw isn’t totally blundered away (this, with Insight, since this is due to surprise or deception).
—So potentially four resist rolls. Hm. That’s a big OUCH to undo.
Disclaimer: this is how I typically rule things, and is how it goes at my tables when the players share my opinion about what is “fun” about Blades (namely, a frequently gritty struggle, punctuated by surprising moments of scoundrel awesomeness).
However, some groups I’ve played with wanted high-flying scoundrels who rarely get hurt. Which I find fun too. Besides, there is still plenty to worry about to satisfy my desires for challenge, and to motivate character change. In those games, I’ve ruled that resistance always avoid completely, unless it clearly makes no sense to do that. This leads to a more care-free experience, but also noticed that it does little to actually soften things until you start shaping the fiction itself to be softer. In other words, being nicer about resistance rulings tends to brighten the tone, but only from a distinct black to a dark gray on its own, and YMMV if you don’t also frame things a little less deadly than the book assumes.
They can burn stress to cancel / avoid the consequences / harm. Each different consequence is a stress check.
It sounds more generous than it is.
Mark Cleveland Massengale It should be noted that by the book, you can only resist a given consequence once, so you cannot resist harm multiple times to get it down to 0 (armor is an exception, since you can tick armor and use resistance).
They can choose how much stress to burn ahead of time to avoid many things Ariel Cayce too. But after the fact, they just get to say No, I don’t get rekt here. And I care about it enough to roll some dice and stand up for it.
This is quite generous I think, a very broad power. It’s also quite limited when you don’t have a sufficient breadth of related experience (aka resistance dice) to back it up though – an interesting dichotomy and perhaps one of my favorite features of Blades.
yep Jakob Oesinghaus I just wanted to highlight I often will let them do that though. They can by default: declare a resist to avoid a consequence entirely, or declare one to reduce as the situation dictates (either ok so long as that doesn’t make sense).
And I do that too, but in the latter case I tend to include the option to reduce it more with multiple resists unless that doesn’t make sense (more than 2 typically doesn’t, as shown to me across my experience with players – but it’s happened!)
-1 level per resistance (I’ve only ever seen one used at a time), but sometimes I take, and have experienced, GM fiat or “following the fiction”.
Why be nice, they’re scoundrels, right?
With my first crew I had a default of reducing by one level. With my second crew I defaulted to two levels, but the longer we’ve been playing the more I’ve slowly been reverting back to one level. I like the consequences being more present, and now that my crew is hooked I’m not so worried about scaring them away with a tougher game.