After eight sessions, my players are routinely throwing 4+ dice on every action roll. That’s a 93%+ success rate. Any consequences I throw at them are just resisted. I fear future scores will lack a lot of drama. What can I do?
After eight sessions, my players are routinely throwing 4+ dice on every action roll.
After eight sessions, my players are routinely throwing 4+ dice on every action roll.
Is there a way you can frame some of the challenges that work with some different skills? Force them to use skills outside of their comfort zone? Though, when I ran the game, my players could not get a result to save their lives (often literally).
Mitigate through effect and position. A 4+ with limited, risky is very different than a 4+ with the opposite end of the spectrum.
Additionally, very significant challenges (e.g., master swordsmen) require spending stress just to roll.
Don’t forget that the more people they steamroll, the more enemies they make. doesn’t matter how badass your crew is if they can only run scores on 1-2 fronts and they’re being hit on 3.
If you speak with more detail to your campaign and PCs, it’ll be easier to brainstorm appropriate challenges.
So Ive got a couple of idea’s to combat characters winning all the time because they have 4 dice, however it is worth noting that as the gm, you dont really need to make it harder per se.
What I do is I only reward players were it is hard or dangerous.
The easy option will just result in a score, giving gold, but no rep and no xp.
I say that as except for the first trigger all the xp triggers are based on a combination of struggling and roleplaying.
So in order to get that xp my players are forced to go outside of purely what they are good at, otherwise they complete the score, but neither the crew nor the character really grows.
This means by using the reward system built into the game my players do my job for me.
That said ways you could add the differculty if you wanted to:
Throw groups of consequences at them.
Give them devils bargains the mean they take harm.
Have the enemies prepared for the players strength such that doing thoose things they are best at is lessor effect or not as cool.
Make it such that their action could have a narrative impact. For example if a characters contact is known to despise violence and they see you hitting someome you cant just resist away the negative impact of them seeing it..
I’m curious what their character sheets look like if they’re getting 4+ dice on every roll.
Separate them or hit them with rapid-paced challenges to make it harder for them to help each other. If you’re giving a lot of easy Devil’s Bargains, amp it up. Just pushing for dice, helping, and flashbacks should push their stress levels up.
4+ dice may be a 93% chance of success but it’s only a 51% chance of success without consequences. Ramp up the difficulty of their opponents and they’ll be facing more limited positions and more desperate consequences; that’ll result in more 4-5s, more consequences, and more stress. Apply multiple minor consequences on Risky rolls or multiple moderate consequences on Desperate instead of a single more severe consequence. If you’re letting a single resistance roll drop level 3 harm all the way to 0, stop doing that.
That’s just the mechanical stuff. All the narrative dangers mentioned by other posters are good too.
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Is everyone having fun? If so, there’s no problem. It’s not your job to make things challenging, it’s your job to portray the world and play to find out what happens. If “what happens” is the PCs succeed at their goals, that’s perfectly fine.
Luke Cartner Per RAW, the players determine their own xp rewards.
Page 6, Judgement Calls, in the 5th bullet point and page 48, Advancement.
To control xp expenditure, Jeremy Nguyen would first have to remove/adjust that rule, which would probably be a discussion in and of itself.
Meaty Puffs Yes, however as gm I ask them questions like how did you struggle with your vice, or how did you express your belief? And get them to think about it. And if they give me an answer I weave it into the narrative moving forward as a key thing moving forward, or if they struggle to come up with something I sugguest a time were they made the score harder due to thoose things. Which encourages that style oc play moving forward. Believe me it doesnt take much of a push.
Basically I take the meta gamey part of the player and turn it on it’s head meaning the most optimal way to grow the characters and crew is to roll more desparate rolls and roleplay each character more in a way that is suboptimal.
This also seems to be more fun for the players themselves as they enjoy causing a little chaos and madness.
Keep in mind most players struggle with the idea of selecting their own xp, self police and go lower than I as the gm would. Also they are more atracted to desparate xp which they do not have to justify to themselves or others. By questioning the player xp choices and giving them real and harsh consences you inform how they play moving forward. On a side note this is also how I cure players of murder hobo disease…
Luke Cartner Sure that makes sense and sounds like a good way to keep the players narrative-focused. My own group does something similar. But I brought up the xp mechanic because in your earlier post you wrote that you
“only reward players when it is hard or dangerous. The easy option will just result in a score, giving gold, bu no rep and no xp.”
Which sounded like you as the gm determine xp rewards and not the other way around. It would be difficult to reward no xp if you are not the arbiter of xp, but reading both your posts leads me to understand that if you were in Jeremy Nguyen’s situation, you would stop suggesting xp rewards (after an easy score) and you would pose difficult questions to players when and if they awarded themselves xp. Is my assumption correct?
Meaty Puffs you are correct that was what I was trying (maybe failing) to say
Thank you for the replies, everyone. It’s all really helpful.
Adam, my highest leveled player has accrued 110 xp in eight sessions. Second highest has 100 xp. They have about 18 dots each.
I’m curious to know how this compares to Luke’s game.
Thomas, yes everyone is having fun. Blades is such a top notch game.
You can get a maximum of 6 per session, +desperate actions + training. So even if your characters somehow managed to hit all the triggers all the time (unlikely), for 110xp, that means an average of more than 7 xp for training and desperate actions, per session. That’s a LOT. For comparison, my Lurk has maybe roughly 65 xp after a similar number of sessions (EDIT: in retrospect, it’s probably at least 10-12 sessions). Granted, our sessions are pretty short.
Have they been training a lot? In my experience, characters are so busy with recovery and LTP and vices that training is rarely an option… if they always train, maybe downtime actions are not precious enough because they don’t really struggle.
Are they always taking desperate actions? Those HURT if you don’t roll 6s. Rolling too many of these will really mess up a scoundrel to the point where they have to use all their downtime on recovering…
Jeremy Nguyen so my weekend session it looks like the highest level character would have had around 90 xp, however he’s only got 13 pips as he has 7 playbook advances, we have been playing since may so its probably around 12 sessions.
I have so say 110 xp in just 8 sessions is impressive, the only way I can see that happening is alot of desparate actions, personally Id pile on the fatal consequences, to be honest I would have expected a character who took that many risks to have hit 4 truama by now as 110 xp in 8 sessions is taking 7.5 desparate actions per session (assuming every session they got the full 6 xp which seems unlikely), lets round it down to around 5 as thats likely the number Id expect to not crit or get six. Assuming an average of 2 serious consequences per action, and Assuming they just take 1 stress per resist (not very likely but hey) and assuming they need assist or push themselves you are looking at the character tramaing out every session, because that is 10 stress per session. So yeah, Im not sure how your players characters has survived 8 sessions with that many despatate actions…
Luke Cartner Granted, they could be running long sessions with two scores and two downtime phases, then 10 stress per session sounds more survivable (with some trauma, but they need trauma anyway to get more end-of-session xp).
My group’s characters are nowhere near that powerful after 78 sessions.
Wow, your progression rates seem impressive. 4 px – 7 px per session each character in my group.
Silly question, but are they filling the ability track each time before taking a new pip?
Well, the 110 xp character already has 4 trauma through being a vampire. Correct me if I’m wrong, but a fifth trauma doesn’t kill him, just puts him out of action.
Yes, he awards himself 6 xp just about every session. Add in about 3-5 desperate rolls, and some training downtimes. Maybe there was some accounting errors thrown in, I don’t know, I let my players manage their own sheets.
Any harm inflicted on him is removed via feeding. Plus he has the special ability that allows him to ignore the negative effects of harm.
Anyone with experience running a vampire, please chime in.
Ok, things make more sense now then, there is alot I need to unpack here.
First the vampire in the room:
Personally I would not let a player start as a vampire. You have to earn that in my opinion.
Also your math doesn’t make sense. You have said the characters have about 18 dots each. Now I assume that includes starting dots, so there are 6 starting dots for vampires, which would mean the player would need to assign 12 dots. At the vampire cost of 8 xp per dot this leaves only 14 xp left. At the vampire cost of 10 xp per playbook upgrade would only allow for one playbook advance.
Additionally with the 12 remaining pips you could max out 4 abilities at most, impactful yes, but still is left vulnerable especially because of the almost complete lack of playbook advances.
I am unaware of any special ability that allows you to just ignore all harm. The closest that I know of is tough as nails which just bumps the effect down. Additionally feeding doesn’t clear all harm, it just bumps it down one level, so if my vampire character took level 3 harm, it would need to feed 3 times to completely heal. Feeding is a downtime action, you cant just say as part of the score “I attack the thug, draining his life essence healing and removing stress” any more than if your vice is gambling you can make a bet and roll some dice to relieve stress in the middle of a score.
Additionally the strictures make this harder to do. As they remove downtime actions, limit access to prey and generally make the character less able to hunt.
This feeding has additional complexities, as a vampire you cant just feed without consequences, even if you dont kill you victims.
Feeding leaves you mark, noticeable by whispers and other vampires. Vampires are going to have to deal with the Church of Ecstasy, the gondoliers, the spirit wardens, Lord Scurlock (who would have very definite opinions about another vampire hunting in his city), path of echoes, the reconciled, etc are also searching for them. By feeding they have to avoid all that, not to mention the ghosts of the victims and any other clock you start there. Dont forget the entanglement is just the one you roll regardless, you still get entanglements to occur from complications of player actions, feeding in my book is just a huge bag of complications.
Additionally feeding is a vice action, which means if you are at 0 stress but have taken 3 harm, feeding is garenteed to over indulge.
Feeding has a huge benefit, stress relief and a 4 clock of healing. So I would give it a large cost in terms of needing to person long term projects to establish ‘cattle’ that is safe you feed from (with a limited shelf life) or risk gaining attention from the wrong people, damaging the crew rep or generating heat.
Now lets say the one playbook advancement the vampire took was tough as nails, now you should actually post a question directed at John Harper asking what happens when a vampire does this. But based on RAW the vampire would be able to move around and feed and stuff BUT if the character took ANY arcane damage, thats it the character is obliterated.
Additionally arcane attacks have increased potency against the character, meaning that whispers, demons, ghosts, the dimmer sisters all it be able to generally tear the vampire to pieces (which is a problem as you’ll see in the feed section these factions will be actively hunting the vampire)
The Character needs to explain how they earned the xp, dont be affraid to ask why they think they acheived 2 in each, then bring it back later.
I hope this helps
Jeremy Nguyen Are you trying to solve a current problem in play or an imagined future problem?
John Harper I’m trying to see if there may be a potential future problem. I don’t think it’s a problem yet; everyone is still having fun.
We’re wrapping up season one and I want to make a grand, challenging finale. It’s season two where I’m concerned it might be a problem.
Luke Cartner Thank you for taking the time to help me out.
Session two, we did a score in to allow my players to become vampires. That was the reward in lieu of Coin.
Before allowing vampires, I warned my players that it was in playtesting mode and that I could change their abilities if I felt things were out of whack. My vampire player is totally cool with any changes I feel are needed.
A character starts with 7 dots, add another one from a Crew upgrade, so that leaves 10 dots purchased with xp. Add in 3 more special abilities. At full price, this amounts to 110 xp. He didn’t buy all his skills at full price though since he didn’t start as a vampire. However, his character sheet show another 6 floating xp, so the about 110 xp total accrued still stands.
Re: special abilities. We’re playing a Shadowrun hack of Blades called Karma in the Dark. In it, there is a special ability called Armor Injector which allows the PC to ignore negative effects of level 1 and level 2 harms. I may ask the player to change this to Tough as Nails.
Re: feeding. I did allow feeding to happen during a score twice. It happened as part of the fiction. I allowed the recovery of Stress but I did not allow any healing.
Our vampire PC resists all level 3 harms, so doesn’t finish a score with more than a level 2 harm. Two downtime actions to feed and he is good as new, ready for the next score.
Re: strictures and complexities. Except for adding an extra heat or two per session for leaving evidence of vampirism, I have only inflicted consequences when my players roll less than a six. I’ve announced vampire hunters as a consequence but it was resisted.
That’s okay though. Because a vampire hunter will make an appearance by way of Entanglement at the most opportune time. 😉
Re: Arcane damage. I struggle with this one. I’m not a fan of the all-or-nothing nature of it. That’s why I’ve yet to employ it and am saving it for the upcoming season finale.
Again Luke, I appreciate you taking the time to help me. You threw out a lot of things, and much of it stuck! Thank you!
Holy crap. I’m in Ben Morgan’s game, 75+ sessions, and we’re not even remotely close to this. Our baddest asses have 3 dots in maybe one skill.
Yeah Im mean mastery costs 4 upgrade boxes to unlock, that would take atleast 2 sessions worth of crew upgrades to get..