What are people’s takes on using Group Actions to move around Stress/Consequences?
We had a Score where the crew was hired to acquire some goods, but the goods turned out to be tagged for tracking in the Ghost Field. The Whisper had determined that the tags could be dissolved with electroplasm, with the consequence from that roll that whoever did it would get some nasty electroplasm burns. The Whisper was 1 Stress away from Trauma and generally not in great shape. The group felt this action was vital because taking tagged goods to their patron was basically a mission fail state, and wanted to boost success. The Spider especially wanted to take responsibility (due to having no Stress yet).
We wound up running it as a Group action on Attune, with the Spider leading and taking the Harm. This felt like stretching the rules. How would you have run it?
1) I would generally inflict consequences from group actions on everyone participating, not just the leader.
2) If you lead the group action, you need to lead it in the fiction. It doesn’t sound like that is what happened at your table.
Don’t the characters with little to no stress/consequences step up to help out the group anyway? They are either taking a stress to throwing out +1d to help or they are doing the action solo. Not sure how leading the group action is any different.
Are there groups/tables where this doesn’t happen, and if so how is group cohesion?
It’s OK to have the leader (and only the leader) take the brunt of the consequences if it makes sense if the fiction. And vice versa: If you tell the players that everybody in the group action is at risk then they have enough information to make their own call on what to do. Maybe that Spider does the action solo…
All I would advise is don’t summon trouble. If the consequence from an action was only going to affect one person let it stand.
There’s always the Protect action, where your character suffers (or resists) a Consequence in place of another. The Whisper hands off the electroplasm vial to the Spider and instructs them on what to do to dissolve the tags, and the Spider has to deal with the burns.
Yep, this sounds like a case for the Protect teamwork maneuver, which lets you take consequences for a teammate any time it fits the fiction — this means any time you’re high on stress/harm/just really don’t want a consequence and a team member can in-fiction take it for you (and is willing to do so), roll without fear. Maybe you’ll roll a 6 and it won’t be necessary anyways! Not rolling enough dice to believe in that 6? Take a Devil’s Bargain! Blades is loaded with ways to make rolls and consequences look scary but encourages you to be fearless and roll anyways — and it works great that way!
In my opinion, group action are only rolled for actions that every participant is performing which usually means that the whole group is exposed to the same risk. In this case, a group attune would have meant that in the fiction they were all handling electroplasm and risking to be burned.
I think that setup and assist are better suited to represent your type of situation, in which someone is directly taking the risk and others try to mitigate the danger or increase the odds of success.
Thanks everyone! This was our first score so I ruled group action to keep the game moving. Next time I’ll run it with some combination of Protect and Assist/Setup.