So for a hack I’m doing I’m experimenting with advanced moves that allow you to upgrade a roll’s success tier by spending a resource or accepting a certain consequence.
An example might be:
Out of the Pan, Into the Fire
“When you attempt to evade capture or detection with Skulk you may choose to be placed in a more desperate circumstance to upgrade the success tier (from a miss to a partial success, for example) after the roll.”
Has anyone else experimented with such a move? Is it too powerful.
Isn’t that already an option? Or am I misremembering?
It’s an option in downtime on downtime rolls. Such as spending a coin, but I don’t recall any moves that let players do this during a score.
Looking at the chart, I was thinking of “you end up in a [risky/desperate] position”. But it sounds like you’re thinking of something which lets you turn a 1-3 into a 4-5 by taking TWO 4-5 consequences?
For some reason I was thinking you could trade a Bonus Die to change the Position or Effect by 1 level. Just glanced at the rules, I have no idea why I thought that.
You might have been thinking about how you can take a worse Position for an increased Effect, and when you Push, you can take either an extra die, or an increased Effect?
Interesting. It’s definitely more powerful than most other roll-effecting abilities, but I think if you keep it very specific it’ll be an interesting option without being too powerful.
Yeah you can already trade position for effect which is pretty much what it seems like you are trying to do unless I am missing something.
The vanilla rules let you trade position for effect (standard effect –> great effect). This here is trading position for result level (1-3 –> 4/5).
1-3’s are rare enough as it is once you have a bunch of dice — I’m not sure that effectively getting rid of failures is a good move.
I’m totaly with Jakob Oesinghaus: As a GM I tend to wish for every roll to be a 6 or at least a 4-5. Somewhere I read that without rolling dice we would always tend to a consensus and being the only GM at the table this may mean to give the players what they want. Loot & Levels, right?
BUT BUT BUT: The cool stories in my campaign often come from the failures, from those 1-3 forcing ideas into the world of what could go wrong here. Those “holy sh**”-moments when you think that there’s no way that the PCs will see another day … and then they do exactly that or you learn that the player wanted it that way. Great moments to have.
I hear you there!
Something context to add on that front:
Generally speaking I will only offer this option if it continues the story somehow. Even if you defeat a foe by upgrading, being put in a worse position could mean you don’t resolve the issue and get placed in a spot. I would also posit that, if they are upgrading a failure, the consequences get pretty dire (they still suffer the usual consequences).
And if upgrading a success, these consequences are not resistible.