Multiple Push Yourself Abilities
I know it’s been asked before, but I can’t find a post about it.
Say a character has Not To Be Trifled With, Venomous, and The Devil’s Footsteps. In a fight with a small gang, could they push themselves to engage the gang on equal footing, spew standstill poison at them, and confuse them to attack each other?
I essentially rule these effects as increased effect on their rolls. If they can do all of these for a single push, it’d be pretty potent and cheap.
Is this legit? Am I missing/misinterpreting something?
I’ve seen GMs let people do more than one Push in a single action, but the player took 2 stress for each.
I think doing all three of those for 2 stress might encourage the player to spam it. Besides costing more stress, that action could cause more heat, ticking some clocks, and add an entanglement.
I think its one or the other per push.
Each one says “You can push yourself to…” which means you are specifically pushing yourself to do a specific thing.
So you could push to engage on even footing and get a bonus die, then push again for bonus effect and spray them all with poison. But you couldn’t push yourself once and get all 3 effects if that makes sense.
GM: “You’re surrounded by 6 gang members, what do you do?”
Player: “I wanna fight them off!”
GM: “That’d be desperate limited!”
Player: “Fine! I’ll push myself to engage them on even footing. I’ll take a deep breath in and then push myself to spray them all with Standstill poison.”
The GM weighs up the new positioning. The player now stands on an even footing with the small gang, so scale is no longer important, Risky Standard. He’s also spraying them with Standstill poison which is potent against humans, so with increased potency, he’s looking at Risky Great. Then because he pushed for effect, he goes up to Risky Extreme, and gains +1d from his first push.
So for 4 stress, the player went from Desperate Limited to Risky Extreme with a bonus die. A costly but worthwhile exchange.
If I were GMing, I’d pick up on the fact that the player obviously wants to become a MONSTER when they push themselves. I think that’s fair! I’d limit the benefits to effect to the abilities they have chosen but when they slammed down on that Push Yourself button I’d get in their head and ask them “what’s happening in there that is allowing you to push yourself so hard when the adrenaline strikes and where does it go?”
The meta-rule in Blades is: If there’s no rule for it, then there isn’t a rule for it. 🙂 You can make a ruling for your table as you see fit.
I’d say, if there’s enough overlap for them to all apply, I’d apply them all.
Isn’t the S&V ability applicable on anything though? I thought that’s why it had that extra cost.
That’s +6 stress, so I’d let the player do it.
Thanks all! I’m definitely aware of the meta-rule (and promote it constantly), I just wanted to see if there might be a standard way to handle this or what others’ opinions/reads on this were.
For my group, I think I like Antimatter’s explanation most. At the very least, it will prevent my other players from feeling impotent in comparison.