Has anyone done some long-form math to demonstrate how numbers of Resistance dice scale with regards to stress costs?
Including the two sixes removing a stress?
I ask because I have an exceptionally numbers-oriented player who feels threatened by the system because of stress (from resisted consequences) and harm being taken on most rolls not a 6.
He trusts me, so it works fine for the game, but some actual statistics would help back me up here. Even with the base assumption that this is a sort of antiheroic tragedy, I think scoundrels’ odds are better than he thinks.
You could graph it pretty easily with anydice.
If your player is risk-adverse: group actions, flashbacks and Functional Vice make for a durable if conversative scoundrel.
On the GM side, Consequences don’t always mean Harm. That’s just one of four types of Consequences.
Violence, particularly Healing, is more punishing than Stress in Blades.
With 1 die, you have a 1/6 chance of rolling a 6. With 2, it’s 11/36, 3 dice is 91/216, and 4 dice is 671/1296, so you finally break the 50% threshold with all four dice.
So yeah he’s right in that you’re usually going to take some stress from resistance. I don’t understand though what you mean by saying he feels “threatened” by that.
Ariel Cayce I’ve been working on Anydice, just having trouble getting to the point of an output like “amount of stress from resisting a consequence at X number of dice,” counting the fact that you remove a stress when you crit.
I’m running Scum & Villainy, in which Harm is more forgiving, but framing the consequences in terms of Stress to resist them is his view at the moment. I’d like to speak to that concern on his terms.
Eric Thornber It’s the relative dearth of complete successes that get to him. He feels like the game is meant to grind characters down and ultimately take them away from the player.
While that risk exists and I believe a degree of desperation is meant to be in the game, I also believe that spreading around some dots and Protecting each other with your strong attributes makes your odds extremely good- just trying to reach the point of precise numbers.
Benjamin Barnett He’s kind of right though, at least in straight BITD; it’s a race to get rich before you get burnt out and/or bled out. It’s not a guaranteed downer, and there’s no death spiral like in some games (having one Trauma doesn’t make the second one come faster), so he might be overly pessimistic but his essential premise is correct.
Eric Thornber He’s right in the long-term, but he was initially unsure how anyone could go even a single session without getting a trauma. His expectations were skewed.
He had a similar reaction to Corruption in Urban Shadows at first. The notion that a game is designed to bring about a conclusion to characters’ stories given enough time can seem pretty anathema when coming from D&D, where characters typically outlive campaigns.
Games with tragic assumptions may not be his cup of tea, but the extent to which the character power curve amps up the more Resistance dice you have looks easy to underestimate when you only have a die or two.
Starting Blades characters with new players do feel a bit fragile and ineffective, and you definitely can mark Trauma your first session if you keep pushing your luck and the dice don’t go your way.
A thing to note is that successful and cost-free scores aren’t assumed in Blades. There’s always Stress, Heat, Harm, and Factions to manage. Sometimes it’s better to give up on a score if the dice and situation start to move from risky, to desperate, to impossible. It’s always the Player’s choice to gain stress.
A bit more emphatically: there are always consequences in Blades. Long term and Short term, fictional and mechanical.
All that being said, once you’re rolling 3- 4 dice (more with group actions) instead of 1-2, a lot less sticks to Blades characters.
Stress Expected Value rolling 0-6 dice:
docs.google.com – Blades Resistance Roll Stress Probabilities
At 3 dice you’ll take just under 1 stress on average.
If the player is really worried, have the crew take Forged in the Fire from the Bravos crew sheet. +1 to resistance rolls does a lot, especially if you spread your action dots around.
In one particularly long-running game, most players were rolling 5 dice for resistance, and (as the doc above shows) that’s pretty damn close to breaking even.
Do you think there’s any chance this player could simply change their mindset and embrace the danger? From experience that tends to lead to a more satisfying play experience.
S. Tan Thank you!
Justin Ford We’ll see. If the gameplay experience is satisfying, I think that will adequately address it.
Will Adkisson That’s a good point.
The point of the game is not to be a heroic survivor; it’s just a story of what happens before you inevitably Trauma out. Also, remind him that Trauma is worth XP…