Another quick rules question, about excessive Heat.

Another quick rules question, about excessive Heat.

Another quick rules question, about excessive Heat. If a gang is on 8 Heat and needs to take another 8, what do they end up on?

They take 1 Heat, taking them up to 9, which resets and gives the gang 1 Wanted level. Do the remaining 7 Heat then pile on to the Heat track? I think it should, but it’s not clear.

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As for AP, I think I’m going to need another framing conflict for The Luddites (my PCs’ gang). After assassinating Baszo Baz, they spent some time annoying the Red Sashes and ended up killling a few of the Red Sashes and capturing Mylera Klev. They handed her over to Lyssa of the Crows. Lyssa publicly executed Mylera, so the Red Sashes are about to disintegrate under all the pressure they’re under. All the Luddites need to to is take over a dog-baiting operation and they’ll make Tier 2 with the Red Sashes dropping to Tier 1.

That’ll be the new status quo in Crow’s Foot. Who knows what will happen next?

(With 6 PCs and a few NPC extras, I thought that the Luddites should really be starting at Tier 1. So they did.)

12 thoughts on “Another quick rules question, about excessive Heat.”

  1. Hopefully by now they’ve annoyed enough people to have a few framing conflicts; maybe one for upper tiers annoyed at the upstarts, and one for the people they’ve stamped on climbing up to their unsteady throne. =)

    Surely at least one of them is into something that will blow up in everyone’s face soon.

  3. Andrew Shields They’ve been killing a lot of people recently, so there’s plenty of scope for revenge attacks there. On the other hand, the players are getting a bit bored with the murder-fest, so I don’t want to stress that part. Play so far has been focused on Crow’s Foot, so they’ve not seen too much outside that area yet. Time for the gang to spread its wings, I think.

    Nigel Clarke, when a PC maxes out their Stress, they are taken out of the current scene, reappearing later with zero Stress and an extra Trauma. I’m not sure what the equivalent to “taken out or left for dead” would be for the PCs’ own gang. Hence the question.

  6. I’m sure I read the John had said that excess Stress after the addition of one new level of Trauma adds to the Stress track again making a lot of Stress a real big problem. It’s the Heat version of an overstressed character having to drop out of the session as badly injured etc. that is bothering Neil. Have to hope John Harper  pops up – tagging him via a comment might work.

  7. Hm, I feel like the Trauma description on page 7 is a lot more clear- “When a PC marks their final stress box, they suffer a level of Trauma.

    When you take trauma, clear all of your stress (resetting to zero)”; so if you suffer the Trauma at the final box, and then reset, it wouldn’t carry over.

    I can see why Heat might work differently, though. For one thing, you can reduce Heat more safely than Stress, and you can reduce Wanted Level by Incarceration while Trauma is permanent. So a big gain in Heat / Wanted level is not necessarily as punitive as I think Stress could feel.

  8. Yeah, I agree with Jason Eley that “extra” stress does NOT roll over when you take trauma. 97% sure I had this chat with Mr. Harper already.

    I am not sure what that means for Heat/Wanted, however. My instinct would be to KEEP rollover Heat.

  11. Nigel Clarke That could be interesting. If acquiring a Wanted level means the gang spends a day or two in the Bluecoats’ cells, it would give the other factions that much more time to progress their own projects without interference from the PCs.

    But from the way incarceration works with reducing Wanted, I’d leaning towards excess Heat rolling over and leaving the gang free to operate.

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