A rules question re: Resistance rolls.
When you make a resistance roll to avoid a consequence, are you then obligated to accept the stress and avoid the consequence, or can you then decide you liked the consequence better after all?
Like, lets say a character is doing the proverbial leap from rooftop to rooftop and they blow it and drop to the street below. Maybe I decide to assign them lesser harm in the form of a twisted ankle. The player decides to roll resistance, but rolls really badly – they’d take 5 stress to avoid that consequence, and that would cause trauma because the character already has some stress. Can the player decide to take the twisted ankle instead?
My instinct says ‘no’, because otherwise trauma doesn’t seem like it would happen practically ever, but I wanted to get the official word.
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Definitely not an official word but I’d say no. Life on the street is harsh. I’d say the player landed well to avoid injury but landed in a maze of alleys they’ve never seen before, the crew moves on when they can’t find them and the player spends the scene trying not to panic as they make their way to safety.(explaining why they are taken from the scene after the trauma)
I let them choose after the roll. I can see why you would not, but I prefer giving the player the choice.
It’s ‘no’. You can decide to resist or not, but once you roll, you take the stress.
John Harper Has that always been true? I didn’t even realize I was doing it differently than the rules stated.
It’s been ambiguous in the text in the past. Maybe it still is, actually. I need to check that section.
As I look at it, in the text the question doesn’t seem to come up (at least as I understand what I’m seeing.) So if you assume you know the answer, you aren’t contradicted. =) That would be a very helpful clarification.
Accepting the outcome if you choose to roll moves the period of player deliberation to whether or not to roll to resist, instead of deliberating on whether to take the (known quantity of) stress or the consequence. A choice to gamble or not, rather than a choice of what kind of pain to accept.
(Of course, that’s only a change if you’ve been doing it wrong this whole time.)
Yeah; I read the rules section for this several times before asking the question. It really doesn’t clarify one way or the other. This would be a good place for an extra sentence to be explicit, I think.
FYI: I’m reconsidering this as a hard rule. I think it can work just fine to roll first and then decide whether or not to take the stress. I may present both options in the text.
John Harper, for my group, I’ve been allowing the players to choose whether or not to take Stress or Harm after their Resistance roll, but for what it’s worth, I think the convention you clarified might actually increase our fun. Largely for the reason Andrew points out above.