Blades in the Dark: Game Questions – Page 42 – Blades in the Dark G+ Archives

When is it appropriate to deal with a one-on-one combat situation as a clock instead of a single roll?

When is it appropriate to deal with a one-on-one combat situation as a clock instead of a single roll? Is there a clear-cut difference, or is it just personal preference?

Quick question to those who have run Blades before.

Quick question to those who have run Blades before. I’m setting up my game and we are doing character creation tomorrow. When you are doing session 0, do you have the players figure out the kind of crew they want and fill out the crew sheet before they make their characters, or make the characters and figure out the kind of crew second? I’m sure it works fine either way, but I want to know what experiences you all have had.

Resisting harm and armor:

When you tick off armor, are you still allowed to roll to resist the harm, it specifies that you can’t roll to resist more than once on page 32 in the Blades rulebook, and in armor it says that the armor can be used to replace a roll, so does the rule still apply?

I know that they’ve been doing both in Rollplay: Blades, and since the GM created the game, it seems to me like it’s okay by the rules, but I figure I’d ask.

Thank you!

So, my Leech is building a saber-toothed tiger hull to ride around on.

So, my Leech is building a saber-toothed tiger hull to ride around on. My group figures that it makes the most sense to treat the hull as a cohort in terms of mechanics.

However, we aren’t sure what the quality of such a cohort would be. Making a hull means crafting 3 tier 6 parts, 1 tier 5 part, and 2 tier 7 parts. That would give it a quality of at least 5, probably 6. However, rolling 5 or 6 dice is pretty ridiculous.

On the other hand, the hull is going to cost about 20 coin and 6 downtime actions to craft and inventing it will take another 18 or so downtime actions so treating it as an expert cohort (tier + 1) feels a bit underwhelming for the effort.

Thoughts?

I just started GMing Blades and I’m having a bit of trouble understanding the Recovery downtime activity.

I just started GMing Blades and I’m having a bit of trouble understanding the Recovery downtime activity. My intuition is that it should be possible for some types of lesser harm to heal quickly on their own, but there doesn’t seem to be any affordance in the rules for that.

For instance, if a character stayed up all night Studying and takes Level 1 harm, Exhausted (which was used as an example in the book, if I recall), I think it would feel immersion-breaking to me if the character had to spend multiple downtime activities, spend coin, and hire a doctor or medic to treat them for their exhaustion or else spend the whole next score with reduced effect level. It seems, in a case like that, that a good night’s rest (or even a nap) would suffice. This incongruence I perceive also might apply to harm such as, say, Twisted Ankle, Dazed, or, as an example from the Consort section, Trashed.

Maybe I’m just being too persnickety about flavor and maybe I should just let the mechanics do their work, since mechanics never map perfectly onto the fiction in games anyway. But maybe I’m missing something. Any thoughts?

Veterans

What is a veteran advance and why do I want one? I can’t find any specific mention in the rulebook

HOW DO YOU HANDLE LANGUAGES IN BLADES?

HOW DO YOU HANDLE LANGUAGES IN BLADES?

Probably because they’re allying with the unionizing Citizens of Coalridge, who I described as being largely Skovlanders, one of my players decided he wanted to start a clock to learn Skov.

Rasal’s an Iruvian noble, fresh off the boat, and we liked the idea that he’d want to learn their language, but I hadn’t really planned on making languages a meaningful part of our story.

We agreed that it should be a 6-part clock, at the end of which he would be fluent (Consort), but after 4 segments of which he would already be able to read and write Skov (Study).

Again, I like the idea… but it creates a problem : I can either start penalizing others for not knowing a language, or give him some sort of advantage when dealing with Skovlanders.

I prefer the second solution, I might give him a new ability “Friend of the Skov” which gives him potency when dealing with Skov and Skovlanders, but I was wondering what you thought.

EFFECT LEVEL

There was recently some confusion / difference of opinion about how TIER affects the EFFECT LEVEL, which lead into a discussion on how that is set in general.

I know this was brought up here recently, but that post only added to the confusion.

So I went back and gave the rules another read (or three) and the following is how I currently understand it. I might be overthinking it, or misinterpreting it, which is the reason for this post.

Middle of p24 seems to be key:

“If the PC has an advantage in a given factor, consider a higher effect level.”

Those three factors Potency, Quality/Tier and Scale seem to be individually considered and compared.

As I understand it currently, being at a disadvantage in Tier means reduced effect. The rules however make no clear mention if this goes down two levels from standard to no effect if it is tier 0 against tier 2. Even the example is unclear, because it pits tier 2 against tier 3.

For me it was implied by the ambiguitiy that it isn’t a clear thing you can solve by adding or subtracting numbers.

Tier 0 vs Tier 2 would just be reduced effect. So if it was Standard effect to begin with it would drop to Limited.

So would Tier 0 vs Tier 4.

Let’s try to do a clear rundown:

TIER:

A tier 0 Cutter has reduced effect against a tier 4 Spirit Warden. A fine weapon would bring said Cutter to Tier 1. Still reduced effect against the tier 4 Spirit Warden. Even an excellent weapon would still have the Cutter at a reduced effect because it is tier 2 vs tier 4. Even with the crew weapon quality upgrade it would still be reduced effect.

However there are more factors (considered and compared individually): Potency and Scale

SCALE first:

Staying with the example of a lone Cutter against a lone Spirit warden it is a one on one. It could not be fairer.

The superior training of the Spirit Warden is already considered in the step before: Tier. So it shouldn’t come back up here.

Considering just this it would be a tie. No change in effect from this.

[NTBTW rant]

However, the Cutter with “Not To Be Trifled With” (NTBTW) gains Scale, but only to not suffer reduced effect from Scale. So this does not help him overcome a single person within the rules as written. However John Harper himself allowed NTBTW to have a single PC achieve increased effect against a single enemy, if i remember correctly (please correct me if I am wrong, I could not remember when this happened).

But stricly as written it only helps to offset a penalty.

In our example the effect would not change because of Scale. (unless we allow NTBTW to increase Scale and thus increase effect).

[/rant]

Now POTENCY:

This is all about fictional positioning and special abilities / gear that grant Potency.

If our Cutter was to fight a Spirit instead of a Spirit Warden he’d have Potency with Ghost Fighter. But he isn’t.

So let’s assume the Spirit Warden is still dressing, with his armor on, but his weapon out of reach for the first Skirmish. This should give the Cutter Potency and thus increase effect.

Bringing this all together in the following scenario:

The tier 0 Cutter gets the drop on an unarmed tier 4 Spirit Warden. Both are ready to fight.

Because of the TIER difference the effect gets reduced, SCALE does not affect it, but POTENCY increases the effect again.

We end where we began (the rules tell you to use your “gut feeling”, *shrug):

Standard effect.

If the Cutter had no Potency (the Spirit Warden already picked up his weapon) it would be Limited effect.

If the Cutter also lost his weapon (during the previous struggle to climb into the room), the Spirit Warden would be the one with Potency and the Cutter would have zero effect.

That sounds more complicated than it actually is when you do it and I hope my understanding so far is correct. However, we are not done.

After this all got mixed and it’s decided on a final effect level the Cutter still has options:

– He can push himself for increased effect.

– Someone could do a setup action, also to increase effect.

– Or (ignoring the fact that attacking a Spirit Warden is very likely already desperate) the Cutter could trade position for effect.

In our original example of a tier 0 Cutter who attacks an unarmed tier 4 Spirit Warden one of these three options would put him at Great effect. Two of them combined would put him at a level above that.

Am I still on the right track?

Did I miss something?

Thanks!

I have a group of HAWKERS starting and I’d like to hear how people are (or just aren’t) handling illegal supply.

I have a group of HAWKERS starting and I’d like to hear how people are (or just aren’t) handling illegal supply. Is there a mechanical currency? Are people ticking “supply” clocks? Are they earning coin in return?

Ideas are appreciated.

TRAUMA

~~TRAUMA~~

How does “Cold” work for you? All games of BitD have resulted in players being utterly merciless or destructive by default. When one of the group took cold he found it very difficult for it to be “an issue” that would yield xp. How do you face challenges with this trauma?