Re: Pass-Fail Cycle with Assisting Characters

From: SARAH <sarah.newton5_at_...>
Date: Fri, 21 Oct 2011 13:50:30 -0000

> Hi,
> Glad to here you are giving the game a spin.
>
> I am interested that you have apparently chosen to use multiple pass/fail cycles rather than one for the group. I have never done this myself, always having used the group as a guide. I could imagine having separate cycles if the game had distributed characters mainly acting independently but it feels too much work for party play.
>
> Have you found it manageable and more importantly does it seem to help to have more than one cycle? I guess you may not have a clear idea for a few sessions but I am intrigued to know how it works out.

Hi Jamie,

I'm hopefully playing my second session this weekend so should have more of an idea of how the whole pass/fail cycle will turn out. In my first session I made the mistake of actually adjusting difficulties according to p/f *during* an extended contest, which was definitely the wrong thing to do! However, in general managing p/f on a per-character basis wasn't too onerous, and helped personalise things a bit more, and add some tactical crunch.

As a general rule, I'm intending to use the pass/fail cycle as my default method for setting resistances.

What I'm trying to get my head round now is how to combine switching abilities and making tactical choices to alter resistances in play - resistances which themselves are based on the p/f cycle.

For example, if the PCs are up against a fairly standard foe (a bunch of humans, trolls, what have you), I'm taking a default "Moderate" resistance to refer to the Significant Abilities those foes use. If the p/f cycle demanded a higher resistance, I'd refer to an Exceptional or even Legendary Ability, or otherwise colour the ability's description; correspondingly with lower resistances. That's all cool and I'm grokking that.

The bit I want to focus on next is what happens when the PCs make tactical decisions in play which might modify the resistance they're facing. So, if they're up against a sword-armed Yanafal Tarnils officer, which is equating to, say, a Hard difficulty, they might decide to use a Swordbreaker Feat or some kind of disarm manoeuvre to force the Yanafali to fight in some other way - possibly with a poorer ability providing a lower resistance (say, Moderate).

I'll see how that plays out - specially with per-character p/f-tracked resistances. But my goal is to avoid having resistances completely determined by the p/f cycle regardless of PC narration, tactical decisions, and actions. I think the p/f cycle works great for establishing the baseline resistance in a given scene, which the PCs can then chew on to modify (either up or down) based on their actions. I'm guessing that's the intent of the rules, but I'll have a better feel once I've tried it in play!

Cheers,

Sarah