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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Thomas Shey" data-source="post: 8598217" data-attributes="member: 7026617">If folks don't mind a bit of a digression on this, something I've experienced that may have some bearing.The superhero game Mutants and Masterminds has a heavily integrated metacurrency in it (hero points).  This is a virtual necessity because while its derived from 3e era D&D (while having drifted considerably, since it has no character classes, and levels serve an entirely different function) it uses "damage saves" rather than hit points as a default model, so its even more vulnerable to high impact swings from the D20.Prior to its second edition, it also had "villain points" which were essentially the same thing as hero points but that the GM used.  As of second edition this was discarded, but replaced with "GM Fiat", which uses mostly the same mechanic, but the GM has an unlimited supply of (there's some passive counterbenefit, since any use of GM Fiat gives someone another hero point).[I may be slightly confusing time frame or terminology, since its been some time since this occurred and I used the game now.]The fact that these had so much (necessary) impact on opponent's ability to stay up produced a phenomenon I referred to in a post on the Green Ronin forums back when they were still a thing as "Has the GM Decided We Win Yet?"  It could seriously impact how meaningful what you were doing felt, because the GM could (and there was no solid guidance not to, other than his sense of appropriate pacing) keep shovelling Fiats out all day, and hero points/Fiats were stronger on the whole on defense than offense because of how they worked.  That lead us locally to develop and announce more finite schemes, because then the players knew that at some point your supply of Fiats would be exhausted, so they were at least making progress.</blockquote>

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