Reply to thread

Message

<blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 8744140" data-attributes="member: 82106">Honestly though, my expereince has always been that it is a lot like combat. The odds are not foremost on the mind, though tactics are. So when you see the lay of the land, you always try to pick the most obviously advantageous tactics (IE have PCs apply their best skills whenever possible). If that starts to look problematic, then deploying consumable/metered resources comes into play, and its fairly uncommon for the party to fail an SC they really seriously are determined to pass at any cost. Nor is it really to the GM's advantage to have things be surprisingly more or less difficult than expected, so they're also likely to play things in a way that doesn't 'pile it on' or 'lay off' too much, although now and then just being a brutal purveyor of hurt can make good dramatic sense (haha, what can I say, I'm evil). The original variable failures version WAS very mathematically unstable though, too much for most people's taste. I agree that advantages and such may be intended to help there, but OTOH they serve a great purpose in narrative terms in that they give you another measure of what to dish out, but for and against the party so you're operating in a known mechanical space. As I said up thread a bit, I tend to think using them as given is good practice, but it isn't absolutely required to be slavishly set on every complexity 3 gets exactly 2 advantages every time.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="AbdulAlhazred, post: 8744140, member: 82106"] Honestly though, my expereince has always been that it is a lot like combat. The odds are not foremost on the mind, though tactics are. So when you see the lay of the land, you always try to pick the most obviously advantageous tactics (IE have PCs apply their best skills whenever possible). If that starts to look problematic, then deploying consumable/metered resources comes into play, and its fairly uncommon for the party to fail an SC they really seriously are determined to pass at any cost. Nor is it really to the GM's advantage to have things be surprisingly more or less difficult than expected, so they're also likely to play things in a way that doesn't 'pile it on' or 'lay off' too much, although now and then just being a brutal purveyor of hurt can make good dramatic sense (haha, what can I say, I'm evil). The original variable failures version WAS very mathematically unstable though, too much for most people's taste. I agree that advantages and such may be intended to help there, but OTOH they serve a great purpose in narrative terms in that they give you another measure of what to dish out, but for and against the party so you're operating in a known mechanical space. As I said up thread a bit, I tend to think using them as given is good practice, but it isn't absolutely required to be slavishly set on every complexity 3 gets exactly 2 advantages every time. [/QUOTE]

Verification