So I'm now finishing up the third adventure that my players have run through. So far I did the little module that came with the GM Screen, I wrote and ran a rocket train heist job on Corellia, and now I'm finishing the Beyond the Rim adventure. Now this last one I had to do some severe scaling on combat as I think I may have been too liberal with exp earlier on and the characters were fairly flush with gear and ability. On a different day I am a player in a Warhammer tabletop, and so I got to see a lot of alternate ideas on a very similar set of game mechanics, and from those I made one house rule regarding the destiny pool.

Essentially what I do is use all 12 destiny tokens despite the game being 4 players. I pass the force die around until all the token are either light or dark and that is the starting pool. When tokens get used and flipped they move into a secondary pool that no one has access to. Then between major scenes I repopulate the primary pool with the secondary. In addition to this I do not limit the use of tokens to 1, but rather let any number be utilized to modify a dice roll. This seems to make the use of the pool more deliberate and meaningful. Does anyone have any counter thoughts towards this system?

The other house rule I've been doing is concerning minion groups. I calculate soak again every time damage bleeds over when one member of the group is killed. This seems to make minion groups a lot more dangerous the larger they get, as I was having party members kill entire groups in one attack when I was only calculating soak once.

Any discussions or commentary, or additional house type rules other GMs are doing would be most welcome.

Thanks!

I'm not sure why you take tokens out of play, since when side uses them the other is denied their use.

I wouldn't let players use as many as they want or they'll just wait to have Joe Gun use them all at once on every hard target in each major scene.

They aren't taken out of play. They just become more of a manged resource. Plus if the start with the majority of tokens and in one encounter blow them all on one check... the next encounter when they come back into play they'll have few, or none to play with and that encounter will be a great deal harder for them. My issue with the pool as it presently functions is, that you essentially just have every dice roll being upgraded once as they freely flip back and forth. I had several game sessions where almost every dice pool by myself, or the players was upgraded twice by a light and dark destiny and that seems to largely make it all pointless.

I think I'm just not understanding how you are managing the tokens when you say you repopulate the pool and how they'll have less tokens.

I still wouldn't let them use as many as they like on any single check regardless.

If that is what works for you then go for it, but it sounds like part of your problem is you aren't implementing the destiny mechanic as well as you could be.

A few things I noticed:

Players aren't supposed to spend a DP to upgrade a roll in response to the GM spending one to upgrade difficulty. So no destiny infinity loop. They don't spend one, but you do, they gotta stick it out and hope for the best.

When are you as the GM spending points? While there certainly should be some back and forth, it shouldn't be constant. If the players want to upgrade, you don't have to upgrade back. Likewise you shouldn't be spending them all the time either. You only need to flip one when the players are doing something dangerous, as opposed to just hard. If you need to simply make something more difficult, just increase the difficulty, or add more setbacks, you're the gm, its allowed. Remember, add purple to make it harder, add red to make it more dangerous, add black to give it more flavor.

Try easing up on spending destiny and your players will too. When they get to encounter 2 and you're holding all the points they blew in encounter one, they'll realize something is up.

In answer to the repopulate remark. There is the pool that players and GMs can spend out of. One a light/dark destiny token is spent, it is flipped to the opposite and moved to a secondary pool. Nothing in this pool can be spent. Then I moved the previously used tokens back into the primary pool after a major scene change.


From my reading of the rules, I typically try to shy away from upgrading difficulty just because "Gm says so" and generally I used the darkside destiny to do just that, when I felt it was appropriate. Never just because. But the players upgrade more liberally generally, especially if they start with a alrger amount of light side destiny than Dark.

Where is the rule that once a destiny is spent by the players or GMs to upgrade a pool, that the opposite side can't spend one in return? I can't find this spelled out anywhere. If that is the case, who gets first priority to upgrade? the players or the GM?

I understand the concept of repopulate better now, but I'd need to know what you mean by a major scene, because the typical size of my players pool and how long combat lasts, we might flip all the tokens once and the combat is over, so it would more or less seem to be the same thing in my mind. Of course there is no using as many as you want in a single roll either.

On the whole notion of spending DPs, I think the devs want players and GMs spending freely. When you look at some of the talents in Dangerous Covenants, they are most certainly trending towards more DP use talents. Which of course leads to a problem with your approach imo, if they do continue adding more DP talents you're essentially denying your players access to their talents. The talents are scaled and balanced for there to be a free flow of DPs back forth.

Yeah. I want to think that you might not be using destiny points right. In the handful of games I've played and run, each player has used maybe two over the entire session, with the GM also using a few. Destiny isn't supposed to be a nuclear arms race.

I'm very, very against house rules, because almost 100% of the time they are implemented in haste and out of fear or spite. Even on the best cases, it's very difficult to foresee what effects the changes have. To me, it sounds like players have zero incentive to use destiny because the points flip to the dark side and fill the pool for the next scene. Thus, the entire next scene is pitted against them again and again until you are done victimizing them and flip the tokens to the light side. Rather than control their use, you have simply removed the entire mechanic from the game in a sloppy and hackneyed fashion. If destiny was truly this much of a problem, you are better off removing it rather than punishing people for using it, since it sounds like it's not likely to be used anyways.

I used to work in event planning. Whenever there was a problem, people always liked to come up with complicated solutions instead of addressing the problem directly. Before tossing a house rule together, I'd brush up on the rules again. Remember that once a player has used a light side point, it becomes your dark side point and is out of their control until you use it. So you shouldn't be over-using them.

As for minions, I'm unfamiliar with how they're run, but I would exercise the same caution. I had a GM increase the difficulty of every combat action and punish players who aim before firing. He felt that combat was too easy, nut all he did was drag things out and makes fights infinitely more dangerous. If the problem is with players walking through minion groups, consider reducing the frequency of importance of minion groups instead of simply deciding to make them better. Also consider the rule differences between minions and non minions (rivals?). If applying soak for each body makes yhe rules the same as rivals, you aren't using minions.

I don't mean to be a jerk. I'm just trying to get you (and others) to step back and think about what you are doing before doing it. I've made house rules when running games online in order to speed up mechanics and cut out a lot of GM babysitting. But this was done with much consideration and great caution. And the ruling was made only to facilitate play vis a vis the playing medium, not because I felt the game was broken or abused. Use house rules to facilitate play, not because you think you know how the game was supposes to be written. That path leads to the dark side.

Edit for 2P51's indirect mention of the butterfly effect. Changes to how destiny is used can unknowingly affect game mechanics elsewhere. This is what I'm talking about.

Right, that seems to be the intent of the rules, and as I read it the desire was to encourage GMs and players alike to flip these tokens back and forth. And that is also what seems to make them in this current incarnation kind of pointless. Based on the responses here I may well be in the minority with my opinion about the value of this game mechanic.

A scene might contain multiple instances of combat encounters, or a strand of social encounters. I gauge it in such a way, where the main pool won't sit empty for long periods of time. With this system, if during one scene there is 8 light and 4 dark destiny tokens, and throughout the scene they all get spent and flipped, when the pool resets it would be 8 dark, and 4 light. Obviously the players are going to manage this resource a lot more at this point, and that is really what I was striving for, is maintaining the back and forth flow of the tokens, but trying to make it have a lot more weight. I've done two sessions with this system and the players put a lot more consideration into the pool now and how to utilize destiny and when. Not once have they decided "dump it all on this one check" But as I mentioned above, maybe I'm misunderstanding some of the rules.

Oh sorry, new resonance came up while I was posting. So in reply to Scooter

This wasn't done so much in haste and without any consideration. Certainly no fear or spite. I also don't think you are understanding how the system I'm describing functions if you think that it always is weighted against the players. That certainly isn't the case at all. The only difference is, it can actually become weighted if you spend them frivolously when the next scene comes around. But it certainly has not halted the players utilizing this resource in any way, they still do, they just put their chips down on more important things. Also I did read over the rules again before doing any of this... as someone pointed out I had an understanding wrong if they could direct me to the page that corrects my misunderstanding I'd be happy to check and reconsider.

Not all elements of a game are created equal, if a house rule can increase the enjoyment of every person at the table, I won't shy away from it, but I don't rush into these things and I value all the feedback I've gotten here. But everyone here so far has kind of stated slightly different opinions about the use of, priority, and frequency of use of this game mechanic, which does demonstrate that my feelings about it being a little clunky and open to interpretation, and change of view on it from table to table does exist.

If you're unfamiliar with how minions are run, then it is really hard to have a discussion about their mechanics and function.

Lastly I didn't make these house rules with the godly notion of "Clearly this is how FFGs meant for this rule to be, I'm just correcting their mistake. I introduced these changes to my table, with full transparency to the players and their consent, because we all universally felt it would improve the game, and the tension, and the challenge. I'd be surprised if even this game's creators were sitting somewhere going "everything about our game is flawless, perfect and above the tampering of the mere mortals who purchase our products." That would be a fairly lousy attitude for a game designer, and I say this from a position as someone who works on rule sets for LARPs, which isn't very applicable in all regards to tabletopping, but the principles of game design are similar. Tabletops can't update and evolve as freely as some things. Video games can release patches, LARPs are dealing with groups of people they can inform upon changes before each game. When tabletops do major mechanical changes they have to release tons of errata, or reprint their books...or break away and go make an entirely new game away from the old creators (3.0, 3.5, Pathfinder).

So no, I don't think you're being a jerk, but I didn't open this thread to ask permission to introduce House Rules, I came here to get feedback game mechanically on the ones we've been using. I know full well the depth of consideration that goes into introducing these changes to a table.

Regards,

On to minions I'd leave them as is. A group of 5 or 6 minions already is pretty potent with the skill upgrades due to group size. More groups of minions is the solution, or the inclusion of rivals and Nemeses I think.

Right, that seems to be the intent of the rules, and as I read it the desire was to encourage GMs and players alike to flip these tokens back and forth. And that is also what seems to make them in this current incarnation kind of pointless.

Just MHO, but if you're finding them pointless then you probably aren't using them as designed. We get plenty of flow out of our games (and yes, the GM and players can both flip on the same action in response to each other, but it doesn't happen a lot). Anyway, I think my main objection to your rule if it was proposed at my table is that it gives the DP pool and it's management too much importance in the game. The effect of the original DP rules is usually subtle and adds an element of tension, but doesn't require any further management beyond the initial setup.

I will often use house rules to make a game more enjoyable for my table thouh I have not had much cause to do so in eothe.

My only comment for your changes is to point out that when both the GM and PCs flip a destiny point the effects do not cancel each other. The dm upgrades the difficulty of the check and provides the posibility of a dispare being rolled, an eventuality which may or may not occur. the players upgrade their pool and now have the posibility of a triumph. Even if both sides upgrade a dispare can be rolled without a triump to cancel it and vice versa.

The point here is that useing the DP simply changes the possible outcomes of each roll not the rolls themselves. I say let the dice decide what happens and narate the story accordingly. Sometimes the players will comeout ahead and sometimes dispair will rule the day.

I am defiantly still tweaking the best ways to handle minions. My issue largely comes into play that large groups of them get increasingly more offensively scary, but they do not scale up defensively the same way due to the way soak works on a minion group.

and I do agree that the original DP rules are very subtle, and minimal management, and I suppose it could be said that our feelings were geared towards increasing the gravity, and relevance of managing that mechanic.

I'm aware when two tokens flip, a dark and a light, they do not cancel what they incur out. But they do cancel out any change to the pool. This was a regular circumstance, and why the pool with the base rules, rarely changed at our table, or at least never dramatically did much, or became of much importance or consideration. As noted in my original post, a lot of the concepts of changing how the DP rules worked at our table, came from liking certain ways Warhammer handled such mechanics, which is a very similar dice system. We did another session where we continued to use this house rule, and it continued to work out with the increased presence and tension that I wanted from it.

More small groups of minions. They don't need to all be groups of 6 with a 5 skill rank upgrade. Just more targets forces players to divide fire.

Upgrade dice don't completely cancel each other out in the pool. A Triumph and a Despair don't cancel each other.

I'm aware when two tokens flip, a dark and a light, they do not cancel what they incur out. But they do cancel out any change to the pool.

No, no cancelling is done. Say a PC is taking an action. A light flipped to dark can upgrade the player's pool, turning, say YGGG to YYGG. A dark flipped to light can upgrade the difficulty of the pool, say, PPP to RPP. So a pool that starts out YGGG-PPP will end up YYGG-RPP if both the player and GM flip a DP. On the one hand, they've increased the odds of a triumph, but on the other, you've increased the odds of a despair, and those don't cancel.

Really, it's more like poker, where the pot gets richer, and riskier, for each action.

Oh I'm sorry, I should have clarified,

The DP pool remains the same when both sides flip is what I meant. I fully get the changes to the dice pool, remain static and cannot be reversed by any means.

The DP pool remains the same when both sides flip is what I meant. I fully get the changes to the dice pool, remain static and cannot be reversed by any means.

Ah, I thought you meant "dice pool", thanks. But I'm not sure why having the Destiny Pool remaining the same is a problem...the current action has been dramatically affected, which is the main point of the DP.