Pre-Emptive Avoidance

By JP_JP, in Game Mechanics

Posted at

Okay, I'm not convinced the "one DP per action" argument holds water here. You're not upgrading or downgrading the same skill check twice or trying to activate stuff like Anatomy Lessons twice for the same attack action.

Let's say a Rival maneuvers to engage, you PEA, he maneuvers to engage again, suffering 2 damage.

You have two completely separate instances of a trigger that you can react to, and neither trigger is an action . Either you cannot spend Destiny points at all because "not an action" (doesn't make sense at all) or this talent works by a different rule, allowing it to spend exactly "one DP per maneuver" (kind of makes sense.)

That's the way I'm going to playtest it, and unless they include language like "this talent can only be used once per round/opponent/whatever", I'm going to assume that the limits of the Destiny Pool are all the limits I need.

Edited by GranSolo
Posted at

Again, the spirit of the rules is that you shouldn't be using multiple DP's in a single situation, unless the activation of something specifically calls on 2 DP's (like signature abilities). Other than one DP per check/action, the written rules are a bit light, but I did find this (page 27):

Destiny is a powerful resource that must be used wisely—each player can invest only one Destiny Point in any single check. If a player chooses to invest a Destiny Point to upgrade an ability into a proficiency, for example, that player cannot also invest a Destiny Point to trigger one of his character’s talents .
Emphasis mine. Note that it's " A Destiny Point" (singular) and " ONE of his character's talents". One DP, one triggering. Of course, for rules lawyers, I admit this isn't definitive proof, and this particular talent is triggered out of turn. But, I believe it is the intended design of the DP system that each side has the opportunity to use a DP once in any situation.
Has anyone written in with a dev question about this? I would be very interested in knowing what the intent was, here.
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But it isn't the same situation

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But it isn't the same situation

Maybe, maybe not.

The intent behind that sentence is pretty clear that each side only gets to flip a single Destiny Point during that turn, not one per type of action. And since there's nothing else in the book that says that a PC can flip more than one Destiny Point in any situation, by default the portion of the rules that OggDude quoted takes precedence.

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But, I believe it is the intended design of the DP system that each side has the opportunity to use a DP once in any situation.

The intent behind that sentence is pretty clear that each side only gets to flip a single Destiny Point during that turn, not one per type of action. And since there's nothing else in the book that says that a PC can flip more than one Destiny Point in any situation, by default the portion of the rules that OggDude quoted takes precedence.

So Signature Abilities are now useless?

YAY! I hate those things.

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Destiny is a powerful resource that must be used wisely— each player can invest only one Destiny Point in any single check . If a player chooses to invest a Destiny Point to upgrade an ability into a proficiency, for example, that player cannot also invest a Destiny Point to trigger one of his character’s talents.

Emphasis mine.

This is saying that you cannot spend more than a single Destiny point on the same thing--you couldn't, for instance, spend a DP to upgrade your attack and spend a DP on the Soft Spot talent to increase your damage on that attack, because those both are modifying the same action.

Each time you become engaged is a separate instance, so you're not spending a DP on the same action. I would say that you couldn't, for instance, spend a DP on PEA to disengage and then spend a DP to recover strain with Contingency Plan, though if you were then attacked, you could spend a DP to either upgrade the pool, or recover strain, because that would also be a separate instance/check.

Unless you view "actions" as being centered around "checks." That is, if you're looking at 1 DP per check made on a character's turn, so for every set of 2 maneuvers and an action, you can spend only 1 DP--that would be 1 on your turn, and 1 on each turn of every other character, unless someone goes a whole turn without making a skill check, in which case no opportunity to use a DP arose, but that would yield some awkward behavior, like being unable to use PEA if you used a DP before the current character's turn, because the acting character hasn't made a check yet.

Posted at

But, I believe it is the intended design of the DP system that each side has the opportunity to use a DP once in any situation.

The intent behind that sentence is pretty clear that each side only gets to flip a single Destiny Point during that turn, not one per type of action. And since there's nothing else in the book that says that a PC can flip more than one Destiny Point in any situation, by default the portion of the rules that OggDude quoted takes precedence.

So Signature Abilities are now useless?

YAY! I hate those things.

That's already been called out and clarified, I think. If a specific ability states it needs more than one Destiny Point to activate, you spend that number DPs to activate that specific ability.

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That's already been called out and clarified, I think. If a specific ability states it needs more than one Destiny Point to activate, you spend that number DPs to activate that specific ability.

My point is that while the rules state "only one DP can be spent per action" that doesn't mean only one DP can be spent per turn. Obviously because there are already examples one where that interpretation is blatantly false.

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First off, "One DP per turn", I think, too narrowly defines concept of limited DP use. I'd say it's more "One use of DP", rather than "One DP".


Now, I do understand the arguments for allowing multiple uses of DP for this particular talent. One of the situations, I believe, the devs were trying to avoid was ping-ponging DP flipping. This is why one-use per action/check is spelled out for the more popular uses of DP. This talent doesn't necessarily fall under that because the other side isn't also flipping a DP, he's just moving, and you're flipping in response to that.


One talent that's very similar to this one is Djem So Deflection. For that talent, they explicitly state that you can only perform it once per round (not even turn). PEA may not have that because 1) they want to allow it's multiple use, or 2) they forgot to add that clause at the end :)


I did look for some other talents that might be similar as well. Contingency Plan is also an out of turn incidental and allows a DP flip to recover strain. This talent has no trigger, unlike PEA, so you can use it whenever you want, as long as it isn't your turn. Since it's an incidental, and you can do as many incidentals as you like (within reason), does that mean you can flip multiple DPs as different OOT incidentals to get strain back more than once?


There's also Heroic Fortitude. As an incidental, you can spend a DP to ignore the effects of a Critical Injury. If, say, you have three CI's, does that mean you can take three incidentals and flip three DP's to ignore three CI's, one right after the other?


And Intense Presence, another OOT incidental. Spend a DP to, once again, recover strain. Can you use this more than once during the round (even one after the other), as long as it isn't your turn?


There's more examples. PEA's trigger puts a limit on when you can use it, but you're still using multiple OOT incidentals to flip a DP and use the talent if you react to two different movements.


It could well be that yes, you can do as many DP flips with incidentals as you like. But that seems to fly in the face of them treating the DP pool as a "powerful resource that must be used wisely", which is why they put the "one DP in any single check" rule in place.


It could also be that they need to clarify some rules, especially the new "Out of Turn" talents, which are explained as "Some talents can be activated on other characters; turns. If this is the case, the Activation line also includes the 'Out of Turn' note." Well, that explains everything :) I wouldn't be surprised if they revise OOT actions to include limits of their use, something like reactions in D&D (only one reaction per round). Having a rule like that in place would prevent misuse of DP-flipping incidentals if, in fact, they don't want them used in this fashion.

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Ogg, that basically covers my thinking--we have an example of a talent that does specify that it can be used only once per round, and several that have no such indication.

Personally, I feel that the devs are largely leaning on the limited nature of the DP pool to rein in most potential issues that these might have, and are only concerned with directly limiting certain actions that would be too strong otherwise (such as Djem So Deflection), and avoiding silly flip-flopping wars over single skill checks.

If that's not the intent, then the devs do need to clarify some things.