I'm not a 100% certain of the rules on blessings (I haven't bought ToB yet), but isn't there any kind of drawback to using blessings? What are the bane/chaos star outcomes for the healing blessings? If you assume that an "infinite" amount of blessings can be cast in story mode, you will also have to accept an "inifinite" amount of banes/chaos stars. This makes it completely impossible for a wizard to use any kind of spells in that fashion, miscasts is a real risk. As I said, I don't really know what the negative outcomes are on the blessings but I'm sure there is something?

I really don't think this is a serious issue, it's very easy for the GM to step in and decide how often the blessings (or any actions for that matter) can be used in story mode. Even a new GM will have to learn how to scale challenges properly, this is just one part of it. If a player has an excellent RP reason to use actions in story mode, I would let them do it, otherwise I'd probably keep actions to encounters only.

Essentially, this game cannot be played without house ruling some important stuff at the moment. This is not acceptable. I can run/play any other modern game that comes to mind "out of the box" without any sort of house rules. At the moment, this game requires them.

I think you are exaggerating a lot. The game can be played perfectly well without any house rules. There isn't a single RPG game that can be played without a GM to interpret rules and NPC behaviour. Games that don't require this are not RPGs in my opinion.

edit: bah I give up, how do you quote posts in this weird forum?

I have no idea how quotes work with this weird forum software either :/)

I'm not a 100% certain of the rules on blessings (I haven't bought ToB yet), but isn't there any kind of drawback to using blessings? What are the bane/chaos star outcomes for the healing blessings?

Don't have the cards on hand here atm, but I don't recall there being any actually bad results. At worst you get a bit of fatigue, or stuff like that. Nothing evil like the miscast possibility with magic, in any case.

I really don't think this is a serious issue, it's very easy for the GM to step in and decide how often the blessings (or any actions for that matter) can be used in story mode.

You miss the point. It's not a question of interpreting the rules. It's a question of not having rules at all for parts of the mechanics.

If one of the PCs is a healer priest, this game cannot be played without making a house ruling about a very very important facet. The core rules simply do not help here. No other rpg that I have run requires this.

In general, in order to play this game you must house rule the use of Actions outside Encounter mode. That's not a "minor rule interpretation", that is a major and required house rule of a major subsystem, which has a huge effect on the power level and balance of the whole game.

I can run Burning Wheel without a single house rule. I can run Exalted without a single house rule. I can run D&D 4e without a single house rule. They all work fine "by the book".

I cannot run this game without house ruling how Actions work outside Encounter mode. It's just that simple. And that's a problem.

...and no, I'm not the only one having this problem. Lots of folks over at rpg.net are running into the same (or related) issue, and it's causing quite a bit of negative press to an otherwise praised game.

Sigh. I tried to fix the quoting on that previous message twice now, and even though it shows up fine in preview it still quotes it wrong here. I give up, hope you can still read what I was trying to say :/

The core question here is:

Can Actions be used outside Encounter mode?

All other stuff follows from the (official) answer to that one very important question.

Additional question: what's the official guideline on the healing rate provided by a healer priest, outside of combat? Sure, I can house rule that to be whatever, but since the answer could range from "the target is healed within minutes to full health" to "the goddess only helps people during combat", I'd very much like to get some general official guideline on this.

This question becomes critically important if one of your PCs happens to be a priest.

I think your question is buried in the thread. You probably want to start a new topic asking about recharge, fatigue, stress, and general use of actions in Story Mode.

Rorschach Six said:

Good point. Done.

We just had our first game session this past weekend and I would also like a developer to comment on this issue!
Until then, I will try and house rule this. Let me know what you guys think (I might be off my GM rocker on this):
When casting a blessing in story mode, the priest must be in a neutral stance and use the conservative side of the card. For every healing spell casted the GM will add an extra misfortune die to his/her dice pool (so if George the Priest casted 2 heals successfully, his 3rd spell would have 3 misfortune dice in his dice pool). Once he/she fails on a heal, he/she can no longer use healing from their god in story mode for the rest of the day and suffers 1 challenge die to their dice pool when currying favour for 24 hrs., denoting their gods unhappiness in abusing their power.
What do you guys think?

Magikbawlz said:

Sounds like the direction I'd go in too, but haven't really decided yet. I would also love some dev opinions on this one, to establish a baseline interpretation.

I would probably say that you can only try to heal one particular "set of wounds" by blessings one time out of encounter mode. Asking the god to make the wounds go away a second time is not going to work however hard you beg. In encounter mode the blessing can be used as often as the cooldown permits, which is motivated by the god taking a bigger interest when there's more at stake.

So let's say that a player has taken 3 wounds in a battle. When the battle ends the priest can try to bless the wounded player, he succeeds and removes one wound. That is all. Then the player enter a second battle, the priest can bless again him during the battle.

Alternatively I would just let the blessing take the role of a First aid check, you can do one or the other but only one of them.

EDIT : sorry for that post... I go to ACTION OUTSIDE ENCOUNTER MODE post...

I can see why some people are having an issue with this, but I think the Tome of Adventure already provides some reasonable guidelines for this sort of thing. I haven't GMed yet (first game tomorrow night) and doubt any of my players will take the healing priest role, but if it turns out to be an issue I'm going to take some inspiration from "The Power of Yes" block on pg. 20. I've no problem with a player trying to spam heals in story mode as long as they understand that excessive tests will incur increasing misfortune dice. I'm thinking that each check after the first before the subject is wounded again will have another die added to it. So the first check is fine, but the second will have +1 misfortune. By the fifth check they'll be looking at + 4 misfortune. I don't know if that will solve the problem for everyone here, but it sounds like a decent starting point to me. If it doesn't discourage the spamming just up the dice penalty more. Warhammer gods are particularly fickle deities after all.

EDIT- Going back I see this is pretty much what Hedgewizard said in the third reply. Feh, and here I thought I was being all clever and such. I should have re-read the thread before posting.

I'd like to steal a page from the Burning Wheel/Burning Empires rules for and mention the Let It Ride Rule. It basically says: "A player shall roll once for an applicable test and shall not roll again until conditions legitimately and drastically change. Neither GM nor player can call for a retest unless those conditions are met."

Which for me fixes many of the issues mentioned so far with using Action Cards in Story Mode, and I would mostly recommend applying it to Story Mode. I also feel it works with the RAW as it's mostly a fair guideline for the GM to follow and easy to remember.

Is the player healing a wound? Okay, you get one roll. Attempting to cure fatigue using I'll Sleep When I'm Dead? Sure you've got one chance, go for it. etc...

If the Act ends, a new and relevant event happens and if those are things that change the current conditions, then re-rolls are once again open. It also allows players to be creative and try to change their circumstances. Maybe they go and donate their time to a Shallya temple, significnatly helping those in need. That might cause Shallya to have mercy on them, allowing for a re-roll. Maybe they go and try to find the help of some healer woman that's supposedly lurking the haunted dark forest. Or they try to ring up the help of some well-respected physician. All of which, in my opinion are vastly more interesting than spam-healing.

Anyways, I like to get players focused on something else, instead of absent-mindedly re-rolling until they get the result they wanted.

Let it Ride is a great rule and looks like a good fix for these issues.

Another group has been importing the concept of "circles checks" from Burning Wheel as well, something where the success/boon/bane dimensions also work really well.

Rob

Lot's of interesting ideas in this thread. Comparing wizards/priests to other classes(..ahem I meant careers ), it's obvious that they have an additional level of complexity with their spellcasting/invoking mechanic. From point of a GM who wants to keep things as simple as possible I like the idea of limiting power/favor regeneration that somebody mentioned earlier in this thread.

So let's see what the rules say about regeneration of Power/Favor :

1. One step closer to equilibrium: end of each turn, rally step

2. Equilibrium : start of encounter, end of encounter

3. Increasing power/favor : use of channeling/currying action card

Since all arcane/divine action cards use power/favor, the key is to limit it, or more specifically to limit channeling/currying action card. At the end of encounter the spellcaster/invoker is at equilibrium, he/she can activate any spell/invocation as many time as his power/favor allows. When the character attempts to channel/curry I would add enough misfortune dice(2 or more depending on character abilities) that it would almost surely fail. Of course I would warn the player first with something like that the Gods are fickle and that their favor should invoked only in times of great need or if he is a wizard I would explain him that his character feels that winds of magic are blowing in an ominous way. If a player disregards the warning and proceeds with the action and fails...the fun starts . A priest would experience a terrible vision of a object/belief sacred to his god destroyed/violated( i.e.for Shallya death of dove,for Sigmar destruction of Heldenhammer, for Morr entire expired population of someplace comes to unllife ), if a priest rolled a chaos star his eyes would bleed and he would acquire a critical wound that affects eyes, also I would roll a number of black dice equal to the number of misfortune dices I used in the first roll, for each challenge a character would receive one wound, and for each bane the party tension would go up for two spaces. A wizard would feel that something is wrong with the winds of magic, I would explain him that he encountered a hot spot of Dhar (dark magic) which is wreaking havoc on his health, if he rolled a chaos star he would immediately draw an insanity with the severity of failed roll(minimum 1),also I would roll a number of black dices equal to the number of misfortune dices I used in the first roll for each challenge he would suffer one stress and fatigue, for each bane party tension would rise by 2. If your players persist with unwise channeling/invoking just rinse and repeat the same procedure with different events and more dire consequences( undead rising, greater daemon appearing, minor chaos gate opening.... ), I am sure that your players will soon realize that in a grim and perilous world magic and the gods are not to be trifled with .

You can also use this in the opposite way to help your players, for example, after the encounter, if your players are gravely injured, let your priest spend his equilibrium favor, and then inform of him of good omen(for Shallya dove appearing, for Morr raven appearing, for Sigmar simbol of the Empire manifesting nearby) and give him a hint that that his god is close and that it could be wise to request his favor, and if the players proceeds with channeling/currying give him a bonus of several expertise/white dices. It really opens up interesting roleplaying possibilities.

P.S. : I never saw it mentioned in the rules but I presume that after eight hours of rest character also recharges his power/favor to equilibrium