This might be something I overlooked when rereading the books, but it came up during a playtest: do you use stances when rolling a skill or attribute check while in story mode? All the examples of skill checks in the books seem to focus on encounter mode and the relevant action cards, so it's not very clear to me if you need to swap out attribute dice for stance dice while rolling. And if you do use stance dice, who decides how deep into reckless/conservative a player is? Of course it's always to the player's advantage to go extremely green/red to score more successes...

Any thoughts or page references that would be helpful?

Thanks.

As I understand it, you would use the character's default stance when making a skill check in story mode. The default stance is whichever one the character has more pieces of on their stance tracker (ie, conservative if the tracker has more green pieces), or the one the player chose as default at character creation if their stance tracker is balanced (equal amounts of red and green pieces).

John

That would feel very sensible yes and it does put my fear at ease for powergamey types who would always go for extreme dicepools. It also suits the situational difference between encounter mode (when time, stress and fatigue are an issue) and story mode (where only success or failure matters). Thank you for your input John, I appreciate it.

Also you as storyteller can decide that characters that are angry or rushing going into a skill check or situation gets the agressive stance and that cautious or scared ones get the conservative stance - that way you won't get players acting one way and their characters performing actions in the opposite stance, because it's what they are best at (or the actions benefit the most from).

The dominant stance is only used to determine which side of an action card is referred to for resolution when performing the action in a neutral stance. The rules only talk about changing stance during encounter mode. The FAQ discusses that Initiative tests are normally performed in neutral stance unless the PC triggered encounter mode by escalated the action and has therefore been able to modify his stance during his beginning of turn phase. It further says that if the GM agrees they may convert one of their characteristic dice into a stance die for Initiative checks, based on the PC's dominant stance. This strongly implies that characters operate in neutral stance when in story mode. If a player wants their character to "fly into a rage" just to be able to use 3 Reckless stance dice on a check made in story mode, the GM should strongly consider treating this as escalating the action and have the players roll for Initiative, then continue in encounter mode. This will prevent players from just adopting max depth in whichever stance produces the best result for the check they are trying to make. However, I will note that taking a queue from the FAQ entry on Initiative, we've been using a house rule that you can use 1 stance die based on dominant stance for any check in story mode. The only way to get deeper in your stance is in Encounter mode.

I agree with all of the above readings of the rules (essentially mac40k's post).

However, the more I've thought about the matter of stance dice in story mode, I now see absolutely no problem with using them. Not even "maxed-out" stance modes. Here are my reasons:

1) I don't like the artificial game distinction between encounter and story mode to guide the roleplaying. It strikes me as perfectly reasonable to allow, for instance, the very aggressive, loud-mouthed Troll Slayer to head into Altdorf to gather information "with a really bad attitude" (i.e. a maxed out aggressive stance meter). With the stereotypical Fellowship of 2, that would mean, yes, this Troll Slayer would simply roll 2 aggressive dice.

2) In fact, there already is actually enough of a disincentive not to go too deeply into either stance. The above Troll Slayer increases greatly the number of bane results by tossing those aggressive dice. He might even wear himself out a little (fatigue possiblity). I think his party mates (especially the "uptight" High Elf Agent) would prefer that the Troll Slayer use a neutral stance.

On the other hand, a too hesitant approach by maxing out a conservative stance in the other direction could court delays that might prove costly to accomplishing the matter at hand. In this instance, I would house-rule that conservative "hour-glass" results, if unable to be applied to any particular, obvious card effect, could be interpreted as meaning extra hours or days....

Frankly, I think the stance game mechanic works well enough (and that it enhances the social, roleplaying possibilities) that I'm a little surprised the designers didn't explicitly encourage it in story mode.

I default to the neutral position for most things, but I allow case-by-case exemptions when the player has a justification for being further in one stance or other.

So if the troll merc in my group is having a really pissy day, she might start 1 deep into reckless. As her day continues, she becomes more frustrated and angry, pushing her further into reckless, until she has an encounter with the local watch and instead of calmly talking with them, she abuses and berates them and otherwise digs herself in deeper with her reckless stance.

Here are my issues with deep stances in story mode. The negative side effect of getting a little fatigue or stress from a maxed Reckless roll aren't that detremental unless an encounter will immediately follow, causing the PC to start the encounter at a disadvantage. While I will agree that the effects of delay results can be felt in story mode, it requires the GM to make a judgement call as to how much of a delay an hourglass represents. Not that there is anything wrong with that, but for newer GM's its not as straight forward as putting two tokens on a action card or dropping the top initiative down one place.

If you allow players to enter a stance narratively, unless an encounter takes them by surprise, they will always adopt their preferred stance and depth narratively prior to an encounter. This will not only allow them to roll more stance dice for Initiative, it will allow them to start along the track in the place they want without having to burn Stress at the beginning of the encounter or move over several turns to their desired depth.

If you allow players to choose stance narratively, you have to police abuse more. It's one thing for the Reckless PC to fly into a rage with dealing with a shopkeeper, just so he can roll max Reckless dice on an Intimidate check, but you then can't allow them to immediately narratively cool off when the Watch shows up. If you don't intend to enter encounter mode, how long does the character have to stay max reckless and how quickly can they cool down?

All great points, mac 40K, and well put. I still think there's a (mis)understanding of stance dice that assumes they're pure "power-boost" dice (and so something for the GM to "control" their players from "abusing"). However, I think, for the aggressive stance especially, the prevelance of all the extra bane, fatigue, and blank results mitigate this outlook to a large degree. The double-hammers are attractive; but there's a measurable (a visible ) downside on those ten sides.

By extension, I almost feel that it makes sense that the conservative stance becomes a more attractive stance approach for the social-type characters.

My prediction is that, yes, players will seek to max out stance tracks as often as possible (and, let's face it, I'd bet the aggressive stance proves 2 to 1 more popular), but as the campaign unfolds I'd also wager that more experienced players will keep their stance-boosting twitch in greater check.

<shrug> I could be wrong! For now, I'm allowing story mode stance meters simply to avoid the artificiality of the encounter/story division. However, this reason is further bolstered by the fact that I believe the stance dice have sufficient, strong-enough, built-in disincentivessee my Troll Slayer who's just pissed off half of Altdorf and sent his party tension meter through the roof...

As a quick follow-up to something I just now posted. I said that I'd wager that players will keep their stance-twitch in "greater check." Well, no, that's not well put. My point actually should have been..."who cares" whether they keep it "in check". Let those who want to stay maxed out, stay maxed out...and let the downsides of those maxed-out stance dice pile up.

Do you really want to risk fatigue from an Initiative check before a blow as been struck? Worse yet, do you really want to risk a delay result from a Conservative-stance Initiative?

Sure, there's not much of a downside to fatigue from the aggressively stanced Troll Slayer trying to do a little aggressive information gathering. But think of the increase of banes (disgruntled contacts, alerted skaven assassins, insulted town guard...). After the initial thrill of a fist-full of aggressive stance Fellowship checks, I'd think he (or his party members) would police the situation (no need for GM fiat).

Anyway, great discussion.

McBard said:

Deciding additional bane side effects like disgruntled contacts, insulted town guard, etc. are all GM fiat however, because the only default effect in the rulles is two banes = 1 Fatigue or 1 Stress depending on if the task was physical or mental. Again, a Stress or Fatigue taken in story mode isn't nearly as big of a negative consequence as a point of Stress or Fatigue in encounter mode. Delay results from Conservative dice are already up to the GM to decide in story mode. If a PC is researching some info and spends a day in a library and gets 3 hourglasses because they wanted to be sure that they were successful, how long did it take? If you tell the player that their search was so thorough that it took them a week to complete it, some may balk and argue that it shouldn't have taken them any more than some number of extra hours. Not all groups are like this and a strong GM that is capable of improvising the downside of max stance in story mode by making up their own negative effects, and has players that can maturely handle accepting the arbitrarily decided consequences he imposes, may be okay. A newer GM that is relying on the rules to tell him what to do when a player rolls banes or delays in story mode is going to empower the players more than I think they should and should stick to neutral stance in story mode.

I agree largely with Mac40k (as I seem to do on most things), but with regards to GM fiat and determining results after the roll, perhaps a better way for new GMs to tackle it (if they want to allow deep stances to affect story) is to determine the outcome BEFORE the roll.

So in the case of the library, the player says they want to go off an investigate, and they want to be very thorough and careful so they are going deep into the conservative stance. GM says okay, but each hourglass is going to cost an hour, a day, a week, etc. Then the player can choose whether to go deep, or do the check at all. I've certainly done this a few times, and in fact solicited my players for suggestions. We've come up with some fairly inventive stuff, even when the outcomes are against the character. Maybe in the middle of the research, they are bugged by an overzelous, over protective librarian who constantly pesters the player causing them to lose stance dice (breaking concentration) or perhaps triggering a social encounter that could aid or derail the PC.

That being said, as I mentioned in my earlier post, I prefer to stay in the neutral stance outside of encounters, with justifications needed to adopt stances.

An excellent suggestion HW! Decide the negative consequences first , then allow the player to determine if they are willing to take the added risk that a deeper stance would entail. Should work very well as long as you have a mature group that will not argue with you over it and you don't have a player that will always try to get the max benefit for the least risk. I'm with you in that I will default to neutral stance when in story mode and if a player wants to make a case for being deeper in a stance, then I will require them to suggest what the appropriate negative consequences might be.