Any thought on a new universal effect that turns

3 successes into a boon

or

3 boons into a success

I've contemplated it before, but decided I'm against it. The difference between Successes and Boons IMO is an important aspect of this game for a few reasons.

1. Obviously Successes and Boons are used for different effects, each of which are more/less important at certain times. Example: During Initiative, Successes help you get a high slot on the track, Boons, do not. So if I've got AGI of 5 with no fortune, and I throw 5 Boons I made a really hard roll, with great results, that don't help me at all, during Initiative a boon is as good as blank.

2. As a derivitive of number 1, allowing the exchanging of Successes and Boons, even at a 3-1 ratio starts to alter the percentages and averages of rolls. On a basic Melee attack, 4 sucesses and only 1 Boon means I get the extra damage, but I don't get extra maneuver, The way I look at it, once you've gotten all the success or boons you need to acheive the result you want, any extra are esentially a loss, and with success rates of this system already very high, and most people wanting to find a way to reduce it, adding this rule only helps to further increase those very high rates.

3. Allowing this lesses the value of talents that already allow the exchanging of Boons for Successes. These cards are already of fairly limited value considering you almost always have to spend fortune for the card to work, and even then its a 2:1 ratio. By adding a universal effect these talents are even less appealing.

Now to counter myself a bit, the reason I DO like this idea and considered it in the first place, is that it adds a bit more strategy, originally my though was to allow a 2:1 exchange of Boons and Successes, but this exchange was allowed before cancelling, so if you rolled 2 sucesses and 2 boons, but also got 2 banes, you had a some thought to add to this situation, You could just cancell out and take the single success line of a card, or you could trade up the Boons for a 3rd success and get the 3 success line, but in doing so you now have 2 banes and have to face the consequences of that.

In the end I decided that for the reasons I listed above and the fact that allowing trading before cancelling muddled up the game too much and allowed for just a bit too much meta gaming for my taste to leave well enough alone and not allow trading of Boons/Success other than the talents that already exsist in the game.

That will destroy balance.

To get the best result possible for an action you usually need:

3 successes

3+ boons

1+ sigmars comet

That means that 12 successes, 1 boon and no sigmars comet won't be as good a result as the above. You have to understand that if you could convert those dice the balance would suffer greatly. Successes are seldom the most important part of the result. You usually need just 3 and anything more is waste. You would rather want boons and comets. That is a very important part of the system and if you tinker with this, you'll really destroy the core of the system. There are some tactics etc. that allow you to convert dice though.

We have a house rule for instance where rolling 4+ successes, 3+ boons, 1+ sigmars comet and inflicting at least one critical wound in combat give you a chance for dealing extra damage. That works with the philosophy of the dice system.

I have seen other house rules however that lets you use spare successes as extra damage, but I believe that really ruins the system itself, when for instance it could be better to use a comet as a success even though you already had 3+.

But the dice system and the philosophy behind it is very different from a strict success/failure perspective and what you propose will twist the propabilities for the worse.