Some Action Cards require a simple Skill Check, without any opposition.

How do you decide if you should also apply a difficulty level to the check ? (In addition to the cards own difficulty, for example)

Here are some of those cards:

Exploit Opening (Leadership check)

Berzerker Rage (Discipline)

My Life For Yours (Discipline)

Old Dog, New Trick (Animal Handling)

Saga of Grimnir (Discipline)

The Viper's Dance (Coordination)

Big City Bravado (Folklore)

ETC...

Shouldn't the wording be: Folklore (int) VS Difficulty level ?

Aren't Difficulty levels ALWAYS applied to checks ? I mean it's either an opposed or a difficulty level check. If you don't want any difficulty, you'll simply apply a Difficulty Level of Simple (0d), but mechanically speaking, that's still a Difficulty level !

So my main question is: how do you rule difficulty for those Action Cards that aren't "VS" something ?

I just use whatever difficulty symbols appear in the upper right corner, and that's it unless there's other modifiers (like if the action would require sight and it's dark out or raining, etc.) I assume that if the game doesn't list a "vs something", then it's a simple test with 0 difficulty.

Yes, this means you succeed at these types of action 85% of the time, but the RAW assumes that you succeed at attacks 70% of the time, so it's not a big deal to me. Off the top of my head, none of the cards you're talking about have effects so awesome that they'll break the game even if they work 95% of the time. You are giving up an attack to do them, after all.

Ok, no responses ?

According to the FAQ, all of these actions would have a Simple (0d) difficulty.

Do you agree with that ?

Doesn't it make the roll superfluous ? Too easy ?

Jericho said:

Actually, there was a ninja response. Snuck right in while you were typing up yours, or vice-versa.

Jericho said:

The game is based on the concept that success is more fun than wasted actions. One could argue that this isn't the best setting for that paradigm, as the "dregs of the empire" theme of previous editions is sometimes at conflict with the high success rate of the current edition. Honestly, though, I'd rather have a fight (or social encounter, etc) that takes half as long with half as many failed rolls. It's just more fun that way, IMHO.

As to making the rolls superfluous, if the dice system didn't have those lovely side-effects I'd say yes. But given the banes, fatigue, and delay symbols, you can still have things go wrong on a roll you "can't fail". The degrees of success allowed in the game from comets, boons, and triple-hammer lines also makes these rolls interesting where a simple binary success/fail roll wouldn't.

A lot of the cards that have no difficulty feature a success line that just gives dice to future rolls. Succeeding at a Big City Bravado roll is trading an entire action for one white die on your next couple actions. If I had to seriously worry about whether or not I'd succeed at the Big City Bravado, I'd never take that card. Honestly, even with 90% chance of success, I still wouldn't rush to take the card, because the one bonus die is rarely worth taking a whole extra round to get the real job done. Adding a purple die would be a nail in that card's coffin.

The really good stuff on the cards you mention only happens if you get either multiple successes, boons or a comet. Success is not a binary thing in 3e.

Big city bravado is not really a combat action, I'd say that the card is a fairly good in a social combat. I'd probably also let it be used in story mode to provide a bonus to a story mode check.

gruntl said:

Maybe.

But a hit with one success will often dish out an honest amount of damage.

In the end, lightly armoured characters are at a total disadvantage when the default result is 10 or so damage points.

I find it limiting the viable types of characters people may play.

So in order to make all character types viable, the differences between character types should be erased. So that it makes no difference other than in how they're described?

I don't buy it. Armor is beneficial, no one goes to battle unprotected unless required to or unable due to mitigating circumstances.

Still there are ways to help characters without throwing armor on them. I don't have the cards with me here, but if I remember correctly talents like Catlike reflexes and actions cards like Shrug It Off can be used to help them out. Guarded Position I believe can also help them as it adds misfortune dice to attacks targeting a character no?

Reducing the difference between armor types is not the answer in my opinion. I'd rather add actions and talents that would enable those mythical agility warriors to avoid being damaged.

Lexicanum said:

I agree, but to be honest those actions and talents are somewhat lacking at the moment. You can get talents/actions that help you survive as a agi based warrior, but almost all of those cards are available to the higly armored ironbreaker too (exception being improved dodge). I don't really think that is the end of the world though, it is as you write, "armor is beneficial". The designers of 3e have made the decision that armour is the most important thing when trying to avoid damage. If you don't like it, you will have to use a house rule.

I think I've seen your proposed house rule Jericho, that will probably work just fine (although I think you should actually try the RAW before houseruling).

Well, 10 damage for one success is still modified by toughness (and you should have 3+ in toughness, otherwise you really have no business taking damage in this game). But my point still stands, at 3 successes+2 boons+1 comet you might do something like 16 damage and 1 crit, which is a lot more dangerous than the 10 wounds. It's the crits that you really need to worry about, wounds alone will not kill you (unless your GM really wants you to die and performs coup de graces on you).

Gruntl, are the Crits that dangerous ?

In the end, when you reach 0 wounds, you fall unconscious. In many situations, that can cause your demise. When PCs start falling, often the monsters have the winning hand and will remain masters of the battlefield once its over. So either your mates flee the scene (leaving you to be imprisoned/killed by your enemies), or they stay by your side and then you risk a TPK.

Being reduced to 0 wounds is still the end all of combat. And with a high success ratio and fixed damage RAW, unarmoured characters are predictably in great danger.

I'm not saying armour shouldn't be the main tool for defense, I like that. Like in V1 or V2, any serious combatant will wear as much as he can of it.

But an agile combatant, such as a dilettante/swashbuckler type should be able to get lucky and avoid some damage using his mobility to protect him. Using the RAW, this combatant will be hit almost every time, unless you only send goblins one at a time against him. That's what I don't like. Predictability of outcomes. When hits are very numerous, you can easily calculate your average damage output and approximate how many rounds it will take to down an opponent and if you stand a chance of living that many rounds against said opponent.

It feels like D&D in a way. But at least in D&D damage output is random !

I know the diversity of actions will add flavour and surprises, and that Crits and other impairments can also help making combat fun, but for the Agile combatant, all of that will pale in front of the fact that he cannot survive more than 4 or so rounds in ANY combat situation. Now that is no fun for the player, and not very realistic either. Very agile and proficient fighters exist in RL, and can easily defeat a man in armour of inferior training and skill. I'm not saying the RAW is broken, I'm just saying that Defense is comparatively weak compared to Offense, in my view.

Also, Defense doesn't scale with experience (Improved Defensive Actions aren't that great), but Offense does. So two very proficient fighters will just splatter each other very rapidly. (Imagine Str4 2 fortune with 3 Expertise, 1 Specialisation against ... an Improved dodge ? Again, almost an automatic hit every time.) It just isn't normal that as fighters gain experience, they never learn to better defend themselves !

---------------------

Double post.

r_b_bergstrom said:

Has the high success rate worked well for you ?

Don't you feel that rolling has lost some of its suspense if there is almost no fear of failing ?

Shouldn't benefits be larger in case of success and combine that with a lower success rate ?

I know I should use the RAW for a while before house ruling, but all tests I have made (10 of them up to now, with different character types) make me consider that a higher fail rate should be used (and if that nerfs boons too much, then make these "more powerful", so when you do get some, they make a real difference).

So I really wonder how it works out for people using the RAW, and if they have noticed that these Simple (0d) Action Cards rapidly start to dish out their most potent effects, as getting a few successes and a few boons when there is no difficulty is a cinch.

Jericho said:

Well, you won't die until you get more crits than your Toughness (or equal to, cant remember now). If the GM wants to run a hardcore game where wounds=0 means death I guess you're in trouble. But I really don't see the fun in that. We don't have any fate points in this edition so the GM should perhaps be a little bit more forgiving. You have a point that getting to 0 wounds will cause you to get unconscious and that your party then runs a risk of being wiped out. Still, if I was GMing I would probably not kill off the entire group when they all go unconscious. It depends on the opposition, if they fight the big baddie who is a hyperintelligent sorcerer they will likely be killed (or worse), but if they fall to a random beastman raid they might actually wake up again in a cage, being fed up to provide the herd with meat for the winter season. Not killing players and entire parties can lead to loads of interesting scenarios.

But sure, as I wrote above I do think you have a point when it comes to low armor, high agi warriors. I also agree that there should be some scaled up versions of the improved actve defenses. An easy fix for the higher ranks would be to let them add one purple die per skill training in the required skill (e.g., Coordination for Imp. dodge).

I'm thinking of allowing Expertise and Specialisation levels to be converted into Misfortune dice that are added to the Challenge die for Advanced Active Defense only.

Jericho said:

Same here, misfortune die don't really make much of a difference anyways. They're really underpowered in my opinion. Then again, there's the Improved Dodge, Parry and the like that should also be taken into account.

Jericho said:

Yes, the high success rate seems to be working quite well.

No, no suspense has been lost. Some of it has been moved around (see below), but none is gone.

No, that's not necessarily how it should be. In some games, most RPGs even, that's the paradigm that's used. "All or nothing" could some up the majority of the RPG system mechanics under the sun. Powerful successes but rarely occurring is one possible way of doing things, a comfortable old familar way, but not the only way. This game is almost unique in that it gives some measure of progress nearly every round. I find that very refreshing.

In my opinion, success is more fun than wasted actions.

There's still plenty of challenge and suspense. it's just been moved away from where it was before.

Part of the suspense moved from "Will I succeed?" into the territory of "To what extent will I succeed?" Every action feels more effective. Gone are the days where the dice just hate you and you failed 5 attacks in a row. Instead, even when the dice are rolling below average you hit 3 out 5 times, but just never get the triple success, or maybe you run afoul of some banes and chaos stars. You've had the seem streak of bad luck, but you don't feel like you played through an hour and a half of combat without even once accomplishing anything. The frustration of bad luck has lost much of it's sting. Players seem more likely to laugh it off. Since you still did a little damage, or got some boon affect, the sting of a below-average roll is much less.

The other part of the suspense moved away from the player's roll and into other areas. I find you actually fear the enemies attack more, because they are much more likely to hit you. Fights, are shorter and bloodier, and every bit as exciting as they were And a well-built encounter, with a progress tracker in view, has just as much suspense. Less of the suspense is in any given roll, and more of it is in the story and scenario. I like that a lot.

My wife's character, for example, has been KO'd three times now. In nearly every other game we've played, she's been a bad sport if that sort of thing has happened. (Sorry, dear, but you know it's true). Or she'll be a bit of a bad sport if she gets that string of bad rolls where an hour of combat goes by without her ever hitting. When she gets knocked out in Warhammer 3rd, she just smiles and says "Yeah, but I took 5 goblins with me!" And the hour of combat without ever hitting or accomplishing anything - that just doesn't happen now. Everything's fast and exciting, and you never really feel like you've wasted an action.

I compare that to the Savage Worlds game I wrapped up recently, or the Scion campaign I finished a year and a half ago, and I realize how awesome it is to succeed more often than you fail. In Savage Worlds, a spellcaster that's out of power points just gets to sit around doing nothing. If the enemy gets close they'll maybe try a trick, but the math of it is that they're best off staying far away from the enemy, as they can only hit them with a real lucky roll. (The ironic thing here is that Savage Worlds itself has a higher success rate than a game like D&D, but there's still plenty of characters who have to sit around twiddling their thumbs while the group's tank does his thing.) In Scion, you activate a bunch of powers and roll a huge pool of dice, do a bunch of math, and then fail to do any damage despite rolling 17 "successes" from your pool. A ton of math for zero damage three rolls out of four. And then a long wait till your next action as everyone else does their ton of math to accomplish nothing. Those sorts of situations are boring. The real fun and suspense and excitement comes when characters have a good chance of actually doing something round after round. That's my opinion, anyway.

Jericho said:

When you're testing it, you're just testing odds and math, right? You're probably not getting a feel for the whole experience. Presumably, you're just rolling as fast as you reasonably can, and moving through the required parts to get to the end result. So it's telling you a lot about the mechanics, but not much about the fun that accompanies them. I really do feel that's the important part. Succeeding is more fun than failing yet again and having to wait 10 minutes for your next chance to maybe accomplish something.

Just a thought. You could probably find out for yourself by running a single one-shot with the RAW. If you and your group don't like it after one evening and couple of fight scenes, you really haven't lost anything and can happily revert to your higher-difficulty houserules. You wouldn't even have to make characters for the one-shot, just use your existing PCs from the campaign, and call the one-shot a "dream sequence" or "spin off".

Or, ignore me and keep doing what you are doing. That's okay too, as long you're having fun. That's the important part.

Jericho said:

Back to the real topic of this thread - the Simple (0d) Action Cards:

As I said before, many of these have really small benefits. Call of the Wild, Big City Bravado, Predator or Prey, and Combat Focus all have their main effect being to add a single Fortune die to some number of rolls. In this regards, they're a lot like a talent, or a career ability, or a specialization. Except, unlike any of those three categories of power, they cost you an action to prepare to use them. To counterbalance and boost them in exchange for using up an action, they allow for slightly better results if you get a really good roll. If you start increasing the odds of failure on those, they become more and more dubious. Eventually you'll hit a point where they're not worth taking (and few of them are arguably at that point without any changes).

Things like Assess the Situation, Exploit Opening, Improved Guarded Position, Old Dog New Trick , and the conservative side of Who's Next are more effective, but remain non-aggressive and are done at the cost of preventing you from attacking. In general, these are the sorts of powers used by supporting characters that aren't very good at straight-up fighting. The point of these cards is to let the non-combat characters contribute to the battle in some way. One of the strengths of this system is that no one has to sit out during a fight, and it's these sorts of cards that allow it. The sorts of characters who take those cards are allready at a disadvantage in combat. These cards having low difficulties is what makes that possible, and boosting up the difficulty will reduce the viable options for characters who don't have Strength or Agility primary.

Berzerker Rage is an odd case. One the conservative side, all it does is let you shift your stance to 1 Reckless. If you're at neutral, it's not very good. If you're deep into consevative, it's better than paying a bunch of fatigue. But in and of itself, the conservative side doesn't do much of anything. It just sets you up to make better use of other cards next round, and only if you were standing in conservative. The reckless side, I'll grant you is pretty potent. But I'd take a good hard look at the chaos star line before house-ruling extra difficulty on that card. If I'm understanding it correctly, getting 1 chaos star means you'll suffer 8 fatigue over the next 3 rounds. That's a big drawback.

The Viper's Dance is one I really can't evaluate very well. I haven't seen a Wardancer in action, so I don't have clue how balanced it is. But since wardancers being squishy is a recent topic of another thread, I doubt this card is uber good. To make it better than a basic Dodge, you'd need to have at least 2 other Ritual Dance cards currently recharging.

And I believe that just leaves the Sagas . I must confess I haven't looked too closely at them. There may be a hidden powerhouse there that I'm not aware of. My gut instinct is that the trade off of losing an attack is enough to keep them in check. I mean, if the Ironbreaker is going to spend his turn singing instead of breaking someone's iron, there'd better be a strong benefit in it for him.

But I will say, if you've raised the difficulty of attacks across the board, then maybe upping the difficulty on these wouldn't hurt either. Currently, much of what keeps them in check is the fact that a basic attack is better more often than not. The more you downgrade a basic attack, the better these cards become.

Honestly, as a GM, it comes down to the situation. How hard is the task itself, and then what environmental modifiers are there. RAW says that the GM determines the difficulty, and can change it as desired. An action card test that isn't opposed on the card, the GM could well decide in a specific instance that it is more appropriately an opposed check for that roll. The rules suggest a default of Simple (0d) for most tasks, but the GM is encouraged to change that.

Very nice responses, Bergstrom. Exactly the level of detail I was hoping for.

I think I will try the RAW for a one off (any short adventures I should be looking into for that ?), but no, I wasn't only testing the mechanics.

I had set up a scene everytime, because my friends and I can't help roleplaying... even for tests.

So I did get a feel of the system. But just not very often, and not beyond the learning curve where token handling becomes second nature.

In my V2 campaign, I don't get too much of the unlucky player depressions, v2 fortune point rerolls are helping, I must admit. Oftentimes when players get stuck, they'll resort to a change of tactics, an All-out attack (+20% WS but no dodge no parries), for example. So they'll become "reckless" in a way, to break the cycle of unluckiness. Or they'll devise a tactical effort to change the layout of the battle. Or they'll do something plain crazy (jump out of a window, leap through a melee while drunk, etc...). The rules give them this added control over success rate vs risk.

In V3, you also have Reckless dice and Fortune points, but I get the feeling that you won't need them that much since you already succeed often. You'll just throw them in to get that "big" hit. So I guess I'm not sure about shifting to a "how well do I succeed" vs "will I succeed" paradigm.

Don't get me wrong, I want a success rate slightly higher than V2, and I love the nuances that success + banes and CS can add.

But according to the diceprob tester, a character with a stat of 4, using 1 conservative die for a test of Simple (0d) difficulty will get 1 Success 96% of the time and 3 Successes 39% of the time. That is a very high success rate. And the guy isn't trained. I know a Simple (0d) test should be almost automatic, but even for a guy that's untrained ? It just seems too easy. According to the RAW, a character that is trained and using the correct stance should succeed almost all of the time.

Add a Challenge die to that example and you're at 77% success rate. That's more like it. Make the guy trained, and you're back at 85%; 38% chance of 3 successes. It seems to me with the RAW, there is no room to grow. Lets say that same guy is maxed out at 3 training levels and a specialisation, then he would reach the lofty heights of 96% chance of succeeding at an Easy (1d) check. (Simple goes to 99,7% success)

I guess I'm a Challenge die away from my ideal success level.

dvang said:

Good point. Do you find it hard to give difficulty to rolls like Exploit Opening ? and such ?

I find that when you need to evaluate with GM fiat too many actions, sometimes you just roll over because you don't have the energy to really go into each case with the level of detail you should.

Call that laziness, but still, it happens...

Action Card Challenge Level
My understanding of how to determine challenge level for the different types of action cards, spell, blessing or otherwise. List doesn't cover a few oddities that are self-explanatory like vs. Target Critical's Severity , etc.

vs. Target Defence
not an opposed check, default difficulty: easy (1d), add difficulty modifier from action card
example: Great Fires of U'zhul , Spellcraft vs. Target Defence, +(1d) for vs. Target Defence, +(1d) for card difficulty modifier, +(x misfortune) x = the defence rating of the target, +(x misfortune) x = number of target's in engagement after the first (card special rule)

vs. Target Characteristic
is an opposed check, follow opposed check rules, add action card difficulty modifier
example: Curse , Spellcraft vs. Target Discipline, +(x d) x = opposed check difficulty rating, +(2 misfortune) from card difficulty

Skill
not an opposed check, default difficulty: simple (0d), add action card difficulty modifier
example: Flameblast , Spellcraft, (0d) Spellcraft check, +(1d) from action card difficulty, + (1d) only if engaged with an enemy (card special rule)

None Required
'nuff said
example, Burning Blood

*for all spells requiring checks add +(1d) if quickcasting
**GM prerogative: “The GM is still the final arbiter of a task’s challenge level, and may adjust these to suit the story and the particular task at hand.”

i agree that GM's are encouraged to adjust challenge levels, but ruling adjustments shouldn't require a ton of thought or be exhausting. for example, Berserker Rage at default is a (0d, 2 misfortune check). why bother messing with it? unless , a player has been tranq'd with schlaf. in which case, it makes sense to use GM prerogative to adjust the default difficulty from a simple Discipline (0d) check to a hard (3d) or daunting (4d) check. done.

just to be clear, i am only interested in RAW.

oops, should have added another general rule for adjusting difficulty. i included it for the great fires of u'zhul but i forgot to add it to flameblast so

***add misfortune dice equal to target's defence to any ranged or melee attack.

But according to the diceprob tester, a character with a stat of 4, using 1 conservative die for a test of Simple (0d) difficulty will get 1 Success 96% of the time and 3 Successes 39% of the time. That is a very high success rate. And the guy isn't trained. I know a Simple (0d) test should be almost automatic, but even for a guy that's untrained ? It just seems too easy. According to the RAW, a character that is trained and using the correct stance should succeed almost all of the time.

In this situation, if the person is untrained/clueless, I would recommend increasing the base difficulty to at least <P>.

For example, picking a lock without knowing how to pick locks is inherently a more difficult task. It's not the environment that is making the task more difficult (which would add ), but the task itself is more difficult due to lack of knowledge.

Good point. Do you find it hard to give difficulty to rolls like Exploit Opening ? and such ?

Honestly, I haven't had too many chances to need to do these for my group. I don't have my books here in front of me to make specific suggestions, sorry.

The rules suggest default values, but specifically say that the GM determines the difficulty and level. The GM can decide that the winds of magic are negligible in an area, so that all spells cast there are a default of <PP>, instead of <0>, for example. Or, the GM is well within RAW to have a melee attack be an opposed check instead of vs Defense.

This game is about the story, and cinematic feel. One thing you could do is try asking your players what they think the difficulty of a task they are attempting is, and why. If they come up with good rationales, use what they suggest (ie, keep it easy). If they can't come up with reasons why it would be a 0d difficulty, then default to 1d, for example., or something along those lines.

Maybe it's just me, but I find I have no problems coming up with reasonable difficulties for tasks on the fly when needed. Although, I normally only need to do this for things like skill checks, and use defaults for combat and spellcasting, etc. When I'm in doubt, I ask my players (and make them say WHY).

Dvang, are you saying that you would treat Action Cards without difficulty as skill checks ? (Which they are, in a sense.)

So you would determine a difficulty related to the situation at hand, just like any other skill. Is that it ?

actions without difficulty is just something that you made up because you were trying to figure out a way to distinguish them from other actions when talking about them, but there are just different ways to determine difficulty for the different types of action cards. the only actions truly w/o difficulty are the ones that say None Required . when an action card just says Discipline (WP) it is telling you to make an unopposed Discipline Check with a default difficulty at Simple (0d) and add the card's built in difficulty modifier from the top left corner. is this similar to a skill check? yup. why are there cards like this? because in most cases there is no target to oppose or would want to oppose the cards effect or the card is able to partially ignore the targets defense. flameblast is an unopposed skill check and also not vs. Target Defence but it is still a ranged attack and that means poeple can still try to dodge it and get to add misfortune with their armor defense. the difference is that it is default (0d) instead of default (1d).

@Dvang: a house rule for increasing the default difficulty of untrained skills is not unreasonable. i just don't think many people will be buying action cards keyed to skills they are not trained with if you do that, discouraging them from pursuing sub-optimal but better rounded builds. i get what you are saying about high success rates. i just haven't met a solution that i like yet. maybe an across the board (1d) default increase. it just changes the game assumption about competency in one go w/o having to say "this should be a little harder, this shouldn't" for every thing you come across.

Bindlespin said:

Not that I don't believe you, but where is that rule? It's added when it's vs. Target Defense, but I don't see a blanket rule for all ranged or melee attacks.