I really like the concept of chaos stars and that something bad or unforeseen happens when you roll them. But am I the only GM who has difficulties with coming up with interesting results for them? In my sessions we see them all the time. A single round of combat often sees at least 2-3 chaos stars. With spells and miscasts there's a perfect balance, but for other actions they occur too often and most cards don't have effects for them. Tripping and falling down in the mud more than once in 30 seconds feels a bit...silly. I think the chaos stars are more fit for a D20 system where the power of chaos would be significant but not that common.

Any ideas here? Of course you can always just treat them as a bane, but that doesn't feel like the proper way to go.

I know what you mean, but I've found that with the addition of the disease, corruption and other new rules from supplements, there's usually an in game effect in play which can make use of the stars (two of my players are diseased and have really begun to hang back from volunteering to do things as it will require risking the purple dice). Other than those effects, I'm just using them as banes.

On a side note, one of the two sickos has Red Pox. Every time he rolls a star he loses a wound, but I've also ruled that he gets a new sore. He's got about seven now - he can keep them hidden for now, but if he ever rolls two stars they're hitting his face!

Oftentimes I use Chaos Stars to indicate something in the plot that has changed, rather than a direct effect of the action. So, Chaos Stars often indicate that the Enemy has become aware of the PCs, or the enemy has accomplished a mission successfully, or something else has gone right for the enemy (perhaps pushing their timetable up, etc). It may or may not tie in directly to the action itself.

Some examples:

- PCs are trying to sneak and get a Chaos Star. This can indicate that a guard has seen or heard something suspicious, and has gotten reinforcements or his supervisor. This might increase the number of guards in the area, for example, or make additional stealth checks more difficult in the future.

- PCs are haggling with a merchant and get a Chaos Star. After the PCs leave, the merchant reports/mentions the encounter to the Enemy and that the PCs were asking about him/her or related topic, alerting the Enemy that the PCs are nosing around. (even if said merchant is not a spy, bad luck causes it to come up in casual conversation)

- PCs attack a foe and get a Chaos Star with no line on the action card. The foe was someone's loved son, and now a relative will be investigating their death, leading to the PCs and possibly a vendetta/retaliation.

And so on...

There are lots of interesting possibilities to use for Chaos Stars, other than "trip and fall" or "sword breaks".

Windupboy said:

Windupboy said:

The best thing is not to make any rules for them unless it's something you really want to happend the same way every time. Like for instance requiring a disease check when rolling chaos star(s) on a critical wound recovery check.

You should not have something happend every time. They are chaos stars after all and sometimes nothing happends. But it can be small things. For instance when you try to impress a barmaid you can have a great success and get what you want, but the boyfriend grabs your arm and wants a fight because you were comming on to her.

In combat all kinds of things can happend: Dropping the weapon, a normal wound turns critical, get 2+ fatigue, get a random condition but only keep it if it's bad, roll a disease check for infection (difficulty is the number of chaos stars rolled), trip and prone, enemies get reinforcements, a killed bad guy has used a healing draught and gets back up, your shield, your weapon is damaged and needs repairs (-1 damage until repaired).

Many options, but don't feel you need to think of something every time. Just do it whenever you feel like it, so the players don't know when to expect an effect from the chaos star.

Chaos works in mysterious ways after all.

And with that delightful blasphemy I'll bid you all good night

dvang said:

Great idea, dvang!

You could even gather a specific amount of chaos stars in order to trigger an effect. Say, if the heroes have rolled a total of 10 chaos stars, their enemy has reached a specific goal.

I think I will use your concept in my campaign. This allows not to punish your players for every chaos star they roll without abolishing the penalty of chaos stars.

Chaos stars can cause things that the Players are not even aware of ... they might never know what happened. A later encounter might never have occured if they hadn't rolled that chaos star near the city watch, etc.

Also, I often convert chaos stars to banes in order to power a bad effect on cards.

I've really never had a problem with chaos star fulfillment

(also my party has been involved in a warpstone experiment and their stars also power a tracker that produces corruption. Every character has his own, and when they have a certain amount of chaos stars in a session they have to make a resiliency check to avoid corruption. So the stars have more than one effect ... the one on the tracker and whatever they would normally be used for.)

dvang said:

Love those examples!

so they are very good for broader narrative effect, but as GullyFoyle mentioned, dont forget that per RAW chaos stars always can count as banes, expecially if there aren't cs specific triggers.

If u want, u could also plan ahead your enviroments a bit more: using more location cards, trackers etc could lend u more opportunities to spend cs whithout improvvising!

It seems ot me there are two schools of thought here - one suggesting they have Chaos Stars provide narrative effects, and the other mechanical effects. The latter are definitely easier to come up with (the 'trip and falls' and the 'weapons'), but the former definitely adds more depth. A mix of the two is definitely what I would favour, as will pushing the narrative along is great in the grand scheme, occasionally you want their to be instantaneous effects from these. Dropping the hero that rolled a Chaos Star one space on the initiative track could prove much more on an inconvenience that having another patrol of guards added to the roster, and has a very definite, immediate effect. I want my players to dread rolling Chaos Stars

Narrative effects are of course great, and I use them if there's opportunity. But they work best in story mode, or at least on more important and isolated checks in encounter mode, for example climbing over a wall or lockpicking. The stars I'm concerned about are the all too common ones in fights, as I mentioned above . It's hard to come up with interesting effects several times per rounds (the story takes ten turns in 30 seconds and ends up in total chaos! If everyone that my players kill while rolling chaos stars was somebodys son they would soon have whole towns of angry relatives on their heels..).

But I'll guess I'll have to make a little list or something formore common effects - extra fatigue or moving down on initiative track are good suggestions - and keep the big changes for chaos stars on more important checks.

Thanks for the input and ideas!

Windupboy said:

You could consider stars have a positive effect on the opponent rather than a negative effect on the player - just to mix it up a little.

'You pu your all into your strike, but you leave yourself woefully exposed - you know if you get hit before you can recover, it's gonna HURT' - game effect, +2 damage for the next enemy that strikes that player. Stuff like that *shrug*

I guess I figure with wounds, crits, corruption, fatigue, stress, tracking tokens, initiative tokens, not to mention simple 'you slip', 'you your weapon' etc, there's more than enough to mix Chaos Star results up in combat...

I guess I don't the see reason for making a distinction between the results in story mode and encounter mode.

If my players get in a bar fight and role a Chaos Star—they could slip on beer, maybe put them selves in a bad position relative to the bouncer (giving him a white die) or it means an off-duty member of the city watch is there and the players can expect a visit the next day.

In The Gathering Storm I hade the undead get an extra henchmen for each chaos star rolled. That built up the tension alot. The players started to sweat, as the zombies were spreading in the town and the heros wanted to save as many citizens as possible.

I sometimes use the chaos star to put some jokes in: step in a bucket, slip on something (as someone above wrote), who got the bucket of filth on them etc.

(somehow the players are really helpful in this, coming up with all sorts of ideas to spoil it for their fellow adventurers)

But most of the times I just convert them to a bane. It is only when I want the players to feel that something is wrong and something is building up, that I smile and add a token in front of my notess (openly).

I actually have an idea that the players themselves are to come up with what the chaos star(s) do (obviously not when casting spells or when there are specific results tied to the stars) and reward them with fortune points to the pool if what the player came up with was "bad enough". If they try to go easy on themselves, I'll throw in some extra bad stuff myself. Like when a player tries to get away during a march: "oh I slipped and got a bit of mud on my pants" then I might add "You get 2 stress when you open your backpack when stopping for the night since the mud also dirtied (and ruined) your best shirt which was in your pack."

When the players contribute it's a lot easier and often the players are more focused on their own character, so they generally can come up with great chaos star ideas (and sometimes stuff that are a lot worse than what I'd come up with, in which case they are rewarded with fortune points).

Specifically for chaos stars in combat, here's an option/thought:

Make a list of appropriate Condition cards (and perhaps some Critical Wound card effects, if you feel you need more choices).

A Chaos star applies one of these effects at random for 1 round. So, the PC gains the Staggered condition for 1 round (tripped), or the Blinded condition for 1 round (blood/sweat ran into their eyes), etc. Some of the cards will give bonuses to be hit, and some of the cards will give penalties on their attack next round, etc.

Conversely, you should also be coming up with creative game or narrative effects for Sigmar's Comet results!

I must admit that I have not been doing that - though I'm happily creative with the Chaos Star result.

I'll be doing that in the future!

schoon said:

True, but most attack actions have a specific line for Comets, while fewer have lines for Chaos Stars.

dvang said:

Quite true - I was thinking more along the lines of general rolls or those outside of combat.