So,

One of my players dug up the rule in the book that states that should there be no Chaos-star result on an action card, a chaos-star is counted as a simple bane.

This kind of put me in conflict. I was used to thinking of chaos-stars as REALLY BAD THINGS , so usually on a result people would drop a weapon, get a negative effect, lose a maneuvre, take a fatigue/stress/wound or upgrade a wound to a critical, etc. But if you're rolling 1 challenge die you get a 12.5% chance of star. With multiple dice (particularly out of combat if negotiating etc) they come up somewhat frequently. If you fumble every time, it can get pretty hard to keep coming up with 'the bad thing that happened' so this 'bane' result makes it easy to gesture away sometimes.

How do you guys interpret Chaos Stars in combat and out? Is it always something awful or do you use the bane-rule?

Reposting what I wrote for another thread on Chaos Stars and how to I use them:

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".

Another option suggested in that thread was issuing temporary (1-round) condition cards.

Typically, for example, if there is something that I am tracking for the bad guys, a Chaos Star sometimes will advance their track, or will advance/set back the PCs track (depending on whether it advancing is good for the PCs or not).

Very cool and helpful post Dvang.

A few questions if you have the time. How do you deal with the frequency of chaos stars? While the PCs may frequently use skills they are trained in and net comets, the chaos star is far more likely to occur (as most rolls have a higher than 1/10 chance, or higher if the difficulty is upped). If they have to negotiate with a merchant, and roll 3 sets of dice (with say 2 challenge each), they may come up with 3-4 stars. Do you increment/Decrement the plot each time, or if you have the merchant report on them the first time, do you increase the information he gets? If so how do the PCs keep up and increment the plot as any problem resolution often causes yet more rolls which can add stars in.

Overall I really liked your post and approach, as it helps in the generation of plot and problems for the PCs to overcome. It's a good way to look at furthering the story. I'm just hoping you can share insight you might have on using your system with multiple stars.

Also I have started throwing in limited conditions based on rolls, and that's been helpful, but I think the PCs were shopping for lighter options rather than bad conditions every couple of turns (or more likely fewer pauses if we wanted to come up with a good interpretation).

Multiple stars in a roll can be challenging. It depends on the situation and what I am tracking.

Occasionally I will use multiples to adjust a tracker. Most often, I "spread the love" and do a few things. So, when talking to the merchant, not only does the merchant inform the bad guy about the visit, but chance means that the bad guy's minions have had a success somewhere (advancing their track), etc. Or perhaps one of the bad guy's minions is in the shop somewhere and actually overhears the conversation plus the PC says something to highly offend the merchant and the merchant refuses to deal with the party after this transaction, etc.

You could also keep track of them, and adjust the bad guy's Nemesis organization track, or perhaps give him some additional henchmen to use for each Chaos Star (hey, I kind of like that idea ...). Say 1 henchman per roll, giving him an additional henchmen group when = # PCs is rolled. Weak henchmen, like Ungors or cultists so as not to disrupt the balance too badly, but it does make the PCs pay... <evil grin>

One thing I do, when I run out of ideas for Chaos Stars, well I do several things... but one thing I do is have a tracker in the open. I adjust this by 1 each time a Star is rolled, that has no apparent consequence.

This buys me time to think what on earth I want to use the tracker for!!! And my players gets slightly nervous as to what it means and how it will affect them...

Hello All,
I have the same problem as shinma and that’s why I sometimes use the chaos star like a negative sigmar. If it is not mentioned it can be a bane or a crossing sword sign, because the problem I see is that the PC will try to stop doing things what needs checks and/or try not to do challenging things (even if they are highly trained).
Lother

Spivo said:

Good idea and I've started doing a similar thing. Only difference is instead of yet another tracker. I just increase the party tension meter. That way the players and characters nerves are a closer match. Plus it's one of the few reasons that I do actually advance the tension meter since our group never really dawdles in combat anymore and they generally agree on things with seldom any character in-fighting. So that leaves me to increase the tension meter somewhat arbitrarily because the deep dark cooridar is extra scary or they just shat themselves when opening the cabin door to reveal a beastmen horde etc...

What is important to remember about the chaos symbol is that its either a bane or a challenge, but its up to the GM to decide. so if the player is SOO wanting it to be a bane so he can get a hit, then guess what. its a Challenge "no hit for you, thank you come again" and for those rolls were they get a ton of hits and want it to be a challeneg so they can use thier boon to do something special... guess what, its a bane "thank you come again"

ontop of those Mechanics, behind the scenes, i also do have the chaos have plot changing effects as well as mentioned by the other people on the forum.

also i house rule that sigmars comets and chaos stars cancel each other out. regardless if there is conditions for chaos or comet. if both are rolled neither of them count for anything.

hey Sehmerus, where does it state that a chaos symbol can be a challenge? I remember reading that, but in searching for it, I have not seen it again anyplace.

shinma said:

I believe it's mentioned a few times. But I'm pretty sure it's right on the page that explains what the symbols mean on each die.

In the core rules Chaos Stars only convert to banes.

I house ruled they could also convert to challenge symbols since there didn't seem to be enough juicy stuff with them otherwise. Lots of folks have seemed to do that.

BUT, the hardbacks came out with the additional range of freer form stuff to do with chaos stars (and comets, boons, banes) and that lead me to revert to the base rule. Because now there is always something a Chaos Star can do at my table, between action cards, location cards, crits/insanities and now this free form table.

The hardback options are a bit loose so I turned them into a range of things for combat and social situations. So, for example, as appropriate a chaos star might mean 2 Fatigue or Stress, or a damaged weapon, or (4 or so other things).

This does mean players succeed more often (with not changing to challenges) but I like this.

Success with complication is more interesting than failure.

Rob

Valvorik is correct. I double checked the core rules and chaos stars are only chaos star effects or convertable into banes not challenges. Converting to challenges is all optional rule based.