I'm sick of having to track different A-C-E die pools for different monsters, especially when defending. Furthermore, I'm sick of tracking active defenses for enemies. As a solution, I want to simplify things. I'm thinking of a static modifier to defense and attack/actions. I'm calling it the Threat Pool.
The threat pool is a measure of how well a particular fight is going. It gives a static set of dice to add to all actions either made by or targeting a monster/NPC. For each point in the Threat Pool, add a fortune/misfortune die to actions/defenses respectively.
Here's my first idea on how to form it. (I'm kinda writing as I'm thinking, so I'll probably have to revise this)
Threat Pool starts at 1/3 (round up) the Aggression pool (Cunning if this is a Social encounter), plus the Expertise pool of the biggest enemy.
For example: Say you have monster A with A/E of 3/0, monster B with 4/1, and monster C with 5/2. You would end up with a threat pool of 4 (5/2 is the biggest, 5/3 = rounds up to 6, plus two expertise dice.
Now that seems like a lot, but it can be whittled down by spending 2 boons to reduce it by 1 or a comet to reduce it by one.
Any thoughts?