Hi all,

my search-fu is weak and I cannot seem to find any info on the question of whether a character with several advantages can pass along up to as many boost dice to the next allied character (or a boost die per every two advantages for any allied character respectively).

I another forum it was stated that in the WHFRPG, the option of passing a boost die could be chosen only once per skill roll. However, I can find no mentioning of this in EotE?

Can anybody help?

Thanks in advance!

I asked the same question using the Customer Service Rules question and got this response.

Me
Rule Question:
One issue that came up last night and while I let it go in order to keep the game moving, I did want clarification on it.

Player A rolled 2 Successes along with 4 Advantages, he gave the 4 Advantages as 2 Boost Dice to Player B . With the 2 Boost Dice, Player B Aimed for his Maneuver and then shot, so the player ended up having 3 Boost Dice to his shooting roll in addition to his regular dice roll of 1 Ability Die and 2 Proficiency dice.

My overall question is, is accumulating that many Boost Dice manipulating the system or is it as what is intended through the rules?

Sam Stewart's Reply:
I don't really see the situation as against the rules. Advantages (and what you spend them on) are meant to be somewhat nebulous, so that the advantages (lowercase) they give to the players make sense to the narrative at the time. I'd say the more important part is that the narrative reason for adding those Boost dice was something that made sense and was fun given the situation.

If Player A did this while his character drove the target out of cover and into the open with sustained gunfire, shouting to player B "Take the shot!" and player B slowly but surely lined up his blaster, took a deep breath, and fired, then I'd say that sounds pretty interesting, narrative-wise.

The only thing I'd caution against is if your players are always defaulting to Boost dice because they can't think of anything else to do. The first shot could have also triggered a critical hit on the target for example, or any number of other options found in Table 6-2 on page 206. But there are plenty of options that aren't on the table, especially for 4+ Advantages. If you find your players defaulting to tons of Boost dice, next time suggest "well, you can do that....but instead, you could just knock the rival off the gangplank and send him plummeting to his doom/hit the fire extinguisher next to him and cover all the enemies with foam (and give them some Setback dice)/create an opening to grab an incapacitated ally and drag him to safety/attract the attention of a local police patrol, giving the group a distraction to escape.


Hope this helps!

Sam Stewart
Senior RPG Producer
Fantasy Flight Games

I think the combat charts cites that you can only spend a max of 3 Advantage to pass a boost die onto a player, with 1 Advantage to pass a boost die onto the next ally to act, and 2 Advantage to pass a boost die to a specific player. Only the recovery of Strain says that it can be activated multiple times on the same roll, and weapon qualities specifically mention if they can be triggered more than once (Autofire and Sunder come to mind).

Of course, the GM can override that if they want, either because as Sam mentioned the situation makes sense for it, or because they're more concerned with letting the PCs do something awesome.

Granted, you could have a situation where several PCs all spend 2 Advantage on their roll to each pass a boost die to the one PC with the big frakkin' rifle, who then aims and winds up rolling five boost dice on their shot.

Problem is, blue dice only have a 1 in 3 chance of an actual success, and are self-perpetuating.

As someone said, you're usually not 'helping the next guy'. You're 'helping the next guy help the guy after that'.

I only let any one player benefit from one "specified" boost die (give any player a boost die) and one "unspecified" boost die (give to the next active character). Not because I don't want them to stack up boost dice, but because I want to encourage them to spend Advantage on other things rather than just stick to the table and never think creatively about it.

I don't limit it. If I think players are only using one option too much I'll offer alternatives, or try to get them to think of them. Given that crits and weapon advantages are triggered in the same Advantage ranges, it's usually not a problem, and when the players do stack them it's usually for a good reason.

Problem is, blue dice only have a 1 in 3 chance of an actual success, and are self-perpetuating.

As someone said, you're usually not 'helping the next guy'. You're 'helping the next guy help the guy after that'.

Sometimes yes, sometimes no.

If just a single boost die, then perhaps. But if multiple boost dice are generated, you stand the chance of those extra Advantages being used to trigger something cool.

Personally, I view the "generate a boost die" as the means of last resort for Advantage, and try to convince other players, whether I'm the GM or a player myself, to do something other than "pass a boost die."

When running WFRP I prefer the limits set for boon/bane expenditure. I suppose I don't mind a little stacking in Edge, but yea if it becomes a default munchkin kind of thing I strongly encourage the players to opt for any of the other great things advantages offer.

Gand had just ran into a room and flipped over his partner to help him with 2 minion groups of Stormies that joined the fun. Gand shot into one group dropping 2 of them. The attention Gand received from the rest of the Stormies was somewhat unplesant. Gand took a crit to the face blinding him. Our table got a good "oh crap" moment out of that. Gand was not pleased.

AFB at the moment, but the penalties for being blinded are pretty harsh when firing. I made a comment about Gand taking them out even though he was blinded because he is such a "bad ass". All the players thought that the narrative would be neat to see Gand pull it off. For the next two rounds, Gand received all the boost die one could hope for. Resulting in a pretty awesome scene.

Gand was quite the bad ass for a bit and it was a good time. That has been the only time that a player has gotten a ton of boost die at our table, but it was a lot of fun for the narrative. Let the story be the guide is our take on things.

The rule book answer is 2 from any single skill check. However, no total limit. So player 1 uses 2 advantage to pass a boost die to player 4, player 2 uses 2 advantage to pass boost die to player 4, and player 3 uses 1 advantage to pass boost to next player (player 4) and an additional 2 advantage to pass a boost die to player 4 (can only trigger each advantage item once).

Player 4 goes and gets a whopping 4 boost dice.