The book is vague, if silent, about how to spend advantages and if they can do so for the same thing more than once. What I mean is, if a player has 5 advantages, should they be able to give the next player 5 boost dice (1 boost per advantage)?
I've been playing it as a "yes they can" but it feels a little powerful. But, then again, that's a ton of advantage. So it also makes contextual sense.
Thoughts?
The way I've been playing it is the only thing that can be purchased multiple times is the Strain option, since it specifically says so.
If an option is repeated each level then I think you should be able to purchase each one; so for 6 Advantage you could give another player 3 Boost dice.
It's all very context-sensitive. Are we talking about combat, social rolls, skill rolls?
For combat, you mostly spend Advantage for critical hits or for making free actions -- i.e., diving for cover after making the shot. In that, you could split up the Advantages: three for a critical hit, two for getting to cover before the other Stormtroopers start shooting.
Social would involve more influence, so I could see using Boost dice there. Personally, I hesitate to give out more than two Boost dice per roll, so I'd say come up with a more narrative solution. Maybe the contact they're negotiating with starts to like them, and so offers them more money? Or tells them there's more to the job than they think? Perhaps the ex-senator will put in a good word for them to his allies, or send someone to have a talk with the local governor about the bounty on their heads.
(That last one could be useful for reducing Obligation: rather than have a Bounty 10, they could end up with just a Debt 5 to a more law-abiding citizen.)
But for stuff like Mechanics, Medicine, etc., I think the system outlines what you get with more Advantage. I know that with Medicine, Advantage gained on those checks reduces the character's Strain while Success reduces the character's wounds. I could see something similar happening with Mechanics, but my book is all the way on the other side of the room, so...
All right, fine. The Mechanics skill lists Advantage as increasing the quality of an item, possibly adding Boost dice. And I think there's a rule about ships not being able to recover more than one System Strain a day. But if you're repairing a droid, I think you could use the Medicine check's example.
In conclusion, just use your imagination. Get creative. If there's something the players want and they get a handful of Advantage, consider giving them an avenue to get it -- not the item itself, of course; save that for Triumphs.
"For combat, you mostly spend Advantage for critical hits or for making free actions -- i.e., diving for cover after making the shot. In that, you could split up the Advantages: three for a critical hit, two for getting to cover before the other Stormtroopers start shooting."
I'm not sure this is true in my experience.
There's a wealth of things you can do with Advantage, and which come up very often in our games, more than just "critical hits or making free actions"...
The most common uses seem to be passing Boost dice about and adding Setback dice to enemies' rolls. There are options to do these for 1 or 2 Advantage, and especially if the players really narrate them well, they can be a lot of fun.
You can deny the enemy their ranged defense by knocking them out of cover and lots of other options.
I think it's a bit simplistic to say "mainly crits and extra maneuvers".
Sorry if I wasn't more clear.
Here is an example situation: A player fires his weapon and makes a skill check. The check fails, but nets him 6 advantages. According to the rules, he can spend 1 advantage to give the next active player 1 boost dice.
This particular player wants to use all 6 advantages to convert them into 6 boost dice for the next player. I see nothing in the book that would say they can't do this.
What would you guys say to such a use of advantage? Rules as Intended?
Sorry if I wasn't more clear.
Here is an example situation: A player fires his weapon and makes a skill check. The check fails, but nets him 6 advantages. According to the rules, he can spend 1 advantage to give the next active player 1 boost dice.
This particular player wants to use all 6 advantages to convert them into 6 boost dice for the next player. I see nothing in the book that would say they can't do this.
What would you guys say to such a use of advantage? Rules as Intended?
He still has to narrate it all and give a plausible reason for the bonus. If it makes sense, run with it. If not, then suggest that some of them be used in other manners.
The rules are there to help drive the game, but don't get bogged down in them.
So, long story short... (too late)... go with the rules as intended and what makes sense to you and the group as a whole.
i think the idea of the system is to remain as flexible as possible. if you want to allow all 6 boost dice to be used on the next turn then go for it. it's not that over powered. the initial player had zero result on his turn, or possibly a negative effect.
i would ensure that the GM and players narrate something spectacular to account for the bounty of boosts
In terms of RAW, I'd imagine that if it was meant to be used that way, that it'd be similar to the 1 advantage for 1 strain recovery thing (pg. 207), where it says that it can be selected more than once.
Regardless, I wouldn't allow it. Especially since there's numerous other kinds of boosts you can do with advantage. Like similar to what's on the chart, you can use your advantage to disarm an opponent, give them setbacks to attacking, or even hit/activate some sort of environmental object that can hurt or hinder opponents. Just stacking on advantage to give boosts just doesn't really make sense to me. I mean, sure you can say your shot kinda damage the enemy's cover so they're a little more out of cover, there's one boost - or alternatively, it discards the 1 setback for cover for the next attack - but how would you use the rest of your, let's say, 4 advantages to give boosts? It wouldn't make sense for it to be that you just destroy the cover and that gives more boosts, it makes more sense that that cover is just gone completely and so now the enemy completely loses the added defense by cover until they get a chance to move.
Another example would be if your advantages are giving boosts to the next player, and for whatever reason, your attack instills confidence (in the form of a boost die) to the next player's attack. Well it makes sense for 1 or 2 boost dice depending on the advantage you spend, but let's say you wanted to dump like 8 advantage into giving them 8 boost die (kind of taking this to extremes, but still), then it'd be odd to instill so much confidence from a single attack that it's like the next player is practically rolling 2-3 extra green dice.
If the player literally wanted to give the next player SIX boost dice on their next action, I probably would just flat-out not allow that.
However, if the circumstances warranted AND the player had some really *awesome* narration of something they wanted to do, that had all of us at the table pumping our fists and going "YEAH!", then sure, I'd say go for it.
More realistically, I'd say you'd probably need to break it up--give a specific player a Boost die for 1 or 2 advantage (either the next player or ANY player, respectively), and notice something crucial about the environment or make something advantageous happen for 2 or 3 advantage, negate the target's Ranged Defense for 2 or so advantage.
Something like "I fire off a volley with my blaster, and the shots all miss the Stormtrooper ducked down behind those crates, but they hit the pourstone building he's standing in front of. A window on the upper floor opens and a Weequay lady sticks her head out, shouting in Huttese to 'keep it down out there!'
"She dumps a huge pot of stinky, boiling soup out the window and it lands on the Stormtrooper, making him recoil so he tumbles out into the street, out of cover. I yell out 'Oskara, looks like the soup's on him!'
"I give Oskara a Boost on her next attack, give a Setback to the Stormtrooper on his, and negate his cover."
Just one example
If the player literally wanted to give the next player SIX boost dice on their next action, I probably would just flat-out not allow that.
However, if the circumstances warranted AND the player had some really *awesome* narration of something they wanted to do, that had all of us at the table pumping our fists and going "YEAH!", then sure, I'd say go for it.
More realistically, I'd say you'd probably need to break it up--give a specific player a Boost die for 1 or 2 advantage (either the next player or ANY player, respectively), and notice something crucial about the environment or make something advantageous happen for 2 or 3 advantage, negate the target's Ranged Defense for 2 or so advantage.
Something like "I fire off a volley with my blaster, and the shots all miss the Stormtrooper ducked down behind those crates, but they hit the pourstone building he's standing in front of. A window on the upper floor opens and a Weequay lady sticks her head out, shouting in Huttese to 'keep it down out there!'
"She dumps a huge pot of stinky, boiling soup out the window and it lands on the Stormtrooper, making him recoil so he tumbles out into the street, out of cover. I yell out 'Oskara, looks like the soup's on him!'
"I give Oskara a Boost on her next attack, give a Setback to the Stormtrooper on his, and negate his cover."
Just one example
Good example.
Sorry if I wasn't more clear.
Here is an example situation: A player fires his weapon and makes a skill check. The check fails, but nets him 6 advantages. According to the rules, he can spend 1 advantage to give the next active player 1 boost dice.
This particular player wants to use all 6 advantages to convert them into 6 boost dice for the next player. I see nothing in the book that would say they can't do this.
What would you guys say to such a use of advantage? Rules as Intended?
In general, my take on it is you can't have more than two or three Boost dice. (To the same end, you can't have more than two or three Setback dice, either.) So in that case, I'd give the next player two and tell the current player to come up with something else, or otherwise make something up myself.
This particular player wants to use all 6 advantages to convert them into 6 boost dice for the next player. I see nothing in the book that would say they can't do this.
It is in the book, it's just not called out specifically. The only option you can pick more than once is strain recovery, which is specified in the book as being able to take more than once. The others are not so specified, therefore it's not allowed.
Narrate first - rule second. Get the player to narrate the dice, the try and figure out the mechanical effect of this.
I would suggest that actually narrating this shot has you limit the number of boost dice to 1-3 at most. It just becomes increasingly more difficult to make up a story to suit the desired result.
I think the idea of coming up with can I have 6 boost is more than likely the lack of narration and the play of a mechanical step of the rules. Throw the rules out for an evening and just shoot from the hip, make the dice reading organic and fun, rather than rules bound and mechanical.
I thought there was something in the book that said you can only "activate" any given thing one time (but if given enough advantage, you can activate multiple things). I don't know where it spells this out, but I thought I read it somewhere...maybe in a FAQ?
For example...you can do as many of these things as you want, but only once each, given the amount of Advantage you have:
-Recover 1 or more strain for each advantage
-Grant 1 boost die
-Grant 1 setback die
-other stuff I can't remember right now
So, if you had 6 advantage. Since you can't grant 6 boost die, you can spend 2 to grant 1 boost, 2 to grant 1 setback, and 2 to recover 2 strain.
That's how I usually do it, but like I said, I can't remember where that rule is spelled out, if anywhere.
if you end up with 5 advantages can i spent 3 on strain, 1 on boost and 1 on something else in the same round?
if you end up with 5 advantages can i spent 3 on strain, 1 on boost and 1 on something else in the same round?
Yep!
On the chart there are two options to grant boost die to characters. One is to the next PC's turn and another one that allows you to give a boost to anyone. So you could technically give the next PC 2 boost on their turn.
Yes, so if you get 5 advantages you could spend 2 on strain, 1 to boost the next ally, and 2 to boost any ally (which could also be the next one).
I prefer to let the players tell me what they are using advantage for, especially in combat. The 'recover strain' option is the only one intended to be used more than once, but just because an option isn't listed in the chart doesn't mean it won't work. For example, last night, I had a player near the end of a difficult combat roll 4 advantage and no successes. He was the only player left standing, and there's only so many things you can do with that. He was shooting at a smuggler rival who had taken cover behind some junk at the other end of an alleyway. He asked, "How much advantage to destroy his cover?" I placed it at a cost of 3 advantage, and the player wanted to use the other advantage to additionally knock him prone. We compromised - the containers were fragile and his blaster rifle shots were damaging enough to them to scare the baddie. He dived away from cover and landed prone nearby.
Of course, you don't want to houserule everything, but if a player has a great idea for advantage, let them go with it, as others have said.