Can manipulating the Winds of Fate roll be balanced?

[Lago PARANOIA]

I don't want to talk about whether WoF is fun or should be the default method for rolling up powers. I want to talk about whether manipulating it is balanced.

I definitely don't advocate using all of these at once. But for example:

1) Making it so that lower-level moves are always selectable but the ones you'd really care to use are always available. Not only this but adjusting the slider on the scale so that yesterday's fireball becomes today's magic missile.

2) Making it so that 'bad luck' in a battle such as seeing a friend go down, getting critical hitted, becoming bloodied, or recovering from a bad effect boosted what you could roll on WoF.

3) Having you and your buddies willfully trade or manipulate each others' rolls--such that if Travis Touchdown rolls a 5 on his WoF move he can trade his score with his buddy who only rolled a one. Or people could use the 'aid another' action to give a boost to it or not.

4) Attacks or combat manuevers that manipulated a monster's WoF roll in some way. For example power attack or risky strike gave a bonus to what a monster could do. There's some overlap with #2 here.

5) Made the WoF scale flip-flop for defense and offensive manuevers but put the selection of both on the same roll. For example, the better defensive manuevers you roll low for and the better offensive manuevers you roll high for. So if you rolled low, there was an incentive for you to use your defensive move for the round rather than go into attack mode.

6) Implemented a 'focus' option where if you rolled poorly for one round you can forfeit your action and take a defense penalty in order to roll better for the next round. Being flatfooted for any reason (including that space of time when initiative is rolled and you get to act, even if you rolled a 93) resets your roll.

[Username17]

In general, any time the game gives you mitigating bonuses for bad things happening to you, this is analogous to a cost which players will pay voluntarily sometimes. How often this occurs will depend on what the costs and benefits are. But any benefit from party members dropping will at least in edge cases cause it to be advantageous to hurl Tom off a cliff to distract enemies just before you charge. And if you're the Prince of Chin or the Burmese King that's actually probably in genre.

1) Making it so that lower-level moves are always selectable but the ones you'd really care to use are always available. Not only this but adjusting the slider on the scale so that yesterday's fireball becomes today's magic missile.

Not sure what you're getting at here. If the maneuvers you care about using are always usable you aren't really using a resource management system of any kind. Of course if you just mean that some of the non-super moves would retain their utility at all levels and be usable at-will along side a WoF system - sure that could be fine. Letting people fall back on a bullshit auto-hit attack regardless of what abilities they got access to that turn would be alright. Sometimes you'd want to get rid of a pain of glass or a rat or something, such that bullshit damage + automatic hit would be advantageous. And having it at-will wouldn't really interfere with anything, because the character would usually want to do other things.

As to having powerful abilities scale down to become at-wills - that depends upon how starkly level based you go. If things scale off into the super epic, and people have power levels of like four Raditzes or something, then the mere ability to make a building explode may not be something you even need to call out the name of when you do it. In a less starkly leveled environment, that probably shouldn't happen.

3) Having you and your buddies willfully trade or manipulate each others' rolls--such that if Travis Touchdown rolls a 5 on his WoF move he can trade his score with his buddy who only rolled a one. Or people could use the 'aid another' action to give a boost to it or not.

It's possible to balance that sort of thing. But it gets into cheerleader squads pretty fast. The players who aren't super engaged with the game and play shitty bards who provide moderate bonuses while dancing or some fucking thing are the ones who suffer most from this sort of thing - because they are actually kind of relieved to foist power onto other characters at the expense of their actions - which in turn makes them less engaged. This causes a slippery slope where players drop out of the game altogether.

5) Made the WoF scale flip-flop for defense and offensive manuevers but put the selection of both on the same roll. For example, the better defensive manuevers you roll low for and the better offensive manuevers you roll high for. So if you rolled low, there was an incentive for you to use your defensive move for the round rather than go into attack mode.

Sure. I mean, in the Green Arrow example the different rolls weren't even explicitly more powerful than one another. It would be entirely possible to run this sort of thing in parallel with other resource systems like mana or charges or super bar or whatever and have several moves of each cost point for each roll.

But you could have different numbers be themed in one way or another. Three is a very "wood" number, for example. You could even have players load their own set of numbers, where they would presumably try to balance the wheel out as well as they could so that there would always be something fairly appropriate to do on any roll.

6) Implemented a 'focus' option where if you rolled poorly for one round you can forfeit your action and take a defense penalty in order to roll better for the next round. Being flatfooted for any reason (including that space of time when initiative is rolled and you get to act, even if you rolled a 93) resets your roll.

That's just a formalization of the benefits of sniping. Whether that's acceptable or not depends upon how much you want to emphasize stealth and how big of an advantage you get by picking your number for a turn.

-Username17

[Lago PARANOIA]

Okay, here's another question.

Buffs that last longer than the amount of time it takes to do the action. How do they work for WoF?

Obviously there's no such thing as buffs that last in the hours or even minutes. But what about shorter periods of time then that?

Also, iterative or extra attacks. Can they exist? SHOULD they exist?

I'm starting to get more excited about this system. It feels a little bit like building a deck for Yu-Gi-Oh or MtG and that's a good thing IMO.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Also, in your opinion, should characters be able to rotate powers in and out of their WoF pool outside of level gain? Sort of like if Vaarsuvius is going on the 'against the evil' adventure he'll try to stack his deck to have fire and acid effects more? If so, what should the tolerance be? Should they be like the wizard and have the option rotate a lot of new powers in and out of their WoF rolls but they have to choose ahead of time which powers they have on the bench, or should they be more like a cleric and just have the entire list at once?

[CatharzGodfoot]

But you could have different numbers be themed in one way or another. Three is a very "wood" number, for example. You could even have players load their own set of numbers, where they would presumably try to balance the wheel out as well as they could so that there would always be something fairly appropriate to do on any roll.

This sounds like something that will appeal to people who enjoy character building. I think it shows a lot of promise. Less super move, more Min/Max.

Of course, there are people who aren't going to want to fill out their own wheels, so hopefully that's easy to deal with without anyone falling too far behind.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Of course, there are people who aren't going to want to fill out their own wheels, so hopefully that's easy to deal with without anyone falling too far behind.

They'll probably just throw all of their moves into the wheel and sort it out at random.

[Talisman]

The players who aren't super engaged with the game and play shitty bards who provide moderate bonuses while dancing or some fucking thing are the ones who suffer most from this sort of thing - because they are actually kind of relieved to foist power onto other characters at the expense of their actions - which in turn makes them less engaged. This causes a slippery slope where players drop out of the game altogether.

My experience is that such players will tend to do this anway. You can do a certain amount of carrot/stick to encourage the behavior you want, but expecting drastic changes in playstyle is foolish.

Also, in your opinion, should characters be able to rotate powers in and out of their WoF pool outside of level gain? Sort of like if Vaarsuvius is going on the 'against the evil' adventure he'll try to stack his deck to have fire and acid effects more? If so, what should the tolerance be? Should they be like the wizard and have the option rotate a lot of new powers in and out of their WoF rolls but they have to choose ahead of time which powers they have on the bench, or should they be more like a cleric and just have the entire list at once?

It depends on how class-based this is. If it had hard classes (a la D&D), each class should have a list of default powers and additional powers that become available through that class (and some mechanic for multiclassing).

I would say power-swapping should be possible, but not frequent. Say, not more than once per day, and never from a ginormous list (more socerer than cleric). You can have N powers "prepared" at a time, and you know N+X powers.

[CatharzGodfoot]

Of course, there are people who aren't going to want to fill out their own wheels, so hopefully that's easy to deal with without anyone falling too far behind.

They'll probably just throw all of their moves into the wheel and sort it out at random.

'Well, I guess I'll sort it by type. So for 1, I'll put in Charm, Suggestion, Command, and Emotion. For 2, I'll put in Chill Touch, Vampire Touch, Death Touch, and Burning hands. For 3 I'll go with Ray of Fire, Ray of Light, Ray Charles...'

[Lago PARANOIA]

As to having powerful abilities scale down to become at-wills - that depends upon how starkly level based you go. If things scale off into the super epic, and people have power levels of like four Raditzes or something, then the mere ability to make a building explode may not be something you even need to call out the name of when you do it. In a less starkly leveled environment, that probably shouldn't happen.

Well, in your er, what should be BS auto-hit damage or manuevers for:

Farmboy who practices with a wooden sword daily who dreams about adventure encounters a dying knight on the side of the road with a missive.

Batman

Harry Potter

Spiderman

Beowulf

Monkey D. Luffy

Green Lantern

Goku

This is just my perogative, but I think that as far as the peasant-boy goes he should have an autoattack set like this:

Does 1 damage/level with any melee weapon designed to kill.
Does 1 + 1/2 damage/level with any ranged weapon designed to kill.
Peasant Pluckiness: Against any enemy of his CR - 3 or lower (minimum 0), roll a 1d4. On a 1, they are blinded for one round, on a 2 they are prone, on a 3 or 4 they are slowed for 1 round.

[Username17]

Okay, here's another question.

Buffs that last longer than the amount of time it takes to do the action. How do they work for WoF?

Buffs that last longer than the number of rounds it takes on average to come up need to have another limiting resource that they use up. 1d6 WoF grants characters virtual permanent access to any buff that lasts longer than 6 rounds. It is unreasonable to expect players to begin battles without such a buff unless it has another limiting factor. Common ones are:

• Mana - when the buff comes up you have the option of spending mana points to get the buff for a while. Thus, one can expect that in a major encounter it will eventually turn on and that it will turn on in turn zero of an ambush, but the player won't have it continuously operating. Further, since everything comes out of the same pool, characters who have access to multiple buffs may find that they'd rather take whatever buffs are currently available rather than holding out for their favorite - thus making them crank up in unpredictable ways.
• Charges - when each buff comes with its own list of charges, things operate similarly to mana except that accounting is easier and people never lose out on at last eventually getting the buff they wanted. You can also hand out shared charges that will ultimately give people a buff from column A, a buff from Column B and so on. This works similarly to slots, save that presumably these things deplete over time which can leave characters fatigued and without access to buffs if they don't do whatever arbitrary thing is required to get the charges back. Standard example of charges is Cleric spells, and interchangeable charges would of course be Beguiler spells.
• Slots - when characters only have a finite amount of buffs that can be active that is substantially less than their number of buffs, characters will walk around with their buffs all the time. But they'll also be limited in when and how they can swap their buffs around by WoF rolls. Standard example would be Combat Stances. The WoF roll doesn't really limit whether you have one, but merely how rapidly you can swap it around.

Also, iterative or extra attacks. Can they exist? SHOULD they exist?

The amount of rolling that anyone does during a turn is entirely arbitrary. You could give one person an attack. Or you could have them ttack twice for half the effect. It has no real effect on the outcome of the game. It mostly depends upon whether you personally feel more satisfied rolling and declaring three attacks or one.

-Username17

[Neeeek]

It's possible to balance that sort of thing. But it gets into cheerleader squads pretty fast. The players who aren't super engaged with the game and play shitty bards who provide moderate bonuses while dancing or some fucking thing are the ones who suffer most from this sort of thing - because they are actually kind of relieved to foist power onto other characters at the expense of their actions - which in turn makes them less engaged. This causes a slippery slope where players drop out of the game altogether.

You think the players who aren't super engaged are the ones who trend towards the "helper guy" role? It's been my experience that the exact opposite is true: People who play helper roles tend to know exactly what everyone else is capable of, and usually remind them of it (if for no other reason than to make sure they counted the bonuses they are getting from the helper guy). It strikes me as odd that someone would make what is essentially a team player, then not pay attention to the team.

[Tsuzua]

You think the players who aren't super engaged are the ones who trend towards the "helper guy" role? It's been my experience that the exact opposite is true: People who play helper roles tend to know exactly what everyone else is capable of, and usually remind them of it (if for no other reason than to make sure they counted the bonuses they are getting from the helper guy). It strikes me as odd that someone would make what is essentially a team player, then not pay attention to the team.

It depends on the nature of the buffs. A bard-like "Give +2 to attack and damage rolls to the team in exchange for all my actions" is right up the alley of an non-engaged player. You just start singing and then go grab a coke.

Buffs that are more variable in their effects (extra attack or extra damage or better defenses or whatever) are more likely to get those you bring up. Knowing what buffs to cast, who to cast them on, and when it's better to heal or attack does can require a lot of attention if the buffs are made to encourage that.

[Username17]

Spiderman

Assuming that we ignore everything that J Michael rubbed his cock on, here's roughly what he does:

Spiderman is a Gadgeteer. However, his only "gadgets" are ones he can vaguely justify as being based on web shooting. Everything else is kung fu based. Frankly, I think he took a bunch of stuff off the Acrobatics list preferentially to the gadgets that would be available to him. He is built with a bunch of powers that are written for people with glue guns, net launchers, and grapnel launchers.

He has a wisecrack ability that he can use at any time. It pisses people off and distracts them. It's kind of like a feint. Also he can punch people. And he can cling - which lets him treat walls and ceilings as floors.

But mostly he rolls a die each round and gets to use various stuff based on what he rolls:

1. Anchor: attach two things to another, can stop heavy objects like cars and trains.
   Ricochet Strike: Bounce off a wall to strike someone in the back.
   Kidnap: Grab someone and drag them off with you.
2. Sticky Fingers: Glue weapons and other held objects into unusability.
   Swinging Kick: Swing into something to cause damage or knockback.
   Trip: Whether they enjoyed it or not, they're going again next Fall.
3. Tie Up: Wrap someone in bindings.
   Harpoon: Catch a target and reel them in.
   Toss: Throw someone or something at someone or something else.
4. Tie Down: Tie an opponent to the ceiling, wall, or floor.
   Head Knockin: Bash two heads together.
   Duck and Cover: Hide behind scenery and catch a breather.
5. Net Cast: Throw a net over many enemies to see who can be caught.
   Pummel: Climb onto an opponent and beat on them.
   Drop Kick: Knock a target far away.
6. Bukake: Hit someone in he face with sticky glue.
   Grapnel: Move to a solid object in range, bypassing dangers.
   Last Straw: Say something that inexplicably enrages an opponent beyond reason.

Something like that. I think he also has a set of at least two defensive stances, where he can rely upon Danger Sense or Jinking to augment his Dodge. The first makes him more resistant to surprise attacks, so it's what he uses most of the time. The second gives him a bonus against enemies that he is moving faster than, so he switches to that early in many fights.

-Username17

[Username17]

So now that I'm done with the semester's last final exam, I have some time to sit down and really write some longer pieces again (final embryo question: explain ear development from memory). So anyway, onto super heroics. I rather like the dynamic of rolling up random power lists, and if you roll up next turn at the end of this turn, it gives you time to plan your move and strategize with friends without giving you time to to run down the clock. But there's still room for super moves that are more super. And they need an additional resource schedule above and beyond merely being part of an ability set that only comes up every six turns.

What is easier? That's the question that needs to be asked, because no one has the patience to keep track of 14 round cool-down times. Indeed, a lot of computer game staples just won't work in a pen and paper game at all. So here are some standards:

• Mana The way it works is that you have an Endurance reserve, or spell points, or some other tally of power points. Some of the abilities on any WoF list dip into the reserve and others don't.
  Problems: To a certain extent, mana reserves tend towards Critical Existnce Failure, only for your character doing awesome shit. That is, the difference in effective cost between two abilities you can afford is always nothing on the turn you actually use it - and the only difference on later turns is whether you have to ramp down to at-wills for the indefinite future. Secondly, if you want to have any more granularity than "you get three special attacks a combat" then you're going to end up subtracting two or even three digit numbers - and experience has shown that this is the edge of what people can handle while drunk.
• Charges Charges can either be interchangeable (in which case they operate a lot like very small Mana reserves) or they can be on a per power basis. In any case, some powers will be charge limited and others will not be.
  Problems: Interchangeable charges get a lot of the critical existence failure thing going. And non-interchangeable charges can be a pain in the ass. Seriously, we're talking about possibly six or more abilities that you are tracking charges for separately.
• Activation Roll When your WoF comes up, some of the abilities will be available, and others roll another die to determine if they are available.
  Problems: May be fiddly. The more dice you have to roll at the end of your turn the less I want to do it. Also this restriction is essentially meaningless in non-time critical situations. You can "take 36" anytime you wouldn't be doing anything special next round or the round after that while waiting for a power to come online. Essentially, the character can walk up to a problem, survey it, rub their hands together, take a deep breath and use any activation power with no long term cost - which may or may not be problem depending on the power.

Right now I have to say that I'm leaning towards Activation Roll for Blue powers and non-interchangeable charges that recharge with new adventures for Red powers.

And yeah, I think that having a "stance" that is mutually exclusive with others is a good idea. None of that really handles short duration buffs very well, but maybe getting rid of them altogether with the exception of an occasional Red power that allows you to kick ass for a few rounds an adventure is OK. To a certain extent, I genuinely feel that if you are turning on your power up animation more than once a show you are wasting screen time.

-Username17

[Tsuzua]

Right now I have to say that I'm leaning towards Activation Roll for Blue powers and non-interchangeable charges that recharge with new adventures for Red powers.

I might be missing a thread elsewhere but what are Red and Blue powers?

[Hicks]

FrankTrollman, on Abstract Game Balance

[IGTN]

I think he's not referring to those; Fantastic! uses Green to mean at-will, Blue to mean recharge, and Red to mean once/adventure.

[Hicks]

... And there I was, thinking I contributed. Darn you and logic! Darn you straight to heck, where you shall be uncomfortably warm until you decide to leave at a time convenient to you.

[Tsuzua]

Thanks Hicks and IGTN. I wanted to make sure what they were before I commented on them.

I think you could also put conditionals "X must the case" or side effects "X happens to you and X is generally bad" in addition to those above.

• Conditional- There is some sort of prerequisite before you can use the action. This can be simple as having to be next to the target or something complex like "Flanking an enemy of size no greater than Large that attacked and missed you." It can also be something the player can do about or something outside the player's control.
  Problems They can be trivially easy to meet or next to impossible to do. The difficulty of meeting conditionals varies based of the fight and campaign since Giant-Killer is awesome for fighting in the Den of the Giant Storm Lords, but sucks for the Den of the Kobold Tunnel Rats. Making conditionals reasonable and fairly standardized usage is tough.
• Side Effect- Something bad happens to you if you use the power. The simplest is that it causes some damage to you in addition to the target. It can also be stuff like reducing your defenses or make you more evil and bastardly than normal.
  Problems Side Effects can be ignorable or "why would I ever use it?" It can make a power available but useless (getting a cause backlash power at 1 hp sucks). Players might be able to circumvent side effects with proper building. Risk-adverse players and those against doing their enemy's work for them will avoid them like the plague. The cost of a side effect varies based of foe and length remaining in the fight.

I think Conditionals might be good for Blue powers. Side Effect should work well for a subset of Red Powers. It would encourage players to use their Side Effect Red Powers near the end of the combat to reduce the cost of the side effect (assuming that they can predict when the end is near). This mirrors movies and books where people typically wait till the end of a fight to use their ultimate moves.

Also I do like the WoF change to making the WoF at the end of a turn. It solves many of the issues I have with the older WoF model.

[Username17]

I think Side Effects actually works best for Green powers. An ability that is more damaging but less accurate naturally gravitates towards being used when accuracy is relatively less important (such as when your to-hit chances are hitting statistical minimums anyway or situational accuracy modifiers push you to the other end of the RNG regardless). Abilities to trade maneuverability for speed or offense for defense (or vice versa) will likewise have clear situational times when they would be beneficial or harmful to use. So those kinds of abilities genuinely might as well just be options whenever they are on the menu. Similarly for Conditional powers. If you can only use your EMP power to smash robots, it's not really that important in most cases if you have the nominal option to use it fairly frequently.

There's no need for Death Blow to be labeled Death Blow because you're normally only using it once a fight (if that) anyway.

-Username17

[Lago PARANOIA]

I'm just bumping this thread again because of this thread, which involves the Problem of Supermoves.

Certain characters like Inigo Montoya and Tao Pi want to finish off their opponent in or make a comeback strike when it's dramatically appropriate with a specific move in their arsenal. This move may not even be the best one in their arsenal, but they want to have the ability to use it when it's dramatically appropriate.

The problem is that in the default there's no way to ensure you won't have a situation where Goku is just repeatedly spamming Kamehamehas until the enemy goes down. There's also no guarantee that Hulk Hogan's 'face punch' move won't be the move to take down Andre the Giant.

So how do you plan to solve this? I was kicking around an idea that an opponent had a 'Critical' condition that activated when they suffered enough pain. This doesn't necessarily prevent them from fighting (indeed, it might not even have any penalties to it), but what this does mean is that as long as you're only targetting enemies with the 'Critical' condition you can use any attack that you feel like.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Note: This proposed mechanic assumes that you're using the 'tier' version of Winds of Fate, where you roll higher to access better moves. For example:

1 Regular Arrow
2 Boxing Glove Arrow
3 Buzzsaw Arrow
4 Lightning Arrow
5 Explosive Arrow
6 Moon Beam Arrow


New Condition:

Critical: You have done something that leaves you to be wide open. Several effects may cause this condition:

You attempted a Desperation Manuever that failed the activation roll.
You are unconsious and do not have an ally within your melee reach.
You have accumulated a number of wounds.

An enemy may, as long as they use an effect that has an 'Attack' keyword and only targets one or more creatures who are either willing allies or have the 'Critical' condition, can access any power for their Winds of Fate roll. An attack used in this way is called a Deathblow.

It's a standard tactic for allies of a creature in the Critical status condition to rush to their side to prevent them from being targeted by AoE attacks. In this case, a creature can still use their 'normal' Winds of Fate roll if they still want to target multiple characters.

Conversely, it is also considered an acceptable (if dodgy) tactic for allies of the creature performing the Deathblow to let themselves also be targetted by it in an attempt to get the enemy.

Being in the 'Critical' state imposes no additional penalties to defense, attack, or actions on its own.


Desperation Manuever:

Occasionally, a character finds her or himself up against an opponent who has the upper hand and they did not get a Winds of Fate roll you wanted. A character in this condition might decide to use a Desperation Manuever.

First, determine the manuever that you want to use. Determine the value of the tier that it is in. Subtract the value of the higher tier you can use with your Winds of Fate roll. This number is called a Desperation Target Number. By rolling d20s, you attempt to accrue a number of successes to meet this number. If you roll enough d20s, you can use the manuever from this tier.

This is a free action, meaning that you can decide to use a Desperation Manuever even when it is not your turn--however, the manuever you select with this option must be part of an action you are allowed to take. For example, if you are trying to use a manuever as an immediate interrupt in response to someone hitting an ally, you can only use Desperation Maneuver on a manuever that has this specific trigger. If you fail to meet this roll, then you gain the Critical and Stunned status conditions until the end of your next turn and also lose the action you used to activate the Desperation Manuever for.

Roll a d20. If you roll a 14 or higher, you gain a success. If you roll a 19 or a 20, you can also roll a d20 again. Any die you roll a 19 or 20 on you can keep rolling (and accumulating successes) until you no longer can. Unless explicitly stated, no game effect from you nor anyone else can prevent, modify, negate, or reroll these die, the results, or the range of success.

You may roll additional dice depending on certain effects. You gain one die per effect and effects are cumulative unless otherwise stated.
- The creature you are going to target with this attack has scored a critical hit against you within the past 3 rounds.

- An ally within 10 squares of you has fallen to 0 hit points, is rendered unconscious, or has suffered a Deathblow within the past 2 rounds.

- The GM may allow you to roll one or more extra desperation manuever dice in dramatically appropriate situations, such as facing down the necromancer that turned your wife into a zombie.

[Username17]

Yeah, in an RPG it doesn't follow narrative causality. You don't magically get your signature move at the crucial time, and indeed you aren't guaranteed to even win. Your not a character in a novel, you could totally lose whether you use your signature move or not.

But that actually underscores the need to shuffle the moves around. Inigo has no idea what attack will drop his opponent. He doesn't even know if he will win at all. So if you don't throw a resource management wrench into it that forces him to vary his moves he'll just use the single move he thinks is most appropriate for his situation over and over again. Seriously, consider him as a 4e character, once he runs out of his encounters and dailies, he has Tide of Iron and Cleave, what do you think he is going to be spamming for the rest of his sword duel?

-Username17

[Lago PARANOIA]

But that actually underscores the need to shuffle the moves around.

Well, how much shuffling of the moves do you think should be done?

From the Problem with Supermoves threads, people say that they generally find it cool when the hero comes back from the brink with a special move, make a dramatic rescue of a dying comrade, or when they finish off an opponent with style. I can sort of see where they're going with it since people would feel pretty sad if Tao Pi or Leeroy never got to use the Wuxia Finger Hold or The Glow for their final battles against their archnemesis, but we don't want them constantly pressing buttons to get the move to work.

The system I proposed tried to make it so that the PC always gets to finish off an opponent with the move they like while also making it likely (but not guaranteed) that when a weary and ass-kicked Robin is trying to protect an unconscious Raven from creepy Slade molesting hands it makes it more likely that he busts out with the big move and saves the day. But doesn't guarantee that Robin will get the move he wants. Oftentimes Robin will try to go for his electric disc Birdarang sword combo, it'll fizzle out, and then Slade casually delivers a Deathblow to Robin.

[Lago PARANOIA]

I'm just bumping this thread up again after the response I got to my thread about narrative causality.

Mind, I'm the kind of person who wants as little of it as possible as long as the rules play fair and straight. However, I was really surprised at the responses I got--people DO want their heroes to always win against the villains who raped and tortured their families and DO want their speech to always inspire the rebel army.

So, people who disagreed with my premise, what do you think of the system I proposed? Still too much to chance? Not enough? Just right?