We Found Our Edge, and then We Lost It (Patreon)

The power roll is working! I just finished running a test for some of my coworkers and our VTT partners, and we all left it feeling pretty good! The cult of Cthrion Uronizir was put down, but not before they summoned a psionic blood dragon! We all agreed that the game really feels like it’s in a great place in terms of challenge, teamwork, and excitement. Well, at least it was for that encounter. More testing will see if we’re hitting that mark consistently.

(Hey, it’s me, James.) Since the power roll is working well in combat, I thought I’d show off the latest version of the rules, then talk a bit about how we are using circumstantial bonuses in the system. First, let’s take a look at the core idea. Here’s what we sent to our testers:

Power Roll

Whenever a hero or other creature in the game attempts a task with an uncertain outcome, such as attacking a foe, sneaking by a patrol of guards without being seen, or persuading a queen to provide military aid, the creature must make a power roll to determine the outcome of their actions.

Types of Power Rolls

There are two types of power rolls. Ability rolls are used when you activate certain abilities (see Abilities) to determine the ability’s impact. For instance, if a fury uses their Brutal Slam ability to attack an enemy, their ability power roll determines how much damage the enemy takes and how far back the enemy is pushed. If a shadow uses Black Ash Teleport, their ability power roll tells them how far they can teleport.

Tests are power rolls you make outside of using your abilities to affect the world around you (see Tests). A tactician may not have an ability that lets them climb up the face of a cliff, but it’s an activity they can attempt to do with a test. An elementalist doesn’t have an ability that lets them intimidate a cultist into backing down from a fight, but they can still make a test if they want to try.

Making a Power Roll

When you make a power roll, you roll two dice (or 2d6) and add one of your characteristics. The characteristic you add depends on the kind of roll you’re making as outlined in Abilities and Tests.

Power Roll Outcomes

The result of a power roll determines your outcome tier:

• Tier 1: If your power roll result was 7 or lower, it is a tier 1 result. This is the worst result a power roll can have. For abilities, it means you still do something, though that impact is not resounding. With this result, an attack ability might deal a little bit of damage and not do much else. For tests, it means you fail what you set out to do and suffer a consequence.

• Tier 2: If your power roll result was 8, 9, or 10 it is a tier 2 result. This is the average result of many power rolls, especially when the heroes are 1st level. For abilities, it means what you do has a moderate impact. With this result, an attack ability deals a decent amount of damage and has an effect that briefly helps an ally or hinders an enemy. For tests, it means you succeed at what you set out to do, though if the test has severe difficulty, success has a cost.

• Tier 3: If your power roll result was 11 or higher, it is a tier 3 result. This is the best result a power roll can have. For abilities, it means you have the maximum impact possible. With this result, an attack ability deals a lot of damage and has a powerful or lasting effect on an enemy or an ally. For tests, it means you succeed at what you set out to do. If the test has challenging difficulty, you get a little something extra in addition to your success.

The specific outcome of your power roll is determined by the ability that requires it or the rules for tests (more on how tests work in a later post). The following is an example of an ability that uses a power roll:

Brutal Slam

The heavy impact of your weapon drives your foe back.

Keywords: Attack, Melee, Weapon Type: Action

Distance: Melee 1 Target: 1 creature or object

Roll 2d6 + Might:

• 7 or lower: 3 damage; push 1

• 8-10: 8 damage; push 2

• 11+: 12 damage; push 4

Downgrade Power Roll

Whenever you make a power roll, you can always pick the result of a lower tier. For instance, if an ability lets you impose the slowed condition on a creature at tier 2 and the restrained condition on a creature at tier 3, and you get the tier 3 result, you can choose to downgrade the result to tier 2.

If you downgrade a critical hit, you still get the extra action benefit of the critical hit.

Natural 12 on a Power Roll

If you get a 12 on the power roll before adding your characteristic (also called rolling a natural 12), you always achieve the tier 3 result, no matter the characteristic added to the roll. This rule exists because some creatures have negative characteristics that reduce the result of a roll.

Circumstantial Bonuses

Now you have the rules and frame of reference for the rest of this post! (Side note: Some of you may be wondering how we came up with the ranges for these tiers. The answer is based on a lot of playtesting and thinking about how high a creature’s characteristic bonuses can get in the future.) Before I show you the rest of the rules, let’s talk about circumstantial bonuses.

Circumstantial bonuses are represented by getting extra (or sometimes fewer) dice to roll (like advantage and disadvantage in fifth edition), numerical bonuses and penalties (like the +2 of fourth edition’s Combat Advantage), or other some other rule that increases or decreases a character’s chance of success or failure on a dice roll or other randomizer. Basically, “Hey, this cultist is prone. Shouldn't it be easier for me to smash them in the face with an axe?” and “Yo! This cultist is prone. Shouldn’t it be harder for them to smash me in the face with an axe?”

We’ve been talking about boons and banes (inspired by the mechanics in Shadow of the Demon Lord) for a while. Adding and subtracting d4s to your 2d6 roll made sense when the actual result of the roll was the damage dealt or compared to a specific target number in a test. It doesn’t work as well for the power roll. We know. We tried it on the first power roll test. Adding and subtracting d4s to power rolls was all around lackluster. Every boon and bane had a LOT of influence. When your range of numbers is pretty small (2-12), an average bonus or penalty of 2.5 is really impactful. Since boons aren’t super rare (they shouldn’t be—it’s fun to have a bonus), it meant that people were getting the best result of their roll all the time. That took a lot of the fun and drama out of the rolls. We sort of knew going into that test that this would be the case, but we gave it a shot anyway to see if we were right. We can use math to guess at what’s fun, but you can’t know until you try it,

After that failed, we took another tactic. Taking into consideration what we had just tried and that our Patrons enjoyed stacking boons and banes only to a point, we tried something akin to fifth edition’s advantage and disadvantage mechanic, but with multiple layers so that we could have a little stackability (as a treat). We also found that some folks kept getting the names “boon” and “bane” confused, so we changed up boon to edge—representing an “edge” or advantage a creature has in a given situation. Here’s what I wrote up and we tested:

Edges and Banes

An archer standing on a castle wall fires down into a throng of enemies, hitting the mark each time thanks to the high ground. A drunken bandit struggles to land blows on sober opponents as alcohol clouds their judgment. There are times when you need more than just a characteristic to represent the advantages and disadvantages heroes, their enemies, and their allies have.

Edges

An edge represents a situational advantage your hero has when making a power roll. For instance, a standing hero who makes a melee attack against a prone creature has advantage on the power roll. A pair of magic gloves that makes your hands sticky might give you an edge when making a power roll to climb walls!

When you make a power roll with an edge, you roll 3d6 and use the highest of the two dice rolled to calculate the result.

Double Edge

You can have more than one edge on a power roll, resulting in a double edge. For instance, if you make a melee attack against a prone creature who is also restrained by a net, each condition, prone and restrained, provides an edge on the roll. That means you have a double edge! If you made a power roll to climb a wall while wearing magic sticky gloves and while receiving aid from an ally with the Climb skill, you would also have a double edge on that roll!

When you make a power roll with a double edge, you roll 4d6 and use the highest of the two dice rolled to calculate the result.

There is no triple, quadruple, or greater edge. If you have three or more situational advantages on a roll, you still have a double edge.

Banes

A bane represents a situational disadvantage your hero has when making a power roll. For instance, if you make an attack while prone, the power roll you make suffers a bane. A rainstorm might give you a bane on a power roll made to climb an outdoor wall because the weather makes the stone surface extra slick.

When you make a power roll with a bane, you roll 3d6 and use the lowest of the two dice rolled to calculate the result.

Double Bane

You can have more than one bane on a power roll, resulting in a double bane. For instance, if you make a melee attack while prone and restrained, each condition imposes a bane on the roll. That means you have a double bane on the roll! Similarly, if you made a power roll to climb a stone wall in the rain while only using one hand because the other is holding a basket of magic eggs, you would also have a double bane on that roll!

When you make a power roll with a double bane, you roll 4d6 and use the lowest of the two dice rolled to calculate the result.

There is no triple, quadruple, or worse bane. If you have three or more situational disadvantages on a roll, you still have a double bane.

Rolling with Edges and Banes

There are times you might have one or more edges and banes on a roll. For instance, you might be weakened by poison while attacking a prone creature. Each of the following situations is resolved differently:

• If you have an edge and a bane or a double edge and a double bane, the roll is made normally without any edges or banes.

• If you have a double edge and a bane, the roll has one edge.

• If you have a double bane and an edge, the roll has one bane.

When to Use Edges and Banes

The rules tell you when to add an edge or bane to a roll. The Director can also add edges and banes to rolls due to narrative or environmental circumstances of a roll. For instance, no rule specifically says that rain makes climbing a stone wall harder and therefore imposes a bane on power rolls made to do so, but it makes sense that this would be the case, so a Director should absolutely do it!

What We Liked

The thing that we liked about this version of the rules was that it capped edges and banes at two. That meant you could still team up and combo things, but it didn’t get to a point where counting up boons and banes slowed down play. Turns out stacking bonuses two high is the sweet spot for our game (probably we think maybe). Further testing will reveal if that’s true.

Still Too Powerful

We tested this version of the rules and liked it enough to take it to our contract testers, but it turned out it was still too powerful. A single edge or bane had a decent impact on the outcome of a roll, but a double or edge or bane made some tiers close to guaranteed. Turns out that players are pretty good at engineering double edges when it counts.

This also created some weirdness with multitarget attacks. Our game typically handles attacking multiple targets with one roll to speed up play. But if one target is prone, but the other isn’t, do I roll twice, once with 2d6 and once with 3d6 for each target? What if I have an ability that can add an edge AFTER a roll is made? Do I reroll everything? Just add a die? What if I had a bane on that roll? Woof. If we’re asking you to reroll or add more rolls, we’re getting very clunky and also increasing the odds of rolling a crit in a way we didn’t intend. We’ve given folks a way to game the system that doesn’t fit with the fiction.

The bonuses and penalties needed to be smaller (but still impactful) and easy to add in a multitarget or post-roll situation. Then I remembered, “There’s a reason a lot of 2d6 games hand out tiny bonuses. A range of 2-12 is already pretty small. A +1 is far more impactful than in a d20 game.” Unsurprisingly, we ended up with a fairly simple system of bonuses akin to what a lot of other games use.

+1/−1

It seems like giving people small bonuses and penalties is the best way to go. In our three-tiered system of outcomes, a difference of 1 really matters. Instead of an edge, you now get a +1 for a situational advantage. A +1 is exactly what it sounds like, a +1 bonus to your power roll. That’s what we call it—a +1. The name’s not necessarily sexy, but it is super functional. You know exactly what it does. Sometimes that’s best. A single power roll can have up to two +1s (also known as a +2 … I know, we’re getting wild). Instead of banes and double banes, we have −1s and −2s. You can have both +1s and −1s on a roll, and I don’t even need to tell you they cancel each other out because that’s how math works.

We tried this system just now in our latest test, and it was a hit. The conduit could give out a +1 as a triggered action after a fellow hero made a power roll, and that player reported that they loved knowing their triggered action was going to work and help bring an ability into the next tier. When a roll really counted, players strategized their teamwork to make sure that roll got a +2, but there was still a small but decent chance that the roll could wind up in the lowest tier, making the outcome dramatic. In other words, we had a lot of fun and everyone seemed engaged! I think we’re on the right track.

—James