Doom Pool: D12 ever ?

[Supplanter]

You are correct. Stress sticks around until the next transition scene. If you're stressed out, it goes away but you're stuck with trauma. If they pulled their punches, it becomes d6. All other non-stressed out stress is stepped back by one.

-EF

Right. At that point Battlechimp and I were discussing his hypothetical of hero getting stressed out but starting the next scene with a fistful of plot points - both because the Watcher bought the DDs pack into the pool.


Jim

[vitruvian]

You are correct. Stress sticks around until the next transition scene. If you're stressed out, it goes away but you're stuck with trauma. If they pulled their punches, it becomes d6. All other non-stressed out stress is stepped back by one.

-EF

Right. At that point Battlechimp and I were discussing his hypothetical of hero getting stressed out but starting the next scene with a fistful of plot points - both because the Watcher bought the DDs pack into the pool.

Jim

Sorry, missed that you were talking about the next scene already. I thought you were still talking about it possibly being a long time till the character got an Action again in that Scene, and it being pointed out that that fistful of plot points was also useful for keeping effect dice on reactions and things like that.

[Supplanter]

So, um, guess who used 2D12 to end a scene in last night's session?

#hypocrite


Jim

[MidnightBlue]

So, um, guess who used 2D12 to end a scene in last night's session?

#hypocrite


Jim

I'm sure you had a good rational for doing so though, right?

[EldritchFire]

So, um, guess who used 2D12 to end a scene in last night's session?

#hypocrite


Jim

Did you at least hand out the 2XP to all heroes?

-EF

[Supplanter]

I did hand out the XP, yes.

Rationale was, this fight with the Wendigos is about to devolve into two full turns of Wendigos trying to leave and X-Men trying to stop them and it's 10:30PM . . .


Jim

[Cam]

NOW YOU SEE, JIM. NOW YOU SEE.

Cheers,
Cam

[Supplanter]

NOW YOU SEE, JIM. NOW YOU SEE.

Cheers,
Cam

Heh.

But the other side of that is, I did run with a somewhat larger DP for much of the night than last time, and it did have the problematic (to my thinking) effects I feared on things like healing rolls, support actions, attempts to remove complications and most actions in transition scenes.

So I still struggle!

I did get the damn thing spent down to a single D6 by the end of the night, though: bad for Master Mold, good for the climax of the event . . .


Jim

[figurefour]

But the other side of that is, I did run with a somewhat larger DP for much of the night than last time, and it did have the problematic (to my thinking) effects I feared on things like healing rolls, support actions, attempts to remove complications and most actions in transition scenes.

For what it's worth (I haven't had a chance to run/play MHR yet) I've always seen the system as pushing towards a state with a few HIGH dice in the Doom Pool.

I'm not sure how this affects play, but I think increasing the size of the dice in the pool without dramatically affecting the number of dice in the pool would make all the difference in letting the threat increase without making rolling against the Doom Pool seem overwhelming. The real threat seems to be when the Doom Pool has more dice (of a decent value) than the players can easily muster for a roll.

Rolling against 2d12 is risky, rolling against 1d12+2d10+4d8 is probably suicide.

That's why the Watcher should spend the small dice out of the pool and try to increase the size of their dice when they have the chance. The strategy used to aggressively push for a d12 in the Doom Pool seems to be consistent with keeping your Doom Pool SMALL, since you can only increase the smallest die, you want to spend all those d6 so you can bump your d8s.

So, theory aside, does anyone have experience to lay on me here? Are large dice in the Doom Pool harder to overcome than many dice in the Doom Pool?

[chaosnet]

I've always seen the system as pushing towards a state with a few HIGH dice in the Doom Pool.

I thought this would be the case too, but the thing to keep in mind is that if you Watcher strategically then you can build up the DP pretty easily, however if you Watcher narratively and step up dice when it thematically and/or narratively make sense then you'll notice quite a few D6s in there.

In the sessions that I've run, I've found the DP to be quite anemic as I havent had the opportunity for villains to create wholesale mayhem (i.e. their Effects go into the DP) and my players have quite the bit of luck as far as rolling 1s.