Helping other Characters

[alexandro]

I think I have a problem regarding how characters can use their abilities to help each other.

The book says, that you can use a secondary (or tertiary...etc.) ability to enhance the use of your primary ability. Although it doesn't specifically mention it, I can see the same system being used for one character using one ability to enhance the ability of another character.
Where it gets a bit wonky is when one character is trying to enhance the abilities of a group of characters (like our cook trying to boost the capsize attempt of his pirate crew with his spicy food ;)). Should this be possible without a secret? Would every character get the bonus dice or do they have to be divided?
It basicly does the same as Secret of Blessing, so it should probably be a secret too, but this would force the above cook to take another Secret (in addition to Inner Meaning) to get the job done, which seems a bit much for what he is doing.

Any ideas?

[Clinton R. Nixon]

Alexandro,

It does mean that giving your success level in bonus dice to each member of a group would require a Secret: otherwise, you can just help one person at a time.

[alexandro]

Thought so too.
I was just searching for a balanced way to allow for it, because I like to encourage this kind of thing and it seemed a bit of harsh to require a secret for something that reasonably could be done with an ability.

After some thinking:
I would probably use the "chain helping" rules from the BDtP section to allow for it, while still keeping the rule, that one character can only help one other (this is what I would use for PCs).
Or in the case of of the cook and the pirate crew above, I will just treat a group of SGCs as one character (less bookkeeping). 

[shadowcourt]

Sticks-in-the-mud that we are, my group is still playing a sort of "house rules" TSOY 1st edition, so our answer may be slightly different than what other people come up with. We restrict bonus dice from chained rolls to 1 additional die from a source (because the chained abilities resulted in such large explosive pools sometimes that there were contests which were simply fait accompli-- because you knew your opponent could end this chain with 7 dice to roll on his final roll, and you were hanging out with 2, you were going to be trounced), though there are Secrets and special options that slowly open this up.

This means that when you use your Battle ability to help your Dueling roll, you're only grabbing at the most a single bonus die from the Battle check to apply to the Dueling check. Other circumstances-- special bonuses, other Secrets, gift dice from other people around the table-- might well result in additional bonus dice for that final Dueling check, but at least you're not bound to be womped by someone who can chain an appropriate ability.

Again, this might not work for every game table, but it was suggested by players around mine, and its worked well for us ever since. We provide a Secret called the Secret of Ability Genuis, which runs like this:

Open Secret: Secret of Ability Genius
Choose one Ability when you take this Secret, such as Etiquette or Battle. The bonus dice you apply from chaining this ability are unrestricted; you can apply as many as you want to a single roll.

Even without this Secret, we would let characters divvy up their pools, so that a single character who is providing strategic advice to a whole group of his friends could make a Battle check, and toss up to his total Success Level of dice to his friends as bonus dice on their appropriate checks. We've never had the situation occur, but I don't think we'd allow a second character to make a second Battle check and distribute even more bonus dice (though they could combine their efforts, as normal, for one slightly-more-likely-to-succeed Battle pool, which they could distribute freely).

In our game, Secrets like the Secret of Blessing, and those modeled after it, provide unrestricted bonus dice, just like our Ability Genuis Secret does. The benefit, of course, is being able to use an unusual ability, like Pray, to enhance everyone, and the dice being unrestricted. I'd let any old character preach to a group of the faithful and use Pray to lead them, just like Battle does (and letting them toss out restricted dice, one per friend); a character with the Secret of Blessing can bless even those who don't share his religious or spiritual leanings, or are active detractors of magic or faith.

Again, this is what's been working for us, and might not work for everyone else. It's a TSOY 1st ed option, as well, and I don't know how it survives the port over to 2nd edition. It does violate the "only help one character at a time" rule, but its provided with more enjoyable play; if someone around our table is relegating themselves to a support role while a bunch of their friends are doing things that have more gusto, it's nice to be able to reward them with some freedom to toss dice to a whole bunch of people. But perhaps I've become too fond of the "bard," and my personal conceits show through.

-shadowcourt (aka josh)