Many on one?

[Sydney Freedberg]

Having just seen your other thread:

The thing is, "many Story Tokens = many characters = many actions" is not, in fact, a sure-fire way to win when you want to. Believe me; I've played in, gosh, dozens of Capes sessions -- I live near Tony, don't be jealous -- and I've been a frequent, frequent user of this tactic. And it's a good tactic. It is, as you say, the most efficient use of Story Tokens: spend one Story Token now, get one additional die to roll this turn and every turn until the end of the scene.

But! It is not necessarily the most effective use of Story Tokens, because it only gives you those multiple actions during your turn. Once it's someone else's turn, and you're back to Reacting, you still have just the one reaction; and once everyone's taken their regular turn, and people are buying extra actions, then you're back to buying them at the "one Story Token = one action" exchange rate.

"But if I have so many actions in my regular turn, surely I can make sure I control everything and won't have to worry about anything afterwards!" Well, maybe. In my personal experience -- wow. So very much not. Again and again and again, I've had armadas of characters, only to have some crucial conflict still slide out of reach...unless I spend just one more Story Token for one more action. If the other players are on the ball, they can put things out there for you to want to win almost as fast as you can increase your ability to win them.

And maybe you do win everything you want. Congratulations! Now you've got fewer Story Tokens, and you're probably staked Debt in order to split your dice* and win things, so your Debt is reduced and your opponents have a bunch of Story Tokens. Guess what happens next scene?

* Because if you don't stake any Debt on a conflict, and your opponents do stake two (or more), you only get one die to their two (or more). And the odds are very poor for one die, however many times you get to reroll it, to beat two dice at even moderate values. The odds are impossible if one of those two dice is a six, of course.

[Tuxboy]

Tony used these to terrifying effect in a recent game: "Goal: Target my character with any kind of attack" to prevent anyone hurting him

Fiendishly cunning, but would it protect him from being caught in an area effect targetting someone else? *VBG*

[Eric Sedlacek]

The thing is, "many Story Tokens = many characters = many actions" is not, in fact, a sure-fire way to win when you want to.

This is true and is worth reiterating, but in fairness, the dynamic may well be four players against one, not just four characters against one.  That's a completely different dynamic.