[Agon] Under Consideration: Helping dice that really help

[Darren Hill]

Right, I'm back from my nights session, with some observations.

The Helping Dice rule seems to be a huge trade off. It completely alters the tone of play as Ralph mentioned in another thread - conflict becomes much less of a gambling exercise, and much more deterministic. At certain times you get the feel that you're almost playing diceless, as you and your opponent burn up traits to each get +1, and the one who eventually decides he's paid enough this round loses. "I spend a point to get a +1. He spends a point to get +1. I repeat. He repeats."
There are also plenty of rolls where, for instance, one side rolls a 9 and the other a 3. In the standard system, players probably wouldn't bother rerolling that (unless they just wanted to reduce the enemy's victories). In this case, a reroll is used to narrow the gap, and then the helping die comes in on subsequent bonus rolls to allow victory.
So, it does lead to a more deterministic combat system, one decided by how many resources people have to spend.  It also leads to players spending more abilities/rerolls than they would otherwise, which leads to more Interludes, which leads to the GM getting more strife, which I suspect might upset the pacing of Quests.

I think it was suggested that this may speed up combats, because players would be hitting more often. In practice, I don't think this is the case. Players do hit more often, but what happens is you spend a lot more time on your turn wondering, "shall I burn another trait for a +1, or how do I get the two or three points I need?" Which, like positioning, can be a time sink - and doesn't happen anywhere near as badly with the standard rules because a lot of the time you can see straight off that there's no point gambling. Or after you try a reroll or two, and either succeed or fail, that's the end of it. Here' a LOT more rolls are worth trying for.

Also, as GM, it did spoil my fun a bit. I knew I had NPCs with huge piles of +1's I could use (30+), and it would be easy to end a battle with all but a handful of all NPCs abilities exhausted. But that would drain the PCs of way too many resources and would cause the fight to drag on, AND would lead to a different kind of whiff - where the players feel that no matter how much they commit, the GM will always beat them. (This effect is more pronounced when you have multiple NPCs in a scene - the players will overwhelm the resources of a single NPC fairly quickly - but still, not without draining their own resources quite a bit.) So I had a less enjoyable feeling of having to hold back in a way that the doesn't happen with the gambling system.

I'm curious, Ralph: how many of your NPCs Abilities did you exhaust in your battles?

Now, this report may sound entirely negative - I appreciate that what I describe will actually be beneficial for some people. And it's undeniable that any trace of whiff factor is gone. What it replaces it with isn't to my taste, though. I will admit that some of those bidding moments where player and GM faced each other, and wondered who would give up first, were pretty cool. (But then, so were some gambling rolls in the old system - I concede nothing! :))

For me to use any sort of Helping Die rule, I need some inherent limit to how often you can exercise this rule on your turn, or some limit to how often you use it. (Like: d4 traits don't get the Helping benefit. That would cut down a LOT of the more frivolous uses - people would have to think more carefully about when to use it). Mainly to stop PCs being sucked into using more resources than they actually want to, and so that I, when playing NPCs, don't feel I have to hold back.

What Is The Problem This Rule Is Meant To Fix
Getting back to basics for a moment. The Whiff Factor: I think what upsets people's fun is getting those rerolls and then rolling crap. "I'll use my God Oath - damn, another 1. Zeus really hates me."
The times the whiff reall hits is those low to middle range results, where you just keep rolling minimum.

I don't think anyone considers it a whiff if your foe rolls a 10, you call on your god oath and roll a 9. You've still failed, but you won't feel cheated by that failure - you knew it was a long-shot and you came damn close.
But if you need a 4 and call on that god oath, you do feel a bit cheated when you don't get it.

Likewise in the standard system, if you roll a 12, and your foe gets a 14, you might groan - but you don't feel that's a whiff. You rolled well, but your foe rolled better, and that's the way things happen sometimes.

So IMO it's the low and maybe middle range results that are the problem. So, really, you need a fix which targets the specific problem, and only that problem, without drastically changing gameplay.
So here's another suggestion.

Alternate Fix
There are two parts:
1. When you use a Bonus die, you are guaranteed to get at least half the die size. If you roll a d6, you get at least a 3. If you roll a d12, you get at least a 6. (There were times in the sessions I've played where using this roll with a d6 or even a D4 would have been useful.)
2. Add a new entry to the Divine Favour table: spend 2 (or 3?) points for a +1 bonus. (This is effectively the Helping Die benefit as it applies a LOT of the time, but with more meaningful rationing of the benefit. By making it dependent on Divine Favour, it avoids the massive resource drain the current helping die can cause.)

I think these two steps taken together will eliminate the whiff factor for many people, while the gambling element is still there for those who want to take risks.
I'm very interested to hear whether Ralph and Seth agree or disagree.

[GreatWolf]

Honestly, the solution that I was toying with was simply this:

Choose all your dice before you roll.  Take your highest as your result, and add +1 for every other die that isn't a 1.  That way there's still the gambling moment ("Will this die roll work....") while still keeping the ability to try to skew the results in your favor by burning resources.  The "ignore dice that roll a 1" rule is to make larger dice still better than small dice.

With all that, though, I'm wondering if we're simply running into an issue where we are wanting to play different games.  It's entirely possible that the "problems" that we're finding aren't really problems at all but the result of different expectations.

In other words, I'm willing to concede that my take on what would make Agon better might actually be a major deviation from what John Harper wants the game to be.  And that's cool.

[iago]

I may just wanna roll helping dice forward if they don't help.  Keep rolling them (within the same battle, only), until they roll the top result.  Would work for advantage dice, too.

[John Harper]

Hey Seth,

That dice system is actually one I considered for Agon, and one I like. I'm working on a new game based on the Agon mechanics right now, and so far I'm using Result = Highest Die + 1 per extra die in pool. I also like the idea that 1's don't count, and you have to choose all your dice before you roll.

So we're on the same page, pretty much. My own play experiences with Agon have been different from yours and Ralph's (I've never had what I would call a "long" combat, and minions aren't a problem). But a tighter, punchier game is a good thing, and I appreciate your input. I won't be making any sweeping changes to the game as printed for a year or so. By then we'll have plenty of good input about how the game handles and what should be addressed. For now, it's good to mess around a bit and get our hands dirty in the workshop.