[Agon] are Advantages too cheap?

[Ben Robbins]

I think buying Advantages with strife might be too cheap. 1 strife to get an additional d8 in a simple contest is a lot more bang-per-buck than just increasing a single die. For example, for 1 strife I can hit the heroes with:

d6 d8 (raising one die)
-or-
d6 d6 d8 (adding an Advantage)

Granted a purchased Advantage can be nullified by hero actions, good planning, etc. but still it's pretty potent for the price.

If you look at it for NPCs that will be in combat instead of just simple contests, rolling a bonus d8 once would normally cost 3 divine favor (which would cost 3 strife) so 1 strife for a d8 Advantage is definitely cheap.

I'm thinking starting purchased Advantages at d6 instead of d8 would mostly fix it. You could increase the die with more strife as normal (so 2 strife for a d8, 3 for a d10).

[John Harper]

Yeah, Ben... that was an error on my part. Originally, advantage dice only lasted for one roll, which is why they were so cheap for NPCs. I changed how the dice work, but forgot to change the cost.

A d6 advantage isn't much of an advantage, though, so I'd skip that one. 3 Strife for a d8 advantage sounds good to me. 5 for a d10? Or should it just be 4?

[Ben Robbins]

Hmm... 3 for a d8 seems high.

For 2 strife the Defense/Offense power gets you a constant d8, but only on one thing. 3 strife gets you 3 divine favor which could add a d8 at any time (among many other things). An advantage is a one-shot and is more limited because much like helping dice you could only use it on a roll if it made sense.

I think part of the rub is that in a one-shot simple contest an advantage makes a big difference, but in a combat it only gets used once so it makes much less of a difference overall. I'm hesitant to recommend different pricing for an NPC advantage vs an ad hoc contest advantage but there might be some truth in that.

Whatever it is, I'd say it should follow the normal progression for raising the die (1 strife to increase the die size one, double that if it's a minion).

[John Harper]

Yeah, good point.

Hmmm. Something to ponder a bit more.