My group has setup a house rule that I hope will be helpful to us, and I figured I'd share.

Before I go right to the meat of it, let me put just a little bit of background here for clarity sake.

My players often find themselves entering into conflicts against one, two, three or more opponents.  Typically this is involving a conflict against one skeptical official, or perhaps two argumenative merchants, or even three angry and stabby thugs.  Part of the beauty of TSOY's conflict resolution system (and BDTP for that matter) is that its abstracted to the point that you can be fighting/arguing against orc spearmen, klingon starfighters, or anything in between just about; all depending on the scope and scale of the game that you and your group are playing.  We were all smooth sailing as our warrior-girl took on two spearmen in a conflict and aced it, but later we had some raised eyebrows when our Zu practitioner made nearly a dozen cannibals flee.  So the question came up about mechanics and number of opponents.  Let me insert here, that obviously this may not pertain at all to your game.  That's fine, in fact that's part of what I love about TSOY, as I said earlier, its incredibly scaleable.  So with that bit said, here's my nifty house rule.

For any conflict in which a PC goes up against more than one NPC (the NPCs being handled with a single dice pool), that NPC dice pool gains a bonus dice for every NPC involved, after the first.  Trying to talk the Council of Five into supporting your Urban Beautification project?  That's 4 bonus dice for the Council's roll.  About to go toe to toe with a group of three angry barbarians?  That's 2 bonus dice for the Barbarians' roll.
In addition, and this was specifically to address some balance issues that my players were concerned about, when our Zu user enters into one of these conflicts, he must spend his point of Reason, but only has to spend the one point, rather than one point per opponent.

So... there!  Shared!  I hope that it helps someone.

Meanwhile,  anyone want to shoot it full of holes for me, or suggest another way of doing something like this?

That's perfect, and is a logical extension of the rules about people helping each other. It takes an average, kind of like Hero Wars rules for augmenting became the much simpler rules in HeroQuest.

I like it, and will definitely use it when players use Sway against multiple people instead of Orate.  Most people left it at unskilled and still talked soldiers out of following orders.

I'm wondering there can be one general 'talking' skill, then Secrets related to applying it to different situations, like many people, angry people, or overcoming language barriers, each with a reasonable point cost (avoiding overlap with Secret of Specialitiy), with a rule like yours for when the relevant Secret isn't used in the attempt.  That way it's still possible, with proper penalties, and the player can dump whatever points they want to into the attempt, and build their character appropriately as well.  I might give this a shot.

That might be another way of handling other skills.  A combat manuever Secret applying to multiple enemies, big enemies, rough terrain, whatever (I'm thinking of Westley's and Inigo's duel here).  If a penalty seems reasonable, apply it, but let a player buy a Secret and spend Pool points if he wants to avoid the penalty.

Thanks!

I've been using a similar house rule for my group, as well. I like it!

-K

We've been using similar mechanics in the games I've both played in and run, but I'm concerned that you might want to call for some sort of "law of diminishing returns" on the bonus dice. I find that after 3 bonus dice or so, the odds get fairly insurmountable for your average player. Usually, when I call down the ninja hordes (for instance, the ratkin who swarmed my players about two days ago), I add a bonus die or two, but don't bring down 11 bonus dice for 12 ratkin. Particularly if I want them to be able to survive the fight without my intention just going through every time. Granted, I could've scaled back the size of the horde, but it was delightfully dramatic and cool to chase them through a Maldorite market, leaping over donkeys and around crates and barrels, as they get chased by crazed ratkin.

-shadowcourt (aka josh)

Hey, :)

Question: this is for when the SG decides not to roll dice for the other side, yes?

If not, why not just roll cascading skills to determine exactly how many bonus dice the final roll has?

(Not that I'm putting down the rule, it makes sense to me, I'm just trying to understand the rationale behind it.)

Cheers,
J.

This worked out pretty well in my game this past weekend.

I went ahead and just used the whole pile - 8 cannibals attacked, and so I rolled 7 bonus dice.  And the stakes were something like "If you win, you can dispatch the cannibals, no problem.  If you lose, they'll scoop you up and carry you off to their lair for a dinner buffet.  Then we'll have to figure out if they eat you or not."

For me, its a good way to have clear mechanics that influence how the group proceeds.  Our spear-warrior lost a conflict like the one above and immediately Brought Down some Pain.  It was a tough fight then too, but she came out on top.

But like I said - its all about the scale of your game.  For my players, they want it to be cinematic, but not quite John Woo.  So they're happy taking on small groups of opponents, but conflicts like the one with the 8 cannibals is an exception, not a rule.  Using a dice mechanic like this makes numbers matter.  It forces them to weigh their options when they're raiding the main cannibal temple :)

And JMendes, I'm not sure I understand your question entirely.  I invoke this when the players enter into a conflict against multiple opponents.  I pick up my three fudge dice, plus (number of opponents minus one) bonus fudge dice, and roll them.

And I did notice my players working harder to bring in cascading skills to provide a little counter to these bonus dice.

Ahey, :)

Well, the way we do it is we have opponent 1 roll unopposed, then use the result as bonus dice for opponent 2, who also rolls unopposed, cascading the result onto opponent 3, etc, onto the final opponent, who rolls with as many bonus dice as the final result of the guy before him. In other words, we use each opponent's skill in a cascading roll. I think that's by the book (though I could well be wrong) , and I was just asking why you chose to discard this option.

By the way, you should also realise that once you're rolling with five bonus dice, the odds are pretty great that you're just gonna roll +3. Bonus dice above the fifth are gonna become more and more irrelevant.

Cheers,
J.