Here's a rule that I'm seriously considering for a Semi-Official Rules Change.

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Advantage, Helping, & Creative Ability Dice

When you use an Advantage die, a Helping die, or a Creative Ability die, the die is not rolled with the other dice in your pool. Instead, roll it seperately, and consult this table:
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Roll  (Bonus)
1-3    (+1)
4-6    (+2)
7-9    (+3)
10-12  (+4)
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The bonus is added to the result of your roll. Bonus dice bought with divine favor (+1d6 and +1d8) work this way, too.

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With this system, helping dice always really help you, with at least a +1 to your result. I think this will really put an end to any kind of whiff that may linger in the game. The exact makeup of the table may need tweaking (I also considered die roll divided by two) but I think the idea is sound.

As a secondary part of this, I'd like to adopt Darren's idea that Advantage dice impair each time they are used (and can't be refreshed). This neatly takes care of the problem of how long they linger and how often they can be used.

Thoughts?

Sounds interesting.
Regarding the first part, the table of +1 to +4:
What if you, say, roll a 4, then get a helping d12 and roll 12: would you be able to use the best of the two options (and now have a result of 12, which you could spend DF to roll-up), or would you have to take the 8?
I can see either way being reasonable - in the latetr case, you pay a price for the guaranteed benefit that helping gives.
Using enough helping dice on a single roll, you'd be able to achieve any target - a group that is used to taking lots of interludes might get a decent jump in power.

Personally I might go for a simpler system:
When you call the helping die, if it is lower than the current roll, you get a +1.
So, if you have rolled, say, a 2 and a 4, so your current roll is 4. someone Helps and rolls a 3. Your roll is now 5. Someone else helps and rolls a 4. Your result is now 6. Someone else helps and rolls a 12. Your result is now 12. (Or, for added fiddliness, your result is now 14, because you have two +1's). 

About the Advantage Dice Impairing (which I think Ralph suggested first), it sounds good to me. I was about to suggest a different version in that other thread, but I like this impairment version better. In fact, I love it, especially when compaired with some variant of the rules above, so those d6 advantages can always be counted on for +1's.

I take it this applies also to the d6, d8, and rerolls you might get from Divine Favour?

(For posterity, the rule I was going to suggest:
Advantage Dice can be used once each Exchange of a Battle, rather than once per Battle.
I was hesitating suggesting this, because those d10 ones become very very beneficial.)

Oops - ignore my divine favour question ;)

Darren, your questions are confusing things for me.

The system works as written above. With this rule there is no other way to read Advantage, Helping, or Creative dice. They generate a bonus to your roll, that's it.

My one question is whether or not this is *too much* of a fix; even a +1 is pretty significant in this game, and the lowly d4 being able to produce a +2 is  a little, hm, startling?  Keeping in mind that a +2 is something you primarily see as half of someone's heroic attribute.

I dig the whole goal of reducing whiff factor, but at the same time, I don't want to make things too easy, get me?  This could easily go into territory where the bonus is large enough that there's no point in rolling -- the opposition simply won't be able to generate a number higher than (1+bonus) on its dice.

Yeah, I'm afraid of that too, Fred. I want to dial in the numbers so they make sense.

Maybe the spread is different:
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Roll  (Bonus)
1-5    (+1)
6-9    (+2)
10-12  (+3)
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Getting warmer, maybe.

Mm, I get what you're getting at -- the maximum of one die is where the breakpoints are at -- but I'm not sure that's it yet, either.  Though maybe that's because I don't otherwise see the "pattern" in it...

Though, heh. There it is.  if I don't look at the range, but just the breakpoints, I can see...

Helping grants a +1; if the die rolls 6+, +2; if the die rolls 10+, +3

Somehow that presentation clicks more for me, though I can't readily quantify why.  The reasoning for the breakpoints certainly stands out more for me when I don't present it as a range-of-results-means-plus-blah table...

In the hope of being a bit clearer than last time, here are my thoughts.

Thoughts on the Proposed Semi-Official Rule

• I like the range of both tables (+1 to +3, and +1 to +4) - they both make each helping die size different. Choosing to use a d8 will be done for different reasons than rolling a d6, for example.
• Like Fred, I'm concerned about the size of the bonus. Getting a guaranteed +1 isn't too bad, but having a good chance of getting a bigger bonus is risky. The second table is better here.
• Converserly, I'm also concerned about the smallness of the bonus. At present, the main thing I've seen d10 abilities used for is to try to increase a roll by a lot. (Say, you roll a 3, and need a 9.) Under this system, high dice are a lot less help in such cases. The only way to do it is to chain several traits together. I think this is a bad effect, but not hugely so, especially since when you need that 9, and you're willing to pay for it (or make others pay for it), you can guarantee you'll get it with this rule. The gambling element is hugely diminished. The benefits to this approach (quick, simple) may compensate. Plus, the whiff factor is most frustrating at the low end were your trying to turn a 3 into, say, a 4 or 5, and failing. At those close margins this system shines.
• There'll be fewer roll-ups, maybe a lot fewer. At present, you might end up rolling 4 or more dice on a single task, all of which can qualify for the roll-up option. Now only two dice will, and they'll often be ones that are less likely to give a roll up (helping die d6 = 1/6th, using your main ability: 1/10th). It's a matter of taste whether this is good or bad.
• With this system, you don't need a special "D4 helping traits don't grant or cancel oaths" rule. There's less of a need for higher oath prices for the high traits either (especially with the second table), since even when the players are rolling d10, they'll be expecting to get a 1-5 for +1. :)
• My first thought, after my experience with a Strong-Limbed NPC, was that this would lead to longer battles because NPCs will benefit too. I now think that's wrong. Since Heros usually outnumber NPCs, it will more likely lead to shorter battles, with fewer resources used. Only playtesting will see whether this is a noticeable or safely-ignorable effect.

My Proposed House Rule
I did also suggest an alternative and mention it in case it got lost in the confusion above.

• Uses the rule that exists in the text.
• If the helping die doesn't help, add +1.

This rule is simple, it works with the text as listed, but keeps the gambling element of using high dice for high rolls, while still eliminating the whiff factor at low margins. It's not as quick as the above rule, though. (It has most of the other pros and cons of the above rule, like potentially leading to shorter, lower-resource battles.)
To be honest, I'm not sure which of the two approaches I prefer (John's or mine),  but since this one was one I'd thought after playing the first time, and it does have distinct advantages of its own, I thought I may as well mention it. It can be safely ignored now :)

Hmmm.  Ok this is going in the opposite direction as I've been...fewer dice, more modifiers instead of fewer modifiers more dice...but it could work as well. Instead of eliminating the problem modifiers you're making them so common as to no longer be a problem.

The "speed things up and keep them moving" part of me says to skip rolling the advantage/helping dice and looking up on a table altogether.  Just go with a fixed bonus based on die size.  Need an extra +2, Impair a d8.  Need a +3 Impair a d10.  d4s would be 0 representing a minimal ability that can be rolled in a test but too puny to offer any help...that would prevent d0 stats.

But I'm not sure the issues really need this radical of a change yet.

Sorry, Darren. I missed your house rule proposal the first time. I actually like it a lot. Thanks for pointing it out.

You're welcome, John. I think the biggest benefit of my house rule suggestion is you don't have to agonise over building a table of the correct mapping of die size to modifiers, it just uses the already playtested mechanics with a small modifier.

Ralph: I was a bit worried about the d4 being dropped to zero, but the only time its come up in my three sessions so far it was not a problem. In the two player game I ran last night, one of the characters had impaired his Hunting to zero, and then the duo had to make a Harmful Obstacle Contest of Hunt, to traverse the "Iron Forest" safely. His automatic result of zero was amusing, and did lead to his companion Helping him through the woods.
I can foresee situations where I ask, "Okay, does anyone have a zeroed out trait." "Yes, I have Spirit." "Okay, <thinks> and so, the Shade of Protus appears before you, a frightening figure. We have a contest of Spirit!" (and impairing my own Grace as I dodge hurled dice.)

The avoiding of d0 traits was more of a side effect than a reason. 

In my "fixed bonus by die type" table I went with d4 =0, d6 = +1, d8=+2, d10=+3 because then a d8 would be twice as good as a d6 and d10 three times as good. 

If you go with d4=+1, d6=+2, d8=+3, d10=+4, then a d8 is only 50% better and the d10 only twice as good as the d6. 

The first scale seemed at first blush to better award high individual stats...and as a side effect making it pointless to impair d4 stats.

But again  I think its a pretty radical change.

Your +1 if the die didn't help. is a less radical change.  I think that would help alot with the feeling of whiff because at least every effort gets you marginally closer to where you need to be without completely changing the whole structure of the game.  I hate changing too much at the same time, but I'm tempted to try this on Friday and see how it goes.

I'd like to ask everyone currently running an Agon game to try out Darren's method in your next game:

If you roll an Advantage, Creative, or Helping die, you may either take the result of the die as your new result, or add +1 to your total.

Heroic traits still apply as normal. So, if you are Strong-Limbed and you use your Might as a creative ability, if you don't like the result, you could add +3 to your total.

I'm not playing Agon at the moment, so I don't have a group to test with. If you folks would be kind enough to test this out and report back, I'd appreciate it.

I might be playing again this Monday and the following one. If so I'll be sure to test it out.

As I think more on this and reflect where and why the actual groan moments in our game were, I'm thinking this would have been a huge benefit to the feel of things.  It likely would have led to more use of Creative Abilities, players were loathe to Impair with only a 1 in 8 chance of seeing any benefit, it would have let to more use of the lesser Abilities...sure its only a d6, but most likely I'll at least get a +1 out of it...and it would have given some benefit even to abysmal die rollers like Crystal:-).

I'll try this out on Friday.

To be clear what we're looking at is:
1) Name dice, Antagonist Assigned Free Ability Die, Weapons Dice rolled and read as normal.
2) Creative Ability dice, Advantage Dice, Helping Dice (for or from Oaths) provide a +1 each if they are not otherwise used as the "Result" die.

Crystal was afraid that you'd bring up her die rolling....

Anyways, I like this idea enough to give it a whirl.  Honestly, I'd even be interested in seeing it tried out without any other rules adjustments.  Knowing for sure that I'd get some benefit from a Helping or Creative die makes me much more willing to use them and to tap Oaths to draw them from other players.

I've got a lot of crazy this week -- other folks will need to test this one in the lab, I'm afraid. :)

I think this also gets added to 2): the extra dice or rerolls gained from Divine Favour.

One thing:
when using the Divine Favour Extra Attack, you normally roll in the extra dice you've bought as a freebie.
It occurs to me that this isn't straightforward.

The way that should work, probably, is just roll that big pool of dice and look for the highest - don't treat them as helping dice.

Example: I attack with my D10 Spear, D8 Weapon, and D6 Name. My result is 5. I then spend a Divine Favour for a D6, and improve it to 6. I then call in an Oath and get a D8 - this rolls a 1, but my roll is now 7.

I then spend 2 Divine Favour for a follow up attack, so I roll D10, 2D8, and 2d6, looking for the highest.
Then, if I choose, I can call in some more Helping dice - and only these dice then get the minimum +1 effect.

This isn't complicated at all, if you are doing what the book says: when you roll a helping die, pick up that die and roll it into your pool. So you should have in front of you exactly the amount of dice you've just rolled.

The other simple way would be to drop the rule of keeping the bonus dice bought on earlier rolls, it's a lot simpler. But I'm easy either way, or is there a third solution?

Good catch on the Divine Favor Dice.

So far the only thing I recall Divine Favor being used for in our game is Opening dice, so I have no direct experience with that.

But various commentary seems to indicate that the reroll all of your dice as part of the second go is pretty overwhelmingly good...so maybe, with this rule, the second attack should go back to base dice and start over?

If not, then definitely just treating those dice as "normal" dice and not helping dice is easier.

Valamir wrote:
To be clear what we're looking at is:
1) Name dice, Antagonist Assigned Free Ability Die, Weapons Dice rolled and read as normal.
2) Creative Ability dice, Advantage Dice, Helping Dice (for or from Oaths) provide a +1 each if they are not otherwise used as the "Result" die.

That definition doesn't include the Divine Favour-granted dice or rerolls.

Mybe this works:
2) All Bonus Dice,
where bonus dice are all those added to whatever the dice set is for a roll.

Hey, John.
When we try the rule, should we try that Advantage Die rule, too (they are Impaired with each use, and don't refresh)?

I've confirmed with my players that we'll be playing this for the next two Mondays.

Yeah. Do the impairment thing, too. Thanks, man.

Another thought has occurred to me:
Should the "minimum benefit +1" be a Heroes only thing, a special benefit to showcase the heroic nature of the PCs? (This may be what you intended, if so I've written a lot for no reason!)

The problem I'm about to illustrate applies in all the rules changes suggested in this thread - in fact, it might be a little bit worse in the ones which allow bigger bonuses than +1.

I'm also operating under the assumption that NPCs do get to use Creative Abilities, which may be wrong. The text refers to "you" and "heroes," so there's room to interpret it either way.

But if NPCs can use Creative Abilities, that means they have a boat load of extra potential +1's to use during a battle which will make a different to the duration of that fight, quite possibly pushing it to a longer duration than is interesting.

I know in the battles I've been running NPCs in, there's been quite a few situations (usually several in every battle) where an extra +1 or +2 would turn a hit into a miss, or vice-versa, but bonus dice weren't able to change the result because of several reasons:

• either it was later in the fight, and injuries made the reroll dice unable to reach the target,
• or it was late in the fight and the NPC had used it's d8 and higher abilities and so could not reach the necessray range any more,
• or it was any time in the fight and the result was just outside of the GMs reach,
• or a reroll was made and it just wasn't good enough.

In all of those cases a guaranteed +1 (or +2 from chaining two abilities - quite reasonable since I often spent two abilities to try) would have made the difference.

Because NPCs only stick around for the one battle, usually, there's no pressure to consider: "will I need this later? Or can I afford to take the extra interludes this will cost me?" So every ability on the sheet that you can think of narrating in usefully, all the way down to d4, can be used.

Since the percieved whiff factor is really to protect player experience of the game, there's no need for NPCs to get this benefit. NPCs already operate differently from PCs in a number of ways, so it's no great stretch, and is probably a better solution than giving GMs advice not to go crazy on using traits.

What do you think?

Actually Darren, my gut is leaning the other way.  I think having the NPCs (not minions) take advantage of the +1 Helping dice rule is perfectly acceptable...otherwise they'll become fairly impotent.  You'll have Antagonist whiffing instead of player whiffing and heroes will roll over NPCs in short order.

Whiffing isn't about failure...or even the frequency of failure.  Whiffing is about failure, that's totally out of your control.  Nothing you could have done would have had any significant impact on success...its just plain ole luck...that's a whiff.

Giving both sides the ability to get the +1 should work fine, because while the NPCs are now HARDER to defeat (than if they didn't get it) its still well within the player's ability to influence.  Its not bad luck that caused the hero to failure, its that the player decided that winning wasn't worth the amount of Impairment it would take to swing the victory.  Before this rule the player could decide that winning WAS worth the Impairment but the odds were so unlikely that he failed anyway...a whiff.  But WITH this rule, since each step gets you marginally closer you're limited only by the amount of resources you're willing to burn.

Now one caveat I'll throw in here, is that players may need to make their resources last over multiple objectives, where a GM is free to burn all of an NPCs resources in the battle...so an NPC is free to burn far more than a hero.  But since there would typically be more Heroes (and hense more resources) than NPCs I'm thinking that will balance out.  If not, then it might be useful to charge the Antagonist Strife to Impair more than 1 ability per contest...but I'd rather avoid fiddly stuff like that if possible.

I agree with Ralph.

And to be totally clear: NPCs can use Creative Abilities.

Thanks for clearing up that point, John.

I'm still a bit worried about the NPC's getting +1, and this is why: Under this approach, a default NPC with no abilities raised above d6 now has access to around 32 automatic +1's, a fair proportion of which you'll be able to find a way to narrate in - short of some instruction which says, "don't go crazy with creative abilities," and I think that's a flawed approach because every Antagonist will interpret it differently.

I think the antagonist wiffing isn't likely to be as serious. NPCs would just have to be careful about when they use their D8 and above traits, and most of the time, that sea of d4 and d6 abilities will sit there unused. While PCs have to conserve their resources, NPCs don't - and this effectively simulates that, by making only a small proportion of the NPCs traits available for effective use for such boosting.

There, I've explained my worries. I'm pretty pumped about getting to play again on Monday, and I might have a new monstrosity to add the NPC thread afterwards (one of my players lurks hereabouts, so I don't want to post it yet).

Valamir wrote:
Whiffing isn't about failure...or even the frequency of failure.  Whiffing is about failure, that's totally out of your control.  Nothing you could have done would have had any significant impact on success...its just plain ole luck...that's a whiff.

Giving both sides the ability to get the +1 should work fine, because while the NPCs are now HARDER to defeat (than if they didn't get it) its still well within the player's ability to influence.  Its not bad luck that caused the hero to failure, its that the player decided that winning wasn't worth the amount of Impairment it would take to swing the victory.  Before this rule the player could decide that winning WAS worth the Impairment but the odds were so unlikely that he failed anyway...a whiff.  But WITH this rule, since each step gets you marginally closer you're limited only by the amount of resources you're willing to burn.

I totally understand your worries, Darren. But this needs actual play before we can start second guessing it. Speculation only helps so much. Yeah?

Yeah, that's fine.

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.

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.

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.

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.