In another thread, Eero said:

Eero wrote:
For your concerns, I direct you to check out the resource odds the system of TSOY provides for players. There is one important factum in the system, you see: player characters win, if they want to. They win by buying bonus dice, using gift dice, going into BDTP... if you're a player character, you can win, and the only question is how much you pay to do it.

Following the setup in the book, SGC's pools are halved. Because of the lack of pool points, they're at a serious disadvantage: They cannot buy off harm with pool points as often as PCs (the PC hits have more permanence). This is a great disadvantage for the SGCs.

Changing intentions in BDtP can lead to situations where the SGC can only do parallel actions as well. Also, no-one is better than you in everything (at least that's the case with TSoY), so by changing intentions, you might get into a situation where you can more easily apply your highest rates skill (which is good for you, especially when combined with the pool point issue above).

That said, getting SGCs to the "right" level of competence is hard.

Also, if a PC loses big time, they can expend advances on the spot to improve their chance for success. As SGCs don't normally have advances to spend or keys to burn for XP/advances, this is an additional advantage for PCs (but this may lead to Eeros point of winning if you want to – your character will change, which might be perceived as a price to pay).

Also, do not underestimate gift dice. You cannot rely on them, but they are a very helpful resource.

Unfortunately, I cannot answer the burn rate question.

About gifting dices, I have seen a lot of difference depending on the social behavior at the table.

I mean: if the players CAN ask for gift dices from the other players, they usually get them (it would be "unfriendly" to refuse), and when you have a lot of players this can mean even 4-5 bonus dices. With so many, it's really easy to get a roll of +3 or at least +2 when you need it.

If, instead, it's not considered "good form" for the players to ask for gift dices, and they have to be gifted spontaneusly by the other players (like Fan Mail in PTA), they become really "gift", given only when the other players really care about the character's victory.

A nice rules twist I saw about gift dice was that they need to be gifted before dice are rolled, whereas you can buy bonus dice with pool points and activate gifts after that first roll as well. This makes for a nice distinction between group approval and improved effort. In the groups I played with, gift dice never came about as pity dice, but if they do more often than not, consider this small variant.

If you still have the feeling it's more about the gift dice than about the abilities of the characters, reduce the number of gift dice (halving them might be a good shot). Both variants are subject to acceptance by your group, of course.

The rate of refresh is actually a pretty interesting "deep question", because it varies so much between characters and groups. The key idea is that the default way of using Pool is actually pretty slow in leaching a character of Pool points. If a character does not have a Secret that burns major points, you'll see only few Refresh scenes. Then again, larger Secrets have the opposite effect. The eponymous canonical example is the Secret of Mighty Blow, which burns easily through five points per BDTP, minimum. Stack a character with a couple of expensive Secrets, and the situation changes completely.

This is a weird interaction, because there's not obvious dramaturgical reason for expensive Secrets to be a cause for breather scenes. I guess it comes down to simple player preference - just like in D&D, you can choose whether you'll be a wizard that burns brightly for a while, or a fighter who performs averagely whole day long. Or something like that. Anyway, the point is that if you're seeing too little Refreshment for your tastes, sell your players on some expensive Secrets.

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For the PC power question, perhaps I should specify that, obviously, player characters won't win anything and everything stacked against them. They can, however, win anything with equal Ability ranks, and have a decent shot against slightly higher ability. Of course part of this depends on the local habits - in our games it's typical that players throw lots of gift dice at each other, and characters frequently help each other in conflicts. This results in a highly flexible resource environment where, indeed, characters have deep pockets and can outspend their opposition with the help of their friends, if they deem the conflict important enough. If resource options are to the scarce side, I can see how a PC can simply not have anything to draw on, especially at the beginning when they don't have an Advance breadth to fall back on.

Also, a high Ability, enough Pool and Secret of Mighty Blow is one of the most powerful raw-power combinations in the game. A character with Mighty Blow will win anything he can apply it to, once. I would forecast defeat for a player character who went into that fight without a significant edge in Ability or some way of draining opponent Pools.

For your duel, try these things next time:
- Cause conditional penalty dice for the opponent. Disarming him would be worth the two-die penalty, I would think, for example. An NPC often won't have any way of counteracting penalty dice, and two penalty dice are worth almost two ability ranks, putting the PC ahead as long as the adverse condition remains. Won't of course help when the opponent gets that one lucky roll he needs to activate Mighty Blow.
- Make it difficult to use the Mighty Blow: depending on the cultural conditions, using the Secret might be perceived as being against the rules of an honorable duel, as it's clearly of malicious, uncontrolled and harmful intent. Highly conditional strategy, though.

Not very good tricks, but then, you can't win them all. Sometimes the PC has to give and come back another time with a plan. Now the player knows what to expect from this NPC, so he can prepare for it. Get something to leech that Vigor Pool, and things start quickly looking much less bleak.

Thanks for all the advice guys, I'll be bearing it all in mind for my next session.