So, Risky Actions, in essence, let characters do things that they normally can’t do, but that other characters can. I was thinking about a few things that the existing Risky Action options don’t cover, but that some characters can do. Here are my thoughts for some new Risky Actions:
Boost or Hinder using your Mid die. That mod is persistent and exclusive.
Recover using your Mid die.
Gain a Minion. The Minion’s size is equal to that of your Min die. Choose which one Basic Action it can take. It acts at the start of your turn, and goes away at the end of the current Scene. You can only have one such Minion at a time.
Risky Actions are generally equivalent to a Green ability, so the first of those is fine, and the third is probably fine even at a Mid die (using the Minion-Maker table, otherwise it’s too random).
I’m not as crazy about allowing unlimited Recover for anyone at any time. It’s probably not “unbalanced” but it’s bad for game flow given the rest of the game’s design.
The other problem is complexity. Opening up that many possible Risky Actions adds a lot of possibility space, so if players are thinking about too many options all the time, things could bog down.
True. At first, I didn’t want to use that table because I thought it would be too much of a hassle to look up, but now I see that it makes it more balanced.
Well, it’s not completely unlimited; you still get a Minor Twist. But yeah, I agree. Recover isn’t a super dynamic action, and goes against the ticking-clock nature of the game. I could always change it to “Recover with your Min die.”
I see what you mean. However, these are Risky Actions, so players won’t be thinking about them incredibly often.
In actual practice, though, I think I’d probably only offer these to my players if they specifically asked for a way to do one of them.
Seems sensible. That’s my usual approach on all Risky Actions anyway, and none of these new ideas look overly strong. I might worry a bit about bigfooting another hero’s schtick if they were getting used a lot - eg if you have a Minion-Maker hero, be careful of letting other folks make them with risky actions too often, or if you have a hero built to do healing be careful about allowing risky Recoveries - but odds are it won’t be an issue. A “risky minion” is going to be pretty weak compared to what a real MM’s minions can do, so less impetus to bother taking the twist for one, and similarly a healer should be able to handle playing medic.
True. The rules do state, though, that the GM should discourage players from using any Risky Action frequently, because Abilities are supposed to be a hero’s standard tools, whereas Risky Actions are for if a hero really needs to do something he or she normally cannot. Besides, I would imagine that the other players would not appreciate you wracking up Twists very often.
And beyond that, you’re limited to only a single Minion at a time. One Minion is likely to not change the tide of battle very much. It could go down in a single hit.
Yeah, they’re intended to be more of a situational “power stunt” kind of thing most of the time. If a player really wants to do the same trick over and over again I’d probably suggest they rewrite their character a bit to have a suitable Ability to do the job, working with them for a custom homebrew one if nothing in their Source/Archetype lists will do the job.
I’m used to a pretty high-Twist play environment, but we usual take them to use Yellow/Red Abilities early rather than on Risky Actions. That, or nearly-botched Overcomes, of course.