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What do Hero Points in contests exactly do?


Chiarina

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Sorry for asking such a beginners question, but I´m on and off confused about the effect of Hero Points spent in contests.

Do they always bump up the degree of success or failure (critical failure to failure / failure to success / success to critical success)?

Or are there occasions, too, when they improve the degree of success (marginal victory to minor victory, for example)?

Edited by Chiarina
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10 minutes ago, Chiarina said:

Do they always bump up the degree of success or failure (critical failure to failure / failure to success / success to critical success)?

Generally yes.  And as a consequence that changes/improves the level of victory.  For instance, you rolled a fumble, the difficulty was a success - that's a major defeat. Applying a Hero point here bumps your roll to a failure, so not it's only a defeat. (Generally applying a Hero Point there doesn't really help you unless you're in an Extended Contest and it keeps you from dying.)  If you rolled a success vs. the difficulty with a success, but the difficulty had the higher roll so you're at a marginal defeat, a Hero point bumps you to critical, and now you go from defeat to a minor victory.

15 minutes ago, Chiarina said:

Or are there occasions, too, when they improve the degree of success (marginal victory to minor victory, for example)?

As above, that is a consequence of shifting your result.

There is one case (Group Simple contest), where the Hero Point spent only goes to bumping up the final victory level, not the specific individual result.

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2 hours ago, Chiarina said:

I was irritated exactly about the Group Simple Contest. Thanks for your help.

The reason it stands out is that if everyone applies a Hero Point, then very quickly it goes from a "contest" to "no contest" and becomes boring as there is no challenge.  It doesn't preclude using Hero Points within this format, but you have to think carefully about its use (and perhaps gauge how many Hero Points the heroes still have).

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I´m not able yet to discuss designer decisions, but I think, this problem is solved already by requesting more than one heropoint for a simple group contest, isn´t it? However, the simple group contest is extraordinarily in more than one aspect: You have to announce the use of hero points before rolling the die, the hero points don´t modify the succes but the level of victory and, last but not least, the hero points don´t help you, if you´re rolling a failure.

In my eyes, that´s a surprising anomaly in an otherwise consistently designed game... (I´m sure, I missed something...).

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2 hours ago, Chiarina said:

You have to announce the use of hero points before rolling the die, the hero points don´t modify the succes but the level of victory and, last but not least, the hero points don´t help you, if you´re rolling a failure.

In my eyes, that´s a surprising anomaly in an otherwise consistently designed game... (I´m sure, I missed something...).

I suspect it was a case where they discovered that the individual use of HP's during the contest quickly shifted the results to an easy victory for the heroes, and had to come up with an alternative.  Personally, I don't feel it's an effective solution so I don't use it.  I think the better solution is just to increase the level of difficulty.

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