Some help with Figuring out Extended Conflict pools

[heathd666]

So for this saturdays adventure of M-Space the players are on a mining colony on a moon with a habitat dome and the mining town is made to be kind of synth western. the antagonist has the mine foremans daughter held in his mansion and the players need to fly with their shuttle over to the house lower someone down to get her and than get out alive. i am envisioning 3 conflict here. so 3 sets of conflict pools. the first would be stealthfully getting the small shuttle over the house without attracting any attention in late afternoon. The second part would be in lowering someone down in a harness with a laser torch to cut through the window bars and get the girl out and haul her back up. complications can arise if they are seen there will be retaliation probably gunfire etc. the third part will be in evading and escaping because by this time i am sure they have attracted some resistance, do you really think a bunch of murder hobos will do all this quietly without any attention? sounds easy right. i want to use the conflict pools that mythras and especially M-Space uses. im not sure how to incorporate the conflict pools and than what to do with them. also how do i incorporate more than 1 person into the conflict pools to keep everyone happy and feel like they are all doing something. i have 6 players but im guessing only 4 will be involved with this as the rest will be at a barn dance with the courtesan of the group. in the book its using characteristics as the conflict pools but im not sure what to use for the scenario i have planned.

 

my thoughts are this, 

for the first conflict pool it would be a players __________  as a pool? i would have someone on sensors rolling against the opposing using __________ pool  for ground based sentries? so the players would roll sensors (to see something coming /pilot to maneuver out of sight etc) skill and if they succeed they take away from the sentries pool. the sentries would roll their perception skill and if they win they take away from the players pool?

for the second conflict pool it would be the guy on the hoist in the harness using dexterity as his pool. and the sentries if they have not noticed them using their perception against the player ______ pool?

for the third one i am assuming it would just be a race.  any thoughts would be helpful. also is there a way for the results from one conflict to complicate or compliment the next pool. for example if they did really bad in the first conflict it adversly affected the second conflict which they do well at which than compliments the third conflict pool to help them. 

 

than for any advice, still new at this but learning

[clarence]

Ok, I'm not sure I fully understand the situation, but I'll give it a try. And remember, stacking several conflicts can be fun, but it's quite taxing on the characters. Compare it to running several fights in quick succession. 

Approaching the site with the ship: 

To avoid depleteing the pilot's Conflict Pools, I would make this a simple (hidden) skill roll or even assume it succeeds bar a fumbled roll. You do want them to arrive at the site after all. 

I would run the following two conflicts simultanously. One round for the pilot vs. the guards, then one round cutting the window open. And so on. 

Hovering the ship above the site without being detected and have the person dangling below in the right spot:

Conflict Pool: DEX x2

Skill: Pilot

Damage: 1d6

I would use the average INT x2 of the guards as the opposing Pool, with average Perception as the active skill. The reason for doubling the Pools, is that this Conflict contains the window-cutting. Preferrably, the guard's Pools shouldn't reach zero too quickly, as it will take away some of the challenge. 

Now, if the Pilot's Pool reaches zero first the guards have detected the ship and they start shooting. Within 2-3 rounds they will notice the person tethered to the ship and fire at him/her as well (and a backup PC sniper would be nice if this happens). 

(To increase the difficulty, every time the pilot's Pool is lowered the person cutting the bars will be unable to make a skill roll. A fumbled Pilot roll has the window-cutter take 1d4 hit point damage, as he's being slammed into the wall). 

Cutting the barred window while dangling under a ship:

Conflict Pool: DEX

Skill: Athletics or xx

Damage: 1d6

The opposing force here is the sturdiness of the bars. How difficult do you want it to be? For a normal difficulty, use a Pool of 11 and a "skill" of 50% (in this case, these values are an abstract representation of the bar's security level, including how well they were installed). 

For every successful roll, one bar is removed. The trick is to reduce the window's Pool to zero before the pilot's Pool reaches zero. As the last bar is removed it takes two more rounds to grab the person inside the room and raise them to the ship. Or they can be left dangling during the following pursue : )

Race from the site:

Normally, I use DEX as a Conflict Pool for races. Here, the pilot's DEX Pool is already lowered (or at zero) due to the previous conflict. So I would go for the average of INT+POW instead (unless you want the pilot in a really bad situation - use DEX in that case). 

Conflict Pool: INT+POW/2

Skill: Pilot

Damage: 1d6

The followers use the same. I would tie the number of followers to how good the guards performed in the first Conflict. If their Pool ended up at zero they are obviously not very active/skilled, and there will be low numbers of followers. Perhaps one follower per two Pool points they had left?

 

Every follower that reaches zero is out of the race (crashes or gives up). If everyone but the PC is at zero, the character's ship gets away. 

 

If the PCs Pool reaches zero, any remaining followers have caught up. This could mean a number of things: they are in firing range, the PC ship is forced to land, an even stronger force arrives (the sheriff?) and so on. This entirely depends on the scenario.

[heathd666]

awesome that is just what i was looking for. 3 quick follow up questions. 

1st i was under the thinking that you only used characteristics for conflict pools but you can use skills than?

2nd  if i am correct in understanding the conflict pools stay lowered until they "heal" back like hitpoints? i had not realized this as i thought it was a temporary pool just until the conflict was over with. if this is the case than those skills that are affected by said characteristic, in this case dex, would they be affected by the lowered characteristic?

3rd if approaching the ship they get a critical than i can have that add something to help them with the other 2 conflicts they are preparing to do, the lowereing the man down and the guy hanging from the rope?

[heathd666]

@Matt_E is the ebook, "Guidelines setting up tasks", a more thorough understanding of conflict pools? sorry if it isnt im still new to mythras and all and figuring out some of mythras fiddly parts still confuses me sometimes.

[clarence]

1. Only characteristics for Conflict Pools. Skills are used like 'weapons' to afflict damage to the Pools. 

2. Yes, Pools heal like hit points, only a bit faster. A lowered Pool will not lower correlated skills though. (A Pool reduced to half will result in a skill penalty however, but that's something else). 

3. Yes, that's exactly how I would do it : )

[heathd666]

thanks for the help clarence, im super excited about mythras and especially M-Space but i am afraid i am not as rules savvy as some of you here, and i dont always "get" things that seem simple so i appreciate the help.

[clarence]

No problem Heath! I'm just happy to help. 

Just a note: the rules for Tasks in Mythras and Extended Conflicts in M-SPACE are not related. They can be used in similar situations, but work slightly different.