[Torg] Possibility Spending

[Benjamin Grant]

>See, the P-rated bad guy has the option of spending Possibilities for
>re-rolls in exactly the same way that the PCs do. That means that
>either the PCs have to allow him to get extra die rolls (that is, not
counter)
>or the NPC can simply burn all his Possibilities to force the PCs to lose
>about a third of their Possibilities.

I have been thinking about this issue and discussing it with another member
of our gaming group.  This is a very real issue.  We discussed many possibly
fixes, such as escalating costs and such - but this is the idea we are
"floating" for now:

:: After a roll, you can choose to spend a possibility for a reroll.  Any
opponent can choose to spend a possibility to cancel the possibility you
just spent.  You then may spend one further possibility for a reroll which
cannot be cancelled. ::

So the following are the sum total of possible options:

-Someone does not spend a possibility on getting a reroll.
-Someone does spend a possibility on a reroll, and no one spends a
possibility to cancel it.
-Someone does spend a possibility on a reroll, and someone else spends a
possibility to cancel it.  The original person chooses to forego any further
options.
-Someone does spend a possibility on a reroll, and someone else spends a
possibility to cancel it.  The original person chooses to spend one more
possibility, gaining his reroll.  No one else may cancel this (second)
possibility. 

This preserves the right of the original actor to counter the counter, while
it preserves the right of the responder to make the original actor's life
more difficult.  This is also balanced because the all active rolls, whether
offensive or defensive, may partake of this.

In further discussion, we also thought the following guideline to be worth
considering:

:: In any scene with a major conflict, the villains' side should have a
fixed number of possibilities that that side has access to, depending on the
dramatic quality of the scene.  All scenes involving possibility rated
villains are dramatic, but some are epic, movie-ending kind of scenes.  For
regular dramatic scenes, the villains' side has access to one times the
number of possibility rated heroes (PC or NPC) on the heroes side this
scene.  For epic dramatic scenes, that number is multiplied by three.  So if
3 PCs are accompanied by an equally powerful NPC fighting on their side, the
villains' side would have access to either 4 or 12 possibilities this scene,
depending on whether the drama was epic culminating drama or not. If the
villains' side has a certain number of possibilities, it is up to the GM to
decide whether or not to divvy them up before the start of the conflict, or
to keep them as a general pool that all villains can play from. ::

Now, the differentiation of "normal dramatic scenes" from "epic dramatic
scenes" may not be necessary, but our game has a special issue - I think we
have more possibility-rated characters than most games, as our game is a
superhero game and every super has possibilities.  This makes (I believe)
according to Torg every conflict involving a super opponent a dramatic
scene.  Of course, I suppose the GM could simply house rule that out, so
that just because we are fighting a super we aren't necessarily having what
Torg calls a dramatic scene.  If that change were applied so that only
certain scenes involving supers invoked a dramatic (according to Torg)
scene, then the above guideline would be rewritten to say that the
possibilities the baddies have access to would be equal to the number of
possibility-rated characters on the hero's side in a non-dramatic scene, and
three times that in a dramatic scene.

So I guess I would like to know if anyone thinks if using the above rules
and ideas will cause our group any problems? If so, what and why, and what
might be the solutions?

Thanks.

-Benn Grant
eFix Computer Consulting
benn at 4eFix.com
603.283.6601