Re: Mechanical discussion

[Baelon Drakeson]

Maybe. I've never rolled on the table before. All I know for sure is that there's a definite chance that a bonus die jumps you from a good result to a bad one, which, given the rarity of rolls, kind of makes a poor return on investment.

While a particular bonus die may put you at a bad result, having bonus dice reduces the probability of a bad result.

That's also the big power of have a godswood - on average only a slight boost (+1) and with high odds (somewhere between 25 and 30%) of lowering your roll, but is optional.
If cherry-picking on House Fortunes were allowed, it would make the godswood hardly worth the 5 wealth it costs - it would be a huge gamble to use it except in those rare circumstances that you cannot guarantee a good result from your rolled dice.

[Daveth Coldbrook]

Oooooh. Is it? I hadn't realised. I thought the big power of the Godswood was that it was half the price of the *reliable* +1 from an Artisan. So, are the artisan and mine optional as well? Is that the big power of holdings?

Edit: Ah, wait, I think I get it! If it says 'add X to the result', it's optional, after you roll. If it says 'grants a +X bonus to rolls', it's mandatory. Is that right?

[Baelon Drakeson]

That is, at least, how I interpreted it.

A Godswood is basically a Sept minus a Maester. The Sept has the advantage of being able to stack with a maester (for another +3 and a second valuable character);
what does the godswood + maester combo have to compare? The high-risk/high-reward bonus is hardly worth 5 wealth on its own;
the bonus plus the flexibility definitely is. It's basically a second chance to avoid a bad result, but no guarantee (and can make matters worse).

EDIT for clarity:
The text reads: "
Having a godswood allows you to..."
(emphasis added)
'Allows' is generally only used in contexts where the opposite is possible;
the fact that the wording is different from all of the other wealth benefits seems indicative of a difference in mechanics as well.
It easily could have followed the more common verbage of 'gain' or 'add'.

[Baelon Drakeson]

Vital announcment.

1d6ro1 lets you reroll 1s once. I know this is a topic some of you care about deeply! It works for any roll, just just roX (x= number to reroll) instead of rX.

I was just looking into this, and unfortunately it does not let you limit how many 1s are rerolled, it just prevents a die from being rerolled a second time.
Whether or not such rerolls of rerolls are allowed was a matter of some debate in BitW, but that's not really the point (nor was it really the point there).
The issue is that if Baelon used the ro1 extension for Attractive on a persuasion(charm) roll, it could give him up to 6 rerolls (1 per die), 3 times as many as he should get.
Not as bad as the r1 extension which essentially gives unlimited rerolls, but still not quite right.

Further, if memory serves the majority consensus over in BitW was that a rerolled die could be rerolled so long as there were eligible rerolls remaining;
if that is the chosen interpretation (I don't remember which side of that fence Reader came down on, which is what would matter here), ro1 would also be problematic in hat it would deny eligible rerolls as well.

In short (too late!) we probably shouldn't use ro1 for Attractive and similar effects.

[Loreia]

To spar is practice, so yield will come with no consequences other than admitting defeat, at least when you fight me.

Well, yielding means the loser gets to determine the consequence (and the winner chooses whether or not to accepts it).
If there is an unexpected defeat (i.e. reduced to 0 health) I want to make sure that it is no worse.

It's not that Baelon the character doesn't trust Lorreia the character on this, it's that I (the player) just saw a deadly training 'accident' and don't want any 'accidents' in a for-fun sparring match right before the joust.

You can spar like me and Yoren were doing, telling blows marking the impact areas but doing no damage.

The thing in this system is that most sparring weapons are little more than some sticks bound together, hurt like an arrow through the knee but do little damage.

As long as we're not fighting with Vicious weapons, you are "
removed from combat"
when your hp drops to zero. We can simply call it nonlethal damage for a sparring match, and have an understanding between the PC participants that there won't be any killing, maiming or ransoming. Those are 'common' consequences, meaning they're not written in stone. Athelstan had to choose to kill Rodrric, so as long as we don't choose consequences we should be fine. At the end of combat, you recover your health.

[Yoren longshore]

I know this is an abstract concept in this system, but about how much is 1 population? Are we talking of twenty people or a hundred people? I have found no mention of this in the rulebook, but I would like to know, as it gives you a certain perspective of how big the house really is...

[Athelstan]

Farmstead or a Thorpe worth of people, which is to say a big family

[Theomore Tullison]

A unit of peasant levies costs 2 population, which may make it at least 50, but since not all the population is likely to be called up into the levy..it could be as much as 200 maybe.

However, since 70 population is like all of Westeros..take such math with a grain of salt. I'm taking the assumption of 70=all of Westeros with a few barrels, personally.

[Baelon Drakeson]

It does not translate easily to absolute numbers;
it is not a linear scale.

Consider that (per the chart on pg 101) 31-40 is "
Modest population. At least one town and several small hamlets."
but approximately twice that (61-70) is "
All or nearly all of Westeros."


Westeros clearly has more than two towns and twice-several small hamlets. :;
):

[Yoren longshore]

Fair enough :;
):

[Theomore Tullison]

On the contrary, it's a linear scale.

Except it's meant to be something else than a linear scale.

[Reader]

Safe just to write that table off as an error, unless it's supposed to be a log scale. :;
):

Theo's suggestion to base it off converting to Warfare units seems like a sane starting point, but I haven't sat down to check implied populations and check if this makes sense.

[Yoren longshore]

Well, the issue with using soldiers to caculate this using soldiers is that it is only about ten percent of able bodies that may join in wars, of course depending on the lands fertility.
That is not to say that calculating using levies would not be a great idea(it is) only that we would have to take into account the infirm and the women etc.

[Baelon Drakeson]

On the contrary, it's a linear scale.

Except it's meant to be something else than a linear scale.

I'm not really sure what you mean. I see no linear scales on the population resource tables.
The chart on pg 101 is hard to graph, as it is descriptive rather than absolute, but more often than not doubling the resource does not double the described population, so whatever relationship is there, it is not linear. The chart on pg 109 is a bell curve, albeit 'stepped' because it is in ranges rather than contiguous.

Or do you mean the relationship between population and how many levies you can get out of it? That is linear, but trying to do otherwise would be one nightmare of a game mechanic, so that is not a good guide.

Safe just to write that table off as an error, unless it's supposed to be a log scale. :;
):

That's what I was thinking, but it's hard to quantify from those descriptions, it could be an exponential or (odd) quadratic instead.

Theo's suggestion to base it off converting to Warfare units seems like a sane starting point, but I haven't sat down to check implied populations and check if this makes sense.

It doesn't scale well - i was thinking that as well, but even at Theo's maximum of 200 per pop, that means you hit diminishing returns on population when you exceed 8,000 people (40x200). That is far too few, especially as that 200 is including those too elderly, young, or infirm to be levied.

[Reader]

Solution - hand wave it, apologies if this is imprecise Yoren.

If someone cooks up sensible numbers I'm open to suggestions.

[Baelon Drakeson]

Solution - hand wave it, apologies if this is imprecise Yoren.

If someone cooks up sensible numbers I'm open to suggestions.

I suspect that's what GR had in mind in the first place;
actual population size is not going to be generally relevant compared to what there are in terms of population centers.

[Kevan Lyras]

I just now realized that with Blood of the Andals, I can reroll one dice of the chosen ability everytime I roll:

"
As well, choose one ability in which you have 3 or more ranks. Whenever you test this ability, you may reroll a single die. You must take the result of the second roll, even if it’s worse than the first."

If I have a test bonus dice in this ability test as well (i.e. fighting 4, long blades 1b) I should ALWAYS reroll the lowest value, if it is lower than before it will get dropped anyway due to the bonus die, and if it is higher, I have a higher roll. Correct or am I missing something?

[Theomore Tullison]

Sounds quite right, yes. But if you are rolling without bonus dices, then the reroll could be risky. And if the bonus dice is a high number, and you use a destiny point to turn it into a test dice, you may not want to reroll it either.

[Baelon Drakeson]

I just now realized that with Blood of the Andals, I can reroll one dice of the chosen ability everytime I roll:

"
As well, choose one ability in which you have 3 or more ranks. Whenever you test this ability, you may reroll a single die. You must take the result of the second roll, even if it’s worse than the first."

If I have a test bonus dice in this ability test as well (i.e. fighting 4, long blades 1b) I should ALWAYS reroll the lowest value, if it is lower than before it will get dropped anyway due to the bonus die, and if it is higher, I have a higher roll. Correct or am I missing something?

Yep, so long as you are rolling at least one bonus die it essentially gives you +1B to your favorite attribute.

On it's own that's not that great;
what makes BoA such a powerful benefit (in my opinion) is the once per day +2 on any test after the roll. That can really save your bacon - shifting a critical failure to a regular failure, or a failure to a success, or getting one more DoS in clutch situations. (Ser Theomore has already gotten some good use out of that, as have several others). It is definitely the most versatile of the 'Blood of the...' benefits, though perhaps not as consistently useful as Blood of Dorne in a fight or Blood of Valyria in an intrigue. They will be useful in their areas more often, but BoA is useful when it matters most, regardless of what kind of test.

[Theomore Tullison]

For a persuasion 4 character, the reroll from BoA (Persuasion) is not far behind in effect to the +2 from BoV.

BoV just lifts up the roll in general, BoA becomes very effective when you get a low roll into the test dices, Theo's persuasion got bumped by +5 in the burden of leadership. It's sort of like, a diminishing effect. It's +2 for specialties with no rank, +1.5 where you have one rank, and +1.2 where you have two. Also of note is that you can make a judgement call based on the TN, if it's 9 and you roll an 11, with 3 as the lowest number, you could re-roll that, worst case you get a 1, and make the TN exactly. But if you get a 6, you get +1 DoS. With a +2, you're stuck just short of +1 DoS. Only applies for cases where you keep all rolled dice ofc.

The advantage with the daily bonus is that you can use it to boost a roll with an ability not among your strongest, If Raff's little shenanigans hadn't made Theo win the pageantry anyway, the BoA +2 would still have secured victory by total die roll. And It saved the burden of leadership glory for Theo on day 3.

[Baelon Drakeson]

True, I did not mean to imply that reroll was not good at all. It is just as good as adding an unkept die if you already have at least one. However, the +2 from BoV is never going to be worth less on average, and it changes the possibility space - a Persuasion 4 character with a BoA reroll has the possibility of critical failing on a TN 9 test (though they would have to be very unlucky), and no matter how lucky they are they can get only 2 DoS on a TN 15 test. With the +2 from BoV however, no matter how unlucky they cannot critically fail the TN 9 test, and with luck can get a 3rd DoS on the TN 15 test.

Just the reroll vs BoV, I think BoV wins. Add in the floating +2 though and I think BoA is overall better, mechanically speaking.

BoV is so much more flavorful though. I mean, we have what, at least 4 or 5 characters with BoA? Andalspawn are everywhere. BoV is reserved for a more distinct type of character... one with FIRE in their blood...

[Theomore Tullison]

I've played so many BoV characters as of late that I wanted something else.

[Lady Corrine Marsten]

And so became Cullen. I approve! :;
):

[Theomore Tullison]

I've only played Origins though, can't say there's any similarities with that Cullen. Though I understand he has a larger role in later installments.

[Lady Corrine Marsten]

I've only played Origins though, can't say there's any similarities with that Cullen. Though I understand he has a larger role in later installments.

Yeah, he's in DA2, and is a romance option in Inquisition. *sigh*

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