Stacking Assists

Benediction is a Spell Bonus
Distract Opponent is a ALLY Bonus
Asset Ally is an Ally Bonus

All 3 should stack.

John
Talents from allies count as an ally bonus John. Your ally’s Distract Opponent stacks with your talents.

There are several problems with this.

1) Assist Ally (a combat action which requires no invest,don’t other than a speed 3 action) now overrides just about any ‘aid ally’ type Talent a character might invest in, such as Insoirational Performance, Distract Opponent, Exploit Weakness, Leadership, Inspirational Presence, and others.

2) If this is true of spells, then there is a whole new stacking issue with spells stacking, etc.

John

I have a stacking question:

Do runes stack with unique magic items?

I’m not going to take a side on this discussion one way or another because, to be honest, I don’t care. That is to say, I have no real investment in it… as a player I’ve found that it rarely comes into play for me. And, more importantly, as a judge, I never take the time to request how a player rolled a 45 on his attack roll and just assume that his attribute die exploded a lot. He may have a +9 to hit or he may have added +15 due to some stacking of effects. I don’t ask. It would slow the table down too much. Instead, I just roll with the flow of the table and make adjustments, accordingly so that the players enjoy the adventure as much as possible.

What I will do, however, is make a statement that most/all of us reading this thread already know… due to the nature of the system, bonuses to a skill could be extremely impactful. That is, as average skill bonuses increase during a character’s lifetime, so to do the average targets he needs to achieve. And due to the bell curve ingrained into the mechanics, if that target is near the apex of the curve (which it tends to be) then each bonus pushing you over the edge of the curve has up to an approximately 8% increase in your likelihood of success. Therefore, allowing stacking to go unchecked will lead to an increased number of situations where one optimized group ‘cake-walks’ an encounter and another less optimized group finds it nearly impossible to succeed. And we all know where those situations lead… less player enjoyment, power creep, increased difficulty in writing encounters, etc. But by keeping a tighter hold on the possible range of bonuses that any single roll could have, you limit those situations. Yes, that leads to my ability that I invested resources into being potentially ‘nullified’ by your ability that you invested resources into, or vice versa. But not all abilities can be universally helpful. If I were the game designer, I’d try to err on the side of game balance, with the belief that the short-term irritation would be less detrimental to the game as a whole than the long-term effects of the other solution.

I now return you to your regularly-scheduled debate.

Scott

Edit: Okay, I guess I lied… Personally, I think that the “Ally” category should be removed, entirely. And in the handful of edge cases where a bonus comes from an ally, but not from one of the other pre-defined sources, then those rare situations need to be clarified and everything else will fall into place.

What I will do, however, is make a statement that most/all of us reading this thread already know… due to the nature of the system, bonuses to a skill could be extremely impactful.

I Absolutely agree with you Scott. You make a good point. Unchecked stacking is certainly a threat to the mechanics of the system. My concern is that when the stacking rules are read, or erratad, in such a way that a coopertion based build is sub-optimal that we risk a return to self=centered builds and and a ‘look how much damage I can do’ type arms race. Now, if backed into a situation where I have to pick my poison I’d chose to error on the side of restricting staking.

However, I think there is a simpler solution that both keeps stacking from going unchecked, that doesn’t gimp a certain type of build. I’d propose that you can stack anything, from any source, upto a maximum +4 to hit, +4 to damage, and/or a single die bump. Such a maximum modifier rule is simple to understand, dosen’t require judges or players to audit each dice roll, and allows for stacking. While at the same time the stacking in check to a reasonable degree. If that is too liberal then I’d also support the same rule with a +3 to hit, +3 to damage cap.

I know that this would require another Errata to the Errata document. But I am curious if this solution would take care of everybody’s concerns.

Now it appears to be “Spells from Allies don’t stack with spells from yourself, nor do they stack with Talents from Allies, nor being assisted by Allies.”

JohnDon’t you think that’s too restrictive that a spell could not stack for 2 reasons?

Should the errata say “self spells” instead of “spells”?

But what is the goal of making the rules of stacking so complex? I mean my impression of the typical Arcanis player is that they are exceptionally bright. If we can’t figure it out without resorting excessive debate, then maybe simpler is better. Or at least more elegant.

So, how much of a modifier is too much? +3? +4? +20? We all have a point at which we think that there is something fishy going on. Why not reach a consensous on that number and just apply a hard cap?

Am I reading it wrong? Right now the errata allows a spell cast by an ally to stack with a spell cast by oneself, as long as they aren’t the same spell, correct?