Quote:
Originally Posted by BraselC5048
I just don't want players to decide to take insane (in odds) risks planning to buy success.
|
I ran a samurai campaign that featured Impulse Buys. I even had a special pool of points that were only for Impulse Buys (They could trade them in for CP, but two Impulse points gave you one CP, so it was a bad trade), so I was actively encouraging the use of Impulse Buys, and I found they rarely did what you describe.
Here's what generally happens: Say you'll succeed 90% of the time and you roll 100 times. If you want everything to succeed, success will cost you 10 points. If you succeed 10% of the time and you want to everything to succeed, success will cost you 90 points. Even if you expect CP to make up the shortfall, it always makes more sense to spend CP on your character and to try to make the rolls as reasonable as possible, because it will save you points in the long run.
I did sometimes see players take ridiculous risks and count on CP to save them. For example, a player had saved up like 20 points, over lots of time, to spend on Impulse Buys, and threw himself into a difficult battle with a powerful villain, and relied on Flesh Wounds and Impulse Buys to survive the fight. But this was
out of desperation. It was because he could find no other option. And this is how the fight actually looked: He would take a devastating blow and know he was dead, but Flesh Wound it away. He would fail a roll, and buy a success. And with each spent point, he knew he was closer to defeat. Each time, he knew that he should have been defeated, and this hammered home how absolutely lethal this fight was. In the end, he retreated. I think he burned 5 of his points, and saw that he wouldn't make it and cut his losses. He didn't try to force events with his Impulse Buys.
In practice, they tend to make up short fall, and tend to emphasize dramatic necessity. They don't generally allow the ridiculous to happen. It's possible, but you can refuse points, and throwing yourself into absolutely stupid situations tends to result in lots of critical failures (and it costs 2 CP to turn a crit into a failure, and another to turn the failure into a success, so you're looking at 3 CP if you're being TRULy stupid. Remember, failure by 10 is a critical failure, so attempting something with a skill of 3 has a substantial chance at a critical failure...)
I wouldn't worry about it. Just allow impulse buys! Look through the book, see their advice, and build your "realism" in other ways, like lower point totals or the removal of cinematic options (like Gunslinger). That's my advice.