Just started trying to learn the rules and need help understanding how doom and momentum works in struggles in action scenes and out side of them.
As I understand it, doom is not generated by failed d20 rolls in a struggle,
they only count as complications? If that’s true, it means that doom can not be added to the doom pool when a player fails a d20 roll in a struggle, right?
Further more as I understand how momentum works in struggles is that the momentum thats left when the winner is declared is not added into the momentum pool for the players?
I’m not sure where you’re getting the idea that failed d20 rolls generate Doom - Doom mainly comes from Complications, from NPC Momentum, and from players choosing to add to Doom to buy dice (and a couple of other things).
You’re correct about how Momentum works in a Struggle, however.
As I understood it, in Struggles, if both parties are generating Momentum it basically cancels each other out. So if party A generates 3 Momentum and party B generates 2 Momentum in a Struggle, the resulting Momentum is 1 for party A and 0 for party B. I might be wrong though.
I think I got it from that In standard skill tests, the DM can choose to instead of giving a complication to the players in faild d20 rolls the DM can choos to place doom in the doom pool?
Ok, so if there is mounetum left at a defensive struggle in combat for the winner, then the mouentum must be used by winner at once at the attack, to, for example, buy more damage? And if the mouentum is not used, it will be lost after the turn is over?
yes, I have also understood it like that, but what happens to the momentum that remains?
It seems that the mouentum that occurs in struggels can not be saved in the moumentum pool for the players if the players win the struggle, and for the NPCs the momentum can not go in to the doom pool if
if the NPCs win the struggle?
Players can always bank (up to 6) momentum in the group pool at the end of that players turn. Again there is a max of 6 momentum in the group pool, and 1 disappears at the end of each round.
understood what I had missed, I thought that all failed d20 rolls created complications, but now I see that its only 20 and in some cases 19 that creates complications.
But then the question becomes, what happens to a complication in a defense struggle, is it put it in to the doom pool? and if its not put in to the doom pool, what happens to it?
First, a complication does not have to be Doom, though it can. It could also be a combatant dropping their weapon (or even breaking), somebody slipping and falling, etc… Most important though is that it does not take effect until the action is resolved. So if I attack and succeed, but also roll a complication, the complication will not take effect until after the attack. So maybe my sword gets stuck in my opponent and is ripped from my grasp as the enemy falls dead.
So in the case of a defensive struggle, the complication has no impact on who wins, it will take effect afterwards and that could include paying 2 Doom into the Doom pile.
Generated Doom always goes to the Doom pile as there is no limit to the amount that can be contained in that pile.
What happens to the opponents momentum if the players lose a defensive struggle when the player is the attacker? Is that momentum added to the doom pool?
Yes. So lets say a Player attacks an NPC. The NPC decides to parry (struggle) and both have a difficulty of 1. The Player rolls 2 successes, but the NPC rolls 3 successes. The attack by the Player fails and generates no momentum. The NPC generates 1 doom and it goes to the doom pool.
I see that the rules as written are to compare momentum in struggles after equaling the difficulty for both sides, but this seems to give a lot of situations where defence ends up having no impact on an outcome- for example, 1 success on defence will have no impact if the attacker misses (difficulty 1 negates the success, so no momentum) or if the attacker is a player and exactly meets the difficulty (ties resolve in players’ favour) or in any situation where the attacker scores one or more momentum beyond their difficulty (the defender has no momentum to reduce the attacker’s momentum). This last result is the most troubling, as it certainly looks and feels like the defender’s success should somewhat mitigate the attack, especially given defence is a finite resource, often paid for with Doom.
In my group we’ve (accidentally) ended up comparing successes directly, then removing the difficulty from the attacker if they have more, which seems more intuitive.
