There are 4 Momentum in the pool. Combat is ongoing. An NPC enemy attacks a Player Character as an action during its turn. Not having the Parry skill and with a Coordination of only 9 the player decides it would be wiser to utilize some other method of protecting themselves. He decides to use the Create Obstacle option and spending 2 Momentum increases the base difficulty of the enemy attack from D1 to D2. He describes this as attempting to dodge the incoming attack by spinning away.
This cant be done as the use of the momentum is not in itself a Reaction that can occur during an enemy’s turn.
This could have been declared and initiated during the player’s turn, anticipating the enemy’s attack when it occurred.
This use of momentum was not intended for combat situations and therefore cant be used this way.
This is perfectly legal but must be attached to a Reaction of some kind, momentum can only be spent when the character is acting after all. So the character would have to Parry but could increase the difficulty of the enemy’s attack as well with the momentum spend.
I don’t think immediate momentum spends are technically a reaction (you don’t need to spend doom like a reaction). Any character can simply spend the momentum from the pool whenever they deem appropriate for immediate momentum spends.
I don’t think there is anything wrong with this. But I would require both myself and my player to determine what increase the Difficulty will be and how many dice I want to roll for my NPC.
This prevents any kind of hard feelings:
GM:The skeleton attacks you.
Player:I used create obstacle to increase its difficulty by 1.
GM:The skeleton buys an extra dice.
Player: I increase by 2 then!
GM: The skeleton buys an extra die.
Fiction does matter. Skeleton is very aggresive so GM spend 2 doom, PC throws various objects to make the attack difficult so spend momentum to increase to D2. The GM must know what the given scene wants to achieve and what the role of npc is about. Maybe then the game will not turn into an auction. Easy to learn, hard to master.
My example tells you how to stop that. Everyone comes up with what they do. They get a single point of announcement.
Player wants to create obstacle. No problem. Come up with the description and momentum to spend.
GM decides how many dice they want to spend on their attack.
Reveal both of these at the same time. No escalation.
@Bleddyn I agree the narrative is the important part and the game should not turn into an auction. It should never be GM vs Player. I also think people are people and it is a very real possibility.
I’ve never had players using Create Opportunity that I can remember, but I don’t announce what dice I’m adding to the NPC’s pool anyway, and we try to reveal simultaneously.
You could spend Momentum to increase the difficulty of an opponent’s test - even an attack - at any point prior to the attacker buying dice (difficulty must be set before dice are bought, dice must be bought before any dice are rolled). This does not require a reaction (and you could still make a reaction against that attack).
Assuming of course there is a logical explanation for how the character could affect the NPC. An archer a hundred yards away firing at an ally would be hard to interfere with by a third party unless they knocked the ally aside or something.
Precisely. Most common uses of Momentum don’t need much thought to explain them, but sometimes it’s worth taking a moment to think about what the Momentum use represents.
