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Oddballs EP 6 Discussion Thread

The story continues today!

I know its Episode 6 and probably too late, but i dont think they’re using all the mechanics of the game properly? It seems like there’s a whole lot of failures so i’d like to point some stuff out, hopefully without sounding like a giant butthead!

Iconic Items - i think these got forgotten about after Episode 1, they can add +2 dice (also regular-ass items for +1 if theres a useful one around GM permitting!)
PC assistance - you can get help from your friends for an extra dice but failure effects both (unless you’re all trying to do the same thing, like when rolling off the cliff they cant assist). NPCs can also help the kids at GM discretion.
Pride - 1/‘Mystery’ auto succeed, can turn a failure into a success
Leader - Leader skill can try to create a pool of extra dice by rolling vs Trouble, these dice can be given to future trouble rolls as long as they do what you told them to do
Push - You can also push the roll for a free re-roll of the failed dice but you suffer a condition, so two conditions if you still fail! You can use a Luck after this if the Push fails

Also if you succeed over the roll they can buy extra effects such as giving a success to another, avoid the same problem next time, do it faster/quieter, extra info etc. These are described per skill along with the generic ones.

Also the Luck rerolls only the failed dice but i’m not sure if Roll20 does that on its own?

Lastly, i think, theres the characters’ Anchors, where you can spend a scene with your Anchor to heal all conditions.
You can also roll Lead to heal one condition, +1 per extra success after what was required, however if you fail you also get the condition you were trying to remove. (Theres Hideouts too but i think circumstances require that they dont have or cant get to theirs!)

Sorry for being the rules guy, the show is still fun! But these rules are also extra RP opportunities especially Anchoring or Leading to heal and direct the group, but i’ve just seen some people in chat express frustration at the amount of fails that happen, and some tiny player frustration with conditions

Love the show! Glad Gencon didnt stop the party this week, lots of interesting stuff happened! More please!

1 Like

Yeah for sure! Also I still think 1 is the lowest stat isn’t it. 0 body means that Clarence can never succeed which makes Clarence’s body rolls futile since we all know he will always fail.

It’s smoothed over through the narrative but it still kinda sucks the tension.

Correct, the minimum in any Stat has to be 1!

I dont think the Kids’ full stats are posted anywhere, but Clarence shouldnt have that 0 body for sure =p
And Clarence failing all the body things can be helped sometimes with Sams Lead, she gets 8 Dice for it and each success adds 2 dice to the “leadership pool” which can overcome the terrible stats if needed

*edit
Also for the “extra hard” two success targets, if they get 1 success (for example, or half if its higher) then they can take a condition or even Break themselves for an automatic 6, but only for a partial success as determined by the GM (called a compromise in the book)

Also dont know if its always this way in the show so far but a fail doesnt always have to mean a automatic Condition, but often the easiest, and Sams 8 Lead can help recover these)

*edit 2
The reason all this extra stuff is important, the extra dice, items, auto succeeds etc, is that even with say, 5 dice you only have a 60% chance of getting 1 success, and even at a seemingly hefty 8 dice its only 77%.

Im not sure if @Jesse intends for the characters to have 0’s in some of their stats due to altering some of the system around for the setting or if it was an oversight. I went into roll20 the other day to double check if the characters had 0’s in their stats and it seems like they do. I also went back and rewatched @AdamKoebel tales of the loop one shot prep video to double check.

Whenever Ken (Clarence) rolls body, he rolls a “Body ()” with “- condition (0)” which means he has no stats allocated in body atm. The minimum should be 1 to always allow a character to have a chance at a success even tho it is low.

He should be seeing a “Body (0)” or “Body (1)” at least if they followed the baseline rules.

Hopefully @NoorElBahrain or Adam or @itmeJP see this and verify with Jesse since Im not sure what his handle is on here.