SoC suffering random conditions [minor spoilers]

[DarwinsDog 150]

While playing one of the missions we got an activation event that said heroes suffer 3 random conditions. There's really no precedent for how to handle the situation, so we took one of each card, shuffled them up and gave the top three to one hero.  We then replaced those three and did the same for each other affected hero. So far so good. The next turn we get the same message, and we had a debate about whether it meant that they suffer three new conditions of if it meant that they are hit with three random conditions and they may luck out and get one or more again, thus ignoring them.

In other words should you take all 7 (in my case) conditions and pull the top three to give to each hero, or do you randomly select from the ones they don't already have? I guess the thing to consider is what they mean by "suffer" the condition. 

Related to that, one of the heroes in question was Ispher. Since he's immune to poison, can that be one of the random conditions?

In the end we went with the usual rule for FFG co-ops to do whatever hurts the players the most, but no one was completely convinced either way. I'm curious how others have handles this situation.

[any2cards 2,508]

Whenever we have to suffer random conditions (no matter how many of them there are), we always do it in a way that causes the most to be suffered (making the game operate for the heroes at the hardest level).

Assuming hero A starts with no conditions, we roll a d10 (since there are 10 conditions available).  We then roll a d9 for the second condition (a d9 simulated of course as there is no such thing), a d8, etc. This way, no condition is ever drawn twice, and the hero does receive a random condition for each roll.

In order to make this truly the hardest impact on heroes, we ignore any condition that the hero can never have.  For instance, Ispher is immune to poison, so we never include poison in the list of conditions for which he is rolling.

Note that we still assign a condition to a hero if he has a LIKELY chance of getting rid of it.  For instance, just because a hero has a 5 knowledge, we don't avoid assigning a curse to him.  Or if he has a 6 Might, he still gets assigned a poison.  Since there is a chance they can still fail their rolls, they can still get the condition.

Edited August 13, 2017 by any2cards

[Zaltyre 1,701]

And that's why you can never increase an attribute above 6 or decrease it below 0. If a test is rolled, it must have multiple possible outcomes. (Figures without attribute values are an exception to this since they don't actually test- they just auto-pass or auto-fail.)

[DerDelphi 265]

11 hours ago, Zaltyre said:

And that's why you can never increase an attribute above 6 or decrease it below 0.

Isn't the minimum attribute value 1?

 

Btw: To draw a random condition I create a deck which contains 1 of every condition type. Then I shuffle it and draw from the bottom.

Edited August 14, 2017 by DerDelphi

[DarwinsDog 150]

5 hours ago, DerDelphi said:

Btw: To draw a random condition I create a deck which contains 1 of every condition type. Then I shuffle it and draw from the bottom.

Do you skip conditions that the hero already has/is immune to?

[DerDelphi 265]

Just played the quest myself half an hour before. In this case indeed I skipped conditions that the target already had/was immune to, because the targets are indeed meant to suffer 3 conditions.

[10355ts 24]

The way I see it, if a target is immune (say, Ispher's poison immunity) they get the condition then it is immediately voided (otherwise there would be little point in having the immunity); basically, the card hits them then bounces off, as it were. They recieve a condition card, but it is immediately discarded.

 

I don't see a need to make a deck of 1 condition card each or to roll dice; just shuffle the available condition cards you have and draw three and the probabilities should work out functionally the same.

Edited August 24, 2017 by 10355ts

[DarwinsDog 150]

15 hours ago, 10355ts said:

The way I see it, if a target is immune (say, Ispher's poison immunity) they get the condition then it is immediately voided (otherwise there would be little point in having the immunity); basically, the card hits them then bounces off, as it were. They recieve a condition card, but it is immediately discarded

That's what one of my players was arguing. Basically it comes down to that it means to "suffer" a condition. To me, Ispher can't suffer poison, and therefore will not be suffering three conditions as stated in the app.

15 hours ago, 10355ts said:

I don't see a need to make a deck of 1 condition card each or to roll dice; just shuffle the available condition cards you have and draw three and the probabilities should work out functionally the same.

It works for the first hero, assuming no one else has any conditions. After that you have different numbers of cards for each condition. 

[10355ts 24]

13 hours ago, DarwinsDog said:

That's what one of my players was arguing. Basically it comes down to that it means to "suffer" a condition. To me, Ispher can't suffer poison, and therefore will not be suffering three conditions as stated in the app.

It works for the first hero, assuming no one else has any conditions. After that you have different numbers of cards for each condition. 

 

Yeah, the way I see it, "Suffer 3 conditions" is just the major peril version of the minor peril "everyone is poisoned," and obviously Ispher's individual card power takes precedence over the general RtL peril declaration in that instance, so by analogy, it protects against poison in the major peril too. Plus from a sortof general gameplay perspective I feel like when a PC has a really "niche" ability that's not useful all that often, it's more fun to read it a little broadly so people get more chances to use their abilities. But, yeah, it's subjective and a matter of how you read the language of the peril,  and your reading results in more challenging play. 

 

Good point about the numbers changing if someone else already has conditions though.