Doubt Megathread

[echoVanguard]

Well, I think the math needs closer examination.

For every Flow-using enemy you confront in combat, you'll gain Flow points about as fast as you spend them (if you spend 1 point per round and the enemy uses one power per round, you'll always be at parity). If there are multiple enemies using Flow, you'll actually get them back faster than you can spend them, since each member of the Clave gains a point each time each enemy uses a power, multiplicatively.

Lastly, "being exposed to manipulated Flow" doesn't just mean being attacked with a hostile Flow power. Discovering a clue, following a trail, or otherwise engaging with conspiracies and challenges are all interactions with the manipulated Flow of whatever you're on the trail of, and reward 1 or more Flow points per instance. I'm hoping to make this clearer in the PDF.

Keep in mind that players will start each scenario with some number of Flow points, usually at or around their maximum. Additionally, because all powers cost exactly 1 Flow point to use and you typically only get one action per round, you don't go through them as quickly as you might think. That said, there are definitely some exceptions to this rule (like Young's Regardment and Urgency of Maxwell doubling up to create 2/round burn) and some characters will go through Flow points much faster than others and at very different rates that might be untenable (like a Fated character who burns 15 points per day regardless of how fast they're being replenished). I'm certainly open to constructive suggestions, if anyone has any. I'm also concerned whether gaining Flow points every round is too finicky, and might incentivize people to drag combats out; it might be better to just reward a stack of points at the end of each combat.

echo

[echoVanguard]

To be clear, the concerns Hicks brings up are worth considering. It's definitely important that players should feel very strong and empowered to use Flow powers pretty freely, but not without limit -- the fact that you can eventually run out of mojo is meant to be a hindrance to your ability to either limitlessly reproduce weird phenomena or to construct perpetual shenanigan contraptions.

There's a big difference between the feel of an at-will power that lets you create a cup of water ("I use this every 6 seconds to fill an olympic swimming pool, then boil the water to construct a steam engine!") and a thing that lets you create a titanic blast of water a limited but non-renewable number of times. In particular, one of those can grind the game to a halt, and the other helps keep it moving forward.

echo

[Hicks]

In that specific case, why is that a thing: creating water? In the game where magic does stuff to alter probability and turn unknown situations toward your ends, why is instantaniousnly filling a container of any size that you verified as empty with a physical substance on theme?

I get where you're coming from on multiple attackers giving a net positive of flow..... so what? If you can in general only spend 1 flow per round, being outnumbered still gets you killed. Enemies have to come in groups of at least 2, and that still doesn't help with out of combat flow use. The example story has 9 examples of spells used. One round of a night terror, and once for entering a registry appartment..... for candice. The protagonist already crashed there for the last 3 days. So yeah. Maybe there can be some sort of flow ritual like shouting at nothing on a street corner for an hour to refill your mojo, or playing a game of poker to lose, or something. Because none of the out of combat stuff happens if you only get flow when you're being outnumbered by magic monsters.

[echoVanguard]

In that specific case, why is that a thing: creating water? In the game where magic does stuff to alter probability and turn unknown situations toward your ends, why is instantaniousnly filling a container of any size that you verified as empty with a physical substance on theme?

If you've ever read any comics about the Scarlet Witch, you know that probability control can do a lot more than just make a flipped coin come up "tails". Doubt draws from a lot of source materials of various types of conspiracies and secret world fantasies, some of which are a little more explicit in their supernatural bent than others. As with any Flow power, the evidence changes after the fact to supply a plausible explanation (a water main bursts or something).

Because none of the out of combat stuff happens if you only get flow when you're being outnumbered by magic monsters.

Lastly, "being exposed to manipulated Flow" doesn't just mean being attacked with a hostile Flow power. Discovering a clue, following a trail, or otherwise engaging with conspiracies and challenges are all interactions with the manipulated Flow of whatever you're on the trail of, and reward 1 or more Flow points per instance. I'm hoping to make this clearer in the PDF.

I feel like we're having trouble communicating.

echo

[Hicks]

Hrmmmm... I guess I'm balking at what I am precieving as a resource to act being limited to being a reaction to what is presented in liew of being proactive and engaging with the world.

I'm hoping to make this clearer in the PDF.

I hope it is more defined there too. Granted, I'm pretty sure I'm coming off as more accusiotory and confrontational that I intend; it isn't your responsibility to write a game for my theoretical enjoyment. If anything I'm a fan of the project, channeling my enthusiasm to try and bring attention to what may help transition a good project into a good game.

[echoVanguard]

It's fine. Like I said, these are important issues that need to be discussed, and it's going to be tricky to nail a balance between "spending resources is fun" and "resources actually matter and reinforce the game's tone". Anything that helps get closer to that is always welcome.

echo

[Omegonthesane]

Is it a feature or a bug if people can dead-ass run out of Flow in combat?

'cause rather than finicky round-by-round tracking, my impulse was to suggest "your Flow pool is refilled to the brim if you decisively defeat monsters, and gets refilled by some meaningful fraction if you decisively escape from monsters either before or after they notice you" as well as the trickle from non combat supernatural investigations.

(Easily justified with something like you needing to perform a "multiple full round actions" focus ritual to collect all the ambient Flow, which is super dangerous if you're still in combat. Though inevitably someone's going to run the combat where you try to refill the tank mid fight.)

[echoVanguard]

So there are a lot of things in play with how Flow points are expended and regained. The fact that they're limited at all is a nod, however insufficient, to the idea of non-reproducibility -- you can't lab-test your powers because eventually you will run out of points and not have an easy way to regain them. It's also an attempt to disincentivize weird behaviors like "let's barricade ourselves in this broom closet and take a nap" or "let's leave the evil keep and come back tomorrow, I'm low on spells" that we've all encountered in daily-refresh resources systems in other games. While there's nothing intrinsically wrong with these behaviors, I wanted to try to avoid them entirely in a somewhat organic fashion by having resources be refreshed by moving the story forward.

The current system attempts to ground that idea in something resembling an understandable mechanic, but it's not without its own problems. If you know your Flow pool is going to be refreshed completely at the end of combat, you're going to be strongly incentivized to spend all of it during that combat. While that's not necessarily bad, it does remove a playstyle option for people who want to spend their resources very judiciously. For example, I'm currently playing a Psion in a PF game (Dreamscarred psionics rules, not the Occult ones) and my other two party members are Path of War classes. They can use abilities pretty much at will during combat, while I have to make a lot of judgment calls about whether I really need to expend power points on a given encounter.

Maybe the answer is to have different traditions regain Flow points at different rates after combat, but I'm hesitant to do that when you can cross-pollinate Flow powers. One thing I could do is make it so that you only regain Flow points when you advance the plot meaningfully or complete a scenario, but also add tradition-specific options for regaining additional Flow points during an adventure.

Here's an idea of how that might look, I suppose:

Outsider[/i]: You regain 1d4 Flow points for each point of Flow rating of any combat scene you survive, up to a maximum of Nd4, where N is your own Flow rating.
Awakened[/i]: You regain a number of Flow points sufficient to put your Flow points at maximum when you complete a written record of recent supernatural experiences you have had, a process which takes 2d4 hours. Once you have performed this action, you gain no further benefit from it until you receive Flow points from another source.
Chosen: You regain a number of Flow points equal to the Flow rating of any creature whose corpse or life force you offer to your patron, up to a maximum of your own Flow rating. You may offer multiple creatures as a single action. Offering the corpse or life force of any non-threatening creature costs Humanity as normal.
Gifted: You regain Nd4 Flow points, where N is your own Flow rating, when you spend at least an hour in meditation upon recent supernatural experiences you have had. Once you have performed this action, you gain no further benefit from it until you receive Flow points from another source.
Conspiracy Theorists: You regain 1d4 Flow points for each point of Flow rating of any combat scene you win, up to a maximum of Nd4, where N is your own Flow rating.
Fated: You regain a number of Flow points equal to the Flow rating of any creature you kill or consume. Killing or consuming any non-threatening creature costs Humanity as normal.

echo