I’m experiencing rules confusion about the Bond Threshold.
If a character has Bonds equal to their Threshold, then does a Move which adds a point to a Bond, do they have to reduce another Bond to balance it out and keep them from exceeding the Threshold?
If so, does that constitute Burning a Bond, with the requisite problems and benefits?
A Bond Point is only gained if the player isn’t at their Bond Threshold – you can’t go past your ceiling via a move or rearrange Bond Points in a metagame-like fashion as the use of Bond Points are supposed to be tied to what happens in the fiction. To gain a Bond Point from a move there also has to be justification for it in the fiction.
Hope that answers your question, let me know if you have others 🙂
That suggests that a player who wants to cultivate a particular Bond will want to Burn other Bonds in order to make headroom for that Bond. Which makes sense in both narrative and game terms, since we want characters Burning Bonds fairly regularly in order to generate drama.
That said, it’s tempting to say that if the narrative permits it, one might implicitly Burn a Bond in order to make room for a Bond increased by a Move.
So for instance:
Heroine A steps in front of the big laser to Serve And Protect vulnerable hero B rather than her sweetheart C. Then A’s player increases the Bond with B … and in order to free up their Threshold, also Burns a point of the Bond with C as a single action.
It’s tempting to allow the player to carry forward a hold from the Burn rather than have to apply it to that same Move, but that may create more problems than it solves.
Another itch about the Bond Threshold:
As a character’s powers develop through Push moves, they don’t get a lower and lower Bond Threshold, do they?
As long as it wasn’t contrived and served to make a fun, interesting and engaging story I’d be fine with a player Burning a Bond to make the Serve and Protect move, and then choosing to Increase/Form a Bond with someone else for precisely those situations you suggest. There are some great opportunities for evocative story there.
No, as their Powers Profile gets filled in their Bond Threshold does not lower. A lot of players are pretty hesitant to Burn Bonds to begin with, making them hesitant to Pushing as well would not be ideal, at least in my experience running the game. You could always tack on a house rule if that’s something you’d like to see though.
It’s tempting to make a house rule that one can Burn a Bond to “make room” for a Bond increase from a Move. But I think I’ll wait for a player to complain about the need before I experiment with it.
I agree that one doesn’t want to deter Push moves, but that means that the rules make spending Bond Threshold to get some more applications of your powers at the beginning kind of a raw deal, since other characters will catch up before long if they Push.
The ones that start out with more applications don’t have to roll to do all kinds of stuff from the beginning, and they’re just as capable of continuing to Push their powers as characters that start with less powers. While the other players are probably going to have to use their Bonds to succeed on Pushing (if they want it added to their Profile), the players that started with powers can be spending their Bonds on other stuff, or just start with more and continue to get more.
Hm. Starting with more powers applications still sounds like a sucker bet to me ….
Sure, let’s keep in mind that the mechanics are supposed to be serving the fiction though. If you want to power game it, you can certainly do that, but it’s not the style of play in the philosophy of the design, mentioned in the book, or recommended by me 🙂