Over the course of our Kickstarter, we’re going to look into some of our Abilities in blog posts. The goal is to show off some of the things that can be done in Mysteries of the Yokai, while talking about how we implemented them and why we made some of the decisions that lead to where they are (and sometimes where they’re going before the final book release).

A natural choice for our first ability was ‘Fortune’s Favor’. This ability was not only one of the first we created, but has been a favorite of both our team and our playtesters.

Fortune’s Favor provides a re-roll once per scene or combat (each basic ‘plot’ block in the game). Even better, if all the dice you roll come up as a six naturally, it doesn’t count as your one use, so you can use it again. This ability represents someone who the universe works to support or protect  in subtle ways. However, this level of inherent good fortune takes a bit of a character’s natural Ki potential; a little bit of the ‘magic’ of a person gets used up with so many changes to the world happening around them. This is modeled in game terms by lowering the character’s maximum Ki Pool by 1 point; the same as if the character were permanently maintaining this as an active Ki Power. This is also done as a balance mechanic. Rerolls at such a low cost are pretty powerful, especially when used on rolls that only involve a single die (giving the character a 1/6 to reuse the ability, as opposed to 1/216 if the player used it on a 3D6 roll).

Fortune’s Favor has been very popular with everyone who has tried it out. At the low price of 5 Potential, it’s the cheapest ability in the game, and generally a no-brainer for any character that doesn’t excessively use Ki (we’ve even had a few people say they will take it on casters and deal with the lowered Ki Limit). The decision of when to use your reroll has been an important decision is several games; do you use it on damage rolls and try to chain 6s to get multiple uses, or do you use it in key Check situations? Being able to reroll an attack when you’re close to breaking the Tide bar against the enemy, or a dodge roll when they are about to break it against the party, can shift the entire battle, and with our Margin of Success mechanic (for every 3 points you win a contested check by, you add +1 to the effect of the Check, such as damage), there are occasionally times you might even want to re-roll a barely successful attack to get a stronger success at a vital time.

For statisticians out there, you may be thinking ‘why would I do that when I can abuse the single die damage reroll?’, and you’re certainly not crazy. The chance to increase damage in a system with relatively low numbers (Tide usually breaks after 7 damage, so the difference between 1 and 6 on a D6 can end up being as powerful as having two additional averagely-rolled attacks) is powerful enough to require careful watching and testing. In fact, Fortune’s Favor is flagged internally for tracking and a possible change in the final game. Without having all of our final abilities and equipment in the game yet, it’s impossible to tell if the current version is too strong, but we may be looking to have Fortune’s Favor only apply to 3D6 rolls. If we change it to go that route, it would end up losing it’s Ki penalty to make up for the loss of flexibility. That said, Mysteries of the Yokai uses a very lenient system in combat; players are encouraged to solve problems in alternate ways to just straight damage rolls. Because of this overall game mechanic, we currently feel Fortune’s Favor is not too powerful to be in the game (though we’re leaning towards a Potential cost increase).