I'm sick of having to track different A-C-E die pools for different monsters, especially when defending. Furthermore, I'm sick of tracking active defenses for enemies. As a solution, I want to simplify things. I'm thinking of a static modifier to defense and attack/actions. I'm calling it the Threat Pool.

The threat pool is a measure of how well a particular fight is going. It gives a static set of dice to add to all actions either made by or targeting a monster/NPC. For each point in the Threat Pool, add a fortune/misfortune die to actions/defenses respectively. 

Here's my first idea on how to form it. (I'm kinda writing as I'm thinking, so I'll probably have to revise this)

Threat Pool starts at 1/3 (round up) the Aggression pool (Cunning if this is a Social encounter), plus the Expertise pool of the biggest enemy. 

For example: Say you have monster A with A/E of 3/0, monster B with 4/1, and monster C with 5/2. You would end up with a threat pool of 4 (5/2 is the biggest, 5/3 = rounds up to 6, plus two expertise dice. 

Now that seems like a lot, but it can be whittled down by spending 2 boons to reduce it by 1 or a comet to reduce it by one. 

Any thoughts?

..so don't track ACE.  I don't.   I use a a couple dice here and a couple dice there depending on whatever effect I want.  You're the GM and this isn't Descent where you're under some kind of strict rule.

Use them as more of a guideline :)

No fuss.  No muss.

jh

Emirikol said:

Well, I haven't been, obviously. At the same time, I'm feeling like I want a little more out of the antagonists. 

I think I cannot follow your rules.

In your example, the resulting thread pool, 6. Will this be added to ALL attacks made by the monsters (as fortune dice) and against ALL attacks made by the PCs (as misfortune dice)?

As an alternative, I keep on recomending people playing with a tablet /laptop behind the GM. It works miracles for me. I have all the monsters in excel sheets, with their actions, active defences, A/C/E budget, weapons and armours etc. On my table I have Orc_1, I look in my pc for the excel sheet of Orc_1 and I do all the traking, it is not a bigger job than in others RPGs.

Cheers,

Yepes

I also think ACE is one the fiddlies rules, easy to discard. Some complexity per player is ok but not for monsters and NPCs - RPG is anyway about the players and is not meant to be a simulation of any kind.

Just drop ACE altogether - I tried to replace it with pool systems etc but never tracked those either. The action needs to be unstopped. If a monster seems to be too easy for the players, adding a thematic expertise die to a roll has never broken the immersion.

If by lack of ACE the game seems to become too easy just ramp up bigger and badder monsters and a add a few extra monsters - difficulty can be scaled more naturally by "quoality and quoantity" rather than game mechanics.

I have simplified it by tracking ACE but ditched "Active Defence" tracking altogether. Action cards which hamper active defence of NPCs now destroy Pool Dice of said NPC.

My NPCs can use their "Cunning" for parying/dodging incomming attacks.

Personally I don't understand the problem with tracking ACE. Recharge on enemy actions, yeah that is a massive P.I.T.A.

I normally use up all ACE dice within the first 2 rounds anyway.