The Dresden Files > DFRPG

OK, about shifts

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iago:

--- Quote from: MacsNewBrew on April 09, 2010, 04:03:51 AM ---Ok, thanks Fred, that helps with what they aren't, but I still don't get what shifts are.

and I *am* rather thick-skulled sometimes....

--- End quote ---

So, in another game, when you're rolling against, say, a 15 difficulty, and you roll a 21, and the GM says "Whoa, 6 over the difficulty? That means I'll bump you up to the next level of results!"

That margin of "6" is your shifts.  They're how you shift the results beyond the most basic thing.

With an attack, what you're shifting is the amount of stress you produce: if you hit the defense exactly, you just "connect" -- 0 shifts.  If you roll 3 above it, that's 3 shifts, which with an attack turns into a 3-stress hit.

But if it's not an attack -- if it's you, say, rolling your Investigation against a difficult thing to detect, and you beat that difficulty by 4, maybe that means you found it much faster than you would have if you'd just hit the result exactly. So the shifts there are shifting the result to happen faster.  Or maybe instead they're instead shifting the result so you get more information than you would have if you'd just hit the difficulty target exactly.

MacsNewBrew:
AHHH! I get it now! THANK YOU!!!  ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D

LCDarkwood:

--- Quote from: MacsNewBrew on April 09, 2010, 03:43:53 AM ---1. PC jumps off house roof to attack two thugs below. Thug 1 gets it in the back, down but conscious, thug 2 drops gun in surprise

--- End quote ---

Hey, not to risk more confusion, but the rules also have one other concept to cover what you're talking about here: supplemental actions. Basically, that means you can take a penalty to your main action in order to do more than one thing on your turn.

This would be a perfect example: jumping off the house is movement, so you'd take a -1 penalty to the attack. (Probably you wouldn't be able to attack them at the same time unless you had a stunt, but let's not worry about that right here.) This is sort of like paying a shift in advance - it's like saying, "Hey, that cool thing I could do if I rolled an extra shift? Let me just pay for it up front with a penalty." So then, when you succeed, you can just do both.


-L

iago:
Yep. You can think of shifts like a short-term stack of chips. What are you going to spend them on? Closing with your opponent (1 shift) and THEN smacking him in the chops (the rest, as stress)? Awesome.

MacsNewBrew:
Sooo if my fists are +2 and I say knock thug 1 down with a difficulty of +2 (taking the -1 penalty to declare that shift ahead of time) and I roll a +2, I can use that shift to "untouched thug 2 drops gun in surprise"  --(totally Batman) or is it limited to the same target?


TOTAL RPG n00b here...sorry

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