Sorry to be asking stupid questions again but...
Can someone please explain confidence; i get spending it on tasks but what i,m confused about is the difference & use of score vrs points.
Thanks again
You can spend a Confidence point to get a bonus of +3 to a roll (with some limitations, see the section on confidence in the corebook). Once spent, a point is gone forever, though you'll gain more during stories (again, see the section on confidence). You can have as many points as you can hoard.
If your Confidence Score is 1 you can only spend 1 Confidence point on a roll. A higher score means you can more points on the same roll, getting a proportionately higher bonus; more precisely, you can spend a number of points up to your Confidence score. So if your Confidence score is 2, you can spend at most 2 Confidence points on a single roll, getting a bonus of up to +6. You can obviously spend fewer if you wish. Unlike Confidence points, score usually stays constant; it takes something life-changing to change it, usually by 1 at most.
Your Confidence score determines how many points of Confidence you can spend on any given task. The default is 1, but the SG may increase it at his discretion.
+1
Note that the effect of the "once spent, a point is gone forever" is to discourage players from investing points once they have only few points. If you wish to encourage the use of Confidence, consider instituting a house rule where Confidence Points return to their character-generation starting amount (usually 3) at the next Season (or keep a higher amount if you have it). This makes players more likely to spend Confidence, assuming they're pretty sure a new adventure won't crop up this Season. And it has the added bonus that it makes more sense to have NPCs use Abilities with Confidence , such as certain Infernal Abilities. At any rate, this is a house rule. Only institute it if it's a problem in your games. Frankly, Confidence is often forgotten in mine so I once used this... but it's no big deal either way.
Unstated here, but not in the book, Confidence is only spent in situations where the increase due to Confidence would result in success. So, if you are dealing with something that has an EF 15 but your total before Confidence is 12-14 spending a point of Confidence will make it successful. Rolling an 11 or less can't be overcome by only a point of Confidence, so if a player said they would spend a point in that situations where it can't ensure success, the roll simply fails and the player retains the point for later use.
1 Like
Also, one of the (many) overlooked rules is that, per RAW (p. 20), Confidence Points are awarded at the end of a session, much like experience points, and that "characters should gain two or three Confidence Points per session." So, yes, confidence points are gone forever once used, but you (should) get them back on a regular basis. And, if you don't use them that much, you can get a pretty good stockpile for the Big Boss Battle when you have a lot of rolls that have to make.
Also Twilight rolls. Always have a point for twilight. It makes the early ones much easier to knock.
1 Like
Confidence was one of the things we had difficulties implementing, as we started 5th a good handful of years ago. IIRC 4th ed (and perhaps earlier, but it was 4th I played back then) had a limit of how many points you had/could have (barring special circumstances), and once spent they were regained.
5th ed does something else, and since the old farts were stuck in the old ways and the noobs failed to understand the concept it was never used. Once understood the old farts - who were also the SGs - started not only spending Confidence for own characters to showcase it, and remind the others when it would be useful, but also remembered to grant Confidence as rewards.
So when a story is over we dish out Story Exp and also Confidence (for non-Grogs). We also tend to hand some out for achieving personal goals during seasonal activities, like cult initiations, finding an apprentice, publishing a good book etc.
The beauty of Confidence is that they can be spent after the fact. Yes, they are great for Twilight. They can also in some cases save lives, if a Dfn or Soak roll only 3 higher means Incapacitated instead of Dead etc.
Most players in my saga readily spend them now. The procedure is that players call out Ease Factors reached on rolls ("I get a 14", and if the SG is dithering with telling the outcome ("Mmmmneh well...") the player can opt to immediately call out ("I'm confident a 17 is enough then"). And the SG either tells the player it is still not good enough or gives the altered outcome.