Which rolls are appropriate to spend Confidence Points on?

Games Discussion Ars Magica
1

An idea came up in a discussion recently and I am trying to determine broadly how a rule is intended to be taken. I have also asked about this in the Discord Server, but I wanted to see what people on the Forums think as well, both for posterity and because some old heads are around and might be able to shed some light.

Confidence
Important characters have a Confidence Score and Confidence Points. This includes both central player characters (magi and companions) and important NPCs, such as recurring antagonists and allies. These characters start with three Confidence Points. Most such characters start with a Confidence Score of one, but this can be modified by Virtues and Flaws.
There is no limit to the number of Confidence Points that a character can have.
Using Confidence
A player may spend Confidence Points on most rolls to get +3 to the total per point spent. He may decide to spend the point after the dice are rolled and the putative result of the action is known. He may not spend Confidence on a roll that botched, but he may spend it on a roll of zero which was not a botch. A player may spend any number of points up to, but not exceeding, the character's Confidence Score.
Once a Confidence Point is spent, it is gone forever. Confidence Points are not recovered.
Confidence may not be spent on rolls which represent a whole season's activities, such as rolls for studying from vis.

ArM5 pp. 19-20

This description does a decent job saying what rolls you can’t spend Confidence Points on, but it doesn’t do much to describe which ones you can spend it on.

The text says you can spend points on “most rolls.” If it said “most of the character’s rolls” I would say that the rules support what my intuition said: any roll where the total being generated includes a Characteristic (or perhaps Ability) from a character can have Confidence Points spent on that roll by that character.

The text doesn’t say that though, it says “most rolls.” Moreover, it doesn’t say a character may spend Confidence Points on “most rolls,” it says a player may spend Confidence Points on “most rolls.” This seems to indicate that it doesn’t really matter which roll it is, as long as it fits the criteria listed after, that it can’t be spent on a botch, nor can it be spent on a roll representing a whole season’s activities.

Does that mean then that I could spend Confidence Points from my magus on a Defense roll my shield grog is making?
Can I spend them from my Companion character to boost another magus’ Casting Total to make sure they can Penetrate against a Mighted creature we’re fighting together?
How about on the SG’s Warping roll to make it harder for my magus to avoid Twilight?

If the answer to any of these is no, why? Is this just a shared intuition that’s so obvious that we can take it for granted that it was the intended reading? Or is there some text in another book or some writing of the authors that would clarify that these uses are invalid?

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2

Interesting point about using your confidence point on someone else’s roll. I would argue that’s not allowed, but that’s my interpretation. It can’t be used to say, give more XP from studying from vis, or altering a laboratory experimentation totals since both are seasonal activities. But anything that a player rolls on during a session is fair game, I’ve seen players use it to avoid wizard’s twilight, for example.

Also, if you run a game where a player has a Confidence Score of 3, throwing around +9’s on a roll is WILD. I speak from experience as the ST.

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No. No. No. Yes, it’s a shared intuition that is so obvious that there might be some ambiguity while reading the first few pages we rapidly forget as we browse through the book, because we’re talking about a character’s confidence in its own abilities, and because players roll for their own characters. Characters have a confidence score, not an aura of localised probability warping. You’ll note the limit on spending confidence points is tied to a character’s confidence score, and the game designers didn’t feel the need to clarify whether four players could bid confidence points on the same check, or whether the storyteller was a player for the purposes of spending confidence points for non-player characters.

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4

This was the crux of the particular thing that was being considered for whether or not Confidence Points could be spent on it.

In Houses of Hermes: True Lineages, there is a subsystem for Breakthroughs, which is seasonal work that produces Breakthrough Points after you invent an effect and then do a process called Stabilizing the Unknown. As a final step of Stabilizing the Unknown, the researcher suffers Warping Points equal to the Magnitude of the effect that was invented as a part of the research, minus a simple die.

So the natural question then became, “can you spend Confidence Points on the roll to subtract Warping Points from Stabilizing the Unknown.”

At first, the thought was obviously not, because this is the culmination of a seasonal activity, and I would still accept that as justification for not allowing it, but the Warping is not seasonal, because it can trigger Wizard’s Twilight, which is not triggered by seasonal Warping. This can be used as a justification that the roll then must not be a seasonal roll, and you could spend a confidence point on it, as a thing that a player rolls in association to the actions of a particular character.

What I was hoping to get out of this thread is an actual rule and page reference that I can point to as why this is not allowed, but in looking into it, if you accept that it isn’t a seasonal roll, then I cannot find an actual written rule that would indicate why you cannot spend a confidence point on this roll.

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5

This is a better question. I would for sure allow a player to spend confidence points on twilight avoidance or Twilight understanding, but not the GM roll nor would I allow it to be spent on the simple die to reduce the warping gain. I also wouldn’t allow the confidence point to be spent on the single die warping points gained if entering twilight, hoping for better insight either. The warping gain is without doubt a single event, as it can send you into Twilight. But there is nothing to conclude from that to say that the simple die is a single action. It can easily be interpreted as representing a whole season’s activities, either spent protecting yourself from possible warping as part of the experimentation process (much like in the experimentation process, you’re protecting yourself from lab disasters but need to roll a dice for the season, which can trigger a disaster which gives you a single event warping sending you into Twilight), or spent understanding the breakthrough so as to reduce the need to rely on warping to finalize your understanding of the breakthrough points. Either interpretation is season long. I can’t think of an alternative explanation of what the wizard is doing to reduce that warping as part of the die roll that can count as a single event performed at the moment of locking up his lab for the season, where he might spend confidence. The alternative explanation I can think that the die roll might represent to reduce warping is blind luck, which will lead us into discussing the Lucky virtue, a discussion you can find elsewhere on this forum if you care about it. It probably wouldn’t fly at my table either.

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No, for (at least) two reasons.

First, except for circumstances where the opposite is explicitly stated, spending Confidence only allows one to add to a roll, not subtract from it.

Second, the number of Twilight points gained seems to be the effect of an external force - the uncontrolled magics of the experiment assaulting the mage – and I would concur with previous posters that the Confidence bonus seems intended to affect only the Confident character’s rolls (ruling otherwise can create gigantic balance problems).

7

Ars Majica gives the Story Guide and the players more latitude than most games. Nearly all games will say change the rules if you want, but most people will play rules heavy games such as Pathfinder, D&D, pretty straight to the rules.

AM is deliberately vague. Does your group want to exclude knowledge roles from confidence, as how can you put extra effort in to memory? Maybe confidence can only be used at times of serious challenge. No using confidence on a craft check for example.

Please no-one respond with why knowledge and/or craft rolls, confidence should be used. They were purely for example purposes about what some SGs and troupes may choose, and which the free form wording of “most rolls” would allow.

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You misunderstand, the Confidence Point would be added to the roll; the result of the roll is subtracted from a value after it is resolved, which means adding to the roll reduces Warping Points gained.

I agree that something being external seems to be against what most people have interpreted Confidence Points as being able to be spent on, but for your benefit and that of the other posters, I would like to bring this back again to asking if there is any textual support for this idea; so far people have said what they would allow at their tables, which is not helpful because it is not different from what I would allow at my table, but my concern is not what people would allow but instead what we have textual support for in the rules.

To address temprobe, for example, you mention asking whether the roll represents a “single action,” but the text of Using Confidence doesn’t talk about “single actions,” it says you can add it to “most rolls.” I want to understand how you can read the text of the rules to support your and my conclusion that it can only be used on character actions that a character could put extra effort into, because I have not been able to devise a reading which makes sense with that interpretation.

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You wont get the clarity you want. The rules contradict themselves.

Page 19 Core rule book
”A player may spend Confidence Points on most rolls to get +3 to the total per point spent.”

Page 33 core rule book.
“Confidence Points can be spent to gain a one-off +3 bonus to any die roll,”

“Most”, to me, suggests it can only be used on rolls by the character spending confidence. Even then, that is suggest.

“Any”, suggests any roll by any person.

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10

While there is a solution, I have a question for others. I’ve been too lazy to follow up the definitive edition on line stuff. I’ll just wait till mine arrives. Does anyone know if there is a higher level of clarity around confidence in the Definitive Edition?

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Well, I’m not aware of rolls tied to a character representing something else than a single action except for rolls representing seasonal work or annual event. Typically checks are made to weigh success on something, which is what confidence helps on.

I didn’t see a difference when I looked it up.

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I just came across something in the description of the Major Supernatural Virtue Craft Magic in HoH:S, p. 131. One example says "and he spends a Confidence Point to give him the final +3 increase. His total is 20, just enough for him to make one shield. This takes him about nine days to finish", so it's arguably more than a single action, but clearly less than a seasonal activity.

However, this was errata'd as follows:
"In the last example on page 131, replace "and he spends a Confidence Point to give him the final +3 increase" with "and he rolls a 3"."

This could be because the author had omitted the die roll that is part of a Casting Total (as opposed to a Lab Total), but it could also be because spending Confidence is not allowed here.

I for one am happy that not everything is spelled out in detail, because I don’t want my rule book to be a legal text. I also don’t enjoy extended rules discussions in my games. The only thing that’s important is that the group has a way to resolve different interpretations, they don’t need to arrive at the great single objective truth.

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13

As a SG, i’m always considering that confidence is only useable:

  • if it’s a one time task (no seasonal activity [like “my character is looking for the best wife candidate”] or related to a season roll; so no experimentation/stabilizing etc., nor vis study)
  • it’s your action, or a passive action I do in secret as you (folk ken/awareness/second sight in most instances of those)
  • it’s a roll and include a die.

So i’d answer: no, no, no, see above reasoning.

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14

I would point to the fact the confidence can’t be used on seasonal rolls. Since the Warping is the result of a seasonal laboratory activity, Confidence cannot be spent.

@temprobe pointed out my old thread regarding Luck, which I personally would allow to influence Discovery/Stabilization rolls.

15

Part of me wants to be the devil’s advocate.
If the Season’s activity involves a lot of repetitive activity, then Confidence on a single instance of this repetitive action should not affect things.

But, a vague recollection of a Harry Potter book where the character gives a confident half stir to the beginning of a potion procedure does seem to improve the distant outcome. So maybe if and only if the initial starting conditions have a significant effect on the end result, then spending Confidence at the beginning might be valid.

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