Do story points make the game too easy?

[blackrook]

One of my players groused, "Story points are too powerful" as they were using them to overcome every obstacle and get out of every bad situation. The grand finale of the adventure was breaking into a mainframe computer, which was a DC 30 task "nearly impossible" and a character managed it by using five story points. Is the story point aspect of this game making it trivial to solve problems? What do you guys think?

[Marnal]

They do require setting very high difficulties and making them face very very tricky challenges. I don't find it to be too difficult, but then I do ask the impossible of them, and make them work for every clue. [often knowing which question to ask is more important then making a skill check]. Also I never let them raise a roll past "Yes But" when using SP.

[da professor]

Getting players to use their story points is the problem for me

[garethl]

Story Points are powerful. They are basically a way to ensure that you don't fail at a task. The key, I think, is to present enough "difficult" challenges early on. If you want to encourage spending set the difficulties higher.

Maybe a Grand Finale could be multiple checks instead of one single high DC check; one to bypass the firewall, another one to fool the fingerprint scanner, etcetera.

The Story Point issue is a common one, here is another thread with some solutions.

[Escher]

Story points don’t make the game too easy – Gamemasters do.

Dice rolls provide the uncertainty, Story Points provide the ‘fictional magic’ that allows the character’s escape, success and survival.
As the GM we need to find challenges for the players and keep them entertained.

If things are too easy, throw in a few critical points, A ‘Yes, But…’ result is a perfect way to do this. The ‘but’ is a that an adversary or hostile creature enters suddenly, something breaks, an unexpected twist, a puddle of oil, a rotted floorboard, mutant slime etc…be prepared to improvise but do it in accordance with the plot and how feasible it is.

If life is too easy for the characters, make some key tasks a lot harder.
Make that door deadlocked. Make an NPC completely stubborn.

Find ways to make the characters burn those Story Points, so when they get to the climax of the adventure there are nearly on empty. And then throw them something nasty.

[Stormcrow]

A typical Doctor Who adventure should be a deathtrap to anyone without Story Points.

[zarohk]

Not a complete deathtrap, just one to normal humans. Also, I know this is not the common opinion, but I try and pressure my players into using story points only occasionally, and mostly as "Pull off Epic" or "Don't die in mortal danger" coupons.

[ersatz]

Sept 27, 2013 19:20:27 GMT blackrook said:

One of my players groused, "Story points are too powerful" as they were using them to overcome every obstacle and get out of every bad situation. The grand finale of the adventure was breaking into a mainframe computer, which was a DC 30 task "nearly impossible" and a character managed it by using five story points. Is the story point aspect of this game making it trivial to solve problems? What do you guys think?

I personally think the game is too hard even with them. I seem to fail even avarage difficulty rolls more often then not.