Bunkers & Badasses – Badass Tokens

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In this next look at the Bunkers & Badasses TTRPG by Nerdvana games, I want to take a quick look at the cost of doing Badass Moves.

In the last article I covered the Badass Move, but not much about those Badass Tokens, or what it will cost to keep doing this over and over again. I said “do it as many times as you can”, but what does that actually mean?

To start off with, if you succeed at that Badass Move you’re going to gain four (4) tokens. If you fail, you’re still gonna gain two (2) tokens. If you’re assisting someone who’s doing a Badass Move, that means you’re getting at least one (1) token, two (2) if they succeed.

Execute Badass Move
SUCCESS: 4 tokens
FAILURE: 2 tokens

Assist Badass Move
SUCCESS: 2 tokens
FAILURE: 1 token

So in general we’re averaging about three (3) tokens every time a Badass Move is going down.

The important part in the handbook is that it states you have one Badass Move per day. You can spend tokens and do extra Badass Moves. Each extra move costs you an additional token, cumulatively.

– 1st extra Badass Move = 1 Token
– 2nd extra Badass Move = 2 Tokens
– 3rd extra Badass Move = 3 Tokens

You get the idea!

If you compare the cost for the extra move with the number of tokens you get out of it, you can see that realistically there’s a point in time where it’s no longer valuable to keep doing Badass Moves.

As an example, let’s say you’ve done four (4) Badass Moves.

– 1st move: Free
– 2nd move: 1 Token
– 3rd move: 2 Tokens
– 4th move: 3 Tokens
TOTAL SPEND: 6 Tokens

If you are getting an average of three (3) tokens back on each move, then you’ve gained 12 tokens. So far, this seems like a good deal!

You can also spend tokens on non-combat checks, or to add to any role. So sometimes you are spending Badass Tokens without getting new tokens back through a Badass Move.

Also, while your Badass rolls might average out over a longer period of time, you might start getting particularly unlucky with the dice and go on a short run of failures. This means you’re not gaining enough tokens to keep doing Badass Moves.

Because of this, you should preserve Badass Tokens a little bit, but pick the right moments where you could spend a bunch of tokens to try to add a bunch of “plus ones “+1s”, or where you need to get that extra Badass Move when you need it. This can help to really close off on an enemy.

Or… you can just ignore all of these rules because maybe you just want your players to do cool stuff when they want to, and let them try to be Badasses! That’s a fun way to play and it makes the math a little bit easier on everybody too.

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