Deeds of Derring-Do

Question: Should Legendary Deeds be reserved? Or do you let players use them willy-nilly?

Honestly, how much of a premium you place on Legendary Deeds really depends almost completely on how long your stories run.

To begin with, we usually don't restrict players from using their Legendary Deeds unless they have absolutely no idea why what they're doing is cooler than usual. We're more likely to appreciate a Legendary Deed that is saved for a truly epic moment instead of just a convenient boost to make a roll succeed, and we're always going to award more dice for a cool stunt than just, "well, I really need to win, so I guess I'm Deeding this roll". If a player really wants to blow their deeds on lockpicking rolls to rob a safe or on a Charisma roll to convince an airline operator to give them a free flight, they can certainly do so. They're probably going to regret it later when they can't use a Deed to do something extremely difficult and urgent or when their smaller-roll Deeds result in a bunch of Fatebonds who think of them as the god of truck-driving or something, but we won't stop them if that's what they choose to do.

But whether or not a character runs out of Legendary Deeds is mostly a function of how long the story is. Deeds refresh every story, so if your story lasts only a session or two, I'd expect players to blow their Deeds like candy at every opportunity, while if your stories last for twenty-session marathons they're going to need to hoard them jealously or find that they've run dry long before they have any hope of getting them back. If your story lengths are fairly consistent, most players will probably figure out how much they want or need to reserve their Deeds within the first couple of stories.

Generally, reserving or blowing Legendary Deeds mostly depends on the player's personality. Some players are excited about Legendary Deeds and will use them all over the place until they run dry, and will then struggle through the rest of the story doing without; some players are incredibly conservative and end up wasting unspent Deeds because they're afraid of running out, which can be a problem in the other direction, and some players manage to find a good balance in between. We occasionally remind players who are blowing a lot of Deeds at the beginning of the story that they might want to keep in mind that they have a long way to go, but in the end it's always the player's choice.

And if they don't have a Legendary Deed left to make that crucial roll to escape certain death, well... they're the ones who decided something else was more important. Channel a Virtue, blow a Willpower for an automatic success, or just roll the dice and hope for the best.