Difficulty Rolls

## Difficulty Roles

At the core of the game system are difficulty roles. Whenever a PC takes an action that isn't a "everyday" thing, like opening an unlocked door, walking across a room, etc, the GM will assign a difficulty level ranging from 1(easy) to 10 (almost impossible). The starting difficulty level doesn't have anything to do with the character taking the action. It's purely based upon the action. Typically a difficulty level is tied to a specific PC statistics.

### Easing

Easing reduces the difficulty of a skill. For example, if the difficulty of a skill is 4, easing a skill one level one reduce the difficulty of the skill to 3.

The PC can modify the difficulty level. For the PC's character this is done through four concepts:

1. Skills
2. Assets
3. Effort
4. Edge

#### Skills

A PC will have a variety of skills. See the skills page for a deeper explanation of skills. Examples of skills are blacksmithing, swimming, hiding, stealth, etc. The Rule book has 50 skills that are useful in game, though a GM could add additional skills based upon a character's background. For any given skill, there are four levels.

1. Inability - IF you have an inability in a skill, it means there's something about your character that makes this skill extra difficult for the character. This creates a hinderance, and increases the difficulty of the task up by one.
2. Untrained - This is the "default" level for a character, and does not change the difficulty level.
3. Trained - This is "one level" of a skill, and decreases the difficulty by one, this is called easing the skill
4. Specialized - This is "two levels' of a skill, and decreases the difficulty by two. It is also called easing the skill.

So taking the skill as an example, lets say you had a character that wanted to swim across the lake, and the GM says that because of the temperature of the water, the difficulty is 4. But you're trained in swimming, so you reduce the level by one, so the difficulty level is 3.

On the other hand, let's say your character has a fear of water, creating an inability to swim. Now the difficulty level increases one, and is five.

#### Assets

Assets are physical objects that can help with a task. The GM will establish whether the item will ease (lower) the difficulty level by one or two points. Take our swimming example. Let's say the character has a pair of swim fins. The Gm says the swim fins will ease the difficulty by one, so if the base difficulty was 4, the Character was trained in swimming, and had swim fins, the new difficulty would be 4-1-1=2. Now we see the task is going starting to get easy!

### Effort

When the PC builds a character the character has three core statistics:

1. Might - This represents the physical strength of the character.
2. Speed - This represents the dexterity of the character.
3. Intellect - This represents how intelligent the character is.

For each stat, there are three values:

1. Pool - This is the base value for the statistic, and you'll be spending your pool to complete actions through the game.
2. Effort - You can spend points from your stat pool on a 3 for one basis to ease a task.
3. Edge - An Edge allows you to reduce the cost of using effort.

Lets take our example of swimming, Where the base difficulty is 4, we've reduced it by one because we are trained in swimming, and by one more because we have swim fins.

The GM indicates that swimming is strength based, and your character has a Might pool of 10, and a might Effort of 1, but no Edge. You decide to spend three might points (reducing your temporary might to 7) to provide 1 effort. This reduces the difficulty down to one.

#### Edge

A Character might have an Edge. if the character has an edge, it reduces the cost of effort (and other tasks as well, such as using abilities), by the value of the edge.

Let's take our example above, but assume the character has one edge for Might. Instead of it costing 3 might to create one effort, because we have one edge, it now costs two might for one effort.

That means if your have 3 edge in one stat, you can always do one level of effort for free!

### Hinderances

Where easing the difficulty of a task reduces the difficulty level, hinderances increase the difficulty of a task. There is an endless list of what might create a hinderance. We already discussed having an inability in a skill. But lets take our swimming example. It turns out that it's completely dark outside, and there's a new moon. So the GM indicates that because of this, there's one level of hinderance, increasing it by one. So in our previous swimming example, we'd reduced the difficulty to 1, but since its very dark outside, now the difficulty is 2.

So using our example of swimming across the lake, here's how we calculated our difficulty.

 Trained in swimming
 Have swim fins
 Effort one
 Completely dark

So our end difficulty is 2. Now to make a roll. You take the difficulty level, and multiply by 3 and that is your target # to roll on a 20 sided (d20) die. You roll a die and must have that target # or higher to complete the task successfully. So our target number here is 6 (2 X 3). The PC rolls a die, and if they get a six or higher, they have completed the task.

#### Special results

Regardless of whether the character completed the task or not, if the PC roles specific values, additional things come into play:

If the PC rolls a 1 the GM gets a "free" intrusion. Intrusions are a way for the GM to complicate the characters life. Taking our example, lets say the player rolled a 1. Not only did they fail, but when swimming across the lake they got a cramp. Now when they get out of the water, they are slowed when walking until they clear the cramp.

If the PC rolls a 17, if it was a Combat roll, add 1 to damage.

If the PC rolls an 18 and it was a Combat roll, add 2 to damage.

If the PC rolls a 19, even if the task fails, there is a Minor Effect. This is something that is a minor benefit to the Character. Take our example. When swimming across the lake the character managed to grab a hold of a fish and take it to shore. Now they've got a free meal!

If the PC rolls a 20, even if the tasks fails, there is a Major Effect. This is something that significantly benefits the character. The GM and the PC can discuss what the major benefit should be. As in our swimming example, when swimming across the lake, perhaps the PC found a heavy revolver on the bottom of the lake and was able to retrieve it. Heavy revolvers are expensive items, making this much better than just finding a fish.

In both cases, don't waste a lot of time picking effects. Pick one quickly and move on.