Alright, so I’ll go ahead and drop it here, though it’ll probably change. My thoughts on complex challenges:
Complex Challenges
- The GM sets a difficultly between 1 and 9. This should not consider relative attributes, only how difficult it is to get their intended outcome. E.g. “Convince the King to kill his infant son who was born into demonic possession and will only grow more powerful and evil every day”. Difficulty = 6. Also, a Complex Challenge can have more than one group participating in the challenge, the GM should assign a difficulty for each participating group, and if one group has a better chance of success, they should have a lower difficulty. For example, in the above example, the King’s evil advisors (who should have an easy time convincing the King not to kill his own son), might have a difficulty of 2, while the Demon Hunters seeking to purge the Kingdom of demonic influence might have a difficulty of 6.
- Each side improvises the narrative use of a given attribute, in a way that advances the narrative toward their intended outcome, usually these will be Social & Mental for social intrigue, but the player must present a reasonable argument in a role-playing context for how that attribute advances their side. The GM might simplify things by just taking one of the opposing character’s Defense scores, however, in the “Convince the King to kill his infant son” example, then the GM should take the King’s Resolve defense and adjust it WAY higher.
- There is no initiative, both sides just simply present their narrative, justifications, arguments, logic, deceptions, bluffs, intimidations, whatever, for how they’re trying to win the contest
- Each character participating makes an action roll according to their narrative goal from #3 above. The GM decides the CR they are rolling against, in many cases it may be on of the adversary’s Defenses, or if the Advanced test is passive (like finding their way through a complex forest), then the number is just a CR based on difficulty chosen by the GM.
- The Advanced challenge can either be “opposed” or “unopposed”. E.g. the characters can have active resistance from enemy NPCs (opposed) or they might just be trying to travel through a particularly difficult-to-navigate forest (unopposed). In either case, the challenge ends when the number of failures or successes is met (See “Difficulty / Failures / Successes below)”. If the number of successes is met, the challenge is won, if the number of failures is met, the challenge is lost. If the challenge is opposed it ends with the outcome being decided by the first side to meet either number.
- For every 10 points that a roll exceeds the target Defense or CR, it counts as an additional success. So, if the CR is 15 and my action roll is a 35, it counts as 3 successes (1 for meeting a 15, 1 for meeting a 25, and 1 for meeting a 35)
- Each participant who rolls hastens the end of the challenge for better or worse, participants with skills that are weaker or less relevant run the risk of producing the very result the group wishes to avoid.
- The end result is either Success With a Twist or Failure but the Story Progresses as it relates to the character’s intended outcome for the complex challenge.
Difficulty | Max Failures | Required Successes
1 | 5 | 2
2 | 4 | 2
3 | 4 | 3
4 | 5 | 4
5 | 5 | 5
6 | 4 | 5
7 | 4 | 6
8 | 3 | 6
9 | 3 | 7