Chapter 3.1: Task Resolution

Most of what a character does resolves in conversation. A player says what their character is trying to do, and the gamemaster answers: yes, they do it; no, not like that; or maybe, if the dice agree. Dice only enter where the third answer applies, when the outcome is in doubt. This chapter covers what happens from there: assembling a roll, setting how hard it is, resolving a contest between two characters, and handling what a bad roll leaves behind.

Scenes and Traits

Play proceeds in scenes. A scene holds one immediate stretch of action in one place, with a purpose or pressure that keeps the characters there: stabilizing a failing relay, crossing a watched concourse, treating a patient, or arguing over the terms of an evacuation. The gamemaster frames the location and the immediate situation. Players decide what their characters do inside it. The scene ends when its question has been answered, the characters leave, or the action moves somewhere else.

A Trait is a short statement of a fact that matters to play. Write active Traits where everyone can see them. A fact can remain part of the description without becoming a Trait; giving it a Trait means the table expects it to shape what is possible or how hard an action will be.

Traits fall into four broad kinds:

• A situation Trait describes a temporary condition affecting the scene, such as Smoke Through the Corridor, Evacuation Under Way, or Alarm Raised.
• A location Trait belongs to the place, such as Well-Stocked Surgical Bay, Abandoned Relay Station, or Unstable Walkway.
• A character Trait belongs to a person or creature. Species, injuries, emotional conditions, and a history such as Former Foundry Inspector all live here.
• An equipment Trait names a tool or system whose presence matters, such as Clinical Sequencer, Signal-Bending Rig, or Survey Drone.

What a Trait Does

Apply a Trait when the fact it names bears directly on the proposed action. Ask what follows because that fact is true. A relevant Trait usually has one of four effects:

• It makes an action possible. A Clinical Sequencer allows the assay its operator wants to run.
• It makes an action impossible until the situation changes. A Collapsed Passage closes that route.
• It reduces a Task's Difficulty by 1.
• It increases a Task's Difficulty by 1, or calls for a Task where the action would otherwise succeed automatically.

Some Traits state a narrower mechanical effect. A cysuit provides Protection 1; an Injury may prevent a particular movement; a damaged power system may widen the complication range. Use that stated effect when it applies.

The same Trait can help one action and hinder another. Dense Smoke helps a character remain unseen and obstructs a careful shot. Apply each independent fact once. Two names for the same circumstance do not create two modifiers. Several genuinely separate Traits can stack, each moving the Difficulty by 1 or contributing its own stated effect.

Players may propose a Trait and explain how it applies. The gamemaster decides the effect before the player commits Momentum or rolls dice. A relevant character or equipment Trait can also expose a cost; a broad advantage never guarantees that the Trait will always help.

Potent Traits

An ordinary Trait has Potency 1, which is left unwritten. A stronger or repeated condition carries a number after its name: Dense Smoke 2, Jammed Signal 3, Fortified Position 2. Its Potency is the number of equivalent Traits it represents. Where each copy would adjust Difficulty, apply the Potency as the total adjustment. A Potent Trait may also support several distinct effects when the fiction calls for them.

Potency measures the strength of one fact. Separate facts remain separate Traits. Dense Smoke 2 and Unstable Deck can both affect a character trying to cross a compartment under fire.

How Long a Trait Lasts

A Trait remains in play while its statement remains true. Situation Traits usually last for a scene or a few rounds. Location Traits remain with the place. Equipment and persistent character Traits travel with their owner. Injuries, damage, and other temporary character Traits last until treatment, repair, or events in the fiction remove them.

When the fact changes, rename or remove the Trait immediately. Restoring power removes Power Offline. A spreading fire might change Smoke Through the Corridor into Dense Smoke 2. No roll or Momentum is required when the fiction has already settled the change.

Creating and Changing Traits

When changing the situation is uncertain, attempt a Task, usually at Difficulty 2. Success can create a Trait, remove one, replace one with a more accurate statement, or raise or lower a Trait's Potency by 1. The action must supply the means: emergency lamps can create Well Lit, engineering work can reduce Jammed Signal 3 to Jammed Signal 2, and clearing debris can remove a Blocked Access Trait.

When a successful Task accomplished something else, spend 2 Momentum to Create or Change a Trait as an additional result related to that Task (Chapter 3.2). Complications can create or worsen troublesome Traits. The gamemaster may spend 2 Threat to introduce a Complication Trait grown from the situation already in play.

Most Traits are open information once they begin affecting play. A concealed fact can remain unrevealed while discovering it is part of the challenge. The gamemaster still states the final Difficulty before the roll, and reveals the Trait when the characters perceive it or its effects become evident.

Attempting a Task

A Task is built from a character's Attributes, Specializations, and Focuses, and resolved by rolling two or more d20s.

1. Pick an Attribute and a Specialization, and a Focus if one applies. Add the Attribute and Specialization ratings together; the total is your target number. Most Tasks suggest an obvious pairing (Chapter 4.6 covers the common ones), but a player may propose a different combination when the approach calls for it, and the gamemaster has the final word. Confirm that the character has the tools, hardware, access, and information needed to make the attempt. A Focus supplies no missing equipment (Chapter 3.5).
2. The gamemaster sets the Difficulty, usually a number from 0 to 5. This is how many successes the roll needs to clear. Exceptional opposition and stacked Traits may raise the final Difficulty above 5; 5 is the usual range, not a hard limit. Players should always know a Task's Difficulty before committing to it.
3. Build your dice pool, starting with 2d20. Add any bonus dice granted by Talents or other effects, then add more by spending Momentum (Chapter 3.2). No Task ever rolls more than 5d20. Every point of Momentum spent adds one point to the gamemaster's Threat pool.
4. Bring in Assistance, if the situation allows and you want it (below).
5. Roll. Each die that comes up equal to or under your target number scores a success. If your Focus applies, a die that comes up equal to or under your Specialization rating scores a critical success instead, worth 2. If no Focus applies, a die that comes up a 1 is the critical instead. A die that comes up 20, or within the Task's complication range, causes a complication (below).
6. Compare successes to Difficulty. Meet or beat it and the Task succeeds; anything scored past the Difficulty becomes Momentum. Fall short and the Task fails.
7. The gamemaster narrates the outcome. On a success, spend Momentum to shape it further. Either way, apply whatever complications came up.

Your engineer is trying to squeeze extra output from a failing drive system. Her target number is Control (11) plus Engineering (4): 15. She carries a Propulsion Systems Focus, and the gamemaster sets the Difficulty at 2. She rolls two d20s: a 4 and a 19. The 4 clears her target number, and because her Focus applies and 4 is also at or under her Engineering rating, it counts as a critical success, worth 2; the 19 clears nothing. Two successes meets the Difficulty exactly, with nothing left over for Momentum this time.

Tools, Access, and Automatic Information

Establish capability before setting Difficulty. If the character lacks an essential tool, the Task may be impossible until they acquire, fabricate, or improvise one. Inferior tools usually create a Trait that raises Difficulty or the complication range. Appropriate equipment may make the Task possible or lower its Difficulty.

A cysuit already provides routine environmental readings, common diagnostics, standard references, and simple hand tools. Give that information directly. Call for a Task when the target is concealed, hostile, unfamiliar, beyond the standard sensor load, or changing under pressure. Chapter 3.5 defines the baseline and the Traits for specialized hardware.

Setting Difficulty

Most Tasks default to Difficulty 1. Routine or straightforward work drops to 0; complex or genuinely uncertain work climbs higher. From there, the gamemaster weighs whatever the scene and the character's circumstances add: factors that make a Task harder or easier are usually represented as Traits, using the effects described above.

Apply all relevant Traits and Potency before announcing the final Difficulty. Difficulty cannot fall below 0, but it has no general maximum. A high final Difficulty does not itself make an action impossible: critical successes, Assistance, and other effects may still make the required total attainable. A Trait may make the action impossible as a separate fictional effect, as described under What a Trait Does.

Your medic is performing intricate neural surgery on a Vyrkani patient. This has a basic Difficulty of 2, but the specifics stack up: her cysuit's medical libraries have never handled Vyrkani neurochemistry, raising the Difficulty by 1, and the ship is taking fire during the procedure, raising it by 1 more, to 4. The surgery also needs a compatible tissue sample, which a crewmate volunteers before the roll is made, clearing that obstacle without touching the Difficulty. The ship's surgical bay, a location Trait, eases the Difficulty back down to 3.

Difficulty 0. A Task this easy needs no roll at all: the gamemaster declares it done, with no successes, no complications, and no Momentum generated. A Difficulty 0 Task never rolls dice and never generates Momentum, including bonus Momentum from Talents or other effects. If uncertainty, pressure, or danger makes a roll worth resolving, set the Difficulty to at least 1.

Assistance

More than one character can work a Task together. One is the leader; the rest are assistants. A single assistant costs nothing to bring in. For each assistant past the first, the player controlling that assistant spends 1 Momentum. As with every Momentum spend, that adds 1 Threat: more hands on a problem also means more room for something to go wrong.

To assist, describe how your character is helping the leader, then roll 1d20 against your own target number and your own Focus, if any. An assistant never rolls more than that one die. If the leader scores at least 1 success, every success the assistants generated is added to the total. If the leader scores none, the Task fails regardless of what the assistants rolled. Assistants can still roll complications, and in combat, assisting takes the assistant's turn.

Remote Assistance requires a Full or Limited Aelith connection. A Limited link may act as a Trait when delay or lost fidelity obstructs the help. Minimal and Offline links carry instructions with no live Assistance roll (Chapter 3.5).

Your engineer is repairing a failing relay and scores 2 successes on his own roll. A crewmate pitches in, rolling 1d20 against her own Control and Engineering, and adds a further success: 3 in total.

In the middle of a firefight, your captain spots the one gap in a boarder's cover and calls it out. That direction counts as Assistance to whoever is taking the shot, rolled against the captain's own Reason and Security. Any success, or complication, the captain generates joins the shooter's own roll.

Opposed Tasks

When a Task is contested directly, one character trying to land a blow while another tries to avoid it, or one trying to move unseen while another searches for them, it is an opposed Task. The character acting is the active character; the one resisting is the reactive character.

The reactive character rolls first, gathering a dice pool and rolling against their own target number the same way any Task would, but without a fixed Difficulty: only the number of successes matters. That total becomes the Difficulty the active character rolls against.

If the active character succeeds, resolve the Task normally and award any surplus successes to their controller as Momentum or Threat. If the active character fails, the reactive character gains a number of Momentum or Threat equal to the shortfall: Momentum for a player-controlled reactive character, or Threat for a gamemaster-controlled one. A Difficulty of 3 met by only 1 success therefore gives the reactive character's controller 2 Momentum or Threat.

After the reactive character rolls, apply factors affecting their side of the contest to the success total. Each favorable factor adds 1 success; each hindering factor removes 1, down to a minimum of 0. Potency applies the factor that many times. The adjusted total becomes the active character's Difficulty. Factors affecting the active character beyond the opposition then adjust that final Difficulty up or down as they normally would. Either side may accept Assistance under the usual rules.

Your security specialist is grappling with a hostile boarder, forcing a blade aside. This is an opposed Task. The boarder has Daring 11 and Security 3, target number 14; he rolls a 6 and a 15, scoring one success (the 6 clears 14, the 15 does not). Your specialist rolls next, with Daring 12 and Security 5, target number 17, and a Focus in Hand-to-Hand Combat. She rolls an 8 and a 12; both clear her target number, for 2 successes, enough to beat the Difficulty of 1 the boarder's roll set, with 1 left over as Momentum. If she had scored no successes, the boarder would have won the contest and added 1 Threat for the one-success shortfall.

Elsewhere, your medic and a crewmate are fighting free of captors, having taken a combat stimulant beforehand. A captor moves to stop your medic; she rolls 1 success on her own defense, and the stimulant counts as an extra factor in her favor, adding a success of its own. The captor's Difficulty rises to 2.

Complications

Any d20 that comes up 20 causes a complication, something that complicates the scene once the Task is resolved, whether the Task itself succeeded or not. A Task's complication range is normally just that one result, 20, but a factor in the scene can widen it: a range of 2 means 19 or 20 triggers a complication, a range of 3 means 18 through 20, and so on, up to a maximum range of 5. A player may spend 2 Momentum to prevent a complication once it comes up. The spend adds 2 Threat, turning an immediate problem into pressure the gamemaster can spend later instead.

Mid-negotiation with an unfamiliar people, your diplomat's attempt to win them over lands, but a rolled complication catches her cysuit's translation libraries stumbling on an idiom: a mistranslation that may color whatever the conversation covers next.

Some Tasks cannot really be failed outright, only completed with difficulty. The gamemaster may announce before the roll that Succeed at Cost is available, or offer it after a failed roll. If the player accepts, the Task succeeds and causes one automatic complication, on top of anything rolled naturally. The gamemaster may set a larger number of automatic complications, but must state that cost when making the offer.

A Task that Succeeds at Cost is not a true success for Momentum. It generates no Momentum, including bonus Momentum, and Momentum cannot be spent to improve its outcome. Its automatic complication follows the normal prevention rule: the players may spend 2 Momentum to prevent it, adding 2 Threat as usual. They may not add Threat directly in place of that Momentum spend. Each additional automatic or rolled complication must be prevented separately.