Foreword

After a little over two years of development, I decided to change the resolution mechanic for the better, without touching up much of the rest of the game. There are a few things I can say about the reasoning behind this update, though I've already talked about them in length in a recent patreon post. The short version is that the core resolution mechanic of the game was conceived in its earliest stages, and as time went by it became less and less able to support new things being added to it. This resulted in situations such as when the Skill and Trait bonuses were first separated and the chances became very heavily squashed in the old Roll and Keep 2 mechanic.

The dice pools and the rest of the dynamic remains largely the same, but the core dice mechanic has now shifted towards hit-based pools, with a little model that internal playtesting shows to work quite nicely with how the pools were handled in the first place. Damage was the first little attempt at using hits, and they became more prominent when they were officially added as a side rule. As it turns out, they simply worked better than the main resolution method, and this update replaces the old method completely.

Here's to more playtesting and progress!

Changelog

Core Mechanics & Characters

• Redesigned the Success Test rules from the ground up to be based on Hits, and updated all adjacent mechanics accordingly. 
• Added Item Bonus to the list of possible Bonus types.

Success Test has seen the most changes in this update: The Roll-and-Keep-2 mechanic wasn't working properly, making critical hits too common and failures near impossible. The new model has a nicer overall curve, and allows for some neat mechanics that kick in when rolling Doubles.

Difficulty has also seen a little update with the introduction of per-difficulty variable TNs of how many Hits you need, as well as a more clearly laid out rule of Deeds, Not Dice that tells you when and how you can roleplay your way out of a situation without involving dice. 

Outcomes have also been affected by this change: Setbacks are now harsher and more leaning towards what was the more forgiving stages of Failure without giving up narrative progress, and the old Failure has been rewritten as Disaster: a more severe punishment for the very real chance of rolling no hits when attempting something you really shouldn't.

The Exertion Die offers a different take on the now removed "Trying Again": Push Through allows you to add your Exertion Die after a dice roll if you didn't like the result, but you take increased Exertion damage for testing your limits.

Group Tests have also been reworked into Cooperative Tests, in which everyone's individual results help out (or screw up) the Leader more impactfully.

The pool has been increased to a maximum of 7 due to the Item Bonus being introduced, a luxury made possible by the new core resolution mechanic. I've been meaning to add an Item bonus for a long time to separate it from the environmental nature of Advantage, but I couldn't afford to add another die to the already failing core mechanic. Item Bonus comes into play from special properties of certain items, or when you have an item that gives you an edge in a given situation.

• Renamed Attributes to Virtues and expanded upon them.
• Tweaked Combat Styles and Magic Paths into Disciplines. 

This is mostly a matter of presentation, though the now-renamed Virtues have been expanded a bit with examples of each one. Disciplines is an attempt to unify the rules of Magic Paths and Combat Styles through the same skill subgroup.

• Removed the daily limit on Insight usage.

You're simply gonna need more Insight to help you out whenever you really need it.

Combat, Damage & Equipment

• Increased Condition Track length by one space.

This helps to improve the death spiral's usage, and it's just a little bit more forgiving with players now that the average Hits have been increased. This change actually puts them on par with Large adversaries despite being Medium creatures, but it's all for the sake of the experience of the players over simulation.

• Tweaked Defensive Actions.

Defensive Actions are now Multi-Virtue Tests, giving you an edge when you shine in more than one area. Item Bonuses are now applied following Light Armor, Shields and Parrying weapon instead of Advantage.

• Removed Immunity, and tweaked Weakness and Resistance. 

Immunity simply wasn't working as intended. It required exceptions, extra explanations and other bullshit that became very confusing very fast for very little benefit. Instead, Weakness and Resistance can now stack with itself. Also, hitting Weak Spots of Adversaries now bypasses Resistance, making it just a little bit more rewarding to really go for those Called Shots. Speaking of which...

• Changed Called Shots and the Precise weapon trait. 

Called Shots are now a choice between careful aiming or quick, reckless luck. Precise now gains the new Item Bonus on Called Shots, as do other traits that gave you Advantage before.

• Replaced the Ricochet trait with Seeking.

Ricochet was hard to explain when handwaving space and distances, making it a subpar choice. Seeking is overall better, while acting the way Ricochet was intended to work in the first place.

• Reduced Ammo conservation threshold from 5 to 3, and adjusted Blitz and Efficient accordingly.

Ammo Conservation was originally intended to be 3, and it was changed to 5 after some playtests. 5 turned out to be a very big threshold to meet, as Skirmishes were over before marksmen were even close, so it's now back to its original intention. Blitz now uses 2 Ammo instead of 3, too, acting the same way as before but with different numbers.

Also, Efficient no longer gives you the insane and frankly badly executed boost of a whole new Ammo category: it now gives you the very powerful but more elegantly presented bonus of... increasing your Ammo Conservation from 3 to 5. Like pottery, I know.

• Revised Character and Adversary Sheets.

With all these changes being made to presentation, I guess the Sheets needed to follow. The Condition Tracks on the player charsheet now have little icons to tell you when you enter the Impaired, Weary and Fading stages, and the Weapons & Armor section gives you a bit more breathing room to write down your properties.

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See you next time!