Sometimes, characters will want to undertake a particularly risky or audacious action and the GM will call for a specific number of successes required to complete the action. For example, Jake is playing Zahlen and wants to jump over a ten-foot wide chasm. The GM decides that is a long jump and tells Jake that Zahlen will need two successes (at difficulty = 6) to fully clear the chasm and land safely on the other side. Jake rolls a 3, 3, 4, 5, 5, 6 resulting in only one success. Because Jake did not roll above the two-success threshold, his character experiences less than a full success. The GM may rule that Zahlen fully clears the chasm but falls down prone on the other side, or he may rule that Zahlen finds himself hanging off the ledge of the chasm and will also need to make a Strength + Athletics roll to get out of his predicament. The use of the threshold success system allows the GM to establish the possibility for partial but not complete success for an intended action.
Thresholds can also be applied to actions taken during down time. For example, Michelle is playing the character Scarlet and she decides her character wants to design and build a gun to channel death energy. The GM rules that this is a project that could takes months to finish and rules that the threshold for success is 15 total successes (difficulty = 6). Scarlet has a high Intelligence score of 5 and a Hypertech score of 3 giving her a total of eight dice in her dice pool. On Michelle’s first roll she scores a 4, 5, 6, 7, 7, 8, 8, and a 9 for a total of six successes. The GM rules that Scarlet has made progress on her death ray weapon for the first month but is not yet halfway to completion. Michelle rolls again and this time she scores a 2, 3, 5, 5, 6, 6, 8, and another 8 bringing her total to ten successes. The GM rules that Scarlet has made more progress during the second month but she still has a ways to go. Michelle rolls a third time and scores a 3, 6, 6, 6, 7, 8, 9, and another 9. Michelle has now scored seventeen total successes crossing the 15 success threshold set by the GM. The GM rules that it will take Scarlet three whole months to finish her death Ray. Unfortunately for Michelle, all of the remaining episodes for the season will take place during the same week so she will not get her new weapon until the next season starts.
Large projects such as crafting weapons, magic items, and writing longform literature will usually take months or years. Players are encouraged to use the years of downtime in between seasons to explain the scope of the projects they would like to work on. It is reason-able to conclude that Michelle ‘s character could build a machine shop over a span of a few years and crank out five or six new weapons over the course of that length of time. The GM will want to pace the rate that PC’s are able to craft deadly weapons and powerful magic items to maintain game balance. They may do this by ruling that a project requires a larger number of successes, or they may rule that a task will take months or years to complete, thus making each individual roll represent a longer period of time for research and development.
| Length of Project |
Suggested Threshold |
| Minutes to Complete |
1-5 Successes with a roll allowed every minute of game time. |
| Hours to Complete |
5-9 Successes with a roll allowed every hour of game time. |
| Days to Complete |
10-14 Successes with a roll allowed for 8 hours of work (conducted in downtime) |
| Weeks to Complete |
15-25 Success with a roll allowed for 40 hours of work (conducted in downtime) |
| Months to Complete |
25-50 Successes with a roll allowed for 160 hours of work (conducted in downtime) |
| Years to Complete |
+50 Successes with a roll allowed for 500 hours of work (conducted in downtime) |
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