Difficulty

The third factor in composing a dice pool (in addition to the relevant characteristic and related skill) focuses on the difficulty of the task being attempted. The characteristic and skill ranks add positive dice to the dice pool. Difficulty adds negative dice, making success less likely. In addition to dice that represent the task’s inherent difficulty, other dice are added to reflect further complications based on the environment or specific situation.

While you determine the characteristic and related skill based on the character attempting the task, your GM sets the difficulty of all checks. There are six basic difficulty levels, ranging from Simple (level 0) to Formidable (level 5). Some modifiers and situations may warrant checks higher than the fifth level, Formidable, subject to your GM’s discretion (see the Impossible Tasks sidebar, on page 18, for information on an optional additional difficulty level).

In addition to providing a general classification that describes a task’s inherent challenge, the difficulty level also tells you how many purple Difficulty dice d you should add to your dice pool. We refer to a task attempted against a set difficulty level as a standard check.