1. Attacks vs. Target Defence.

This is NOT an opposed roll? Instead it's just Default Easy (1d) and you add one Misfortune die per point of target's Defence?

What is a situation where the difficulty would be higher than Easy (1d)?

2. Healing...

After a night of healing you recover a number of wounds = Toughness

AND

You get to make Resilence check to gain additional wounds equal to boons?

So if I have a Toughness of 4 and get 2 boons on a Resilence roll I recover 6 wounds?

Also it says that if you are trying to Recover from a Critical Wound you make it versus an Average (2d) difficulty test. Then if you are successful you can heal a critical wound with a Severity rating <= to the # of success rolled.

Umm what?????

So let's say I have a severity 3 critical wound. I make my Resilience roll and get 4 Successes and 2 Challenges. Can I heal this critical wound? I've "passed" the check, and have more than 3 successes. OR is treated as me having 2 successes (because the other 2 have been cancelled), so I've passed but accomplished nothing.

Am I correct in assuming that a player has NOTHING to lose by making a Resilence check each full night's rest?

3. Insanity

Are these two statements contradictory?

pg 67. "If none of the traits on the card match the situation, the character has kept his unravelling wits about him, a bit longer and staves off the effects of temporary insanity "

pg 68. "If the GM feels that the randomly drawn insanity card is inappropriate given the triggering effect, the player draws new insanity cards until a card is drawn with a trait that matches the triggering effect."

ohh and one more question.

4. Automatic checks?

In the "Day late, shilling short" introductory adventure. It mentions allowing the PCs to make an Average Observation check to notice the horn. Does this mean that they make this check automatically? Or that a player has to specifically say he's "checking out the Gor" ... if it is automatic... would you have EVERY PC make an Observation check (god I hope not).

Lastly.. if the check is automatic... (so the PCs didn't even ask to observe) and they fail... and they roll 2 Banes and suffer stress. How would they even know what they are suffering stress from....

reply to 1)

There are many attaks that have inherent difficulties added. two weapon figting for instance. also imagine a dwarf throwing himself of a cliff trying to attach his axe to the head of a an orc. I'd add some extra challenge to that attack compared to a normal attack.

There are some examples of what may add difficulties to an attack in the book. outnumbered, bad weather, slippery ground etc.

1. You're correct "vs target defense" means exactly what you write. Some action cards have added difficulty (a purple die symbol on the card). The improved active defense cards add challenge dice rather than misfortune. The GM can of course add challenge dice as he see fit.

2. Yes, that is how resilience works, you only get to count unopposed successes (as in any check). So in your example, the critical would not be converted (although I might grant a fortune dice on the next roll for being close to healing it). You can roll banes and chaos stars on the resilience test, guess it's up to the GM to interpret what they mean (a delay, added misfortune on next test, added fatigue/stress, apply a condition until end of act...).

3. I don't have the rules at the moment, but I seem to recall that those two sentences are about two different things. The first is the normal acquiring of insanities (where you can escape an insanity by being lucky in the draw), while the second is the insanity you get while being "strained". The "strain" insanity cannot be avoided I think, you just keep drawing until you get something that applies.

4. Our GM does not apply any negative effects on failed observation tests. The penalty of having failed the test is in itself punishment enough. Also, he likes to keep us on our edges by having us roll observation checks at times when there's nothing to observe.

AsmodeusDM said:

They suffer stress from being paranoid. If your mind is in a constant state of paranoia (looking out for danger even if you find none) that can quickly take its toll. Just ask any soldier who's had to stay on constant alert, minding every little detail, looking suspiciously at any person or being startled by sounds. It wears you down.

Other uses for banes in these kinds of situations is to have the players think they see something, but then it's gone. You can do similar things with boons, but only this time there really is something coming from the west or there abouts...

You can still do this even if the roll fails, but it might take considerable discipline to keep the IC and OOC knowledge separate for gamist players. But it can lead to some great RP. The players know they've failed the Observation roll, but the characters think they saw/heard something from the west.

It also hooks in nicely with the Party sheet and allows the GM to use the stress meter based on how the players react. If they draw their weapons and prepare for an attack that really shows a stressed out party that's jumpy.

Imagine a Wood Elf Hunter stopping the party and telling them he heard something from the West. They all take out their weapons, maybe it's the beastmen they've been tracking? Then a squirrel jumps through some branches overhead. You just know that's going to cause some stress amongst members. A dwarf might remark: "I guess squirrels a scary sight in your neck o' da wood, eh lady?" or some smart alec might remark "I'm glad we were prepared for that".

Even if they draw their weapons and do get attacked add a stress token. It means they're all so freaked out that they're responding drastically to simple things and their lookout sucks. Who knows who else might chance upon them next... if they survive this encounter!

for the insanity confusion...

I think this is saying that if the pc ends up with an insanity, either through unluckiness when his willpower is distressed, or through going through the deck until they find a matching trait while strained, BUT that the GM decides the insanity result doesn't really match the conditions (even though the trait matches), the GM can dictate that a new random card is chosen, until he is happy with the result.

as an example ,lets assume the pcs have just had a harrowing encounter with some chaos tainted npcs, barely escaping with their lives and picking up an insanity. The card randomly selected for the insanity is "Manic Fervour", ok the trait matches but the GM doesn't feel that type of insanity matches the result of the encounter and therefore tells the pc to randomly draw another; this time "Fragile Nerves" comes up, and the GM decides both the trait and the insanity matches the encounter and so the pc now has fragile nerves as a result....