Hello to all,

Again some basic questions ....

1. Sometimes, it is written: " upgrade difficulty of all combat checks against this target once "; " upgrade difficulty of all combat checks against this target twice ":

in example 1, does it mean that i must upgrade 1 Difficulty die and in the second example, i must upgrade 2 difficulty dice ?

2. Sometimes, as GM, i increase the difficulty check by adding difficulty dice, sometimes i 'm adding Setback dice and sometimes i need to upgrade difficulty dice to Challenge dice. From your experience, is it more lethal or difficult to increase Difficulty Dice or to upgrade Difficulty dice ? What do you usually do when you need to improvise?

3. Setback dice are more related to environmental minor obstacles but instead of increasing the dice pool by adding Difficulty dice and setback dice, isn't it more efficient to upgrading in Challenge dice ?

4. Regarding Advantages, it is not always written (probably because it is obvious!) as "uncancelled advantages" for activating items,.... but i guess, it is always uncancelled advantages, isn't it ?

(sorry in advance if my questions seem silly or obvious).

Thanks a lot

1.) Yes, normally someone trying to stab me has two purple dice in his dice pool. If for some reason that is upgraded once he has one purple and one red. If it is upgraded twice he has two red. If it is upgraded three times he has two red and a purple.

2.) Adding an extra purple die to a pool makes failure more likely than upgrading a purple die to a red. Upgrading to red dice is the only way that Despair results can happen though. Which is more important is a question of taste.

For example: Bob the Burglar is brilliant (Cunning 4) and skilled (Skulduggery 3), he has a 83% chance to pick an average (difficulty 2) lock. If he runs into a hard lock (difficulty 3) his chance to succeed drops to 73%. On the other hand if he is picking that average lock under stress and the GM spends a story point to upgrade the check (so one red and one purple), he has a 79% chance to succeed, but also picks up a 8% chance of a Despair. Increasing the difficulty from 2 to 3 made him more likely to fail than the upgrade would, but the upgrade introduces the possibility of some disastrous side effect.

Anydice is a great tool for calculating probabilities, there is some Genesys formatting available here:

https://anydice.com/program/11231

3.) Setback dice are typically for negative circumstances. Bob is rolling against two purple for that lock no matter where it is, but if he's drunk, rushing, and underwater, he might have three (or more) setback dice. The idea is that difficulty dice don't vary based on circumstances, you represent bad conditions with setback dice.

4.) Yep, only uncancelled anything matter. Cancelled results never do anything.

Thank you Sgingell..... it helps a lot. ? ?