heys!

it came up again lately and i still don't really know the answer to that question:

most spells are "just" spellcraft checks which are not vs target defence. does that mean, that only the black dice for the real defence of the target are not applied or does the difficulty modifier not apply too?

for example: a meele attack against a greater deamon will normally have a difficulty modifier of at least 2d, so the player takes 2 challenge for the difficulty and lets say 5 misfortune for the defence of the deamon.

now for the wizard: he casts flameblast, which has a difficulty modifier of 1d itself, but is a "spellcraft only" check. so he will not add the 5 misfortune for the defence, but does he add the 2 challenge for the diffictulty?

always a huge discussion in my group and we never seem to find a satisfying answer in the rulebooks…

The 1 challenge die you get for difficulty in "vs target defence" actions is not added to Spellcraft only checks. The challenge die from "Unfathomable power", affects "all actions and check targeting a xxx", this is a lot less clear cut. Given that the word target is used on the Flameblast spell, I would say that Unfathomable power applies.

Active defenses (Dodge) may not be used, the card specifically states that it can only be used on actions that target the character's defense. But the GM can use aggression dice to make the action harder (this works when "the NPC in question is a direct target of the effect").

Edit: For the Flameblast vs a greater Daemon, the difficulty would be 2 purple dice (one from the spell difficulty, one from Unfathomable power) + black dice spent from the aggression score.

that sounds logical to me, gonna try it on my players

thx for the advice!