6.6 Achievements

You can try to achieve one of the conflict goals, which are either story-related or have special effects. Goals are introduced in Setting Up Conflicts, above, and are described in detail in chapter 7.

Take up to 8 of your strike dice and roll them. Every 3+ is a success. You need to get more successes than the difficulty rating of the goal you're trying to achieve. If you are unsuccessful, all of the strike dice return to your Strike Pool (bonus and charge dice are always used up). However, if you are successful, all of the dice that you rolled are used up.

Describe your actions after you know whether you’ve achieved the goal or not. You can describe part of your action beforehand if you want, to set up suspense for the roll, but you should wait until after the roll to complete the description appropriately.

You can unmark a trait to reroll your failed dice for an achievement. If you still fail, strike dice return to the Strike Pool as before, but the trait remains unmarked.
The GM can, but does not have to, allow powers usually used in strikes or as actions to give bonus dice to an achievement if it makes sense in the specific situation. The number of bonus dice does not have to equal what the power would grant to a strike.

Later in our fight against the demons, we’re having the hardest time with the demonic bull. The beast has a defense of 6 because of its armored hide of massive dragon-like scales, and we can’t seem to get through with our strikes. I ask the GM to establish a goal that will help us lower the beast’s defense. The GM establishes the following goal:

Overcome the Beast’s Armored Hide [5]: Beast’s Defense -2

I need almost as many successes to achieve the goal as I would need to wound it, but I can roll more strike dice for an achievement (up to 8, rather than 6 for a strike), and once we achieve the goal, we can inflict all 3 needed wounds to bring it down much more easily.

By this time, I’ve gathered new strike dice, 7 in total. I need to roll 6 successes to overcome difficulty 5, which seems doable. I describe how I jump on top of the beast and plant an explosive device under its scales to blow a hole into its armored hide. However, my roll of all 7 strike dice only turns up 4 successes, which is not enough. I already used my trait earlier, so I can’t reroll the failed dice.

I return all of my strike dice to my Strike Pool and describe how Zadie jumps off the beast and holds her ears shut in anticipation of the explosion. But then nothing happens—it’s a dud. She curses under her breath and jumps aside when the beast charges at her, unscathed.

Combined Achievements

Most goals can be achieved with joint effort. Two or more characters can spend their actions together and contribute strike dice to a joint roll. One of the characters needs to be the leader of the achievement action just as with combined maneuvers, and only that character can use appropriate powers.

While a player can usually only spend 8 strike dice on achieving a goal, this limit is raised by 2 for each additional player who contributes dice. This means that 3 PCs attempting to achieve a goal together can roll up to 12 strike dice total, drawn in any combination from their 3 Strike Pools.

The next round, Daria and I decide to work together on the beast. In the story, Zadie tosses Rasheem a grenade while she distracts the beast. Rasheem somersaults over the beast, tossing down the grenade to blow up and trigger the explosive device. Rasheem has the Heroics power, so we’re going to determine that he’s the leader of the combined maneuver.

We can use up to 10 strike dice together in a combined maneuver with 2 PCs. I give all of my 7 strike dice, and Daria adds 3 from Rasheem’s Strike Pool. Daria pays 2 charge dice for the Heroics power and gains 3 bonus dice to our attempt. That’s a total of 13 dice! Daria rolls 9 successes and easily beats the difficulty. She discards all used dice.

She then describes how Rasheem lands and, as he looks over his shoulder, the grenade and device go off on the back of the beast in a big explosion, sending scales and fragments all around. The GM tells us that the beast roars madly and looks like it’s out for blood now, but we’re not impressed: with its defense lowered to 4, we can take it down as soon as we get some more strike dice.