When you attempt a skill test, any dice which roll a 20 cause a complication. This doesn’t mean you’ve failed—you can suffer complications and still succeed if you get enough successes—but each complication does create an extra problem, and may be inconvenient, painful, or embarrassing.

Things don’t always go to plan, and while you may succeed at what you set out to achieve, there may be bumps along that road. When you roll a skill test, any die that rolls a 20 causes a complication, which takes effect once the skill test has been resolved. Complications don’t stop you from succeeding, but they may impede your actions later or have other repercussions.

The gamemaster can use a complication to inflict an immediate problem upon your character or the situation, which should relate in some way to the action you’ve just performed. This can often create a trait—a fact about the scene—which hinders or impairs your actions, by increasing the Difficulty of skill tests or making some actions impossible. These traits may be persistent problems, or they may be short-lived, lasting only long enough to affect the character’s next skill test.

There are other ways for the gamemaster to use complications, however. A useful alternative is to impose some immediate restriction or penalty, limiting a character’s immediate choices by prohibiting an action they could normally take. A complication might instead cause an activity to take longer than normal (as a rule of thumb, each complication increases the time taken by 50%). In general, a complication can work like a negative trait. It can stop you from doing something you would usually be able to, or increase the Difficulty of an action by 1.

You are not powerless in this situation, though. When you suffer a complication, you may choose to buy it off by adding 2 points of Threat to the gamemaster’s pool—in essence, avoiding a problem now in return for potential problems later. The gamemaster may also trade a complication you or another player has rolled for 2 points of Threat if they don’t wish to create an immediate problem or simply can’t think of one right now. If a non-player character suffers a complication, the gamemaster can buy it off by spending 2 points of Threat.

Example Complications

As complications are tied to a specific skill, the following are grouped by skill only to suggest what sort of tests might result in particular complications.

Example Battle Complications

• Bruised: The pain is making it hard to concentrate.
• Exhausted: I’m too tired to fight.
• Flanked: I’m in a tactically bad position.
• Injured: I have suffered an injury to <area>.
• Stunned: I’m dazed from a strike.
• Unarmed: I’ve lost my weapon.

Example Communicate Complications

• Disconnected: I am out of my depth in this social situation.
• Gauche: I am showing off my status too much.
• Inferior: My lack of status has been exposed.
• Outsider: I don’t really fit in here.
• Rude: I have caused offense.
• Tongue-tied: I can’t seem to get the right words out.

Example Discipline Complications

• Angry: I am too full of rage for anything but action.
• Conflicted: I am torn between possibilities.
• Distracted: There is too much going on.
• Frightened: I can’t deal with this.
• Intoxicated: I’ve had too much to drink.
• Unfocused: I can’t seem to concentrate.

Example Move Complications

• Awkward: I have no grace or flow of movement.
• Constricted: There isn’t enough room for me to move.
• Hurt: An injury is slowing me down.
• Slow: I can’t move very quickly.
• Tired: I am feeling too exhausted to run.
• Uncoordinated: I can’t seem to control my movements.

Example Understand Complications

• Complicated: There are too many connections to see an answer.
• Confused: I don’t quite understand what is going on.
• Misinformed: Some of my data is wrong.
• Overthinking: The answer just cannot be that simple.
• Uninformed: I am missing a vital piece of information.
• Vague: I am having trouble thinking.

Example: Kara has already picked up the complication ‘Intoxicated’ that has been adding to the Difficulty of her tests. As this is a social scene, further complications would relate to that. She might make a fool of herself in some way (such as spilling something on the wrong person) or fail to remember a point of etiquette and gain further complications like ‘Clumsy’ or ‘Rude’. 

If the situation with Marcus becomes physical, she might gain complications representing wounds, or even that she has been poisoned. 

Complication Range

Some situations can make a skill test uncertain, rather than more difficult. These factors make it more likely that complications occur, by increasing the range of numbers which cause complications. A test has a complication range of 1 normally, so complications occur on any die that rolls a 20 (only a 1 in 20 chance per die). The complication range can never be increased to more than five, and the effect of changing the complication range is explained on the table below:

Success at a Cost

Some skill tests can’t really be failed outright. Sometimes an action will inevitably succeed, but there might be problems or consequences along the way. In these situations, the gamemaster may allow a skill test to succeed at a cost, either before the dice have rolled, or after the result is known. If a skill test succeeds at a cost, then a character who fails a skill test still achieves their goal in some form, but they also suffer one or more automatic complications, in addition to any they’re suffering because of the roll. The gamemaster determines how many extra complications are suffered.

Although the failed skill test has produced a successful outcome, Momentum cannot be spent to improve the result of a skill test that succeeded at a cost: Momentum can only be spent if a skill test was passed.

The gamemaster may declare that an action succeeds at a cost, or they may give a player a choice to succeed at a cost. This choice can and should be made on a case-by-case basis according to the situation.

Example: Kara attempts to make another test to learn more from the gathering before confronting Marcus. However, she fails to get the required successes. The gamemaster allows her to succeed at a cost. For succeeding at the test she learns the spice merchant is indeed Marcus' target. However, the cost is that Marcus becomes aware Kara is asking questions about him and now knows his plan.