It may happen sooner, or it may happen later, but the time will come when a challenge arises that is more difficult than normal. To model increasing difficulty, add additional boons to the requirement.
Why would a challenge get harder?
What might increase the difficulty of a challenge?
- poor environmental conditions;
- lack of resources;
- lack of time;
- supernatural resistance; or,
- active opposition.
This is not meant to be an exhaustive list. If a disadvantage is present that will materially affect the task, add a required boon. To make tracking challenges easier, let’s categorize their Difficulty. Mundane challenges have a Difficulty of 1 because they require one boon. If a challenge is noted as having a Difficulty of 3, it requires three successful boons.
Keep in mind: adding Difficulty will significantly reduce the chances for success so reserve it for significant obstacles! If a Character with three dice has a 42% chance of succeeding on a mundane (Difficulty 1) challenge, it drops to a 7.5% chance of success on a Difficulty 2 challenge, yikes!
Considering degrees of difficulty
Another way to approach difficulty is to consider nested degrees of success, each degree increasing in Difficulty. A broad success might be Difficulty 1 but a specific success might be Difficulty 2 and a perfect success, whatever that means, would be Difficulty 3. What would this actually look like?
Imagine a Character engages in a game of darts at the local tavern. Just striking the board anywhere with the dart would be Difficulty 1, striking the Double Ring would add 1 to the Difficulty, striking the Triple Ring would add 2 to the Difficulty, and so on. Do they need to hit a specific number? Add another 1 to the Difficulty.
Call this the bullseye method. If we want to measure varying degrees of success, from nailing the center of a bullseye to barely striking the outer ring, we can model it.