Heroes often find themselves in tense and dangerous situations such as disabling a complex trap, climbing a rock face while under fire from archers, or rescuing people from a burning building or sinking ship with a definite—and sometimes deadly— time limit
This system simulates these events and helps the Game Master insert some drama into what would otherwise be simple skill rolls.
When to Use These Rules: Dramatic Tasks are great for tense actions that must be performed in a hurry or have disastrous effects if failed.
The Basics: The heroes make skill rolls to accumulate “Task Tokens” and resolve the event before time runs out.
The GM starts by figuring out what the task is, how long the party has to complete it, and how many tokens they need for success.
Use these guidelines when only a single character can attempt the task each turn (others can Support):
Challenging: Collect four Task Tokens in three rounds. Examples: Disable a trap in the dark, pick a lock before a guard returns, disengage a moving horse-team from its wagon.
Difficult: Collect six Task Tokens in four rounds. Examples: Disable a trap in the middle of combat, cast a ritual, sail a craft to shore during a storm.
Complex: Collect eight Task Tokens in five rounds. Examples: Disable a particularly complicated and/or dangerous trap, pick a very difficult lock or series of locks before a patrol returns, cast a large and powerful ritual, repair a complicated machine with multiple moving parts.
If more than one person can attempt the task at once, such as crewing a ship, the GM must set the number of rounds and tokens required for victory herself. Here are some guidelines.
Assume each player will average one success per turn. Use that as a guideline if you want the task to be “fair,” and set the number of rounds from three to five as appropriate. A party of five given three rounds to save a galleon in a storm, for example, needs to accumulate 15 Task Tokens in three rounds. Increase or decrease the number of tokens to make it more or less challenging.
If the number of tokens achieved is a measure of success rather than a straight win/fail condition, such as rescuing victims from a fire or hauling up bags of gold from a collapsing mineshaft, simply set the possible number of tokens that may be gathered in the time allowed. Each token gathered represents a person saved, a bag recovered, etc. It’s up to you whether it’s possible to save them all (using the guide above) or not.
Let the party choose how many will attempt the task, especially if there’s something else going on at the same time. Deciding how many heroes will break into the jail to rescue a friend while the others fight off the corrupt city guard allows them to choose their tactics
Characters are dealt Action Cards as usual during a Dramatic Task. Those attempting the task make relevant skill checks and get a Task Token for each success and raise. Failure means no progress and a Critical Failure reduces progress by one (if any has been made).
The skills that can be used to accumulate tokens depends on the situation. They might be defined, such as Thievery to disable a trap, or they might be open—a heroic paladin might use Athletics to carry people from a burning building while a mage uses telekinesis (Spellcasting) to do the same.
The GM can break tasks down into steps if she likes, each of which might require different skills. If disabling a difficult trap in the dark, for example, the heroes might first have to get two tokens to get the feel for their surroundings using Notice, then three more tokens using Thievery to cut all three trip wires in the correct order.
Requiring multiple skills throughout the task makes it more difficult since raises from one type of skill check don’t carry over to the other. In the trap example above, for example, the first step requires two Notice successes. Additional successes don’t carry over to the Thievery rolls needed afterward.
If a character’s Action Card is a Club, something has gone wrong. Attempts to resolve the task (or Support it!) are made with an additional -2 penalty.
Worse, if a roll is failed during a Complication, the Dramatic Task fails—the trap springs, the lock jams, a victim cannot be saved, and so on. The character may choose not to attempt a roll on a turn he has a Complication—it just costs him precious time.
Support: Characters assisting (via Support) also suffer the Complication penalty, and an additional -2 penalty if their Action Card is a Club! Critical Failure on their part just subtracts from the lead’s roll as usual, however, it doesn’t cause the entire task to fail.