Assisting Character Advancement Challenges Determination Momentum Stress

Challenges

CHALLENGES/EXTENDED TASKS

(Now without Challenge dice!)

Extended Tasks function by applying the game’s Stress and injury mechanics to non-combat actions. That is, an extended task is an activity where ‘beating’ the activity means successfully inflicting damage or Stress to it several times.

Picture it like the A plot of an episode where the medical team is working to identify the cause of a mysterious illness planet side. Or Defusing a bomb found in engineering. Non-combat activities in a dangerous environment. Tense and specific and time-oriented.

Progress Track - How many actions must be completed to overcome the challenge.
Impact - When you succeed at a roll towards the Task, you mark off spaces on the Progress track equal to your Impact. Your Impact is typically equal to the department you (or the ship) used for the task. This may be modified further, by the extended task’s resistance, talents, and other circumstances.
Difficulty: An extended task will state a specific Difficulty. This is the Difficulty of any tasks attempted against that extended task. Other factors, such as traits present in the scene, can affect this Difficulty.
Resistance: Some extended tasks are particularly arduous to overcome, and making any progress is slow. Your Impact is reduced by an amount equal to the extended task’s Resistance.

So the series of events would be:

1. MAKE A TASK ROLL: Resolve a task, as normal, against the extended task’s Difficulty.
2. DETERMINE IMPACT: Your Impact is equal to the department used in your task roll, which may be modified further by talents or other factors. If your task roll was assisted by the ship, then you may use the ship’s department instead.
RESISTANCE: If the extended task has any Resistance, reduce your Impact by 1 for each point of Resistance, to a minimum of 1.
3. APPLY IMPACT: Mark spaces on the progress track equal to your Impact. If the progress track is filled by this, then the extended task is completed. Momentum generated on tasks can be used in all the normal ways, but there is __a Momentum spend specific to extended tasks__:
ADDITIONAL PROGRESS (Repeatable) During an extended task, add 1 to your Impact for 2 Momentum.

Similarly, a complication on an extended task may reduce your Impact by 1 for each complication suffered.

BREAKTHROUGHS

Normally, an extended task doesn’t change when you mark off spaces on the progress track. At the gamemaster’s discretion, however, a progress track can include breakthroughs. These are points along the progress track which alter the nature of the extended task.

An extended task has two breakthrough spaces. The first will be halfway along the track (on the 6th space if the progress track is 12 spaces long, for example), and if the track is an odd number of spaces, round up (so a progress track of 9 has the first breakthrough on the fifth space).

The second breakthrough is three-quarters of the way along the track: take the spaces left after the first breakthrough, and the breakthrough will be halfway along that remaining section (again, rounding up as needed).

When you mark off a breakthrough space, the situation changes in some way. The gamemaster determines if this change is good for you, bad for you, or merely different.