Dice Tests

In T13 the most basic form of Test is the Dice Test. In a Dice Test the player rolls Dice against a difficulty set by the Ref. Occasionally Dice rolls are rolled against each other.

What Dice To Roll

For free each character can roll:
A Boon die (from the appropriate Facet or an appropriate Annex), a Descendant Die (from any appropriate Descendant including all special types : Pacts, Locations, Trophies, Real Estate, Monoliths, Provinces or Artefacts Including their Dark Territory or Dark Matter versions) and any Proficiency Dice that they may have (up to 4d8) see here.

A Character can pay extra Sway to roll extra Dice. The amount required is listed on the Sway table but is reproduced here.

It should be noted that characters who have many Artefacts and Monoliths within their Province and Real Estates can spend enormous amounts to produce extremely high scores. Beware when storming that Vampire Lord’s Castle atop the mountains beyond the forest. And Refs should note the potentially world shattering experiments possible in a Province Laboratory with an Artefact Particle Accelerator…

Results of a roll

The dice roll is compared to the difficulty of the test, or to the opponent’s own roll.

Whichever side rolls higher (or if you roll higher than the set diff)  has succeeded although by how much depends on how high they roll.

If both sides roll the same (or you roll the diff) then they have reached a Stalemate, where they have not failed, but haven’t really succeeded either.

A Proficiency Crisis (caused by rolling maximum or minimum on your proficiency dice) causes you to take both the level of success that you have rolled and the equivalent failure as well (or the failure you rolled and the equivalent success).

The following table governs levels of success based on how much you defeat thr difficulty. 

Extra success levels

As well as being able roll a Superior Success you may have additional success levels on top of that. Each level of success above a Complete Success allows you to buy an Extra Success Level Effect. The types of effects are restricted by the type of Character so a Grunt is restricted to 4 success levels, Mercari to 7 and a Solo to 10 (this restricts Grunts such that they cannot cause Terror or Gain Chi from success levels).

Extra Failure Levels

When a character fails with a serious failure (or worse due to negative Success levels). Failure levels do not care whether you are a Grunt, Mercari or Solo in power level, and you can pick whichever effects you want. They are broadly the same as the success levels, but inverted in effect.

In general you don’t need to worry too much about Failure levels as the opposition success levels act instead, but if you are rolling against a set difficulty and fail then you will suffer these effects.

You should never take failure levels if your opponent is taking success levels (unless you have additional failure levels above their success levels).

It should be noted that loss of Sway/Chi/Yarn can also cause a Character to lose Proficiencies or Descendants, increase (or decrease / gain or lose) Handicaps (Refs choice), or even lose an Annex. When these effects occur they should reflect the costs in Sway that the Character has incurred. So a shortfall of a few points of Yin/Yang could be paid by increasing a low Handicap a little, or losing a few Proficiencies, but a massive loss of Yarn could result in huge changes to the Character, creating Daemonic Handicaps and the like.

Proficiency Crisis and Success Level effects

It is normal when having a Proficiency Crisis to end up with both Success and Failure Level Effects, whenever possible the Referee should try to not have the two Effects cancel each other.

If a Superior Success grants the character Sway, then they should not lose Sway from the Failure levels they also incur.

Card play does not quite work this way, since the cards will probably not directly oppose each other. You may draw and play an Ordeal card and the Ref may also draw and play at the same time, they may interfere, but it is unlikely they will directly cancel.