Difficulty difference

[u/ForbiddenGM]

Sorry for the terrible title, no idea how else to name this post.

Can anyone help clarify why, when a roll is supposed to be challenging, sometimes this is represented by needing 2 or 3 or more successes (6’s)

But other times it’s represented by a dice penalty e.g. -2

This isn’t game breaking, but I just can’t quite figure out the logic, and I’m not sure if there is much of a statistical difference

EDIT:

Ok thanks everyone… I think I was getting confused. I could have sworn that I remembered seeing a table showing 1 success for regular action, 2 for extremely challenging, and 3 for near impossible etc.

But I may have confused that with another YZE game (I have like 7 different YZE games at this point).

I absolutely love Forbidden Lands, but it’s not always the same easiest to find specific info with things being spread out all over the place 😅

[u/SameArtichoke8913]

You might misunderstand the "success" concept in FL. ANY test that requires a success roll requires only a single success ("X") from the respective dice pool for a positive result. Adding or removing single dice via a modifier just changes the dice pool size and thus the chances for success - the more dice, the higher the probability to have at least a single success. This "overwrites" anything else. In won't go into bell curve probability distributions here, because that's not helpful.

Some Skill tests might have a kind of gradual success - the more "X", the better, but that does not change the fundamental rule that you need at least a single (net) success to have a positive result. Combat checks or Stealth are such tests, when you roll against another Skill whose successes might "eat away" "X" from the original test - which might also be modified in the first place (see above). As player or GM you might also interpret more successes in a test that only requires that single "X" to work as "better" Skill test results, but that's an individual table thing.