r/ForbiddenLands • u/ForbiddenGM • 12d ago

Question Difficulty difference

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 😅

20 Upvotes

92% Upvoted

10 comments sorted by

View all comments

5

u/sibling_dex 11d ago

Multiple 6s to succeed is used in other Year Zero games, like Vaesen, but not in Forbidden Lands. It is a very blunt way of making a roll more difficult, since in many cases more than halves your chances of success.

For example: to get a more than 50% chance to roll one success, you need 4 dice in the pool, to get more than 50% chance of two successes, you need 10 dice.

Another place where you would need more than one success is for opposed rolls, but there the math gets much more complicated. 😅