Hey, it's your friendly neighborhood homebrewer back with some more tools for your table! This time we're lifting an entire mechanic (almost) wholesale from another great TTRPG to bring a little chaos and player agency to your game

When a Character succeeds with a natural 19 or 20 on a Test out of combat, they automatically receive a success with a reward. It can be hard to come up with these on the fly, but the good news is that you don’t have to! Use the following rules for Critical Rewards instead to give players agency to decide their reward in the moment.

These homebrew rules are a lightly modified version of the Opportunities system in Fabula Ultima, which is a great game that you should check out if you need a break from Draw Steel! (This is not a sponsored post, I just wanted to provide proper attribution for an awesome mechanic).

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Critical Rewards

When you roll a Characteristic Test and get a natural 19 or 20, you critically succeed! You automatically receive the best outcome possible and gain an additional reward.

You may pick an option from the list below or come up with a different twist that fits the current scene. The Game Master has final say on whether a reward is appropriate to the current situation.

Note that this is meant to apply to Characteristic Tests only — not Power Rolls in combat, as there is already a suitable reward (gaining an additional Main Action). Per Director approval, you may receive a Critical Reward in combat when you use a Maneuver to perform a Test.

Reward	Details
Advantage	The next Check performed by you or an ally this scene receives a Double Edge
Affliction	A creature suffers a negative affliction, gaining a Bane on skill checks using a characteristic which you specify (agility, might, etc) for the rest of the scene
Bonding	You create a Bond towards someone or something. You gain an Edge when performing checks that interact with a creature or object with whom you have a bond. Assign an emotion to the Bond like “mistrust,” “affection,” “loyalty,” “hatred,” “reliance” (etc). The Bond lasts until no longer narratively appropriate or the player chooses to forsake it
Faux Pas	Choose a creature present on the scene: they make a compromising statement chosen by the person who controls them
Favor	Your actions earn you someone’s support or admiration
Information	You spot a useful clue or detail. The Game Master may tell you what it is or ask you to introduce the detail yourself
Lost Item	An item is destroyed, lost, stolen or left behind
Plot Twist!	Someone or something of your choice suddenly appears on the scene
Scan	You discovery a vulnerability, tactic or pitfall of a creature you can see
Unmask	You learn the goals and motivations of a creature of your choice

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I think this turns a moment that could be underwhelming (i.e. the Director is not prepared with an interesting reward, so you get something meh like an Edge on your next test) into a moment where the players can really shape and twist their own stories. Giving them the chance to choose their own reward and take a big swing means that the critical success — which only happens 3% of the time, mind you — really feels meaningful, and gives players a feeling of agency and ownership over their own narrative, connecting them more deeply to your world.

What rewards have you used at your table? What would you add to this list?

RAW, Statuses are entirely combat-focused with specific mechanics that don't really make sense outside of that lens, and generally end when the combat encounter ends, except in specific circumstances.

I think this is fine with respect to combat, but I wanted a way to apply statuses in other circumstances (e.g. during a Montage Test, or possibly just while exploring out of the bounds of specific mechanics). So this is what I've been working on, it's inspired by the Status system from Legend in the Mist.

>When a PC rolls a Consequence as part of a Check, you can elect to give them a harmful status that may impact future rolls. These statuses have a degree of impact from 1–4 and apply a negative bonus to their roll for one or more characteristics. For example, you may become Hobbled-2 (A) which gives you a -2 to any Agility checks. Any roll by the PC will deprecate the status by 1 until it clears entirely, even if that check uses another Characteristic. Statuses last until cleared or until the Director decides that it is no longer relevant (often, but not always, the end of the scene).

The specific name / nature of the status can vary, the mechanical part is which Characteristics it effects. So basically, this gives you some clear Consequences to give to a PC, something that is flavorful and logically follows from their actions and changes their calculus for decision-making temporarily. Note that you can use rolls leveraging other characteristics without any impact, so a player can avoid the effect of the consequence entirely by getting a bit creative.

On the flip side, you can also use this as a Reward, which has all the same effects (reinforcing consequences, suggesting a narrative, changing decision-making temporarily) but in the positive direction.

>When a PC rolls a Reward as part of the check, you can elect to give them a beneficial status that may impact future rolls. These statuses have a degree of impact from 1–4 and apply a bonus to their roll for one or more characteristics. For example, you may become Confident-2 (P) which gives you a +2 to any Presence checks. Any roll by the PC will deprecate the status by 1 until it clears entirely, even if that check uses another Characteristic. Statuses last until cleared or until the Director decides that it is no longer relevant (often, but not always, the end of the scene).

If you wanted to take it a bit further, you could include multiple Characteristics in a single Status in order to really make an impact. You ate an especially good meal prepared by a Follower, so you are feeling Healthy-2 (MA) and can add a bonus to upcoming Might or Agility checks. The interaction with the cosmic entity leaves you temporarily Mindbroken-4 (IR), you receive a negative bonus on Intuition or Reason checks.

I have not gotten the chance to use this in play yet. Curious for thoughts from experienced Directors on if this would be a positive addition to the game or whether it's too confusing, unnecessary, etc.

Thanks!

Sometimes you want a scene to be a little more interesting than the Assisting a Test, but you don't want to break fully into a Montage, and the PCs want to make different types of Tests, so it's not a Group Test. Basically, a situation where something is happening, and the PCs want to each do different things at the same time in order to accomplish a shared goal.

For this, I've been testing out a minimal, single-turn version of the Montage Test that I'm calling Quick Montages (inspired by Quick Encounters in Savage Worlds).

I will say in advance that you could just modify the Group Test rules for this and that would probably be the "by the book" way, but I find it easier to hand out Edges + Banes before the Test to modify difficult situationally, rather than adjudicate Success/Failure on an individual basis. If you use Group Tests and prefer that, more power to you!

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Quick Montage

When the party is working together to accomplish something, they should explain exactly what goal they hope to achieve or what effect they hope to produce. Then, go around the table in any order and have each player explain how they are contributing individually, including what skill (if any) they are applying.

If the player describes a course of action that is likely or highly likely to succeed, they gain an Edge or Double Edge on their roll. If the course of action is unlikely or highly unlikely to succeed, they gain a Bane or Double Bane on their roll.

To determine success:

• If everyone rolls a Tier 1 success, the overall course of action is unsuccessful with additional consequences
• If the number of Tier 1 successes is greater than the number of Tier 3 successes, the course of action is unsuccessful*
• If the number of Tier 3 successes is equal to or greater than the number of Tier 1s (including 0 of each), the course of action is successful
• If everyone rolls a Tier 3 success, the course of action is successful with additional boons

*If you want to be nice, because this is a bit more challenging than a group test, you could say that if they miss by 1 (i.e. exactly one more Tier 1 than Tier 3), they get a Success with Consequence. I didn't include that because the benefit of that varies too much based on group size

Example

The party is working together to pilot an airship during a storm while being attacked by Griffon Riders. They hope to steer the ship into and through the storm in order to lose them, ideally without losing their ship in the process.

• One PC wants to Drive to steer the ship. They are an accomplished helmsman so they get an Edge on their roll, and roll a Tier 3 success
• Another wants to use Religion to pray to a storm god for safe passage. They roll a Tier 2 success
• Another wants to shoot ballistae at the riders, hoping to scare them off. No skill but they still have +2 agility. They roll a Tier 1 success
• Another wants to channel their Null Field to protect against lightning strikes. The GM thinks this is clever but it would be challenging to cover the whole ship, so they roll with a Bane and get a Tier 2 success

There is an equal number of Tier 3s as Tier 1s, so the course of action is successful. They lose the Griffon Riders in the storm and emerge battered but unharmed

If they had rolled more Tier 1s than Tier 3s, their ship might be critically damaged in the storm and start to lose altitude

If they had all rolled a Tier 3, the Griffon Riders might follow them into the storm and perish, leaving no one alive to report back to the BBEG about the party's location

If they had all rolled a Tier 1, they might hear a tremendous CRACK as their ship splits in half and falls out of the sky

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I like this procedure because it creates dynamic scenes where lots of different things are happening that highlight each character in their own way, I still have a hand on the difficulty wheel via Edges/Banes, and at the end of the roll it's super quick to determine success. Curious if folks have tried similar or different approaches for scenes like this! Happy Free RPG Day!

tl;dr: when everyone wants to act at the same time towards the same end, but doing different things, have them each describe their course of action and roll a test with edges/banes based on how feasible/effective their approach would be. The group succeeds if the number of Tier 3 successes is equal to or greater than the number of Tier 1s

Quick story time: My players were fighting an Arixx, and it was looking a bit dicey. They were giving as good as they got, but we reached a situation where one of the PCs was very near death and also grabbed by the Arixx's Bite action. When it became the Arixx's turn, I had a choice — it seemed to me like the most likely action from the Arixx would be to crunch down on the target they have already grabbed, which would result in the PC's death (even on a tier 1 result). Since the Arixx had most recently attacked that PC, I chose to instead use a Claw Swing on two other PCs, which gave the grabbed PC a chance to survive and escape.

I think this was the right decision per the Director guidance, but I can't help but feel like it's going against what the creature would likely do. The grabbed PC had done a bunch of damage to the Arixx, and it felt like a bit of "plot-induced stupidity" that it chose to attack other PCs instead.

Side note, my biggest GMing sin is that I can be a bit of a punch-puller, so I don't really trust my own opinion on this tbh

So I am curious to hear others opinions — how closely do you adhere to the guidance of spreading around damage, versus doing what seems like it would narratively follow? Do you always spread it around, always follow the fiction, roll for it, something else?

Thanks for taking the time to read and share your perspective!

edit: additionally, I'm also curious about this with respect to the Taunted status — do you have taunted targets always attack the taunt-er, or do you take the bane on the action to spread attacks around?