2.Create an Advantage
2. Create an Advantage
2.1 The Move
A player says they’re trying to make something true about the scene, an enemy, or an object. The GM sets Difficulty the normal way, same as any other action roll. This is a fourth kind of roll, alongside Daggerheart’s existing ones (attack rolls, trait rolls, Spellcast rolls).
How is this different from §6 (Ask, Answer, and Declare)? Both sections talk about “making something true.” Here’s the test: does the fact need real effort with a real chance of failure? Does success come with a mechanical payoff?
- Free Declare (§6): small scene detail nobody’s going to argue with. No real task, nothing’s in doubt. “Is there a chandelier in this room?” Important: a Declare never grants free invokes.
- Create an Advantage (here): the character is doing something with a real chance to fail — spotting a weakness, planting a rumor, rigging the environment. Because it’s a roll, it can fail. And a strong result banks free invokes that meaningfully help a later roll. This isn’t just a style choice — it matters for the math. If a Declare could grant free invokes for nothing, it would quietly ruin Create an Advantage’s whole risk-and-reward. Anyone could just declare a useful fact into existence, with no roll, no token spent, no risk. The token cost and the risk of failure are exactly what the free-invoke payoff is paying for. Rule of thumb: if the fact would help a future roll enough to be worth invoking, it has to be earned through this section — not handed out free through §6.
Example: The party is about to run into Iyrenna’s scouts. The rogue wants to rig the shrine’s loose stonework as a trap first. That’s not small scene color. It’s a real action with real risk. So it’s Create an Advantage, not a free Declare. The GM sets Difficulty at 15 for “quietly weakening a load-bearing archway without being heard.”
2.2 Resolving the Outcome
- Critical Success: Plant the Aspect with 2 free invokes banked.
- Success with Hope: Plant the Aspect with 1 free invoke banked.
- Success with Fear: Plant the Aspect, but the GM also gains a Fear — this matches Daggerheart’s normal “success still costs you something” rule for Success with Fear. Even a good advantage-creation roll can come at a price. Fate doesn’t really have a matching rule for this, since its results don’t have a “you won, but it cost you” level the way Hope/Fear dice do.
- Failure: No Aspect. Use the normal Failure-with-Hope/Fear consequence rules. Free invokes work like a stored discount. The first use (or two) of the Aspect costs nothing. After that, it goes back to the normal 1 Hope / +2 cost from §1.3.
Example, continued: The rogue rolls a Critical Success. The Aspect “Archway Ready to Collapse” is planted with 2 free invokes banked. Two rounds later, when the scouts chase the party through the shrine, the rogue spends one of those free invokes — no Hope cost — to add +2 to her escape roll: “I kick the loose stone on my way past.” One free invoke left for later.