Success Value Tests
Characters often undertake ventures that require sustained effort — crafting a sword, sailing a ship, researching a topic, treating a wound. Rather than making dozens of individual Success Tests, the task is resolved with a single Success Value (SV) test, which asks how good the work was rather than whether it was done at all.
An SV test takes four steps.
Step 1: Index
Note the Index of the skill being used — its Mastery Level divided by ten, rounded down. This is the value the character’s competence alone is worth, before the day’s luck is counted.
The Index always comes from the unmodified ML, never from the EML. Bonuses and penalties are felt in step 2, where they belong.
Step 2: Modifier
Make a Success Test, including every applicable bonus and penalty. Its success level becomes a modifier:
| Success Level | Modifier |
|---|---|
| CF (−1) | −2 |
| MF (0) | −1 |
| MS (1) | 0 |
| CS (2) | +1 |
A Marginal Success is the neutral case: the work came out as the character’s skill would suggest. Anything else shifts it.
Step 3: Success Value
The Success Value is the sum of the Index and the modifier. Some skills adjust it further or read it in their own way, as described in their entries. Where a skill gives no special reading, the standard interpretation applies:
| SV | Grade | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| ≤ 0 | No Value | The effort comes to nothing the character can use. |
| 1–2 | Little Value | The effort yields only a poor or partial outcome. |
| 3–4 | Base Value | The effort yields a sound, workmanlike outcome. |
| 5+ | Bonus Value | A superior outcome, measured in Value Diamonds — one for each point past 4. |
Step 4: Critical Failure
The Success Value from step 3 stands on its own, but a Critical Failure on the step 2 Success Test may carry its own separate penalty regardless of that value — the botched batch, the ruined stock, the injury to the worker. What that penalty is depends on the skill, and is listed with that skill’s own Success Value entry.
Value Diamonds
The Value Diamonds of a result are how far it exceeded a plain workmanlike one: none at Base Value or below, and one for each point of Success Value above 4, to a maximum of five.
| Success Value | Value Diamonds |
|---|---|
| ≤ 4 | none |
| 5 | ◆ |
| 6 | ◆◆ |
| 7 | ◆◆◆ |
| 8 | ◆◆◆◆ |
| 9 or more | ◆◆◆◆◆ |
Diamonds grade a single piece of work against a fixed scale of five, and are unrelated to the Victory Stars that measure the margin of a contest and have no ceiling at all.
SV tests and Secondary Mastery
Secondary Modifiers affect the EML rolled in step 2, and Secondary Rolls accompany an SV test as they do any other. Neither touches step 1: the Index always comes from the unmodified Mastery Level.