Difficulties
| Difficulty of the Action | Required Success |
| Routine (striking a stationary target, convincing a loyal friend to help you) | 1 |
| Straightforward (seducing someone who’s already in the mood, intimidating a weakling) | 2 |
| Moderate (replacing a car’s sound system, walking a tightrope) | 3 |
| Challenging (locating the source of a whisper, creating a memorable piece of art)c | 4 |
| Hard (convincing a cop that this isn’t your cocaine, rebuilding a wrecked engine block) | 5 |
| Very Hard (running across a tightrope while under fire, calming a hostile and violent mob) | 6 |
| Nearly Impossible (finding one specific homeless person in Los Angeles in one night, flawlessly reciting a long text in a language you don’t speak) | 7+ |
Automatic Wins:
If a character’s dice pool is twice the task’s Difficulty, the Storyteller may opt to rule that the character wins automatically without a dice roll. Automatic wins streamline play and reduce distracting rules interludes. Apply them vigorously, especially outside of combat or for tests where character failure is boring: information-gathering tests, conversation-openers, or gambits that open up the scene or let it move forward dramatically.
Automatic wins seldom apply in combat or other stressful situations. A Storyteller willing to speed up opening rounds or to blow through a location they didn’t intend to be challenging, might allow automatic wins against mooks and nameless obstacle humans: renta-cops in the office lobby, not real cops in the streets.
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