Tests, Icons & Difficulty
When an outcome is uncertain and interesting, you roll. Everything in Wrath & Glory resolves the same way.
Build the pool
Your pool is Attribute + Skill, plus any bonus dice you've earned.
Agility 3 + Ballistic Skill 3 is six dice. If an ability or a combat option grants bonus dice — Short Range, Aiming, a Species ability — add them on top.
One of those dice is your Wrath Die. It is not an extra die. A pool of six is six dice total, one of which is the Wrath Die. This trips up almost everyone once; get it right the first time and never think about it again.
Meet the Difficulty Number
The GM sets a Difficulty Number — the DN — and says it out loud along with the reason.
| DN | Difficulty |
|---|---|
| 1 | Straightforward |
| 3 | Standard |
| 5 | Challenging |
| 7 | Hard |
| 9 | Very hard |
| 12 | Nearly impossible |
DN 3 is the default. In combat, the DN is usually the target's Defence.
Bonuses come as extra dice. Penalties come as a higher DN. They are not interchangeable, and knowing which you've been handed tells you what to expect.
Count Icons, not pips
Never total your dice. Convert them.
| Die result | Value |
|---|---|
| 1–3 | Nothing |
| 4–5 | 1 Icon |
| 6 | 2 Icons — an Exalted Icon |
Add the Icons. Meet or beat the DN and you succeed. Roll 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 against DN 3 and you have 1 + 1 + 2 = 4 Icons: a success with one to spare.
Counting Icons is the GM's job, and the GM will show the arithmetic. If a result goes past without an explanation, ask for it.
Shifting
Roll an Exalted Icon and still have enough Icons left over to meet the DN, and you may Shift it — spend that 6 on something other than success.
The catch is the arithmetic. Shifting removes the Exalted Icon's full value of 2 Icons, and what remains must still meet the DN.
Roll 4 Icons against DN 3: removing 2 leaves 2, which is under 3. No Shift available, however good the roll looked. Roll 6 Icons against DN 3: removing 2 leaves 4, comfortably clear. Shift away.
There is no limit on how many Shifts you make, as long as each one leaves you above the DN.
What a Shift buys depends on the Test:
- In combat — an Extra Damage Die on the attack.
- On a knowledge or social Test — an extra detail, a better result, a faster one.
- Anywhere — 1 point of Glory for the group, once per Test.
Ask for what you want. The GM decides whether it fits.
The Wrath Die
Every Test carries one, and it does two things nothing else does.
A 6 is a Wrath Critical. Your group gains 1 Glory. If the Test was a successful attack, you have also scored a Critical Hit — something considerably worse than normal damage happens to your target.
A 1 is a Complication. The Test still succeeds or fails on its Icons; a Complication does not cancel a success. Something else goes wrong alongside it — your gun jams, the noise carries, the door opens onto something you weren't ready for. You will often be invited to suggest what.
Both trigger whether you passed or failed. @Missing file covers this in full, including the table your GM rolls when a Complication needs one.
Where the numbers come from
You do not need to memorise a difficulty scale. Every Skill's own entry in Skills lists what the corebook considers DN 1, 3, 5, 7 and 9 for that specific Skill — climbing something at DN 3 versus DN 9, lying to a stranger versus lying to an Inquisitor. When a DN sounds wrong to you, that file is the thing to point at.
Keywords does the same job for access rather than difficulty: it lists all 95 and says what each one lets you do. Most arguments about whether your character could plausibly get hold of something, or be let into somewhere, resolve there.