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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ovinomancer" data-source="post: 8134948" data-attributes="member: 16814">The way you're talking about the 4-5 result makes me think you might not quite grasp it.  It is a success -- the player achieves the goal they were after.  It's not a partial success, or a failure, it's a complete success.  The issue is that it comes with a complication.  Up above you listed, "Jumping, climbing, finding the secret door, as obviously binary success tasks.  Let's look at how I would do these as 4-5 results in Blades.Jumping:The PC is running away from guards along the rooftops and tries to lose the guards by jumping an alleyway.  The position is risky -- it's not a wide alleyway, so the complications will have teeth but not be disastrous.  Player agrees and rolls a 4 -- success with complication.  Here the action is to jump the alley, but the intent of the action is to escape the guards.  So, the player does both -- jumps the alley, but the guards pull up short on the other side.  I now need to add a complication.  I can say, "You land on the other side, but feel something give in your left ankle when you land -- apparently someone was working up here and has left a bunch of nails scattered on the rooftop and you've slipped on one.  Take Harm 1, bruised ankle."  Or, I can say, "The guards pull up short as you leap the alleyway, but one has pulled a pistol, screaming, 'You're not going to get away again!'  You recognize this guard from your last caper, when you tied him up and stuffed him in a closet.  Apparently, he holds a grudge."  In the first example, the PC takes some harm -- a pretty mild complication that lingers in Blades and requires resources to be spent to overcome during downtime.  The second introduces a new threat -- you might get shot! -- and extends the drama of the scene.  Both give full 100% success to the PC, as they've jumped and the guards aren't following.Climbing:This one came up as the first roll in my first Blades game.  The plan was stealth, the entry detail a skylight, the result was Risky, so the scene opened with the PCs having opened the skylight into the upper rafters of a large warehouse.  I described some guards on a nearby catwalk patrolling, so the PC declared they were waiting for the guards to move past on their patrol and slip down a rope into the shadows of the rafters away from the catwalk.  The Leech got a 4, and so managed to hit the rafters silent as a mouse after a small bobble and steal into the shadows.  That when the Leech noticed that the flap on her tools was open, and a quick frantic check revealed that her lockpicks had fallen  out (loss of equipment consequence, check the box) and were spotted lying on the floor of the warehouse.  They were unlikely to be seen, but also would be a challenge to recover.  They opted to not pursue the picks, and I didn't snowball this because the damage was still done. But, the PC got a full success on the action taken and the intent -- the guards never knew she was there.Secret doors.This one is super duper easy.  You find the secret door, but it's locked.  You find the secret door, but there's a guard on the other side when you open it.  You find the secret door, but it doesn't lead where you wanted it too.  Huge range of "you 100% find the secret door" alongside complications.These aren't failures -- you absolutely do the thing, and do the thing well.  But, something new adds a wrinkle -- not related to you not getting what you wanted, but that something else is now causing a problem.  You've now got a limp because you landed poorly leaping the alleyway.  You lost an item even though you made a stealthy climb.  You found the door, just as you wanted, but now discover there's a lock on it or a passphrase.  You get what you were aiming for, always and unequivocally, there's just something unexpected there as well.</blockquote>

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