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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Sacrosanct" data-source="post: 9084686" data-attributes="member: 15700">Yes. For a direct damage attack, they roll their defense roll (like making a spell attack in D&D goes against AC rather than save). For area of effect or non-damage spells, they get an appropriate ability check, which has a pool based on the attribute. For example, if your Mental score is 2, then you add 2 dice to your pool when making your check that would fall under mental (like resisting a mind-affecting power). The type of dice in that pool is based on if you're proficient in that ability or not. Usually the die type for non-proficient is two categories less. E.g., proficient = d10, then non-prof = d6.Not for runes, but sorcery has a counterspell option (so do arcane warriors with bladecasting, but that's another kind of magic--arcane warriors absorb the chaotic energy of combat, converting it to vigor, which is used to power spells. The longer combat goes, the more they absorb).As an aside, the reason I'm going with opposed dice pools is because there isn't any math during actual combat. You know your pool beforehand 90% of the time, so you roll and compare. We're finding it much faster than rolling a d20 and then applying various modifiers.On another side, related to flexibility, there is also a trade up and down rule. Let's say you have 3d8 in your pool. You can trade 2d8 for one die of the next higher, so your pool could be 1d8+1d10. Alternatively, you could trade down, turning 1d8 into 2d6 for a final pool of 2d8+2d6.  This really comes into play when you either need a higher die for an opportunity to beat an opposing number you couldn't otherwise beat, or if you know the opposing number is going to be really low, so you choose to trade down hoping you get more successes.  Thematically, that means a high level caster with a dice pool of something like 3d12 going against a whole bunch of mooks (dice pool 2d6), you could trade down to get a lot more dice, increasing your odds of getting more successes against them.</blockquote>

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