Section 02
Numbers
Difficulty, budgets, and the arithmetic under a session. Every entry is a mechanism examined on its own, with the arithmetic shown and the table consequence stated. No system is treated as canonical.
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008
What a difficulty number says
A target number is a claim about how often the thing should happen. Read it that way and most published numbers turn out to be saying something nobody intended.
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009
Bonuses outrun the die
When modifiers grow faster than the die's range, the roll stops mattering. Where that threshold sits and how systems delay it.
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010
The treadmill
If difficulty rises exactly as fast as the characters do, nothing has changed. What advancement is for once you notice that.
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011
Resource budgets
Spells, charges, hit points and luck are all the same kind of number: something spent between rests. What the refresh interval actually controls.
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012
Degrees of success
Reading the margin rather than the pass. Cheap to add, and it changes what a near miss is allowed to mean.
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013
Opposed rolls
Two rolls compared is a different distribution from one roll against a number, and it is slower. When the extra roll earns its place.