Intro

What heroic journey would be complete without Challenges to face? Challenges are all the perils that pose a threat to your Hero, from great forces of nature, to troublesome NPCs, to strange and terrible creatures.

Fully-formed Challenges are recorded in stat blocks called Challenge Profiles. And in this video, we’ll explain what goes into a Challenge Profile and how the Narrator can use them. As a Hero, you don’t see the Challenge’s Profile, so you don’t instantly know what it can do and how to defeat it. However, you can take action to find out. A part of each conflict is figuring out what will and won’t work with that particular Challenge.

For this video, we’ll examine the Antlered Forest Spirit, a mysterious entity born of the wild that stalks the deep reaches of wilderness. 

Challenge Profiles

Here is its Challenge Profile. At the top is its name and its rating. Challenges are rated from 1 to 5, so a challenge rating of 4 is quite impressive. Below it are its Roles, which define how it behaves in the narrative. The Antlered Forest Spirit is both a Quarry – something that the Heroes need but is getting away – and a Mystery – something the Heroes want to find out or understand.

Challenge Limits

On the left are its Limits, which indicate the main or expected ways the Heroes can overcome it. Recall how we talked about status tiers in our Tags & Statuses video. For a Hero, the Limit is always 5: any status that reaches tier 5 is incapacitating and any status that reaches tier 6 is either deadly or transformative. But Challenges can have different Limits at different tiers for each way they can be overcome.

For the Antlered Forest Spirit, there are three ways to overcome it. For the mystically inclined Heroes, a tier 4 bound or banished spiritual status will overpower it. For those searching for it or hunting it, a tier 4 found status will back it into a corner. And for those pleading for its help, a tier 4 convinced status will bring it to your point of view.

Some Challenges are immune to certain Limits. If you attempt to bond with this creature of nature, you will simply not succeed, as the Antlered Forest Spirit is too wild to tame and answers to no-one, god or mortal.

A Challenge can also have progress Limits, that build up to a special outcome. For example, a hedge witch may have a Ritual Limit she’s building up to by giving herself statuses that gradually stack together. If she reaches that Limit, she can cast a powerful hex.

These are the listed Limits, but Heroes are always encouraged to get creative with how they overcome Challenges, and Narrators can add other Limits on the fly if need be.

Challenge Tags, Statuses, and Might

Below the Challenges’ Limits are its tags & statuses, which affect Hero actions and reactions against it. Here we see the Antlered Forest Spirit has the tag regal antlers and the statuses ethereal-3, wise-beyond-words-3, and mysterious-3. If you attempt to discover information about this creature, that mysterious-3 status will subtract 3 from your Power.

Some creatures are Mighty and have aspects that increase their strength in certain situations. They might also have Vulnerabilities related to the same aspect in parenthesis. This creature is magically attuned with its surroundings, which makes it much harder to sneak up on it – unless your heart is true. We’ll talk about Might and its effects in a later video.

Challenge Special Features

Some Challenges have special features, which are custom rules and abilities. This one in particular, Twisted, is an optional feature that will increase the spirit’s challenge rating by 1, making it very, very dangerous. “Not all antlered spirits are life-loving; some are manifestations of the deeply disturbing darkness of nature. Increase the bind-or-banish Limit and all its Consequences by 1, and change the statuses it gives to driven-mad and ripped-apart.”

Challenge Threats & Consequences

Well, speaking of Consequences, let’s look at the final part of the profile. In Threats & Consequences, we see just what this Challenge is capable of in any scene. This area is split into several sections, showing the typical kinds of actions this Challenge might take, in this case Evade, Forewarn, or Emanate Splendor. Each section begins with a Threat, which the Narrator reads when they Establish the scene. This is the action the Challenge is beginning to take, prompting the Hero to take action.

The Consequences of the Threat are listed below in bullet points. These are the outcomes if the Threat is ignored or if the Hero generates Consequences with their action. Consequences can be narrative and can also create or reduce statuses and tags. The Narrator can also use multiple Consequences at the same time, and they’re not even limited to this list – they are encouraged to come up with new, appropriate Threats and Consequences on the fly.

Journeys

Not all Challenges are creatures or momentary obstacles. There exists a special kind of Challenge called a Journey that depicts either navigating landscapes, such as a Lawless Roadway, an event, such as handling yourself in a Harvest Festival, or an undertaking, such as Crafting an item. Completing Journeys doesn’t require hitting Limits, but instead completing smaller Challenges called Vignettes, such as clearing a Blocked Road, maintaining your dignity in the Bonfyre Dance, or rethinking a difficult design. The Narrator chooses how many Vignettes the Journey takes and introduces them one by one to the Heroes as mini-scenes, often resolved with a single successful Quick action. When the last Vignette is completed, the Journey ends.

Journeys are a way to play through a Challenge that isn’t about attrition or pushing for an immediate goal but instead a series of little moments along the way that the Heroes must go through.

Outro

There are many more Challenges awaiting you in the Legend in the Mist core book, which contains over 70 Challenge Profiles and over 20 Journeys and sets of Vignettes. There are more still in the Setting Book and future expansions. And if you would like to see more videos, be sure to like and subscribe to our channel.

Until next time, good fortunes on your journey!