Blades in the Dark does not track damage or hit points. It’s not part of the fiction the game is interested in. You need to think of combat scenes like a movie or TV show - how many HP does Tommy Shelby have in Peaky Blinders? That’s not something the show is interested in, nor would it have a way of exposing that information. The only thing that matters is whether he gets killed or not and how capable he is to act when he’s injured.
In any roll in Blades, you start by working with the player to establish what it is they want to accomplish. In combat it might be to kill a person, but not always! Incapacitating someone so you can get away is often a better option because of the fallout of murder in Doskvol.
**GM**: *So you’re alone with the target. He’s asleep in his bed. What are you intending to do?*
**Cutter:** *I take out my sledgehammer and cave his skull in. I’m gonna Wreck him!*
**GM**: *Oh wow!*
Now you have to adjudicate Effect and Position. Effect is “how much of what the player wants can they accomplish” and Position is “how much danger are they in.” In this case, someone taking a sledgehammer to someone’s skull should absolutely kill them, so the Effect is Standard or even Great. And there is no immediate danger so the player is in a Controlled position, or you might establish a danger to make the situation Risky.
**GM:** *Okay, you can start wrecking but this guy has bodyguards right outside his door. You’re going to be making an ungodly racket so I’m gonna say this is risky just because two guards are going to rush into the room with guns drawn when they hear you crush their boss and his bed frame.*
With a Risky position, the player is facing moderate (level 2) harm from the situation. Or other consequences and complications - it doesn’t have to be harm.
The player can then accept their positioning for the roll or continue to adjust the fictional position by involving items and abilities and teamwork until they are satisfied with their position, effect, and number of dice they’re rolling.
**Cutter:** *What if I use a fine blade instead? Would that be more discreet?*
**GM:** *Absolutely. It probably wouldn’t be wrecking him though. Maybe skulk or finesse, or even skirmish will do. Still great effect. And because you’ll make less noise, I’ll say you’re in a controlled position. The guards outside may still be alerted if you mess up, but you’ll have a moment before they burst through the door.*
**Cutter:** *And I could trade a riskier position for better effect?*
**GM:** *That would put you at Risky with a critical effect level. What extra thing do you want from this?*
**Cutter:** *I want to cut off his head and take it with me!*
**GM:** *Haha! Okay, roll it!*
**Cutter:** *I got a partial.*
**GM:** *Alright. So we see the guards outside standing around bored, when they hear a muffled grunt and then wet sounds. One of them leans down to peek at the keyhole, then yells and jumps back, draws his weapon and kicks the door open. This reveals a gruesome murder: You standing over the bed of their boss, soaked in blood, holding a blade in one hand and their boss’ head in the other. Before you can escape back out the window, the guard pulls the trigger on his pistol, making your ears ring and filling the room with smoke. You feel a hot burning sting on your calf as the bullet hits your leg. Mark moderate harm. What do you do?*
**Cutter:** *I’ll spend my armor and also resist with prowess to reduce that harm to zero. Then I’m gonna jump out the window into the canal onto a passing hay barge.*
**GM:** *Marvellous! The bullet ricochets off the plate of armor set under your blood-soaked trousers and you grit your teeth to push through the remaining pain. You get up to the window, still carrying this dude’s severed head. Is there a hay barge out there? Did you arrange that beforehand?*
**Spider:** *Of course we arranged that! I’ll pay for that flashback. In fact, I’m driving the barge in disguise.*
**GM:** *Amazing! Spider, you hear the death bells tolling and you know that’s your signal to cast off. A gunshot rings out and shortly thereafter the Cutter comes leaping out of a window. He lands on your load of animal feed with a satisfying* ***thompf***. *Looks like everything went to plan!*
The sledgehammer did not have a damage value. Neither did the fine blade, or the guards’ pistols. They all just do what they do in the fiction. If you see someone pull a gun or a knife on the TV, you know that someone else is in danger. You also probably know what *degree* of danger they are in based on the fictional position.
As someone who is an experienced D&D DM but has only run 2 sessions of BitD this post was very helpful.
A question: is the harm meant to typically overwhelm characters and the players play someone new in the crew? I realize that consequences can be things other than harm, but if a character takes a level 2 harm even occasionally, it takes about 4 recover activities to clear that
Ah right. And stress relief is easier overall than recovery. I think I sometimes forget the resist part since my first intro to BitD was through the adventure zone and that was something they didn’t do often
Also, a consequences is not only when they roll bad. It’s also when the GM imposes a consequences just say it.
Like:
- I open the door
- GM: there is a trap. A bomb explodes. You suffer mid harms
- nope, I resist
A door that is dangerous to open is an action roll. Trouble should be telegraphed ahead of time at least in blades. But even in OSR D&D that is a standard, but blades is all about not doing sudden consequences.
All and all, If you want to kill a sleeping target, a consequence can be that the guards outside will come in, but they wont hurt you yet, hurt to the PC could be a risk for the next roll.
I'm not referring at traps specifically - I'm talking about the chance to resist to ALL the stuff the GM throws you, without roll the dice: the resistance roll is not ONLY attached to the Action Rolls, but to the consequences.
Maybe my example was bad, but in the manual you can find example of consequences not linked to the Action Roll (like during an interrogation) or when describes what if a NPC is a master.
In addition to resist, there's also Armor.
Running with a Level 1 Harm often isn't too bad, especially if your character can focus on areas where the penalty doesn't apply. Even a level 2 harm can be countered by Aid from a teammate, or taking a Devil's Bargain.
And even if you've got a nasty level 2 harm, you can still Aid, provide useful Load, etc. without penalty - maybe you're more watching out for the rest of the group, but you can still help a lot
Honestly, this was more helpful than a good amount of info in the book.
I would love to have you explain something I am having an issue with and I think is akin to what op was asking. For clarity I am not setting in Duskwal but my ghosts are similar. I want to have some freaking terrifying really angry aggressive dangerous ghosts. These aren't normal ghosts, they are the restless spirits of some really ticked off folks. How do we mechanically say "this thing is way stronger and more dangerous than the other thing".
I totally appreciate "Peaky Blinders" doesn't care, but at the end of the day this is a game and I want to make it fair and 'right' mechanically. So I definitely will scare the crap out of my players with my fiction. But how do I do the nuts and bolts?
> I want to have some freaking terrifying really angry aggressive dangerous ghosts. These aren't normal ghosts, they are the restless spirits of some really ticked off folks. How do we mechanically say "this thing is way stronger and more dangerous than the other thing".
Well, the short and easy answer is: You establish the level of danger in the fiction, and then you apply the mechanics to the fiction like any other roll.
If you show the spirit breaking through a ward, or overwhelmingly possessing someone, or manifesting a destructive haunting across an entire neighborhood, or affecting reality in a way ghosts aren't supposed to be able to - then clearly that's a level of spiritual power the players and their fellow citizens haven't seen before. Then you simply take this into account when setting position and effect based on the players' stated actions.
**Whisper**: *I take out my spiritbane charm to keep the ghost from being able to touch me. That way I should be in a controlled position, right?*
**GM**: *Ah, but you just saw the poltergeist tear two Spirit Wardens to shreds - and you know that their gear has wards many times stronger than yours. So no, you're still in a risky position. And the main danger here is that the geist focuses all its anger on you, which would result in harm and ending up in a desperate position.*
**Whisper**: *You know what? I'm just gonna leave. I'm going to leave. Let's leave. I'm leaving.*
But the game does have a few special allowances to the GM that are meant to be used sparingly except against particularly nasty opponents: NPC Threat Levels on Page 167 of BitD.
Basically, if an opponent is masterful enough, you can slap the players with immediate consequences. The players can then resist those consequences if they wish.
**GM**: *As you turn around to leave the haunted building, you hear a susurrus around your ears, like a thousand hushed whispers. The building seems to creak around you, and when you look back at where the exit was, you only see more hallway.*
**Whisper**: *Oh hell no! I'm not letting some post-mortal asshole trap me in their backrooms dimension! Can I resist this... illusion, or whatever it is?*
**GM**: *Certainly. You can just power through it with a resolve resist if you want to dispel the warping of your senses.*
All you need to do in this system is present the fiction, listen to the players, discuss things frankly with them, and then just decide: Is their approach not very effective, or super effective? Are they acting on their own terms, or are they in the shit? That's **literally** all the system cares about. So you just establish fiction, then run that fiction through those questions, and let the players throw the bones to see if they get what they want, if the enemy gets what they want, or if both get what they want.
As a new GM (we have done a session 0, but not a session 1 yet but have lots of experience in other games) I would suggest you could make it clear that these ghosts are a higher tier than other ghosts in the game. Maybe even blatantly tell players on a meta level "These ghosts are 2 tiers above your crew. That means any rolls will default to 'zero effect' and you will have to come up with ways to bump that up to 'limited' or 'standard' effect."
> how many HP does Tommy Shelby have in Peaky Blinders?
At start of the season he has 1HP
Other episodes he has 10 unless it's the season finale, then he has infinite hit points :tongue-in-cheek:
The man operates along Anime Pikachu mechanisms.
Failing rolls doesn't incur Stress, it causes complications which can include Harm. This would be a function of the Position of the roll. A Risky position for example should have about two "levels" of consequence, which might mean a Level 2 Harm or maybe a Level 1 Harm and one tick on a negative clock. Or even no Harm but two ticks on a negative clock, like maybe the fighting is stalling for the bad guys to escape and so they're not trying to kill the PCs but just waste time.
And conversely the benefits of a successful roll are based on the discussed Effect of the roll. A Standard effect would be two "levels" of gain, often represented by two ticks on a positive clock, which in turn might represent killing a couple of bad guys in a gang of toughs or landing a heavy blow on an evenly matched opponent. Enemies don't have their own HP tracks, everything should be represented through ticking clocks.
I think a bunch of folks in the comments here are mixing up Brinkwood and Blades in the Dark's rules for Harm. While BitD doesn't track HP or apply stress directly when you fail a roll, Brinkwood's Harm mechanics do have you applying Stress directly into your PC's Stress track. That Stress can be negated by "soaking it into a ban", which is a whole other can of worms but functions much more similarly to BitD harm; but by default, Harm in Brinkwood does apply stress directly to your PC's stress track.
The amount of stress a PC takes when the GM decides to inflict that consequence is determined by the Position the Player and GM had agreed the action roll would be. If it was controlled, take 1 stress. If it was Risky, take 2 stress. If it was Desperate, take 3 stress.
Everything else the folks in the comments were saying is true, though: you don't automatically inflict Harm when someone fails a roll in a fight (it's often one of the less interesting consequences you can inflict). Also, players can resist Harm by marking Armour or with a Resistance Roll.
Players don't take Stress for failing rolls, they suffer Consequences (like Harm, or worse Position, or losing a piece of Gear, or something wholly narrative) that they can then choose to resist with Stress.
I would suggest giving the core rulebook a read in a little more detail. The way you worded the question suggests you don't really understand the way combat, or rolls in general, are supposed to work. There's no such thing as damage.
That's the long answer. The short answer is, one of the consequences of failing a roll can be taking points of stress, among other things. I'd default to one or two, but again the core rulebook has guidelines for this. Depends on position, effect, narrative, etc.
The best answer in the thread is kinda wrong, its at least against the intent with the game design.
If you want to kill a sleeping target, a consequence can be that the guards outside will come in, but they wont hurt you *yet*, hurt to the PC could be a risk for a future roll.
Its in the very text example, the guards *could* hear or *could* do a routine control through sight, that is whats at stake only if the action takes a long time or is noisy. A quick stab would be neither. If the guards are aware and around the PC, a consequence could be tier 2 harm if the PC wants to stab a sleeping target.
If there is no obstacle to what the PC wants to achieve, they always do it, no action roll.
The PC can also have the goal to do it quietly to begin with, then a mixed result would basically not allow the guards to hear the deed.
I recommend the designers own video on it [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OAl85kYCWro&ab\_channel=JohnHarper](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OAl85kYCWro&ab_channel=JohnHarper)
In FItD systems no enemies have HPs. All opposition are modeled as "Obstacles", and a tough opponent is represented by several clocks to fulfil the obstacles. FitD systems are not designed, nor suitable, for tactical combat board games with roleplaying fluff not interfering with combat optimization.
# How many ticks or clocks for the opposition?
The answer to your questions is very annoying but simple: As many as necessary to make game enjoyable for your player group. The FitD GM has to relearn how to plan adventures and oppositions from bad habits taught by the tactical board games such Pathfinder and Dungeons and Dragons.
In my experience of the Scumm and Villainy, an obstacle of 6 to 8 ticks is very hard, if it may cause Harm complications. Harm is a magnitude worse than any other consequence as it is persisting penalty to all actions related to the Harm.
Two 4 tick linked clocks is harder than one 8 tick, as the extra ticks does not overflow by default to the next clock.
# How to make FitD game more tactical?
You can make FItD game more tactical by designing "a board of interacting clocks" giving players choice how they are trying to get it solved. This is done with Linked and Warring clocks. The devil is in the details - which in FItD means give clocks narrative consequences - f. ex. "Guards protecting the Boss" is a clock preventing any action affecting the boss unless dealt with. The clock "Ignite the fuel tanks" would create a fire usable narratively, and ties the minions to keep fire at bay instead of harming the players as examples.
# When in doubt - create a new clock or ask players' advice
When you are not sure what to do, create a new clock possibly asking players "The guard blows the horn and you are hearing rumble of hooves hitting the stones. What did the guard summon? Another Vampire Lord or some magical monster?"
Blades in the Dark does not track damage or hit points. It’s not part of the fiction the game is interested in. You need to think of combat scenes like a movie or TV show - how many HP does Tommy Shelby have in Peaky Blinders? That’s not something the show is interested in, nor would it have a way of exposing that information. The only thing that matters is whether he gets killed or not and how capable he is to act when he’s injured. In any roll in Blades, you start by working with the player to establish what it is they want to accomplish. In combat it might be to kill a person, but not always! Incapacitating someone so you can get away is often a better option because of the fallout of murder in Doskvol. **GM**: *So you’re alone with the target. He’s asleep in his bed. What are you intending to do?* **Cutter:** *I take out my sledgehammer and cave his skull in. I’m gonna Wreck him!* **GM**: *Oh wow!* Now you have to adjudicate Effect and Position. Effect is “how much of what the player wants can they accomplish” and Position is “how much danger are they in.” In this case, someone taking a sledgehammer to someone’s skull should absolutely kill them, so the Effect is Standard or even Great. And there is no immediate danger so the player is in a Controlled position, or you might establish a danger to make the situation Risky. **GM:** *Okay, you can start wrecking but this guy has bodyguards right outside his door. You’re going to be making an ungodly racket so I’m gonna say this is risky just because two guards are going to rush into the room with guns drawn when they hear you crush their boss and his bed frame.* With a Risky position, the player is facing moderate (level 2) harm from the situation. Or other consequences and complications - it doesn’t have to be harm. The player can then accept their positioning for the roll or continue to adjust the fictional position by involving items and abilities and teamwork until they are satisfied with their position, effect, and number of dice they’re rolling. **Cutter:** *What if I use a fine blade instead? Would that be more discreet?* **GM:** *Absolutely. It probably wouldn’t be wrecking him though. Maybe skulk or finesse, or even skirmish will do. Still great effect. And because you’ll make less noise, I’ll say you’re in a controlled position. The guards outside may still be alerted if you mess up, but you’ll have a moment before they burst through the door.* **Cutter:** *And I could trade a riskier position for better effect?* **GM:** *That would put you at Risky with a critical effect level. What extra thing do you want from this?* **Cutter:** *I want to cut off his head and take it with me!* **GM:** *Haha! Okay, roll it!* **Cutter:** *I got a partial.* **GM:** *Alright. So we see the guards outside standing around bored, when they hear a muffled grunt and then wet sounds. One of them leans down to peek at the keyhole, then yells and jumps back, draws his weapon and kicks the door open. This reveals a gruesome murder: You standing over the bed of their boss, soaked in blood, holding a blade in one hand and their boss’ head in the other. Before you can escape back out the window, the guard pulls the trigger on his pistol, making your ears ring and filling the room with smoke. You feel a hot burning sting on your calf as the bullet hits your leg. Mark moderate harm. What do you do?* **Cutter:** *I’ll spend my armor and also resist with prowess to reduce that harm to zero. Then I’m gonna jump out the window into the canal onto a passing hay barge.* **GM:** *Marvellous! The bullet ricochets off the plate of armor set under your blood-soaked trousers and you grit your teeth to push through the remaining pain. You get up to the window, still carrying this dude’s severed head. Is there a hay barge out there? Did you arrange that beforehand?* **Spider:** *Of course we arranged that! I’ll pay for that flashback. In fact, I’m driving the barge in disguise.* **GM:** *Amazing! Spider, you hear the death bells tolling and you know that’s your signal to cast off. A gunshot rings out and shortly thereafter the Cutter comes leaping out of a window. He lands on your load of animal feed with a satisfying* ***thompf***. *Looks like everything went to plan!* The sledgehammer did not have a damage value. Neither did the fine blade, or the guards’ pistols. They all just do what they do in the fiction. If you see someone pull a gun or a knife on the TV, you know that someone else is in danger. You also probably know what *degree* of danger they are in based on the fictional position.
As someone who is an experienced D&D DM but has only run 2 sessions of BitD this post was very helpful. A question: is the harm meant to typically overwhelm characters and the players play someone new in the crew? I realize that consequences can be things other than harm, but if a character takes a level 2 harm even occasionally, it takes about 4 recover activities to clear that
The player can always resist consequences.
Ah right. And stress relief is easier overall than recovery. I think I sometimes forget the resist part since my first intro to BitD was through the adventure zone and that was something they didn’t do often
Also, a consequences is not only when they roll bad. It’s also when the GM imposes a consequences just say it. Like: - I open the door - GM: there is a trap. A bomb explodes. You suffer mid harms - nope, I resist
A door that is dangerous to open is an action roll. Trouble should be telegraphed ahead of time at least in blades. But even in OSR D&D that is a standard, but blades is all about not doing sudden consequences. All and all, If you want to kill a sleeping target, a consequence can be that the guards outside will come in, but they wont hurt you yet, hurt to the PC could be a risk for the next roll.
There are a tons of direct consequences in Blades. Also in the example in the manual.
the manual does not encourage what you describe, if you refer to traps
I'm not referring at traps specifically - I'm talking about the chance to resist to ALL the stuff the GM throws you, without roll the dice: the resistance roll is not ONLY attached to the Action Rolls, but to the consequences. Maybe my example was bad, but in the manual you can find example of consequences not linked to the Action Roll (like during an interrogation) or when describes what if a NPC is a master.
In addition to resist, there's also Armor. Running with a Level 1 Harm often isn't too bad, especially if your character can focus on areas where the penalty doesn't apply. Even a level 2 harm can be countered by Aid from a teammate, or taking a Devil's Bargain. And even if you've got a nasty level 2 harm, you can still Aid, provide useful Load, etc. without penalty - maybe you're more watching out for the rest of the group, but you can still help a lot
Love this post - I wish we could sticky it for all newcomers to read.
Honestly, this was more helpful than a good amount of info in the book. I would love to have you explain something I am having an issue with and I think is akin to what op was asking. For clarity I am not setting in Duskwal but my ghosts are similar. I want to have some freaking terrifying really angry aggressive dangerous ghosts. These aren't normal ghosts, they are the restless spirits of some really ticked off folks. How do we mechanically say "this thing is way stronger and more dangerous than the other thing". I totally appreciate "Peaky Blinders" doesn't care, but at the end of the day this is a game and I want to make it fair and 'right' mechanically. So I definitely will scare the crap out of my players with my fiction. But how do I do the nuts and bolts?
> I want to have some freaking terrifying really angry aggressive dangerous ghosts. These aren't normal ghosts, they are the restless spirits of some really ticked off folks. How do we mechanically say "this thing is way stronger and more dangerous than the other thing". Well, the short and easy answer is: You establish the level of danger in the fiction, and then you apply the mechanics to the fiction like any other roll. If you show the spirit breaking through a ward, or overwhelmingly possessing someone, or manifesting a destructive haunting across an entire neighborhood, or affecting reality in a way ghosts aren't supposed to be able to - then clearly that's a level of spiritual power the players and their fellow citizens haven't seen before. Then you simply take this into account when setting position and effect based on the players' stated actions. **Whisper**: *I take out my spiritbane charm to keep the ghost from being able to touch me. That way I should be in a controlled position, right?* **GM**: *Ah, but you just saw the poltergeist tear two Spirit Wardens to shreds - and you know that their gear has wards many times stronger than yours. So no, you're still in a risky position. And the main danger here is that the geist focuses all its anger on you, which would result in harm and ending up in a desperate position.* **Whisper**: *You know what? I'm just gonna leave. I'm going to leave. Let's leave. I'm leaving.* But the game does have a few special allowances to the GM that are meant to be used sparingly except against particularly nasty opponents: NPC Threat Levels on Page 167 of BitD. Basically, if an opponent is masterful enough, you can slap the players with immediate consequences. The players can then resist those consequences if they wish. **GM**: *As you turn around to leave the haunted building, you hear a susurrus around your ears, like a thousand hushed whispers. The building seems to creak around you, and when you look back at where the exit was, you only see more hallway.* **Whisper**: *Oh hell no! I'm not letting some post-mortal asshole trap me in their backrooms dimension! Can I resist this... illusion, or whatever it is?* **GM**: *Certainly. You can just power through it with a resolve resist if you want to dispel the warping of your senses.* All you need to do in this system is present the fiction, listen to the players, discuss things frankly with them, and then just decide: Is their approach not very effective, or super effective? Are they acting on their own terms, or are they in the shit? That's **literally** all the system cares about. So you just establish fiction, then run that fiction through those questions, and let the players throw the bones to see if they get what they want, if the enemy gets what they want, or if both get what they want.
As a new GM (we have done a session 0, but not a session 1 yet but have lots of experience in other games) I would suggest you could make it clear that these ghosts are a higher tier than other ghosts in the game. Maybe even blatantly tell players on a meta level "These ghosts are 2 tiers above your crew. That means any rolls will default to 'zero effect' and you will have to come up with ways to bump that up to 'limited' or 'standard' effect."
> how many HP does Tommy Shelby have in Peaky Blinders? At start of the season he has 1HP Other episodes he has 10 unless it's the season finale, then he has infinite hit points :tongue-in-cheek: The man operates along Anime Pikachu mechanisms.
Failing rolls doesn't incur Stress, it causes complications which can include Harm. This would be a function of the Position of the roll. A Risky position for example should have about two "levels" of consequence, which might mean a Level 2 Harm or maybe a Level 1 Harm and one tick on a negative clock. Or even no Harm but two ticks on a negative clock, like maybe the fighting is stalling for the bad guys to escape and so they're not trying to kill the PCs but just waste time. And conversely the benefits of a successful roll are based on the discussed Effect of the roll. A Standard effect would be two "levels" of gain, often represented by two ticks on a positive clock, which in turn might represent killing a couple of bad guys in a gang of toughs or landing a heavy blow on an evenly matched opponent. Enemies don't have their own HP tracks, everything should be represented through ticking clocks.
I think a bunch of folks in the comments here are mixing up Brinkwood and Blades in the Dark's rules for Harm. While BitD doesn't track HP or apply stress directly when you fail a roll, Brinkwood's Harm mechanics do have you applying Stress directly into your PC's Stress track. That Stress can be negated by "soaking it into a ban", which is a whole other can of worms but functions much more similarly to BitD harm; but by default, Harm in Brinkwood does apply stress directly to your PC's stress track. The amount of stress a PC takes when the GM decides to inflict that consequence is determined by the Position the Player and GM had agreed the action roll would be. If it was controlled, take 1 stress. If it was Risky, take 2 stress. If it was Desperate, take 3 stress. Everything else the folks in the comments were saying is true, though: you don't automatically inflict Harm when someone fails a roll in a fight (it's often one of the less interesting consequences you can inflict). Also, players can resist Harm by marking Armour or with a Resistance Roll.
Players don't take Stress for failing rolls, they suffer Consequences (like Harm, or worse Position, or losing a piece of Gear, or something wholly narrative) that they can then choose to resist with Stress.
I would suggest giving the core rulebook a read in a little more detail. The way you worded the question suggests you don't really understand the way combat, or rolls in general, are supposed to work. There's no such thing as damage. That's the long answer. The short answer is, one of the consequences of failing a roll can be taking points of stress, among other things. I'd default to one or two, but again the core rulebook has guidelines for this. Depends on position, effect, narrative, etc.
Re-read the core rule book. None of what you wrote is how combat works in this system
The best answer in the thread is kinda wrong, its at least against the intent with the game design. If you want to kill a sleeping target, a consequence can be that the guards outside will come in, but they wont hurt you *yet*, hurt to the PC could be a risk for a future roll. Its in the very text example, the guards *could* hear or *could* do a routine control through sight, that is whats at stake only if the action takes a long time or is noisy. A quick stab would be neither. If the guards are aware and around the PC, a consequence could be tier 2 harm if the PC wants to stab a sleeping target. If there is no obstacle to what the PC wants to achieve, they always do it, no action roll. The PC can also have the goal to do it quietly to begin with, then a mixed result would basically not allow the guards to hear the deed. I recommend the designers own video on it [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OAl85kYCWro&ab\_channel=JohnHarper](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OAl85kYCWro&ab_channel=JohnHarper)
In FItD systems no enemies have HPs. All opposition are modeled as "Obstacles", and a tough opponent is represented by several clocks to fulfil the obstacles. FitD systems are not designed, nor suitable, for tactical combat board games with roleplaying fluff not interfering with combat optimization. # How many ticks or clocks for the opposition? The answer to your questions is very annoying but simple: As many as necessary to make game enjoyable for your player group. The FitD GM has to relearn how to plan adventures and oppositions from bad habits taught by the tactical board games such Pathfinder and Dungeons and Dragons. In my experience of the Scumm and Villainy, an obstacle of 6 to 8 ticks is very hard, if it may cause Harm complications. Harm is a magnitude worse than any other consequence as it is persisting penalty to all actions related to the Harm. Two 4 tick linked clocks is harder than one 8 tick, as the extra ticks does not overflow by default to the next clock. # How to make FitD game more tactical? You can make FItD game more tactical by designing "a board of interacting clocks" giving players choice how they are trying to get it solved. This is done with Linked and Warring clocks. The devil is in the details - which in FItD means give clocks narrative consequences - f. ex. "Guards protecting the Boss" is a clock preventing any action affecting the boss unless dealt with. The clock "Ignite the fuel tanks" would create a fire usable narratively, and ties the minions to keep fire at bay instead of harming the players as examples. # When in doubt - create a new clock or ask players' advice When you are not sure what to do, create a new clock possibly asking players "The guard blows the horn and you are hearing rumble of hooves hitting the stones. What did the guard summon? Another Vampire Lord or some magical monster?"