Determining
Success Or Failure
To determine an action's success or failure, a player's AR needs to be compared against a Defence Rating (DR) of the item or character that the skill is used on. But how is the DR determined?
If the character is controlled by a player, they also need to roll dice based on their rank in the attribute governing the skill they intend to use to defend themselves or the attribute that reflects how difficult the action taken on or against them is. In all other cases, the character's (NPC) or item's DR is determined by the DM, but it reflects the exact same things as if it were a player character instead.
Once both the AR and DR have been determined, we can compare the two values and get the following outcomes:
AR < DR-7: critical failure
Character fails their action, but also suffers some sort of handicap (e.g. losing a turn, taking more damage in the next attack of their opponent etc.) at the discretion of their player.
DR-7 =< AR < DR: failure
Character fails their action, but doesn’t suffer any handicap.
DR =< AR < DR+7: success
Character succeeds in their action, but without gaining any advantage.
AR >= DR+7: critical success
Character succeeds in their action, but also gains an advantage (e.g. finding an opponent’s weak spot and dealing more damage) at the discretion of their player.
An example to make this easier to understand:
Shudasha wants to use her maul to hit an opponent NPC with a DR of 12. As an Expert in Strength (level 15), which governs the Blunt Weapon skill, she uses a d14+6 roll.
If she rolls 4 (lower than DR-7, which is 5), she suffers a critical failure. This means that she doesn't simply miss her opponent, but she also loses her balance making herself easier to hit (a negative modifier to her defensive rolls would be efective here to reflect this). Note that normally with a d14+6 roll, the lowest roll Shudasha can get is 7, but for the sake of this example, let's assume that she was under the effect of a debuff that lowered her Strength quite a bit.
If she rolls 10 (higher than DR-7, which is 5, but lower than DR), she fails without putting herself in a harder position.
If she rolls 14 (higher than DR, but lower than DR+7, which is 19), she succeeds in hitting her opponent and damaging them without gaining an advantage against them.
If she rolls 20 (higher than DR+7, which is 19), she succeeds in hitting her opponent while also putting herself at an advantageous position that allows her to either deliver more damage in this attack or to have more chances of success on her next attack (in which case a positive modifier would be effective to reflect this advantage).