WDH Resolution Modifiers

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Okay, just to get things out of the way, I'm pretty sure we all know basic Storyteller/Storytelling mechanics: Create a dice pool based on your Attribute + Ability, roll against a target number, and the number of dice that come up at the target number or higher are successes.

We good? Good. Let's get to the specifics of Storypath.

The target number is always 8 for characters at the mortal/Origin and Hero levels. Ascending to the status of a Demigod or Lesser Wyrm would drop that to 7 but I anticipate that to be beyond the scope of this game.

Outside expenditures of Momentum or invoking one's Paths, there are few sources that will increase or reduce a dice pool. Instead, PC's will more likely find themselves assisted with Enhancements and penalized by Complications.

Enhancements

Enhancements represent materials, items, and circumstances that facilitate a character's goals; they do not make a roll more likely to succeed, but when it does happen, Enhancements add further successes: more challenging tasks are eased, opposition is stymied, and it looks just a bit smoother; extra successes can either make the deed more impressive on its own, or be spent on Stunts (below) to add a little flourish. Scale (below) is a common source of Enhancement, but so is equipment, having the high ground, or trying to seduce someone when they already came to a party to have a good time.

Complications

A Complication does not directly affect difficulty for the most part: roll wherein the player receives the required number of successes but cannot or does not buy off Complications still succeeds at what they intended to do, it's just...messy. Emerging from around the corner to return fire in a gunfight might open a hero to getting clipped in exchange. A dragon whose burning breath creates a Complication can use their gouts of flame just fine, but might set the scenery (or a passerby!) alight accidentally. Or the player could just spend a couple of successes above and beyond what they needed to succeed.

NB that reading between the lines it looks like there was an artifact of earlier development where the option existed to take a failed roll and make it a success with complication (and thus unable to buy off). The only trace I can really find of this is in the Apprentice Fatebinding's Invoke, and is frankly the only way this makes sense. I'm going back and forth on this, and may have a house rule for the one situation where this applies.

Stunts

Outside of the successes to simply succeed and buy off Complications, players can also use successful dice to buy Stunts.

A Stunt expends one or more successes to create secondary effects, most often creating Complications, Enhancements, or increasing Difficulty for others. In general, a stunt has to:

• Connect back to whatever action the player rolled their dice on,
• Affect a different kind of dice roll, and
• Be made by the player in question.

That said, many actions have suggested stunts built in: basic success on an attack roll is literally just connecting, and actual damage is a function of stunts (NB that most low-grade faceless mooks only have one or two levels of Health), in addition to blinding, disarming, or knocking down an opponent). Likewise, Investigation has a list of stunts to help facilitate rolls, finding clues and making deductions.

Twists of Fate

Twists of Fate are a special form of Stunt and are a sort of dramatic editing to the scene itself. They can only happen when a roll has been supplemented by one of the character's Paths. As a basic guideline, Twists of Fate allow one minor detail per success--they don't unmake what has been established, but instead take the undefined and make it explicit.

Most of the time, Twists of Fate aren't overtly supernatural in nature. But the Titles accumulated by Gods and Dragons alike are also paths, are the stuff of myth, and can work undeniable miracles.

Scale

Especially in a world more fantastic than our own, relative abilities do not exist in a vacuum. Some giants are stronger than others, for instance, but the equivalent of a weedy asthmatic nerd among the jotnar is still brawny by human standards. Someone riding a dirtbike is going to be more fleet than someone on foot.

Where baseline capacities are significantly different between one party and the other, Scale comes into play to benefit to the stronger party. As such, the jotun from our earlier examples is still only rolling a single die for his strength, but if that die comes up successful, it means much more than it would were he a puny human. To his kin, who have the same bonus to Scale, he has no such bonus in his favor.

Scions and Dragons have access to Feats of Scale through various powers at their disposal, and by their Mythic Titles, and really what good is the ability to flex if you can't show off? The bonus to Scale works out in two different ways depending on whether the target is Narrative or Dramatic.

• Narrative targets are what might be considered less important: often these are pursuits where a character's success is more or less guaranteed, but Scale pushes this from merely a show of power to the sort of thing that shows why your name is whispered in awe, worship, and terror. Armies of mooks, scenery, trivial characters, all of these feel the full brunt of Scale: after dice are rolled, successes are multiplied.
• Dramatic targets represent major focuses of the story. Named antagonists, stalwart allies, and the like aren't there to be clowned on like the hired help, but the PC's are still going to shine in their areas of expertise: against a Dramatic target, Scale functions as an Enhancement (above) that adds successes to a successful roll.