Earning Tenacity

Tenacity is earned by failing. When a d20 test resolves as a failure, the actor picks up a Mote that can be spent later to raise a different roll.

What counts as a failure

The Failure Detection world setting decides which failed rolls grant a Mote:

• Critical Failure (default): only a natural 1 on the d20 grants a Mote.
• Automatic: any failure the system can verify grants a Mote. This covers saves with a known DC, single-target attacks where one token is targeted and the roll total falls short of the target AC, and death saves below 10. Natural 1s always grant.
• Manual: the system never grants on its own. You hand out Motes using the +1 Tenacity button on roll cards.

Concentration saves and death saves are excluded from earning by default. Toggle Allow Concentration Save Raises and Allow Death Save Raises to opt them in.

See Settings for the Failure Detection toggle.

Blind and GM-only rolls

A roll is hidden when it is blind or whispered to GMs only. The Blind Roll Behavior setting decides how a hidden failure is handled:

• Exempt: no Mote is granted and the Spend dialog does not open.
• Grant, No Prompt: a Mote is granted, but the Spend dialog does not auto-open.
• Normal: the roll earns like a public roll.

See Settings for the Blind Roll Behavior choice.

The grant flow

When a failure is detected, the GM client adds 1 Mote to the actor and stamps the chat card with a +1 earned pill. Players see the pill on the same card that triggered the grant. No extra prompt, no confirmation.

If Grant Button is enabled, every watched roll card shows a GM-only +1 Tenacity button. Clicking it hands out a Mote on rolls the system didn’t catch — Manual mode, narrative grants, off-screen events. When the grant succeeds, a “Granted name 1 Tenacity.” notice appears. When the pool is already full, a warning toast fires instead, reading {name} is already at max Tenacity. — the actor’s name is not substituted into that message.

With Automatically Prompt on D20 Test on, the Spend dialog opens on the rolling player’s client right after a watched roll resolves, as long as they have at least one spendable Mote for that roll. See Spending Tenacity.

The self-rescue rule

A Mote granted by a failed roll can’t be spent on that same roll. The Spend dialog filters out any Mote tagged with the current card’s id, so the “available” count drops by one for the roll that just earned it.

Failing a roll funds the next attempt, not the one just failed. When every Mote in the pool is locked to the current roll, the Spend button remains visible on the chat card but is rendered disabled. Clicking a disabled button does nothing.

Starting and maximum Tenacity

• Starting Tenacity: Motes granted to a new character at actor creation. Granted once per actor; actors already holding any Tenacity are skipped.
• Tenacity Maximum: hard cap on the pool. Grants past the cap are dropped, not queued.

See Settings for default values on both.

Pools clear on the trigger set by Reset Trigger. See Rest and Conversion for the reset cycle and the optional trade-in for Heroic Inspiration.

NPC support

The NPC Support setting controls whether non-character actors participate:

• None (default): NPCs never earn or spend Tenacity. Only character actors play.
• Linked Only: NPCs with linked tokens earn and spend like PCs. Unlinked mooks are skipped.
• All: every NPC participates, linked or not.

When an NPC is allowed, every flow above applies: failure detection, the Grant button, the self-rescue rule, the pool cap, and the reset trigger. The badge appears on their sheet the same way it does on a character sheet.

For the rest of the spend loop, see Spending Tenacity and DC Reveal.