Quick Start

Tenacity runs on a loop. Fail a d20 test, earn a Mote. Later, on another failed roll, spend Motes to raise the result by +1 per Mote, turning a miss into a hit (or at least narrowing the gap). This page walks one round of that loop.

Your first Mote

1. Roll any d20 test from your character sheet: attack, ability check, skill, or saving throw.
2. The roll fails. By default “fails” means a natural 1, but the GM can widen this in settings.
3. A green +N earned pill appears on the chat card, and the Tenacity badge on your sheet ticks up by one.

Hover the badge to confirm. The tooltip reads 1 Tenacity. Spend it to turn failed rolls into successes.

A player cannot spend the Mote earned on the roll that earned it. That’s the self-rescue rule. Earn now, spend on the next one.

See Earning Tenacity for the full earn rules.

Spending Tenacity

1. Make another d20 roll. It fails, or lands short of the DC.
2. On the chat card, click the Spend (N) button, where N is the number of Motes available for this roll — the player’s pool minus any Motes earned on this same card (the self-rescue lock).
3. The Spend dialog opens. If the DC or AC is known, it shows the gap. The amount field pre-fills with the minimum Motes needed to flip the result.
4. Confirm with Spend.
5. The chat card updates. An amber +X (now Y) pill appears, the roll formula expands to include the Tenacity term, and the total rises. If the new total clears the DC, the roll succeeds.

If the DC is hidden, the dialog hides it too and the player spends blind. They commit a number of Motes and the GM judges the outcome.

See Spending Tenacity for known-DC vs blind spends and the auto-min behavior.

What if it still fails?

Spending Motes doesn’t guarantee a flip. If the raised total still misses:

• On known-DC rolls with auto-refund on, the system refunds spent Motes at the configured refund percentage and posts “Not enough. Refunded N Tenacity.”
• On blind spends, the GM decides whether to click the Refund button on the card. The refund percentage is configurable, so the player might get back all, some, or none of what they spent.

Refunded Motes remember which roll first earned them, so they stay locked against self-rescue.

See Refunds and Failed Raises for the percentages and edge cases.

At the end of the session

On a long rest, the Tenacity pool clears. If you have Tenacity to Inspiration Conversion on and a player’s pool meets or exceeds the conversion threshold at rest, they trade that pool for 1 Heroic Inspiration instead of losing it. The conversion threshold and the maximum pool size are independent settings.

The reset trigger is configurable: long rest, short rest, or manual.

See Rest and Conversion for the conversion rules.

Where to go next

• Settings to tune failure detection, refund percentage, caps, and conversion.
• Midi-QOL integration if your table runs midi-qol, for live attack and save prompts plus post-hoc raises.