I ' m assuming Pinpoint is supposed to be Bullseye , but Defense Up is legitimate status effect , look it up . <| sep |> To be more specific , my system is similar to AW ' s . The difficulty can vary this NPC , the Patrician of the city , has a resistance to Persuasion of 140 you need to roll 140 to convince him for example . But the difficulty is set a priori . Then the player describes how he uses his Persuasion skill , and that grants him no modifier . The target difficulty for the roll is 140 no matter what but , as you put it , the result of success and failure gets modified by what the player does and by the circumstances . But you ' re entirely right when you say That ' s not the same thing at all . What umortiphago described is actually exactly what I don ' t do p