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Archives of Nethys

Archives of Nethys

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GM Core / Chapter 4: Subsystems / Infiltration / Building an Infiltration

Complications

Source GM Core pg. 198 2.0
Sometimes, when a plan goes sour and seems like it can't get worse, it does. Complications are unexpected problems that compound the difficulty of a challenge. The party might trigger a complication by critically failing a check to overcome a challenge, by reaching a certain threshold of Awareness Points, if you need to spice up the infiltration, or through their own decisions—maybe the wizard's castle has various wards, each triggered when a PC attempts to use a different kind of magic.

Many complications increase Awareness Points or otherwise make infiltration more difficult. A common form of complication is attracting the attention of guards who try to stop, capture, or even kill the PCs. When this happens, the infiltration may briefly shift into encounter mode as the PCs attempt to defeat their assailants. The sounds of battle are loud, so unless combat occurs in an isolated area or the PCs take precautions, each round of unmitigated combat noise causes them to gain Awareness Points, at the very least.

When you create a complication, decide on the details of how it will play out. Each complication has a trigger that determines when it occurs. It might affect only a single character, or it might affect everyone in a certain area, and you'll need to determine whether multiple PCs can work together to overcome it or whether only one can. Complications must be overcome before the characters involved can overcome other obstacles, and attempting to overcome a complication takes a character's turn just like trying to overcome an obstacle. Many complications are one-off events and are overcome automatically, even on a failure, though not without a cost. If a complication requires PCs to gain Infiltration Points to clear it, it has an Infiltration Points entry, just like an obstacle.

Don't overwhelm the characters with complications. Typically, you'll want to aim for two complications per AP threshold. Otherwise, the PCs may end up spending more time on the complications than on the heist itself, and the chance of failure may be too high. The following example is a common complication that could occur in almost any infiltration.

Do I Know You? Complication

Trigger The PCs reach 5 Awareness Points for the first time.
Overcome standard, hard, or very hard Deception, Diplomacy, Performance, or Stealth
Someone thinks they recognize you, and you must either convince them otherwise before slipping away or find a way to dodge the person entirely.
Success You convince or otherwise dodge the person.
Failure You are recognized, and the party accrues 1 AP.
Critical Failure As failure, but the party accrues 2 AP.