Complication and Drive

Complications and Drives are character traits that can be triggered during your adventures and offer a Minor Advantage or Disadvantage to you when triggered.

Complication: A personal quality you are struggling against. It causes a Minor Disadvantage (-1 to dice rolls).

Drive: what keeps you going, a reason to persevere through adversity. Your drive offers a Minor Advantage (+1 to die rolls.

Roll 1d6 or choose your Complication from the table below. A Complication is a vulnerability; a quality an adversary can press on. At activation: make a Spiritus save vs. Difficult (16) or act on the corresponding trigger result before the Watch ends. Each Complication also grants a benefit when actively resisted.

Drives

Roll 1d6 or choose your Drive. Once per Watch, when you act directly in pursuit of it, gain Minor Advantage on that check.

1 Vengeance: someone wronged you, and they will answer for it.

2 Redemption: you did something unforgivable and mean to earn forgiveness anyway.

3 Protection: someone depends on you surviving.

4 Knowledge: there is a truth you must uncover, whatever it costs.

5 Freedom: you will not be bound by debt, oath or chain again.

6 Homecoming: somewhere, someone is waiting for you to return.

Hail Three Wyrd Sisters replaces these Complications with its own, tied to the Abrikoth.

Locks, Scars, and Vows

When a Player Character successfully completes a Challenge, the attribute challenged becomes locked and cannot be changed with further Recursion. Instead, the character undergoes identity progression when they encounter further challenges to a locked attribute, and the Wyrd Sister who presented the challenge offers her marks. The type of mark available depends on which Sister spoke — the Maiden for Minor Challenges, the Matron for Moderate, the Crone for Major — as described under Challenges and Ordeals in Playing the Game.

Vow

A promise, rule, or personal law. Grants a persistent benefit, always paired with a constraint or obligation. Breaking a Vow suspends its benefit until reaffirmed through play. If a Vow’s constraint becomes impossible to uphold after a Recursion — for example, a Vow that required carrying a specific item that was lost — the Vow may be renegotiated with the Wyrd Sisters at the cost of 1d3 Vitality. The Vow is not broken; it is transformed. The new constraint must be of equal or greater weight than the original. Vow Conflict: when two active Vows demand incompatible actions in a single moment (a Vow never to flee versus a Vow to protect a companion who can only be saved by fleeing), you must choose which Vow to honour and which to break. A broken Vow immediately becomes a Scar: remove the Vow’s bonus, apply the Scar’s burden, and gain 1 Echo as the Forest acknowledges what was lost. The broken Vow cannot be renegotiated — it is part of who you are now. Scar slots follow the normal Condition severity structure (Minor, Moderate, Severe, Extreme); treat a broken Vow as a Minor Scar unless the circumstance of breaking was extreme. This is the only way to gain an Echo other than death.

Scar

A permanent wound—physical, mental, or spiritual. Imposes an ongoing penalty or complication. May unlock unique narrative permissions. A Scar cannot be removed, only reinterpreted.

Knot

A learned survival technique. A reusable, limited special action tied to a specific trigger or circumstance. Represents skill born of suffering, not innate talent.

Completing a Challenge always refines who the character is, not just determining how large their numbers are.