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In our last post, we talked about the mechanics of failing forward in Abraxas and how we use that as an opportunity to inject drama and move a scene forward in an interesting way. Failure is never a binary pass-fail in Abraxas, and neither is success. We mentioned the idea of "Degrees of Success" in our last post, but let's examine what that really means in depth. Why should I care if I just hit a Target Number (TN) vs. exceeding the TN as a player? The answer is simple: it provides you with narrative and mechanical benefits the more you exceed the TN.

Back to the Tree

You are back playing your master archer, on the high ground, covering your allies again. This time, there is a mage in the back line who needs to be persuaded to stop casting spells at your party. The Mage carries a respectable 18 Evasion — Evasion is Abraxas's version of Armor Class, the Target Number you have to beat to land a hit — and compounding the issue, the GM rules that the range is a factor and applies a −3 to your roll. You slide out from behind your tree and let loose an arrow that flies true. Your six dice come up 5, 3, 3, 6, 4, 4 for a total of 25 — the same six dice as last time, as it happens — and then you throw the Wild Die. Last time it came up a 1. Not tonight — it lands on a 6 and explodes: you roll it again, and it comes up another 6 — a second explosion — before a 2 finally cools it off. That is 6 + 6 + 2 = 14 from the Wild Die alone, rocketing your roll to 39. After the GM's −3 for range, your total lands at 36 — our master archer earns their title with a shot that clears the mage's Evasion by a massive 18 Result Points! 🏹

Math for the nerds 🎲

Seven dice average about 3.5 apiece, so a 7D pool lands near **24–25** before the Wild Die ever explodes. Take the −3 for range off that and set it against the mage's Evasion 18, and a *clean* shot clears the TN by only three or four — a **Solid** hit, most nights. It took two exploding sixes to vault this one all the way to Spectacular. That is the swing the Wild Die exists to create: your master archer is reliable, and reliability lives in the middle of the ladder — the top rungs are where fate leans in.

What Are Result Points?

Result Points are the points by which you exceed a TN. These represent your margin of competency on the task you just performed. A minimal success is a 0, meaning you met the TN exactly, which is enough to pass. Everything above that is the margin you can spend. This mechanic applies to every Classic roll — the ordinary roll-a-pool-and-beat-a-TN check you make most of the time — regardless of the task, and it feeds directly into the Degrees of Success mechanic, our subject.

The Degrees of Success Ladder

Have a look at the rungs of the Degrees of Success ladder. This is how Abraxas handles Critical Successes — and unlike a Wild Die 1, there is no single "crit" die face here. Your degree is simply where your total Result Points land: a big enough pool can reach Spectacular with no explosion at all, and an exploding Wild Die in a thin pool might only manage Good. Here is how those points cash out:

Points	Level	Examples
0	Minimal	You meet the TN dead on — the lock clicks, the leap is made, the lie holds, but there's no style to it. If a clock is ticking (a patrol rounding the corner, a bridge coming apart), the GM may rule the task costs you an extra beat. In combat: it connects, and that is all it does — roll normal damage.
1–4	Solid	A tidy, competent success that takes the time it should. You set the broken arm, clear the wall, and win the haggle without drama. In combat: a clean hit, well struck — still normal damage, no bonus.
5–8	Good	A remarkable result. You cut the reactor's fuel line with seconds to spare, or read the courtier well enough to catch the lie behind the smile. In combat: a well-placed shot finds a seam — +1 pip to your damage roll.
9–12	Superior	Exceptional and efficient. You thread the skiff through the canyon and shake the pursuit entirely, or stick the landing so cleanly the judges lean forward. In combat: a precise strike bites deep — +2 pips to damage.
13–16	Spectacular	The kind of thing witnesses retell for years. You don't just win the duel of words — the warlord walks away owing you a favor. In combat: the shot lands exactly where it hurts most — +1D damage.

We can see from this table that our master archer, even eating a range penalty, scores a Spectacular success — a full +1D of extra damage from that well-placed shot!

In fact, they cleared the mark by eighteen, two points past Spectacular's ceiling of sixteen. That is not an oversight: +1D is where the mechanical reward stops. Result Points grow with your dice pool and shrink against tougher foes, so an uncapped ladder would quietly turn every outmatched enemy into a bottomless source of free damage that scales forever as your character does. The math stops on purpose. Those two extra points still count for something — they just buy narrative for the table to spend rather than more dice.

Two Arrows, or One?

Here is where the ladder stops being trivia and starts being a decision you make every round.

Abraxas charges you a Multi-Action Penalty (MAP) for splitting your attention: −1D per extra action, applied to all of your actions. Suppose our archer had been greedy and loosed two arrows instead of one. Each shot drops from 7D to 6D, and the average total falls to 21–22. Against the mage, that is the entire margin gone: knock off the −3 for range, and each arrow lands around 18 — dead on her Evasion. A bare Minimal at best, and any dip below average is a clean miss.

So the deal on the table is this. One arrow is a near-certain hit with real headroom above the TN — room where Good, Superior, and Spectacular live. Two arrows are two coin flips, and even the ones that land can only ever be Minimal, because there is nothing left over to climb the ladder with.

That is the trap, and it is a good one. Splitting your action feels like doubling your output, and against a mook, it often is — a low Evasion leaves margin to spare, so both arrows still clear the bar with points in hand. Against a worthy opponent, the arithmetic inverts. The tougher the target, the more the ladder rewards patience, and the more a second attack costs you on both shots at once.

Our archer took the single shot. It is worth remembering that a Solid hit was the honest expectation — the Wild Die is what turned a good decision into a great story.

Abraxas Tactician Corner: A Critical Success is weighted in favor of players with a high degree of mastery. This naturally means that tougher enemies are harder to score a Critical against. Abraxas uses a three-tier encounter system to balance encounters: mooks, named, and bosses. Anyone who has played a video game in the last 40 years is probably familiar with this split. It means players score more critical successes — and need less of a shock absorber — against mooks. As you climb the encounter ladder, it becomes harder and harder to actually score a critical, because Evasion rates climb and eat straight into your Result Points.

Closing Thoughts

In Abraxas, the math is immutable and owned by the system; the table owns the fiction. The last article was all about how the bell curve respects character investments by providing a shock absorber for bad Wild Die swings, making total failure rare if you leave enough room in the buffer. This article is about those table moments of sheer exhilaration when players score a critical success and go beyond what they could normally accomplish.

What do you think? Do you like the idea of a character's skill level weighting a Critical Success?