Willpower
Every character has a reserve of Willpower — a consumable pool representing their capacity to push beyond ordinary limits. For characters trained in Focus, this is a deliberate channeling of the fundamental force that underlies all existence. For everyone else, it is what they call Luck: the inexplicable moments where things just go right, where the universe bends in your favor for reasons you cannot explain.
Mechanically, they are the same thing. The universe does not care what you call it.
The Willpower Pool
A character's maximum Willpower equals their Will + Focus. A character untrained in Focus uses 0 for the skill component. Their pool is just their Will rating. A character with Will 3 and Focus 2 has a maximum of 5 Willpower. A character with Will 2 and no Focus training has a maximum of 2.
Willpower regenerates between acts.
Spending Willpower
Willpower is spent during Step 4: Modify the Pool. When spending Willpower, the rolling player upgrades Ability dice in the pool to Skill dice — one upgrade per point of Willpower spent.
- Each point spent converts one Ability die into one Skill die.
- You may spend multiple points on a single roll.
- You cannot upgrade more dice than you have Ability dice in the pool.
- Spending Willpower counts as the roll's Step 4 modification. You cannot also Press, Brace, or apply any other pre-roll modification on the same roll.
Upgraded Skill dice function exactly like normal Skill dice. They carry Successes and Critical Successes. This means Willpower spending both improves your odds of success and introduces the possibility of Critical Success on dice that would otherwise only produce Successes or Blanks.
Willpower upgrades can produce a pool with both Skill dice and Risk dice — the only situation in the game where this happens. If both a Critical Success and a Critical Failure appear on the same roll, they cancel one-for-one. Any Criticals remaining after cancellation take effect as normal. If all Criticals cancel out, resolve the roll as if no Criticals were present.
Focus users naturally have larger Willpower pools because they add their Focus skill rating. A trained Focus user with Will 3 and Focus 3 has 6 Willpower — triple the pool of a non-Focus character with Will 2. Focus users bend outcomes more often than anyone else, with or without disciplines in play.
This is intentional. In the fiction, Focus users are channeling the most fundamental force in the universe. At the table, they get to do it more often.