Will
Play Vocabulary
Willpower ( Will / WL / W ) represents the innate potential of a character to achieve the powers of mind-over-matter - ie. the characters ability to manifest his or her ideal reality. It also hints at a particular fate or destiny for one's path in life. This attribute is also known as Wyrd. This ability, Will or Wyrd, has key importance in practicing magic, but also in the mundane sense of maintaining a general stoicism - the ability to push on through tremendous and harrowing circumstances.
There are some challenges that might be resolved entirely using one's Will, but generally it is a reservoir called upon in times of particular difficulty or stress. Wielding one's Will in order to essay a task consumes your Mana resources, and a character loses one point of mana for every point of Will added to ones essay roll, unless there are extenuating circumstances.
Regardless, at some point, an adventuring player might, in order to overcome a certain challenge, have to make a Willpower dice roll that meets or exceeds some Difficulty value, or that opposes the dice roll of a foe. In this case, in the basic game, the character's Will value is added as a bonus to the result of a standard dice roll. The total is the outcome value that is compared against the difficulty of the challenge, or the foes adversarial roll, in order to determine success or failure.
Depending on the game style, Will (or WillPower) might be expressed as a fixed bonus value (+0 to +10... or above in high level play) added to a base dice roll, or the value implies a dice roll of a compatible dice size (for example, a character with a Willpower of 6 would roll a d6 to accompany the base roll, while a creature with a Willpower of 9 would roll a d10 when above ground, and a d8 when below (presuming the creature is a surface dweller). In yet another sort of game, there is no base dice or base roll, and each roll is decided by a roll of the dice representing the relevant vital statistic - for example, a character to 8 points of Willpower rolls a d8 (augmented with situational bonuses) to determine the outcome of an activity requiring pure stoic endurance (ie. a trial of the soul).
See also: