Action Difficulty is determined by the GM, either secretly, in the case of Unknown or Discoverable Difficulty actions, or announced publicly in the case of Known Difficulty.

An Action Difficulty is a numerical value representing how difficult it is to successfully resolve. The higher the total Difficulty number, the more difficult the action is to accomplish. For common Actions, the GM may simply assign a Difficulty score. For more complex Actions, such as resolving an attack and defense in combat, the Difficulty may be a the sum of combining several point pools, such as an NPC's influential Stat points, their Defensive Ability points, or even Outcome Modifiers that are revealed during a DBC.

Actions with a known difficulty are those that the GM determines are reasonable that the PC would already know, have discovered earlier, or because of specialized training or work experience have done before, or a similar circumstance that would cause the difficulty score of the action to not be held secret from the players. In this case, the GM just announces the Action Difficulty Score along with what Stats or Abilities influence the Outcome as soon as it has been determined so as not to slow the game down. The Player then resolves the action Automatically, or Manually.

Example: Bob the Builder has encountered a dilapidated hut in a rainstorm and wants to take an Action to repair the hut so that he and his friends can camp there. He has a Craft(Carpentry)3 ability score and Smarts 3 for a total of 6. Based on his experience, the GM decides that he would know how difficult it is to repair just glancing at the hut's condition, based on his ability and experience, as well as about how long it would take. The GM assigns a Difficulty score of 2 to the Action and announces that to the player controlling Bob, as well as confirming the fact that the Action can be resolved by using his Craft(Carpentry) ability and is influenced by Smarts. The GM asks the player what Bob's Stat and Ability total is and determines the action can be resolved Automatically, since his totals are greater than the Action Difficulty, and there are no other Actions competing for those point totals in the current time period, encounter or scene. On the other hand, if there were other Actions he wanted to accomplish in the same time period, such as repairing the party's wagon wheel, or casting a spell requiring Smarts, then the Outcome of the Known Difficulty Action of repairing the hut roof would be resolved Manually to allow Bob's player to determine how he or she whats to allocate their limited point pools, and in what order.

Actions that have an unknown difficulty are either impossible for the player character to assess ahead of time, and so the Difficulty, along with the influential Stat and Abilities are secret, or the GM also doesn't know what the Difficulty is without conducting a Double-Blind Contest, such as in the case of resolving a Combat Action. Unknown Difficulty Actions ARE ALWAYS resolved using a DBC.

Actions that have a Discoverable Difficulty begin as Unknown Difficulty, although they allow the player to optionally spend additional mental or physical action points to convert them to Known Difficulty actions. The GM informs the player attempting to resolve the Action how many Action Points it will cost to Discover the Difficulty, and the player decides to spend those or not. This is important because an Actor can only spend as many Action Points in a scene or Combat Round as their Fitness or Will allow, and they may need those point pools or action points to resolve other Actions during that same time period.

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To speed play, rather than calculating the Difficulty of each Action, a common scale can be used by the GM:

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