1. Plans Within Plans

Mentat mind tricks

Will roll Power 8 ("Understanding others is the path to true power") Understand 6 (Body Language focus) with Trait Empath for this

EDIT: I read that as one success, with difficulty reduced by 1 due to use of the Trait?

I don't know if it's required, but maybe a Duty Understand roll to make sure no one creeps up from behind them. Please ignore if it's unnecessary or I've erred.

You might not allow me to use this focus but just in case... Dirty Fighting (brawling and fighting with improvised weapons

Using THE SLOW BLADE Talent

@Qralloq are you saying it might be best to only roll when called for in this game?

I'm just saying that it's a delicate dance. Feel free to roll in advance if you're okay with me ignoring Momentum generated by rolls I deem unnecessary after the fact.

These are minor characters. Drive 5, Skill 5. A Contest is an opposed roll. They roll their skill, setting the difficulty of an attack against them.

Two successes. D3 to take them out. Rook's Slow Blade reduces that to D2 but he scored three anyway. Don't think Dirty Fighting works with his blade. He spent a Momentum and gained one.

Rook roll your Battle skill again for defense. Nevermind they missed.

Since you didn't specify which PC, I'm going to assume that Marcus would go next, combat being his specialty.

Can he activate his shield as well, or is that considered a second action?

On the dice roll, going with Duty and Battle and apply his Strategy Focus and make use of his Bold (Battle) Talent. But I couldn't figure out from the rules what effect either the Strategy Focus or Bold Talent have on combat, so I'm just going to roll dice as is. :(

The Focus gives you a critical range in the Skill roll. Normally, you get a success for rolling a 12 (drive 6 + skill 6) or lower. You get double successes on a natural 1. Having a focus increases the double successes range up to your skill level. So the 2 counts as 2 successes, and the 15 adds nothing.

Bold would allow you to reroll one die when you buy an extra d20 with 1 Threat (adding 1 die to the pool of dice the GM can add to NPC actions), and doing. "When you attempt a test using the Battle skill, and you buy additional d20s by generating Threat for the gamemaster, you may re-roll a single d20 in that dice pool."

Lastly, you have Traits, including Swordmaster. This reduces the difficulty of your action when the trait applies.

This was D0 action, I rolled poorly for Defense, so you defeat the thug and generate 2 Momentum.

Thanks Qralloq! That makes things clearer, though I feel that I have more reading to do.

Justice/Battle roll, invoking his Long Blades focus.

Just to confirm - his Master-at-Arms talent is of no real use here, right - since these are minor characters and the quality of his long blade isn't important here?

EDIT: and to make sure I'm interpreting the roll correctly - because I invoked the focus, the 2 is a critical (2 successes), then the 7 (1 success) for a total of (3 successes)?

Wanted to check I understand how this conflict is working.

In the "conflict overview" 1. is "Choose and asset to use in the attack". Marya doesn't have a blade in her list of three assets - I guess I'd assumed she carried one AND as one's not listed, then I guess she uses unarmed combat? Is that how you'd read the situation?

When we attack a Rat, they roll by default 2d20 against their Drive + Skill (for them all their drives and all their skills are set at 5). So one success for everything 10 or below, two if they roll a 1. When in the first attack the Rat rolls 6,6, then the difficulty level is 2 from this roll plus 1 from their "home advantage" trait to give D3?

Rook rolled 3 successes so that Rat is out.

After that, another Rat attacked Rook but got no successes. If they had, then Rook would have rolled 2d20 against their Battle Skill + whichever Drive they chose, and every success would raise the difficulty level for the Rat's attack.

Does this sound right?