Muscle

Muscle is used to prevent other forms of Downtime Actions from taking place. This can be used to protect assets such as farms or warehouses, prevent harmful or unwanted actions, or bully other characters by preventing their goals.

Muscle can vary in effectiveness. All characters have a Muscle value of 1 by default, plus 1 for every level of Intimidation that they possess. Characters taking Muscle together for the same action may take the highest Intimidation bonus of all of them, plus the basic 1 for each action taken. A Dog can assist with each Muscle action, behaving as an extra character with 3 Intimidation and 3 Vigilance, if fed 1 Meat.

Characters attempting to take the affected action resist with Stealth. If their Stealth is higher than the Muscle value, they can take their action anyway. If it isn’t, the action fails and Muscle is successful. Characters using Muscle are always revealed to the people they interfere with, while people who try to violate Muscle are revealed only their Vigilance exceeds the person’s Stealth.

Muscle can attempt to stop any range of Downtime actions, such as “All uses of Streetwise” to “All Downtimes from this specific character” to “This specific character using Streetwise.” Actions taken together automatically oppose Muscle as a group, even if they aren’t coordinated, so stopping “All uses of Streetwise” would mean that every character using Streetwise would combine their resistance to succeed. Characters using Muscle must therefore choose carefully what range actions they believe they can stop.

Muscle actions themselves may be the subject of this Downtime Action.