Tied Versus Tests in Conflicts

Apologies in advance if this question is exceptionally dumb. Ran into it last night.

If you tie a versus test in a conflict, for example: Attack vs. Defend, 2 successes each, and no one breaks the tie using a weapon, fate/persona etc. do you go to a tiebreaker roll as with a regular versus test, or do you accept that each player’s margin of success is 0 and move on to the next action? The former seems more in tune with the whole “nothing never happens” ethos, but I wasn’t totally sure.

p.64

Breaking Ties
If a versus test is tied, there are many ways to break it:
􏰀 Use gear that grants +1s to your result
􏰀 Use a trait to break a tie in your opponent’s favor
􏰀 Spend a fate point if you rolled sixes
􏰀 Spend a fate point for Deeper Understanding if you
have an applicable wise
􏰀 Spend a persona point to activate the Of Course!
aspect of an applicable wise
􏰀 Make a tiebreaker roll <—

In other words, “yes that was a stupid question.” Good thing it wasn’t a Kill conflict! Thanks.

Not a stupid question, we just happen to have anticipated you. :wink:

The upside of this is that it’s an incentive to break ties in the GM’s favor in conflicts (especially Kill conflicts!). You get two checks from it and only give the GM a margin of success of 1, whereas you could potentially give up far more if you roll zero successes on the tiebreaker roll and the GM rolls lots of successes.

I’ve intentionally tried to tie things up just to do that trick Thor describes above. One adventure I was walking around with 5 checks stored up. “Checks! Checks for all of my merry men!”

My poor players lost the Drive Off to an ornery giant crab with nature 3.