If you have a character in a con scenario with a grey shade, have it be Resources. As every player has a Resources attribute everyone can check theirs and you can also have the situation where one has the higher exponent while the other has the lighter shade.
Then you can explain that everything in the game needs 4 to 6 to be successful except this one character’s Resources attribute which needs a 3-6. You say something like this to the player: “Although this other character has more money than you, you understand it on a deeper level and can do better with what you have than he can.”
It communcates perfectly the differences in the potential successes the two characters can have which is difficult to explain in other circumstances. You can then say that skills or stats can also be similarly grey shaded.