Waking Up
The biggest risk to your mission is your Jack or the Mark waking up. Let's go over the basics.
Waking up happens when a Wake Check is failed.
This can occur due to 3 main causes:
The dream hits a point on the Chaos Scale that the Jack or Mark cannot cope with. This is usually 17 or above but this varies. Jacks with the chaos Affinity, have their point at 18, Jacks with the order Affinity have their point at 16.
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The Jack or Aura gets enough Permanent conditions to put them at -4 in any Æther. Picture you wake when you get struck by that final spear throw that shocks you awake, or the world gets so fuzzy and indistinguishable that you can't hold yourself in the dream, or that the dream sends you into such a state of panic that you wake up in a hot flush.
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Or the Jack or Aura is hit with an ability or fail a decision roll that results in an immediate Wake Check. Getting hit with a giant axe, or falling into a huge pit of spikes may be something that triggers an immediate Wake Check.
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Wake Checks
A Wake Check is a D20 roll that is affected by the dreams Chaos Scale, the number of Permanent Conditions on the Jack, the Jack's starting Lucidity and any effects from their Memento.
To not wake up you must roll above: The distance the Chaos scale is from seven, plus your total permanent conditions, minus the Jacks starting lucidity times three, then do any effect that the Memento has.
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Let's consider a Jack needs to make a Wake Check due to getting 4 Glazed conditions. The Chaos Scale is at 12, they also have 1 Wounded condition and 2 Shaken, Their starting Lucidity is -1, their Memento reads "reduce the effect of the Chaos Scale on wake checks by half, rounding up".
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The Wake Number will be half of 12-7 so half of 5 rounding up, so 3. Then we add 5 for the Glazed and Wounded conditions, note we don't add 2 more because Shaken is not a Permanent condition, so we are at 8. Now we minus the starting Lucidity times 3 but our Jack isn't strong in Lucidity having a negative Lucidity, so we actually add 3, leading to 11. Therefore, the Jack needs to roll an 11 or above to not Wake Up.
Lucidity Checks
There is another type of check that can happen called a Lucidity Check. This occurs if the Order scale gets to 3 or below leading to the Jack not recognising that they are in a dream. Very rarely, Lucidity Checks can happen due to a decision roll, a Jack or a Marks ability, Or for whatever reason the pilot cannot wake up due to something happening in the Overworld.
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Lucid Checks use the exact same calculations as the Wake Check.
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Failing a Lucidity check causes the Jack to become Non-Lucid and function as if they don't realise they are in a dream, they lose all Jack features such as abilities, passives, weapons, etc. only retaining their Memento.
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The Mark Waking Up
If the Mark wakes up due to their Aura waking up or the chaos scale getting too high, The dream starts to fall apart. The chaos scale increases by 1 chaos each round as the stability of the dream crumbles. This leaves Jacks with only a few rounds to still try to get what they are after.
Hardcore Rules
Takamori's dream technology didn't quite work out as intended leading to some users never waking up from their journeys into other people's dreams.
Rather than simply waking up from dreams when you fail Wake Checks, instead your Jack and Pilot die as a result of the mental stress on the Pilot's brain.
In Addition, if a Jack is Non-Lucid due to failing a Lucidity Check and all the other Jacks leave the dream or also become Non-Lucid, the Jack becomes forever trapped in the dream and their Pilot never wakes up.