Horizon of Darkness

Does a difficulty check also apply to high-level passives? And if you pack a single passive with buffs and debuffs, can you give it a low level? I just want at least some of the effects to be guaranteed and active 24/7.

Overall, I'm leaning towards simply outlining how I envision my champion's build, and then use that build as a basis for further development and balancing.

That's exactly what I was thinking about regarding passives. In most cases, passives are essentially buffs that can be toggled on and off. The only exception is companions. Although, even for a companion, you can choose whether they eat meat in the tavern. Therefore, there will be two types of passives: replaceable and non-replaceable.

Replaceable:
1. Before each battle, it will need to be activated (and a difficulty check will be made if it's a high-level passive).
2. An activated passive will take up one slot and a charge of the corresponding level.
3. If you want to deactivate it during a battle and replace it with another skill, you will need to spend a turn.

Non-replaceable:
1. If you want a passive that doesn't need to be toggled on and off, and is high-level, and requires a check, then it will work as I described to Plesu earlier. A slot and a charge will need to be permanently reserved for such a passive, without the possibility of replacement.