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I think this is good, although does not really tackle the original issue, in my opinion. An individual action is still using a d20 roll-under system, so there's still the problem of that being basic. Either way, though, here's my feedback on the Action Chain system:

Action Chains Themselves

In my opinion, there are a couple problems with what you've proposed. Firstly, if one failure warrants failure of the entire Action Chain, the chance of succeeding should NOT decrease. As a player keeps rolling, the likelihood of a failure increases regardless of any modifiers. Sure, not individually, but as a group, the more rolls you are making the higher likelihood one of them would be a failure.

Secondly, in my opinion, a multi-part challenge is not really demonstrated well with a roll-under system. As much as I love them, I do not think they give this kind of system justice. From what I've seen in systems with something similar to what you've proposed in-place, there is generally a way to tally successes (and get multiple successes in one roll) or are roll-over / roll high. In either of those cases, an Action Chain would have a total number of successes / sum of rolls, and as you make rolls, you contribute towards the problem. This would both solve the problem of being tricky with multiple players and having surprise obstacles occur. It also allows those that didn't roll as well to contribute, which seems more heroic and team-based to me, which seems like something you're going for.

My Recommendation

From everything you've described, if I were you, I would make the game somewhat Rooted in Trophy, but go in an opposite direction for Devil's Bargains. Trophy, in unfamiliar, is based on Cthulhu Dark and Blades in the Dark. Devil's Barigains allow the players to actively root for their own terrible end by giving a player a boost in their roll with a condition attached—they must do something negative or something must happen in order for them to get the boost. When I say go in an opposite direction, I mean that players, instead of pitching to another player something bad to happen, they strike a deal in order to facilitate teamwork. For example, if Superhero A was making a really important roll while Superhero B needed help lifting a rock over an innocent bystander, Superhero B could ask Superhero A if they could help them for a moment after their roll to lift the rock. With the permission of the GM, Superhero A can take an additional die as long as they help Superhero B.

Expanding on that slightly, for Action Chains, I'd use the Trophy resolution system, but take the result's number and mark it against the Action Chains' total. When certain thresholds are reached, the problems are solved.

Hopefully this gives you some food for thought! Very excited for what you turn out.

I have not read Trophy but I'm loosely familiar with it. I think you make a good point about not needing to make the difficulty increase over time since as you say, at least as-is the joint probability of succeeding at all challenges will be lower than on any individual challenge even all else being equal. I've heard many people speak really highly of the Devil's Bargain mechanic. I'll say I've read Blades in the Dark and didn't really like it, but my thoughts on it aren't so specific that I'd be above considering this.

Another possibility could be a system, I know I've read some like this before but can't think off-hand, where you have a dice pool and success is based on the number of dice that roll over a threshold (like success on 4+ on a d6) and degrees of success based on the number of successes. And then the idea of superheroes being able to give their teammates their own successes plays into the teamwork idea, but maybe it could also play into the Action Chain where you can decide how many successes to "spend" at each link on the chain, where you need to be mindful of potential surprise challenges or contextual challenges even if you have more than enough successes for every link in the chain. I'll have to give this idea some more thought but I'm actually growing to like this idea and I think it could make the overall Action Chain move a little more quickly while having an interesting meta-currency aspect to it.

Following up though, I will actually say though, part of the increased difficulty is because I don't necessarily want superheroes to be able to succeed on all challenges in an Action Chain easily; to some extent, the idea is to necessitate that they make tradeoffs and manage priorities. Superheroes should generally be able to succeed fairly easily at any given task, they're superheroes after all, but the challenge is truly in being able to do "everything". That being said, just the joint probability effect may be sufficient, and increasing the difficulty over the course of the chain may be overkill.