Chapter 2: Game Basics

Most of the time, the GM simply tells you what happens. Opening an unlocked door, walking down a road, or buying bread takes no roll at all. You roll only when two things are true at once: the outcome is uncertain, and it matters to the story whether it works.

When both are true, you attempt a check. To make one, roll a d20 and add your modifier for whatever you are trying. The result is your total.

Your modifier is a number written on your character sheet, and each kind of task has its own. Your modifier for climbing is not the same as your modifier for lying, and neither is the same as your modifier for swinging a sword. Where those numbers come from is explained later in this chapter. For now, all you need to know is that a character who is better at something has a higher modifier for it.

The number the die shows before you add anything is called the natural result. A natural 20 means the die itself landed on 20, whatever your total turned out to be.

Circumstances can help or hinder a check. Anything that helps adds a bonus to your total, and anything that hinders subtracts a penalty.

Every bonus has a type, which says where it comes from. You only add the highest bonus of each type. Two bonuses of different types add together, but two of the same type do not: if one ally's song gives you a +1 status bonus and a spell gives you a +2 status bonus, you add +2, not +3.

Penalties have the same types and follow the same rule, so you only subtract the worst penalty of each type. A penalty with no type is different: every untyped penalty applies, however many there are.

A total means nothing on its own. It is compared to a threshold: the number the check has to reach. Meeting the threshold is enough; you do not need to beat it.

Where the threshold comes from depends on what you are doing.

Against the world. When you climb a wall, pick a lock, or recall an old legend, the GM sets the threshold according to how hard the task is. A low wall with good handholds has a low threshold, and a sheer wet cliff has a high one.

Against a creature. When you act against someone, the threshold is one of theirs. Every creature has thresholds for the ways it can resist you, and each one is 10 plus the modifier that creature would roll. When you attack, the threshold is the target's Deflection, which measures how hard it is to land a blow on them.

Against an effect. Sometimes the world acts on you, and it is your turn to resist: a spell reaches for your mind, a gas fills your lungs, the floor gives way under you. Then you roll a defense check against the threshold of the effect, such as the spell threshold of whoever cast the spell. The six Defenses you roll for these checks are described under Attributes, below.

In every case the roll is the same. You roll a d20, add your modifier, and compare the total to a threshold.

Clearing a threshold is not simply yes or no. Every check has one of four results, called degrees of success, and most rules in this book say something different about at least two of them.

A natural 20 improves your result by one degree, and a natural 1 worsens it by one. This happens after you compare the total, so a natural 20 on a roll that would have failed becomes a success, not a critical success, and a natural 1 on a roll that would have been a success becomes a failure.

Every modifier on your character sheet is built the same way, from two numbers.

Proficiency is how well trained you are. Attributes are how capable you are. A character who is both trained in swords and strong swings a sword well; a character who is only one of the two swings it less well.

Proficiency is how good you are at a thing. You start untrained in almost everything, and six ranks lie above that.

Most of your proficiencies come from your class, which decides what you are trained in and when that training improves. Some feats grant a new proficiency or raise one you already have.

Every rank is worth the same two points, from the first to the last. Ascendant is the highest rank a character can reach, and it is the rank of a lifetime spent on one thing.

One proficiency runs ahead of all the others and gates them. It is called Class Proficiency, and it advances at 1st, 3rd, 7th, 11th, 15th, and 19th level.

It decides three things at once.

It is your class's main statistic. A martial character's attacks follow it. A full spellcaster's spells follow it. What a class does best, it does at this rank.

It opens your feats. Every feat has a rank. You can take feats of a rank as soon as your Class Proficiency reaches it. Skill feats are the exception, explained under Feats.

It limits your attributes. No attribute can go above the maximum your Class Proficiency allows, shown in the table below.

What each rank gives you besides the number is described in What Each Rank Unlocks.

Six attributes describe a character: Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma. Each is written as a modifier, and at 1st level none can be higher than +4.

At every even level, you gain 3 points to add to your attributes. You can spread them however you like: +1 to three different attributes, +2 to one and +1 to another, or all +3 to a single attribute. The only limit is your Class Proficiency, which sets the highest value any attribute can reach (Table 2-4).

Every attribute does three kinds of work. It adds to things you roll, it answers for one of the ways the world comes at you, and it sets the size of something you carry with you. No attribute on this sheet exists only to be spent.

Strength is your body's claim on the world: how much of it you can move, and how little of you it can move back. It is mass and leverage as much as muscle, and it is the difference between being present somewhere and merely standing there.

Strength swings the weapon and adds to the damage it deals, climbs and swims and jumps, and decides how much weight you carry before it slows you down.

Strength defends with Stability, and that is the answer to everything meant to take your footing away: being shoved, grabbed, dragged, buried, or crushed. A character who is hard to move is hard to move by anything, and this is the defense that says so.

Dexterity is the distance between what you meant to do and what your hands actually did. In a character who has it, that distance is nothing. It is aim and timing and a body that does exactly what it was told, which is rarer than it sounds.

Dexterity fires the bow, throws the knife, and swings any weapon light enough to move from the wrist instead of the shoulder. It picks locks, climbs quietly, and keeps you from being seen.

Dexterity defends with Evasion, against everything you could have stepped out of: a blast, a falling ceiling, a swinging blade, a spreading fire.

Constitution is how much of you there is. Not how hard you are to hurt, but how long the hurting takes to finish: the depth of the well your body draws from while it is bleeding, poisoned, freezing, or awake for the third night in a row.

Constitution keeps you standing. It is the depth of your Stamina, the breath you can hold under water, the miles you can march before your legs give out, and what a night's rest gives back to you. And when everything else has failed and you are dying, it is Constitution that holds on.

Constitution defends with Resilience, against poison, disease, exhaustion, and anything else that works on the body over time rather than all at once.

Intelligence is the mind's capacity to hold things and to notice that two of them are the same thing. It is memory with a shape to it, and it is what lets a person carry a hundred facts and find the one that matters in the second it matters.

Intelligence reads the arcane, builds and mends, untangles a society's rules and a crime's traces, and holds every Lore you have learned; the sharper it is, the more Lores it can hold. When something unfamiliar stands in front of you, it is Intelligence that reaches back and recalls what you know about it, whatever the subject.

Intelligence defends with Clarity, against illusion, confusion, and anything that edits what you believe or remember. A mind that holds its own shape is a mind that is hard to redraw.

Wisdom is attention pointed outward. It is not what you know, it is what you notice, and the judgment to understand what noticing it should cost you. The wise character is rarely the most learned one at the table, and is usually the first to say that something here is wrong.

Wisdom tends the wounded, reads the land and the sky, understands the gods, and keeps you alive in the wild. Above all it is your perception: the sense that hears the ambush before it springs, and that decides who moves first when a fight begins.

Wisdom defends with Spirit, against possession, banishment, curses, soul-drain, and effects that reach past the body entirely. Attention pointed outward is also what notices that something has come in from outside.

Charisma is presence: the force of your personality and the innate power of your own soul. It is what makes a room turn when you speak, and what makes something reaching for you hesitate before it closes its hand.

Charisma persuades, deceives, frightens, and performs. It is also how much of yourself you can lend to the magic you carry: every magic item you invest holds a piece of you, and a stronger self can spare more of them, five and one more for each point of Charisma.

Charisma defends with Resolve, against fear, compulsion, charm, and anything that tries to make your decisions for you. A self with enough weight is hard to push.

Play moves between three modes. The GM decides which one you are in, and the shift is usually obvious to everyone at once.

Encounter mode is what happens when the seconds matter. Time is cut into rounds of six seconds, everyone acts in a fixed order, and each character gets a turn. Combat is the common case, but any tense scene where the order of events changes the outcome can be run this way.

Exploration mode is the pace of a journey. Time is measured in minutes and hours, characters declare a single activity they are doing as they travel, and the GM narrates until something interrupts.

Downtime mode is the pace of days and weeks. Characters rest, work, train, build, and recover.

In encounter mode, your turn gives you three actions and one reaction. That is the whole economy, and nearly every tactical decision in this game is a decision about how to spend it.

Most things cost one action: taking a step, drawing a weapon, making one attack. An action is written with one symbol.

Stride · Strike · Raise a Shield

Some things take more than one action, and are written with the number they cost. An activity is a single thing, not several separate ones: if you are interrupted partway through, you lose the whole activity and the actions it had already used.

Cast a Spell · Sudden Charge · Whirlwind Strike

A reaction can be used at any moment, on your turn or on anyone else's, but only when its trigger happens. You get one per round, and it refreshes at the start of your turn.

A free action costs nothing. Some have triggers and some do not, but they are always limited by something else, usually a frequency, so that "free" never means "unlimited."

Feats are how you build and shape your character. Each one gives them a new ability or improves something they already do, and the feats you choose are what make your character different from anyone else of the same class. There are five kinds, described below: ancestry, class, skill, general, and archetype feats.

Every feat has a rank, from Trained to Ascendant, and you can take a feat as soon as your Class Proficiency reaches its rank. Class Proficiency advances at the same levels for every character, 1st, 3rd, 7th, 11th, 15th, and 19th, so everyone gains feats of a new rank at the same moment: at 7th level, a fighter and a wizard can both take Master feats.

A character can hold more than one Class Proficiency, by learning a second class through an archetype. When that happens, your highest Class Proficiency is the one that opens your feats.

Skill feats are the exception. They follow your proficiency in the skill, not in your class. You can be a Master in your class and still need to become a Master in Athletics before you can take a Master Athletics feat.

Ancestry feats. Every ancestry has its own list of feats that only its members can choose, found in that ancestry's entry in Chapter 3. Your heritage, also described in Chapter 3, grants you one ancestry feat at 1st level, and you choose another from your ancestry's list. You choose a new ancestry feat at 3rd level and at every odd level after that.

Class feats. Every class has its own list of feats, found in its entry in Chapter 4, and every class gives them a name of its own: the Bard's class feats are its Motifs, and the Fighter's are its Maneuvers. You choose a class feat at 1st level and at every even level after that.

Archetype feats. An archetype is something your character learns to do besides their class, and every archetype has its own list of feats, found in its entry in Chapter 5. The first feat you take from an archetype is always its Dedication, which opens the rest of its list. You choose an archetype feat at 1st level and at every even level after that.

Skill feats. Each skill feat belongs to a skill and sharpens what you can do with it. They are listed in Chapter 7. Your background, described in Chapter 3, grants you one at 1st level, and you choose another at 2nd level and at every even level after that.

General feats. General feats are open to every character, and they improve the things every character shares: health, senses, movement, and training. They are listed in Chapter 7. Your background grants you one at 1st level, and you also choose one at 1st level, then another at 3rd level and at every odd level after that.

When you gain a feat slot, you may instead take two feats of the rank immediately below. You may not keep trading downward: two Expert feats do not become four Trained ones.

You now have every piece a character is built from. Making one takes ten steps, and most of them point to a later chapter where the choices are listed. Read the steps now to see the order; you will come back to them with the other chapters open.

1. Create a concept. Before any number, decide who your character is: what they want, what they fear, and why they travel with the others, as Chapter 1 describes. A clear idea makes every choice after it easier, and it is fine if the idea changes as the numbers take shape.

2. Choose an ancestry and a heritage. Your ancestry is the people you were born among, and your heritage is the particular branch of it you come from. Your ancestry sets your size, your speed, the Stamina you start with, and some of your attributes. Your heritage grants you an ancestry feat, and you choose a second one from your ancestry's list. Chapter 3.

3. Pick a background. Your background is what you did before your adventures began. It gives you 3 attribute points, each to a different attribute, training in one skill and in one Lore, one skill feat, and one general feat, as its entry describes. Chapter 3.

4. Choose a class. Your class is what you trained to become, and it gives you more than any other choice. It names your Key Attribute and your Key Skill, sets your Class Proficiency at Trained, lists the weapons, armor, Defenses, and skills you are trained in, and says how much Stamina you gain with each level. At 1st level you also gain its first class features and your first class feat. Chapter 4.

5. Settle your attributes. Every attribute starts at +0. Your ancestry raises some of them, your background adds its 3 points, and your class adds 1 to its Key Attribute, each as its entry describes. Then you raise four different attributes by 1 each, however you like. An attribute can start as high as +4, but only if your ancestry, your background, your class, and your free points all raise that same attribute.

6. Record your skills. Mark the skills your class and background make you trained in, and your class's Key Skill. You are also trained in a number of Lores equal to your Intelligence, and whenever your Intelligence rises, you gain one more. Lores are described in Chapter 6.

7. Choose your feats. At 1st level you choose an ancestry feat, a class feat, an archetype feat, and a general feat, on top of the feats your heritage and background already gave you. Your archetype feat is the Dedication of the archetype you choose. Chapters 5 and 7.

8. Buy equipment. You begin with 15 golden pieces (gp). Spend them on weapons, armor, and gear, keeping in mind what you are trained to use. Chapter 8.

9. Work out your numbers. Now fill in the numbers your choices produce. Your Stamina is your ancestry's Stamina plus what your class gives at 1st level. Every modifier you roll, for attacks, skills, Defenses, and Perception, is your proficiency plus the attribute it uses. Your Deflection and every threshold you set, such as your spell threshold, are 10 plus that same modifier.

10. Finish the details. Give your character a name, an age, a look, and the habits that make them easy to play. These details have no numbers attached, and they are often what the rest of the table remembers.

Characters grow by earning Experience Points, or XP, for the challenges they overcome. When your character reaches 1,000 XP, they gain a level: their level increases by 1 and their XP goes back to zero, with anything left over counting toward the next level. A character begins at 1st level and can reach 20th.

Each time you gain a level, go through these steps:

Increase your Stamina. Your class entry says how much your maximum Stamina grows with each level. If your Constitution rises, your Stamina rises with it, for every level you have.

Gain your class features. Your class entry lists what your class gives you at each level. If your class casts spells, it also says which spells you gain.

Choose your feats. Table 2-6 shows which kinds of feats you choose at each level, and the section on feats above says where each list is found.

Spend your attribute points. At every even level, you gain 3 points to add to your attributes, as described under Attributes.

Apply your skill increase. At 3rd level and every odd level after that, you gain a skill increase: you raise one skill by one rank, from Untrained to Trained, from Trained to Expert, and so on. A skill can never rise above the rank of your Class Proficiency, so you can make a skill Expert only once your Class Proficiency is Expert. Your class's Key Skill does not need increases: it rises on its own, together with your Class Proficiency.

You can take these steps in whatever order you like. If a feat you want requires a higher attribute, spend your attribute points first and take the feat at the same level. When you are done, go over your character sheet and update every number that changed.

Rules text in this book follows a small number of conventions, and knowing them makes the entries much shorter to read.

Bold text names a rule. When a word is bold in the middle of a sentence, that word is defined somewhere and means exactly what it is defined to mean, not what it means in conversation.

Italic text names a spell. Fireball is the spell; a fireball is a ball of fire.

A trait is a label with rules attached. Traits are printed in the row beneath an entry's name. They rarely do anything by themselves, and they are what other rules point at when they want to talk about a group of things at once.

Feats, spells, and items are printed in a block that always reads the same way.