Exploration
Broadly speaking, this page provides rules relevant for non-combat encounters. This includes rules for environmental hazards, travel times, disease, poison, exhaustion, drowning, city traversal, mounts, and more.
Activity and Exhaustion
Levels of Activity
There are two levels of activity: light and heavy. Your level of activity determines how often you need to make "exhaustion rolls" to resist becoming fatigued. An Endurance/Resolve roll result of 3 is required to successfully resist fatigue, but this target number increases by 1 for each exhaustion roll you've made since the last time you slept. Failing a roll causes you to become fatigued.
| Endurance Score | Light Activity Tolerance | Heavy Activity Tolerance |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1 hour | 1 minute |
| 2 | 4 hours | 5 minutes |
| 3 | 6 hours | 10 minutes |
| 4 | 8 hours | 15 minutes |
| 5 | 10 hours | 20 minutes |
| 6 | 12 hours | 25 minutes |
| 7 | 14 hours | 30 minutes |
| 8 | 16 hours | 35 minutes |
| 9 | 18 hours | 40 minutes |
Different environmental conditions may cause these checks to become harder. For example, extreme heat, cold, or humidity will increase the difficulty of these rolls by 1, as will carrying a heavy load or drinking insufficient water.
Examples of Activity Levels
Light
- Travelling across normal terrain on foot
- Working most common physical jobs
- Performing heavy activity with regular breaks
Heavy
- Active melee or arcane combat
- Running at full speed
- Travelling across very hostile terrain, such as mountains
Effects of Fatigue
While fatigued, all rolls that you make have their difficulty increased by 1. If an effect causes you to become fatigued again while you are already fatigued, you become exhausted. While exhausted, your base move speed decreases by 1 (to a minimum of 1) and all of your attributes decrease by 1. This is in addition to the effects of fatigue. If an effect causes you to become fatigued while you are exhausted, you fall unconscious and may perish without immediate treatment.
The effects of fatigue cannot be healed or restored without removing the fatigue. Most effects of fatigue are immediately removed when the fatigue is removed - the attribute loss caused by exhaustion is the only exception and must be removed separately.
Death and Dying
Normal Hit Point Loss
Upon being reduced to 0 hit points or less, you are knocked unconscious. Once your hit points are reduced to a negative number larger than twice your Endurance attribute, you are slain. For example, a character with 6 Endurance would have to be reduced to -13 hit points to be killed.
Coup de Grace/Killing Blow
If you are restrained, disabled, or unconscious, any attack made exclusively against you is considered a Coup de Grace. If such an attack hits, the amount of damage you take is doubled. If you are unconscious, your unconscious state is extended for an additional round.
Environmental Hazards
Falling Damage
Falling damage is determined by an unavoidable damage roll. The dice pool for the roll is equal to the number of meters fallen beyond the first. The difficulty of this roll is 4, but may be higher for small targets and lesser for large targets.
Traps and Falling Objects
Anything struck by a falling object is subject to an identical damage roll to the fall damage applied to the falling object.
Avoiding a falling object or a simple trap requires either an Athletics/Awareness roll (if the hazard is unknown) or an Athletics/Conditioning roll of lower difficulty (if the hazard is known beforehand). Certain traps may be avoided differently, however.
Difficult Terrain
Heavy undergrowth, waist-high water, unsteady flooring, and similar surfaces prevent regular move actions. They must be traversed with slow moves at 1 space per action.
Starvation and Thirst
Every 24 hours that a character goes without water inflicts fatigue. Every 72 hours (3 days) without food inflicts fatigue. Fatigue (or exhaustion) inflicted this way cannot be removed until the character has had food and/or water.
Humans should drink at least 4 liters of water per day. Drinking half this amount will stave off thirst, but increases the difficulty of exhaustion rolls by 2 and prevents sleep from removing fatigue or exhaustion.
Rest and Natural Healing
Sleeping
A full night of sleep completely restores all hit point damage, removes the Disabled status effect, reduces Drain by half your current value up to 10 points restored, and restores one point of attribute reduction for all attributes. It also removes fatigue and turns exhaustion into fatigue.
In order to benefit from the effects of a full night's sleep, you must get at least 8 hours of sleep (with no more than one third of that time spent on watch). For the sake of convenience, the effects of a rest are only applied at the very end.
Resting for 1 hour restores 1 hit point and removes the Disabled status effect.
While sleeping, the difficulty of all Awareness checks is increased by 2. Other types of observation checks are, of course, impossible.
Hardness and Attacking Objects
Object Defense
Most stationary objects larger than a fist have a defense of 0. This defense applies against all forms of attack - rolling a 0 on an attack roll will miss the object, even when using something like a Soul Attack.
Objects larger than a single space (such as the broad side of a barn) cannot be missed. The only exception to this is objects outside of the accurate range of a ranged weapon, which must hit a defense of 0 as normal.
Hardness
The hardness rating of an object (or sometimes creature) reduces all incoming damage, to a minimum of 0. Once damage has been rolled against a target with hardness, decrease the incoming damage against the target by the target's hardness rating.
The hardness of an item is dependent on its material and construction, and the hit point total of an item is dependent on its thickness.
| Material | Hardness |
|---|---|
| Glass | 1 |
| Rope* | 2 |
| Wood (< 30cm) | 4 |
| Steel (< 10cm) | 6 |
| Wood (>30 cm) | 8 |
| Stone or brick | 10 |
| Steel (> 10cm) | 12 |
- Ropes cannot be (reasonably) broken by blunt weapons.
Most objects have 1 hit point per centimetre of thickness, or about 5 hit points per 2 inches, or about 30 hit points per foot. This is doubled for extremely thick or reinforced objects like castle walls.
Typical tools and weapons have 5 hit points, most shields and armors have 8.
Weapon Durability
If a weapon is used to attack a target with a hardness rating, the weapon itself is at risk of taking damage. If the result of the damage roll is less than the hardness of the target, the weapon takes the damage instead. This damage taken by the weapon is still reduced by the weapon's hardness as normal.
This can cause hit point loss if an unarmed attack is used.
Tools
Generally, tools designed to break specific materials will have the difficulty of the damage rolls to break those materials reduced by 1. They also Examples include a woodcutter's axe against wood or a pickaxe against stone.
Status Effects
Dead
Upon death, the body ceases to function and the soul departs. Only exceptionally powerful magic may return the slain to life, and even the strongest Celestial cannot reverse a death from old age.
Unconscious
When you fall unconscious, you remain unconscious for a number of rounds equal to the result of a single dice roll. During this time, you are completely immobile and unaware. After the unconscious state ends, you become disabled.
Disabled
This status refers to any state that critically limits your ability to interact with the world. In this state, a creature can observe, speak, and make simple gestures, but cannot attempt skill checks or use magic. Attacks against you are treated as if you were unaware. Even purely mental skill checks are prevented due to an inability to focus.
Restrained
While restrained, you cannot take any action that requires physical movement, such as attacking, and all attacks against you may choose to target your front arc or your back arc. Unless otherwise stated, you may still speak and use magic, so long as that magic does not require movement.
Disaligned
While disaligned, any roll that requires Soulpower or any attempt to use soul magic automatically fails.
Grappled
While grappled, any actions you attempt must overcome the force grappling you. While grappled, you may not attack with a weapon, perform a ritual that requires movement, or perform a regular move action. You also do not project a front arc while grappled. All other actions require a successful grapple roll to attempt. Any action that would cause your character to move causes all targets grappling you to move as well.
Knocked Down
While knocked down, your base movement speed is reduced to 1 and your melee attack rolls have their difficulty increased by 1. Most rituals requiring movement also cannot be performed while knocked down. Standing up costs 1 action point and triggers reactive attacks.
Underwater Rules
Drowning
You can hold your breath for a number of minutes equal to half your Endurance. If you take at least one minute beforehand to prepare with deep breaths, you may extend this by a number of minutes equal to half your Conditioning skill.
Each round spent actively in combat (or a similarly strenuous activity) exhausts 30 seconds of breathing time. In other words, you may spend a number of rounds in combat equal to your Endurance score (plus your Conditioning skill if you are prepared).
Upon running out of air, you roll a singe dice. If the result is a 3 or lower, your Endurance decreases by 1. This continues at the beginning of every turn until you either die or are able to breathe again.
Swimming
By default, you may swim in any direction while underwater at a rate of one space per round. Every 3 ranks in the Conditioning skill increases this speed by 1, up to your base speed.
Swimming in turbulent water requires an Endurance/Conditioning roll of at least 1 for a running river, 2 for stormy seas, and 3 for flowing rapids. These checks should be made every minute or every round, as appropriate.
Wearing armor with the Noisy property increases the difficulty of rolls made to swim by 1, whereas Heavy armor makes swimming impossible entirely.
Swimming counts as heavy activity for the purposes of exhaustion.
Underwater Combat
The dice pool for any weapon damage roll made underwater is divided by 2, rounded down. Ranged weapons used underwater have their ranges limited to 5.
All weapons used underwater except for Knives, Stilettos, Shortspears, Spears, and Pikes have the difficulty of all attack and damage rolls increased by 1. Whips, Rope Darts, Meteor Hammers, Slings, and firearms cannot be used at all, and Shields cannot be used to make attacks.
It is impossible to consistently tread water while effectively attacking. You must hold your breath for every round in which you make an attack or participate in a grapple.
Suffering damage while underwater requires an Endurance/Conditioning or Endurance/Resolve roll difficulty 3. If the damage taken is greater than the result of the roll, you accidentally take in water and begin drowning. The difficulty of the roll is decreased by 1 if your head is above water at the time of the hit.
Crafting
Requirements
In order to create an item, you must find two values:
- The raw material cost of the item
- The complexity rating of the item
Generally speaking, an item's raw material cost is 25% of its price. For example, a 6c shield requires an amount of wood, metal, and leather valued at 1.5c.
The complexity rating of an item is a measure of how hard the item is to make. Typical items have a complexity rating of 5. More specific details can be found in the relevant trade skill listings.
Crafting Rolls
Crafting rolls may be made once per day to attempt to make progress on the creation of an item.
Crafting rolls use intellect and a relevant skill. The difficulty of the roll is equal to the complexity rating of the item plus any circumstantial modifiers from the table below.
| Circumstances | Difficulty adjustment |
|---|---|
| Improper or improvised tools | +2 |
| No prepared workspace (working in a hotel room, in the wild, etc.) | +1 |
| Interrupted while working or working on multiple projects | +1 |
| Exceptional tools and workspace | -1 |
| Significant familiarity with creating the exact item | -1 |
The result of the roll indicates how much progress you have made towards the completion of the item for that day. Successive rolls on successive days are added to this result to represent continued work on a larger project, and progress rolls can be made by multiple characters for a single project. For most items, your total progress must work up to 5 times the item's price in platinum (or .05 times the item's price in copper).
If you do not make any successes, you must spend half the raw material cost of the item to replace ruined materials before you can make progress again. On a critical failure, you must spend the entire raw material cost of the item.
You may "roll over" your successes to make more of the same or similar items, so long as you have the materials on hand. For example, rolling 10 successes on an item that costs 1 platinum enables you to create 2 of that item if you have enough materials.
Interdisciplinary Crafting
Some projects require the fusion of many types of skills. Creating a gun requires both engineering and metalworking; carving an inscription on a statue requires both scribing and carving; designing a great mansion requires both construction and aesthetics. In these cases, the entire project must be made with two different skills. Half the total number of successes required must be made with one skill, and half must be made with the other.
In some cases, pre-built items can be used instead of having to custom make them, such as an engineer using pre-made scythe blades for a mechanical harvester. In these cases, subtract the value of the pre-built items from the value of the item being built for the purposes of determining cost of materials and successes required.
Another way to circumvent specialization and high costs is to scavenge other similar items, like turning a scythe into a glaive or a catapult into a battering ram. Follow the rules given for using pre-built items, except that the number of successes required to build the item can only be reduced by up to half. The Game Master may also rule that not all of the value of an item can be scavenged, or that scavenging the item requires a Demolition skill roll.
Cooperative Crafting
The successes required to make progress on a crafting project do not need to come from just one character; multiple characters can contribute to one project. This is a great way to create complicated projects that require multiple types of crafting roll.
Acquiring Materials
Generally speaking, Game Masters are advised to not stress the details of how players obtain crafting materials. It can be assumed that a craftsman travels with sufficient raw materials to continue building and inventing. Certain expensive or rare resources can be a good opportunity to provide an interesting quest, but such cases are the exception. Converting a character's stash of coins directly into a crafted item is a reasonable place to sacrifice realism in the name of a smoother game experience.
In the same vein, Game Masters should allow crafting in unreasonable circumstances, such as working on a mechanical vehicle during a day spent primarily riding on horseback. Again, the point of the crafting system is to allow for players to try out interesting solutions, not to punish them for travelling too much.