When you roll
You roll when an action could genuinely fail or be opposed — picking a lock under pressure, leaping a gap, talking a guard round. If the outcome is not in doubt, you just do it; no roll needed. The Narrator asks for the roll and tells you which stat to use.
How a roll works
The core roll is a twenty-sided die plus the stat the action calls on, against a target number the Narrator sets from how hard the task is. Roll a natural 20 and it is a Triumph — you succeed with something extra, whatever your bonus. Roll a natural 1 and it is a Ruin — it goes wrong with a complication, whatever your bonus.
The six stats
- Brawn — muscle, endurance, raw force.
- Finesse — speed, precision, stealth.
- Grit — toughness, pain tolerance, stubbornness.
- Lore — learned knowledge, recall, working things out.
- Insight — reading people, intuition, noticing.
- Presence — charm, conviction, command of a room.
Health and defence
- Vitality — physical wellbeing. At zero, your character is down and fighting to survive.
- Resolve — mental and moral fortitude. At zero, your character is overwhelmed until they recover.
- Ward — how hard you are to hit. An attack has to beat it.
- Poise — how hard you are to rattle in a contest of nerve, fear, or persuasion.
Practice rolls don’t count
You can open the dice any time, off-turn, just to see them tumble. Those rolls are for the feel of it — they are not part of the story and they never cost a turn. A roll only counts when the Narrator has called for it.