MODERN ROLEPLAYING SYSTEM
Version 2 September 2012
Design: Russell Brown
Art: Joshua Zentner
Editing: Andrew Brown Playtesting: Nick Gubbins, Ryan Tuck, Kyle Holbach
D6Pool Rules Copyright 2011, 2012 Russell J. Brown Artwork copyright 2012 Joshua Zentner, All Rights Reserved Logo font Neou v1.0 designed by André Uenojo
Text = All text in this document is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License See http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
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CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION TO ROLEPLAYINGD6Pool is a relatively simple roleplaying system using only six-‐sided dice (though sometimes quite a lot of them). In a roleplaying game, you and the other players take the role of a character while one person acts as the gamemaster. The gamemaster tells the overall story while you decide how your character will interact with other characters and the world. Game systems like D6Pool help you define your character and provide a way to determine the results of your character’s actions. The rules give structure to the collaborative storytelling.
THE GAMEMASTER Each roleplaying session has a gamemaster. The gamemaster controls the world and sets the basic storyline of each adventure. If each roleplaying session is like an episode of a television show, then the gamemaster is the scriptwriter. However, the gamemaster does not write the parts of the major characters – that is the job of the players. If you choose to be the gamemaster you will not have to create the world and the adventure all on your own. There are plenty of ideas for settings in novels, television and movies, and there are example D6Pool campaign settings. The D6Pool “Cast of Characters” book provides dozens of people and creatures to populate your world.
PLAYER CHARACTERS Each player in D6Pool creates a character to play, defined by a set of skills and abilities. The gamemaster may impose some restrictions on what types of characters you can create, but
otherwise you are free to play any character that fits the setting of the adventure. Perhaps you’d like to play a successful lawyer who discovers he’d rather stop crime in his own way, or a kindergarten teacher who does some work for the CIA on the side? Once you have a basic concept for your character, you create them in terms of the game system as described in Chapter 4.
NON-PLAYER CHARACTERS The world is full of people (and possibly creatures) that may interact with your character. All of these other characters are subject to the same rule system as the player characters, but their actions are determined by the gamemaster. They are referred to as non-‐player characters, or NPCs.
SCENES An adventure typically consists of a series of scenes. These could be combat situations, car chases, conversations with important NPCs, or covert operations. It is important for the gamemaster to determine when one scene ends and another begins, because some effects and abilities in the game last for one scene or can only be used once per scene.
CHALLENGES As you decide how your character will react to the world, often the outcome will not be obvious. Did you manage to bash down that door, or wow the crowd with your singing? These situations result in challenges, and the D6Pool rule system is used to determine the outcome. The next chapter describes how challenges are resolved.
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CHAPTER 2: THE BASICSATTRIBUTES Your character in D6Pool is defined, in part, by six attributes: Strength, Dexterity, Stamina, Intelligence, Charisma, and Perception. The value of each of these attributes is measured as a number of dice (at least 1 and typically not more than 3 or 4). The attribute score represents the number of dice your roll when using that attribute during a challenge. Strength: You use this attribute for challenges requiring raw strength such as lifting heavy objects or breaking free of restraints. You also use it to determine damage dealt in close combat attacks. Dexterity: You use this attribute in challenges involving speed. It may also apply to manual tasks requiring precision, like attacking with a weapon, repairing delicate items, or surgery. Stamina: This attribute represents your ability to persevere in difficult environments and to resist physical threats like disease, poison and damage from weapons. Intelligence: This attribute represents your general knowledge about the world. It determines whether you already know something, and it also indicates how well you can research or deduce new information. Charisma: This attribute is a combination of your attractiveness, self-‐confidence and basic ability to understand and influence other people. It is used in challenges to persuade someone and when giving a public performance. Perception: This attribute represents your awareness and alertness. You use it in challenges that determine whether you notice something subtle in the environment.
SETTINGS Each D6Pool setting (for example: modern, fantasy, science fiction, horror, etc.) is defined by a set of available skills and abilities. The skills available in a far future science fiction setting may be very different from those in a medieval fantasy setting. These rules assume a modern day setting.
SKILLS Skills are specific categories of knowledge or expertise. Like your attributes, your skills are measured by a number of dice indicating how capable you are with that skill. Example skills in a modern setting include Driving, Surgery, or Finance. The set of available skills should cover almost all challenges you will face in a setting. Your character will have zero dice in most skills.
ABILITIES If you have dice in a skill, you may also have specific abilities associated with that skill. Abilities allow you to stretch the game rules a little. For example, some abilities allow you to take extra actions before other characters take theirs, grant you temporary advantages, or allow you to assist another character’s challenges in unique ways.
ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES Your character has a set of advantages and disadvantages. These represent inherent properties of your character that could have positive or negative effects during play. Example advantages include Attractive, Good Luck, Patron, and Wealthy. Example disadvantages include Bad Eyesight, Enemies, Illiteracy, and Poverty. The effect of an advantage or disadvantage is measured in dice (1 die of Poverty, 2 dice of Attractive, etc.).
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RESOLVING CHALLENGES Roleplaying will result in situations where the gamemaster must determine whether you are successful in an action. Any such action with an uncertain outcome is referred to in these rules as a challenge. To determine whether you are successful in a challenge, the gamemaster chooses which attribute and skill best reflect your chance of success. You add up all the dice in these two traits and roll that many six-‐sided dice. Any of your advantages that apply, as determined by the gamemaster, may add additional dice to this roll. Any 5s or 6s you roll on individual dice are successes. Only 1 success is required for a relatively simple task, 2 for a difficult task, 3 successes for a very difficult task, etc. The number of successes required is the difficulty of the challenge. You also roll additional dice for any of your disadvantages that apply. Any 5’s or 6’s you roll on the disadvantage dice are considered failures and are subtracted from your total successes. It’s a good idea to use different color dice for these. From here on, the attribute and skill dice for a challenge are referred to as challenge dice. Any additional dice that add to the success of a challenge, such as advantage dice, are referred to as bonus dice, and any that might result in failures, like disadvantage dice, are referred to as penalty dice.
EXTENDED CHALLENGES Challenging tasks that take a long time or have a number of distinct steps are extended challenges. Extended challenges require many separate dice rolls and a large number of total successes, as well as a difficulty for each roll. When you take an extended challenge you must make successive rolls, each taking a set amount of time, until you roll the required total
number of successes. If any single roll does not meet the difficulty, your entire task fails. For example, surgery to remove a bullet lodged near a patient’s heart might be an extended challenge requiring ten total successes to complete, with a difficulty of 2 and each roll taking an hour. If you attempted this surgery, you would make multiple challenge rolls until the total number of successes reached or exceeded ten. If any single roll had less than 2 successes, your attempt would fail. At the gamemaster’s discretion, you may take time between each successive roll to do other things -‐ setting the task aside for a while. This might make sense when breaking a complex code but wouldn’t make sense for open-‐heart surgery or a race.
OPPOSED CHALLENGES If you and another character are working against each other and only one can be successful in a given situation, you each take appropriate challenges and whoever gets the most successes completes the task. In most situations, one of you will clearly be the defender and the other the attacker. In general, the attacker is the one trying to change a situation. If you’re the defender, you add 1 free success to the result of your challenge. The resulting total is the difficulty for the attacker.
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The attacker succeeds on a tie in this case, because they have met the difficulty of the task. A character trying to harm another character should always be considered the attacker. For example, you try to convince the captain of a ferry that the ship is in danger and he should head back to port. The captain, who is an NPC under control of the gamemaster, is already running late and argues that the ferry should keep going. The gamemaster asks you to take a challenge of [Wisdom + Persuasion], and since this is an opposed challenge, the gamemaster takes the same challenge on behalf of the captain. You roll 1 success. The stubborn captain also rolls 1 success, but adds the 1 free success for being the defender. You fail (you needed 2 successes) and have to come up with a different plan. For situations where there is no clear attacker or defender, like a race or other fair competition, a tie might indicate a stalemate or joint success, or the gamemaster might require another roll to break the tie.
CHALLENGE MODIFIERS There are two ways for the gamemaster to adjust the difficulty of your challenges. The first is to increase or decrease the number of successes that must be rolled to succeed on the challenge. This reflects a change in the inherent difficulty of the task, no matter who is performing it. For example, picking a special lock or shooting at a target behind cover are inherently more difficult tasks. The second way to increase difficulty is to assign penalty dice. This reflects difficulties specific to your character, not the task itself. Penalty dice are failure dice, and work just like the dice rolled for disadvantages. For example, if you are handcuffed to a pipe and must defuse a bomb one-‐handed, you may have to roll 1 or 2 penalty dice. In the same way, if you’re in a situation that makes a task easier, perhaps because you have help from others or special equipment, you may get to roll additional bonus dice.
ASSISTING When another character takes a challenge, the gamemaster may permit you to assist if it makes sense in the current situation. You take a challenge for the skill used to assist, and if you get at least 1 success die (after subtracting failure dice), the character performing the actual challenge rolls 1 additional bonus die. Note that the assisting challenge and the actual challenge might not use the same skill. For example, Dr. Marks is performing surgery after a plane crash on a desert island. He asks you, another survivor, to assist him by handing him instruments and monitoring the patient’s pulse. The gamemaster allows you to assist with a [Perception + Self Control] challenge. You get 2 successes, so the good doctor rolls 1 extra bonus die on his [Dexterity + Surgery] challenge. The gamemaster always has the final say on whether assisting makes sense in a given challenge. Some abilities may allow you to contribute more than 1 bonus die as part of an assist.
MULTIPLE ASSISTS When multiple characters attempt to assist another character, they each take an assist challenge. However, the character taking the actual challenge can only use the bonus from one of the assisting characters.
SITUATION CHALLENGES The gamemaster can use your character traits to determine whether a specific event occurs during play. For example, the gamemaster might roll [Intelligence + Pathology] to determine whether you’ve ever published a paper in a medical journal, or roll dice for your Enemy disadvantage to see if your enemy appears at an inopportune time.
CRITICAL SUCCESS If you roll more successes than the difficulty of a challenge, the additional successes are critical successes. The effects of critical successes vary and are ultimately up to the discretion of the gamemaster. During an extended challenge, your critical successes typically just add to the your total
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successes, shortening the entire task. When you physically attack another character, critical successes add dice to your damage roll or lead to specific types of damage. See Table 2.1 for a list of Critical Success effects.
FUMBLE If you take a challenge and end up with more failures than successes, you fumble. Note that this can only happen if you are rolling at least 1 penalty die (perhaps from a disadvantage). A fumble is a spectacular failure with negative consequences beyond a normal failure. If you fumble while attacking, you could drop your weapon or accidentally attack a friend. If you fumble during a vehicle chase, you probably crash. A fumble during a social interaction challenge could turn a neutral NPC into an your enemy. When you attempt to assist a challenge and fumble, any net failure dice are applied to the challenge you are assisting as penalty dice, even though the other character doesn’t choose to use your assistance.
PERSONA POOL You begin play with 2 dice in your persona pool. These dice can be added to any challenge roll as bonus dice, but once used they are lost. The persona dice in your persona pool can be replenished by the gamemaster. Any time the gamemaster feels you have acted in line with one of your personality patterns (see Chapter 4), you may receive a persona die as a reward. In the same way, the gamemaster may take away a persona pool die when you fail to act in accordance with a personality pattern. If you have no dice left in your persona pool, the gamemaster can force you to act in accord with your personality patterns. Persona pools work best if your gamemaster has a set of dice distinct in
appearance from everyone else’s. This way it is obvious how many persona pool dice each player has. When you use any of them, you simply return them to the gamemaster.
EASY CHALLENGES You may sometimes face challenges that are very easy, but not a sure thing. In this case, the gamemaster can set the difficulty at zero, so only fumbles are failures. This is the case with normal movement actions during cinematic scenes.
PERCEPTION CHALLENGES Perception challenges are used to determine whether you notice an object, sound or smell of interest or pick up on nonverbal queues. They are generally composed of your Perception attribute and a skill related to the item in question. For example, if you are walking through the jungle and are stalked by a puma, the gamemaster might require an opposed challenge between your [Perception + Zoology] and the puma’s [Dexterity + Stealth]. Noticing computer files that have been tampered with might require a [Perception + Computers] challenge against a set difficulty.
Table 2.1: Critical Success Challenge Critical Success Results Movement Additional distance moved Attack Additional damage dice, or special
damage roll for bleeding, etc. Damage Wounds Extended Challenge
More success added to total
Assist Possible additional dice for assisted challenge, depending on abilities
Skill Exceptional results
Table 2.2: Fumble Results Challenge Fumble Result Movement Fall prone or no
movement if prone Attack Drop weapon or strike ally Skill or Extended Challenge
Costly failure
Assist Assisted challenge Penalty
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DISTRACTIONS Actions that require mental concentration work best without distractions. When there are distractions, the gamemaster may assign penalty dice based on the guidelines in Table 2.3: Distraction Penalties. If you’re defusing a bomb in the midst of a gunfight, you would add 2 penalty dice to the roll. These penalties are not cumulative -‐ the worst one applies. Distraction penalties do apply to combat attacks, defense and movement actions, so Concentration skill and the Focus ability are very important if you plan to be in combat. If the gamemaster feels that the distraction rules make the game too difficult or not heroic enough, these rules may be ignored for combat actions.
POWERS Some game settings may include special powers that only a subset of the population can wield. These could be magic spells in a fantasy setting or superpowers in a world of superheroes. Each power is treated like a skill, with its own abilities. For example, Divination might be a magic skill, with abilities like Clairvoyance, Prescience, or Dowsing. A superpower like Enhanced Strength might have abilities like Super Throw, Super Jump, or Toughness.
SPECIAL PENALTY DICE You may want to use different color or size dice to distinguish challenge and bonus dice from penalty dice. It can be even more interesting to use special dice for each type of penalty. You might use red dice to represent wound penalties. If you have poor vision you might use a penalty die with an eyeball icon whenever the vision penalty applies. Besides adding some flavor to the roles, distinct penalty dice can also help the gamemaster decide the effects of a fumble. If the failure dice causing your bow attack to fail are due to bad eyesight, you may have hit the wrong target, but if they were penalty dice from wounds, perhaps the pain caused you to drop your bow. If you succeed in an assist, you could give the other player your own distinct die. If that player only succeeds in the challenge because of the assist die, you get some bragging rights.
SIMPLIFYING THE RULES Once you learn the rules of D6Pool, you’ll find that play is fast and fairly easy, but there are quite a few rules to get used to, especially in combat scenes. If you’d like to simplify things a little to start out, you can ignore the rules for distractions and opportunity attacks. Be sure all the players know which rules you won’t be using so they don’t waste skill points on abilities that no longer have any effect.
Table 2.3: Distraction Penalties Loud Noises, Arguing 1 die Combat Nearby 2 dice Under Personal Attack 3 dice Other Dangerous Situation 2 dice Nausea. Sickness 1 die
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CHAPTER 3: CINEMATIC ACTIONScenes like combat and car chases, when action is fast and the order in which events take place matters, are called cinematic scenes. During cinematic scenes, you and the other characters take turns taking a single action. When all characters have completed their action, a round has elapsed. A new round then begins and the cycle continues until the cinematic scene is over.
INITIATIVE The order in which characters take their turns during a round can be determined by the gamemaster or by an appropriate attribute or skill roll. If a potential enemy draws a weapon during a non-‐cinematic scene, the gamemaster may declare that it has become a cinematic scene. The gamemaster may then have each character take a [Perception] challenge and take turns in order starting with the player with the most successes. If you fall into a pit of hungry lions, the gamemaster may have you roll [Dexterity + Acrobatics] to see who recovers from the fall first. If you are attacked while sleeping, a [Stamina + Self Control] challenge might determine who wakes up the fastest. If two characters roll the same number of successes, those that the gamemaster considers attackers in the encounter go before defenders. Generally the order you take turns, referred to as the initiative order, is determined at the start of a cinematic scene and remains the same for each round throughout the scene.
SPECIAL ACTIONS
MULTIPLE ACTIONS You can normally take only a single action during your turn. This might be movement, an attack, or any other action that could reasonably take place in a few seconds of time. Some abilities allow you to take multiple actions in a turn. For example, some Rifle skill
abilities let you to take more than one shot with a rifle, or shoot while moving. If you take multiple actions, you must determine how many total actions you will take during your turn before resolving any of them. You add penalty dice to all actions in the turn equal to the total number of actions taken. For example, if you plan to use your Multiple Handgun Shots ability to take three shots at your target, you add three penalty dice to each challenge.
DELAYING ACTION You may delay your turn in a round until just after the turn of another player character or NPC. You might do this to allow other characters to take assist challenges or to see what other players do before you react. Once you have dropped in the initiative order because of a delayed action, you remain in that position until the end of the scene, or until you delay again.
FREE ACTIONS Some simple actions like dropping a held item or shouting a quick warning don’t take much time or thought and are always successful. These actions do not count as an action and do not count as extra actions when determining penalty dice.
ASSISTING Where appropriate, you may assist the cinematic action of another character. The results of your assist challenge apply to the next action taken by the assisted character. See Assist rules in Chapter 2.
MOVEMENT Movement actions allow your character to move around the cinematic scene area, which is typically represented by a grid of squares or hexagons 5 feet across. Character locations are noted with miniatures, cardboard markers, or dice. Two characters generally cannot occupy
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the same 5-‐foot location unless they are grappling with each other.
MOVE ACTIONS For most move actions you take a difficulty zero challenge as described below. Only a fumble can cause you to fail. Move (action): You make a normal move action to travel up to 25 feet plus 5 feet for each critical success on a challenge of [Dexterity]. If, for example, you rolled 1 failure and 3 successes on your challenge, you could move up to 35 feet. Run (action): You use a run action to move farther, traveling up to 50 feet plus 5 feet for each critical success on a challenge of [Dexterity + Running]. Crawl (action): If you are prone you can crawl 10 feet plus 5 feet for each critical success on a challenge of [Dexterity + Acrobatics]. Crawling reduces any movement difficulty (due to terrain, etc.) by 1. Swim (action): You can swim at a rate of 10 feet plus 5 feet for each critical success on a challenge of [Dexterity + Swimming]. If you fumble a swimming challenge, you make no progress and suffocate for a round (see chapter 5). Climb (action): You can climb a nearly vertical surface at a rate of 5 feet plus 5 feet for each critical success on a challenge of [Dexterity + Climbing]. The gamemaster may assign the difficulty of this challenge based on the nature of the climb. See Table 3.1 for guidelines. If you fail your climbing challenge, you fall. You can move the minimum distance for move, run and crawl actions (for example, 50 feet while running) without rolling a challenge.
However, if penalty dice apply, you must still roll the challenge. Table 3.2 presents a summary of all movement actions and their associated challenges.
MOVING CAREFULLY You may limit your move to half the minimum distance (rounded down) and then reduce the difficulty of a move by 1. This could be useful if you’re badly wounded or crossing rough terrain. If you’re moving carefully, you receive no bonus movement for critical successes. You cannot reduce move difficulty below zero. Note that if you crawl carefully at half speed (5 feet), you would reduce your move difficulty by a total of 2, 1 for crawling plus 1 for moving carefully.
JUMPING You can jump across or over an obstacle with a [Dexterity + Acrobatics] challenge. The difficulty of a Jumping challenge is 1 per 5 feet of distance jumped. Jumps occur as part of your normal movement or running and the distance jumped counts as part of the distance you move.
MOVING NEAR ENEMIES You must end movement when you first move within the reach of an enemy’s close combat weapon, unless that enemy is already within reach of another ally. If you start your move action within reach of an enemy’s weapon, you may move freely, unless you leave the enemy’s reach and step back in or enter the reach of a different enemy. Your movement only stops when entering the reach of a new, unengaged enemy.
Table 3.2: Movement Rates Rate Distance Challenge Move 25 ft + 5 ft/ crit success [Dex] Run 50 ft + 5 ft/crit success [Dex + Running] Crawl 10 ft + 5ft/crit success [Dex + Acrobatincs] Swim 10 ft + 5ft/crit success [Dex + Swimming] Climb 5 ft + 5ft/crit success [Dex + Climbing]
Table 3.1: Climbing Difficulty Slope/Terrain Difficulty
Ladder 0 Near vertical, handholds 0 Near vertical, smooth 2 Vertical, handholds 1 Vertical, smooth 3
Inverted/overhang, handholds 2
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ROUGH TERRAIN When you move over rough terrain, either on foot, mounted, or in a vehicle, increase the difficulty of any movement related challenges. Rocky, loose, or slippery terrain increases the difficulty by 1. Very rough terrain could increase the difficulty by 2.
ENCUMBRANCE If you are wearing heavy clothing or armor, you may have to add encumbrance penalty dice to your movement challenges. These penalties also apply to all other physical skill challenges, like close combat attacks, acrobatics, athletics, etc. See Table 8.5: Armor for specific encumbrance values.
POSITION CHANGES You can drop to a kneeling or prone position as a free action, or stand from a kneeling position. Rising from a prone position to a kneeling position or standing position is a move action.
CLOSE COMBAT ATTACK A close combat attack is a special opposed challenge used to attack someone nearby. You take a challenge, which is generally Dexterity plus a combat skill, for example [Dexterity + Knives]. The defender establishes the difficulty with a defensive challenge of [Dexterity] plus 1 free success for being the defender. If you meet the difficulty, the attack succeeds and you take a damage challenge to see how many wounds you cause.
REACH Each weapon listed in Chapter 8 includes a reach value. This is the maximum distance between you and your enemy for attacks with that weapon.
ACTIVE DEFENSE When you are attacked in close combat you can always defend yourself with a [Dexterity] challenge. However, once per round you may
actively defend with a skill if you are wielding an appropriate weapon or shield, adding the dice from the skill to your defense challenge. For example, if you’re wielding a club and shield, you could actively defend with either a [Dexterity + Clubs] challenge, or a [Dexterity + Shields] challenge. If you use Unarmed skill for active defense against an opponent armed with a weapon for which they have at least one die of skill, you add 2 penalty dice to your defensive roll.
VULNERABLE DEFENDERS If you are permanently or temporarily unable to actively defend yourself (add a skill to your defensive challenge) you are considered vulnerable. In general, you are vulnerable until your next turn once you have used your active defense. Other states that make you vulnerable include being prone, physically restrained (grabbed, for example), or unaware of your attacker. During cinematic rounds, you are considered vulnerable until your first turn. You are vulnerable until your next turn after actively defending, making ranged attacks or taking non-‐combat actions during combat, like picking a lock or hacking a computer. You
are also vulnerable if you are mounted, or if you ran, swam, crawled or climbed during your last turn. You are also vulnerable if you are prone or kneeling. Note that some special attacks are more effective against targets that are vulnerable.
MULTIPLE ATTACKERS You may actively defend against only one close combat attack per round of combat, even if
attacked by multiple enemies or attacked multiple times by a single enemy. You defend against all other attacks with just your [Dexterity] challenge.
Actions and Conditions That Make You Vulnerable Until Your Next Turn
Active Defense Charge
Ranged Attack Grabbed Running Climbing
Swimming Crawling Mounted
Non-combat Action Start of Cinematic Scene
Prone or Kneeling
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RANGED ATTACKS You make a ranged attack when firing or throwing a ranged weapon at an enemy. You take a skill challenge, for example [Dexterity + Rifle], and the difficulty is based on the size of the target, among other things. Hitting a man-‐sized target requires 1 success, half man-‐sized requires 2 successes, and one quarter man-‐sized (for instance, an exposed head) requires 3 successes. If the target is prone or used a Run as his or her last action, add 1 to the difficulty. Hitting a very large target is an Easy Action requiring zero successes – only failure dice could cause you to miss.
COVER When you shoot at a target behind cover, determine how much of the target is visible and choose the appropriate difficulty. For instance, if only one quarter of a man sized target is exposed, you need 3 successes.
RANGE Each ranged weapon has multiple ranges listed on the equipment table in Chapter 8. Beyond the closest range, the difficulty of an attack increases by 1. Beyond the second range, the difficulty increases by 2. No attack is possible beyond the maximum range.
CRITICAL HITS When the number of successes of your attack challenge (close combat or ranged) exceeds the difficulty, any additional successes are critical hits. When you roll for damage, roll 1 additional bonus die for each critical hit.
SPECIAL CRITICAL HITS Your critical hits may have special effects, depending on your weapon, special abilities, or specific traits of the defender. If this is the case, you reroll the critical hit dice, and the special effect occurs if any of them result in a success. This is referred to as confirming the critical hit. For example, some weapons cause bleeding if any critical hit dice confirm. As another example, if you confirm a critical hit on a character carrying a flamethrower, you might cause an explosion. If multiple critical effects
are possible based on the situation, you choose the desired effect before rolling to confirm. Critical hit dice rolled to confirm special effects do not add to the normal damage roll. You can choose to forgo special critical hit effects and instead just add the critical hits as bonus dice on your damage roll as usual.
BLEEDING If you score a critical hit with a weapon that does sharp damage, you may choose to roll any of your critical dice to cause a die of bleeding. Each confirms causes one die of bleeding. A character afflicted with bleeding dice must roll those dice at the beginning of each of their cinematic turns. Each success result (5 or 6) on a bleeding die causes a wound. Bleeding dice remain in effect until another character successfully uses First Aid skill to remove them.
DAMAGE After you make a successful attack, you roll to damage the target. This is a special challenge that doesn’t involve your or your target’s skill dice. See the weapon tables in chapter 8 for the number of damage dice rolled for each weapon. The difficulty of this challenge is 1 because the target is defending. If your damage roll succeeds, the target takes a wound. Any critical successes result in additional wounds.
ARMOR If the target is wearing armor or heavy clothes, the difficulty of the damage challenge will increase. Check the type of damage done by the weapon used in the attack (blunt or sharp) and determine the armors defensive bonus for that type of damage. Add that value to the damage challenge difficulty. For example, assume you are shot with a rifle, which does 6 dice of sharp damage. You are wearing a leather jacket, which provides 1 point of sharp armor protection, for a total difficulty of 2. The attacker rolls 3 successes, so you take 2 wounds (1 because the challenge succeeded, plus 1 for the extra success).
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STUN Some weapons cause stun damage. Stun damage acts just like a normal wound, except it generally heals faster and isn’t counted when determining whether a character dies.
SPECIAL ATTACKS
GRAB As an attack action, you can take an opposed challenge of [Dexterity + Unarmed] against a target within 5 feet. If successful, you grab the target and they cannot move and are vulnerable until they escape. Whether you are successful or not, you are vulnerable until your next turn and remain vulnerable as long as you hold onto the target. A grab can be made as a close combat opportunity attack.
CHARGE During a single turn, you may make a normal move action or a run move action followed by a single close combat, shove, or grab attack action. Both your move and attack actions suffer 2 penalty dice (for multiple actions) and you add 1 bonus die to any resulting damage roll. You’re vulnerable while charging and until your next turn.
DEFENSIVE STANCE You may choose to take no actions during your turn and instead defend yourself against one additional attack this turn using an active defense. In addition, you receive 1 bonus die on all defensive challenges (even while vulnerable) until your next turn.
DISARM A disarm attack is a special close combat attack against an enemy’s weapon. Resolve the attack normally, but increase the difficulty by 2. A successful attack means the weapon was struck and dislodged from the enemy’s grip. The gamemaster may decide to apply critical hit damage to the weapon itself.
ESCAPE You may use an action to attempt to escape from a grab with an opposed escape challenge. You and the character grabbing you roll
[Strength + Unarmed Combat] and you are considered the attacker.
OPPORTUNITY ATTACK If an enemy makes a ranged attack or non-‐combat action and is within range of your close combat weapon, you may make a close combat attack against them The opportunity attack takes place before the defender’s action, and if it causes any wounds that action is interrupted. You may also make an opportunity attack against an enemy who moves while within reach of your close combat weapon. The attack occurs at any point of your choosing along the enemy’s path, as long as it is within reach. If you wound a moving character with your opportunity attack, the movement ends at the location of the attack. If the attack causes no wounds, the enemy may continue movement. You may make only one opportunity attack per round, and you cannot make an opportunity attack if you are vulnerable. You can actively defend against a close combat opportunity attack if you didn’t use an active defense during your last turn.
RANGED OPPORTUNITY ATTACK If an enemy takes a move action and is within range of your ranged attack at any point in the move, you may make an opportunity attack against the moving enemy. Unlike close combat opportunity attacks, enemies wounded by ranged opportunity attacks do not have to stop their movement where the attack occurred. You can make only one opportunity attack per round, whether ranged or close combat. You cannot make a ranged opportunity attack if you are vulnerable.
SHOVE As an action, you can take an opposed challenge against a character within 5 feet using [Strength + Unarmed Combat]. Your opponent may use an active defense of [Dexterity + Unarmed] or [Strength + Unarmed]. A vulnerable opponent may only defend with Strength or Dexterity. You push the opponent back 5 feet if successful, plus 5 feet for each critical success. You end up in the last location vacated by your opponent.
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TRIP You can make a trip attack against a character within 5 feet by taking either a [Dexterity + Unarmed] or [Strength + Unarmed] challenge. The defender can use either of the same two challenges in active defense, or only Strength or Dexterity if vulnerable. If your attack is successful, the defender drops prone.
INJURY AND DEATH
WOUNDS Wounds are essentially disadvantages that heal over time. When the gamemaster rules that being wounded would affect a challenge roll, you must roll 1 penalty die for each wound. This includes any stun damage.
DYING AND DEATH When your total wounds, including stun damage, exceed your Stamina score, you are unconscious. If your wounds, excluding stun damage, exceed the total of your Strength and Stamina, you die.
TOUGHNESS CHALLENGES At the beginning of a scene, if you are already wounded or have taken stun damage, you take
a toughness challenge [Stamina + Self Control] to ignore the penalty dice from your wounds and stun damage until the end of the scene. The difficulty of this challenge is the number of wounds you have, including stun. If you don’t get enough successes, you still suffer the full penalty for all wounds. You lose the benefits of a successful toughness challenge if you are
wounded again. You may spend a full round during a cinematic scene (taking no other actions) to take a toughness challenge. Note that wounds, stun and distractions never add penalty dice to a toughness challenge, and you cannot take a toughness challenge if you are unconscious.
WOUND HEALING CHALLENGES When you’re wounded, you make a weekly Healing challenge [Stamina + Self Control]. The difficulty of this challenge is your total number of wounds, not including stun. If you’re successful, one of your wounds is healed. Critical successes do not heal additional wounds. Other characters with medical skills and specialties can also help with the healing process as described in Chapter 6. Wounds, stun and distractions do not add penalty dice to healing challenges. If you avoid strenuous activity and have sufficient food, water and shelter
during the entire week, add two bonus dice to your recovery challenge.
STUN HEALING CHALLENGES Your stun damage heals in the same way as normal wounds, but you can make healing challenges for stun damage once every 10 minutes. Your stun damage does not count in the difficulty of your wound healing challenges, nor do wounds count in the difficulty of stun healing challenges. For example, if you have 2 stun damage and 1 wound, you would take stun healing challenges every 10 minutes at difficulty 2 to remove stun damage, and weekly healing challenges at difficulty 1 to remove the wound.
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CHAPTER 4: CHARACTERSCHARACTER CREATION You create your new character by dividing a set number of dice among your character traits. Divide 12 dice between all six attributes. Each attribute must be at least 1 and no more than 4. Divide 12 additional dice between skills. No skill can be assigned more than 3 dice or less than zero. You may use skill dice to obtain abilities instead of skills, at the cost of 1 skill die per ability. The number of abilities associated with a specific skill may not exceed the number of dice you have in that skill. In addition to choosing attributes and skills, you choose a 1 die advantage, and a 1 die disadvantage for each character. Available skills are described in Chapter Six, and advantages and disadvantages in Chapter Seven.
EXAMPLE CHARACTER
PEG THANNIS, DEA SPECIAL AGENT (1) Strength-‐2 Intelligence-‐2 Stamina-‐2 Charisma-‐1 Dexterity-‐2 Perception-‐3
Enemies-‐1 Law Enforcement Powers -‐1
Combat Reflexes-‐2 Zone of Control Concentration-‐2 Focus Forensics-‐1 Handgun-‐1 Running-‐1 Unarmed-‐2 Multiple Unarmed Attacks
Bad Temper Curious Must find missing sister, Janet.
PERSONALITY PATTERNS Choose three personality patterns for your character. Each of these could be a goal, a philosophy, an important piece of background information, or even an addiction of phobia – anything that drives your character’s decisions. Examples include family before everything, curious, or lazy. Patterns should be fairly simple, so a goal like Peg wants to make connections and become a great investigator so someday she can find out what happened to her lost sister should be broken up into multiple, simpler patterns. Personality patterns help you create a compelling character. When you act in alignment with your personality patterns, the gamemaster may reward you with a die for your persona pool. When you fail to act in accordance with these patterns, the
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gamemaster may remove a die from your persona pool.
CHARACTER LIFESTYLE AND WEALTH You should choose a profession for your character, and based on that, the gamemaster will choose the attribute and skill that you will use for monthly income challenges (See Chapter 8). To determine your starting lifestyle, divide the total dice involved in your income challenge by 3 (rounding down). For example, if you are a news reporter who will use your Intelligence of 2 and your Writing 3 skill as your income challenge, you start at lifestyle 1.
After determining your lifestyle, you immediately make your first monthly income challenge and apply the results as described in Chapter 8. Note that is is possible to have a lifestyle of 0 (zero), but not less.
EXPERIENCE AND ADVANCEMENT Your character starts at level 1, but will advance levels after gaining experience. Characters gain experience by successfully taking challenges and completing adventures, as explained below.
CHALLENGE EXPERIENCE Every time you are successful in a challenge (or an assist) and at least half of the dice (including penalty dice) come up as 5’s or 6’s, you may assign 1 experience point to one of your traits (attributes, skills, advantages or disadvantages) that were involved in that challenge. The total experience points assigned to a single trait cannot exceed the number of dice in that trait. For example, if you have 3 dice in Athletics skill, you can allocate a maximum of 3 experience points to that skill. Abilities do not increase the maximum experience for your skills. You may assign only 1 challenge experience point per scene, and you must assign it immediately after the challenge that generated it. You may choose not to assign an earned experience point, perhaps because you hope to gain an experience point in a different trait later in the same scene.
STORY EXPERIENCE When you complete an adventure or reach some important milestone, the gamemaster
Example Personality Patterns
Alcohol addiction
Apathetic Curious
Doesn't accept help Believes friendship is a burden
Frugal Generous
Gregarious Gullible
Knowledge is power Loves fishing and hunting
Perfectionist Poor hygiene
Romantic Sadistic
Scholarly Secretly tutors underprivileged kids
Sensitive Short temper
Shy Terrible sense of humor
My city is the best place in the world Thick-skinned
Wants to be a novelist Wants to play professional basketball
Wasteful Winning is everything
Table 4.1: Required Experience Points Advancement to
Level Experience Points
2 12 3 13 4 14 5 15 6 16 7 17 8 18
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may reward you with story experience – typically 1 or 2 experience points. These are just like challenge experience, except you are free to assign them to any traits. The experience assigned to each trait is still limited to the total dice in that trait. Note that, although they cost a skill die, abilities do not count when determining how many experience points can be assigned to their associated skill.
ADVANCEMENT At the end of a scene, if the total number of experience points assigned to all of your traits reaches the amount listed in Table 4.1: Required Experience Points (which happens to be the current total of your attributes), you advance a level. When you advance a level, you lose all accumulated experience points, and may assign 1 additional die to any attribute and 2 additional dice to any skills or abilities. No attribute or skill may ever be higher than one third of your total number of attribute dice; no skill may be higher than one fourth of your total number of skill dice. You may not add or remove advantages or disadvantages when you advance in this way. Advantages and disadvantages are always
added or removed at the discretion of the gamemaster during play. Maximum values for attributes and skills, by level, are listed in Table 4.2.
NON-PLAYER CHARACTERS Skilled non-‐player characters can be created in the same way as player characters. For example, the gamemaster may decide that the main adversary in an adventure is a skilled espionage agent, so he uses the point system above to create a level 6 character with 17 attribute dice, 22 skill dice and a few interesting advantages and disadvantages. It may also be helpful to assign one or two personality traits. For less important characters -‐ the security guards, receptionists, taxi drivers and expendable thugs -‐ the gamemaster can use level zero NPCs. Creating level zero NPCs is simple because all of their attributes are assumed to be 1 die unless otherwise noted, and they have very few skills to determine (generally about 6-‐8 skill points). A taxi driver might just be described as follows:
Barry Bigfellow, Taxi Driver (0) Strength-‐2 Dexterity-‐2
Poverty-‐1 Acute Vision-‐1
Art-‐1 Driving-‐3 English-‐2 Italian-‐4(native) More example NPCs are provided in the D6Pool “Cast of Characters” book.
Table 4.2: Maximum Attributes and Skills by Level
Level Attribute Dice
Max Attribute
Skill Dice
Max Skill
1 12 4 12 3 2 13 4 14 3 3 14 4 16 4 4 15 5 18 4 5 16 5 20 5 6 17 5 22 5 7 18 6 24 6 8 19 6 26 6
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CHAPTER 5: ENVIRONMENT The world is a dangerous place. This chapter provides a sampling of rules which should give the gamemaster a good idea how to deal with most environmental situations that threaten the characters.
ACID You may come in contact with acid as a result of a thrown weapon attack, an accident, or submersion in a large quantity of acid. In each case, the acid takes a damage challenge with a number of dice based on the strength and amount of the acid. Your blunt armor value provides the difficulty for the attack (plus one because you are the defender). Acid continues to cause damage in subsequent rounds unless it is neutralized or washed off. The number of damage dice rolled for this subsequent damage is equal to the number of wounds the acid caused in the first round. Your armor does not protect against subsequent damage. Note, at the gamemaster’s discretion, confirmed critical hits during acid attacks may damage equipment or cause permanent disadvantages.
ALCOHOL AND DRUGS Small amounts of alcohol and recreational drugs have no negative effect on you and may even add a bonus die to social skill challenges if use of these substances is part of the culture. Some drugs may allow you to ignore pain, temporarily adding bonus dice to your toughness challenges. Excessive use of drugs results in a damage challenge opposed by your Stamina. Resulting wounds are considered stun damage. The gamemaster determines the frequency and strength of these damage challenges.
For example, each time you have another alcoholic drink, you may have to defend against a stun damage challenge equal to the total number of drinks you’ve had. The effects, and therefore the damage challenge, of some drugs may be delayed by minutes, or even hours from the time you use the drug. For most drugs, damage taken after you have fallen unconscious will cause actual wounds instead of stun damage.
COLD In cold environments, you must periodically take [Stamina + Survival] challenges. If you fail, you must defend against a damage challenge. Temperatures around freezing result in skill challenges every hour with 5 dice of damage. Arctic conditions results in skill challenges every ten minutes with 7 dice of damage. Cold damage is considered stun damage, but will not heal until you are back in a warm environment. Damage taken after you have fallen unconscious causes actual wounds. Warm clothing provides 1 die of armor protection against cold damage. Cold weather clothing provides 2 dice of armor protection versus cold damage.
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DESTROYING ITEMS When you specifically attack an inanimate object, the gamemaster determines the difficulty of the attack based on the object’s size, movement, etc. You apply all appropriate bonus and penalty dice, but the defending object rolls no dice in defense. The object still gets 1 automatic defense success as the defender. If your attack succeeds you roll damage normally. The gamemaster determines the armor value of the object and the number of wounds it can take before it is destroyed. Critical successes may also have special effects, like shattering or detonating the object. In general, if an object you use for challenge rolls takes any wounds, add penalty dice to its use equal to the number of wounds. For example, if your weapon has taken 2 wounds, you must roll 2 additional penalty dice when attacking or defending with it. When your armor takes damage, reduce the armor rating by 1 for every 3 wounds taken. If you attack the weapon of an armed enemy, see the Disarm special attack in Chapter 3.
DISEASE You may be exposed to diseases through normal human-‐to-‐human contagion or through contaminated wounds. See Table 5.1: Diseases for data on a few potentially deadly diseases Every disease has a number of attack dice. You defend against the attack with a [Stamina] challenge, plus 1 automatic success because you are the defender. This first attack by the disease occurs after an incubation period specific to that disease. If the attack succeeds, it makes a damage roll as specified. The difficulty is 1 since you are the defender. A disease continues to attack you at its
recurrence rate. If you completely resist damage from 2 consecutive attacks, the disease is considered cured. Some diseases leave permanent effects in the form of disadvantages. At the gamemaster’s discretion, a wound from the disease may instead cause 1 die of a specified disadvantage.
EXPLOSIVES Explosives are a special form of attack that automatically hit any targets within their maximum blast radius. See Chapter 8 for detailed information about specific explosives. Each explosive attacks with a number of damage dice at its source modified by a blast radius. If you set off an explosion, roll full damage dice against all targets within the blast radius. For each full blast radius a target is away from the explosion, reduce the damage dice by 1 die. For example, a stick of dynamite does 12 dice of explosive damage with a blast radius of 5 feet. A target 20 feet from a stick of dynamite would defend against 8 dice of damage (20 feet = 4 blast radii, so subtract 4 damage dice). A hand grenade does 6 dice damage with a blast radius of 10 feet, so a target 35 feet from a hand grenade would face only 3 dice of damage. Explosions are blunt attacks for armor purposes unless otherwise noted.
FALLING When you fall more than a few feet, you may take damage. The gamemaster rolls 1 damage die for every 5 feet you fall. Your armor provides no protection against falls, but you get 1 point of difficulty for being the defender. Landing on a soft surface may reduce the number of damage dice. Landing in water reduces the number of damage dice rolled by 2.
FEAR Some creatures, items or situations may cause fear. Sources of fear are rated by the number of attack dice they roll, opposed by your [Charisma + Self Control]. If
Table 5.1: Diseases Disease Attack Damage Incubation Recurrence
Smallpox 8 5 12 days 7 days Cause: Contagion. Disadvantages: Blind, Brain Damage Malaria 6 3 7 days 2 days Cause: Transmitted by mosquito. Disadvantages: None Wound Infection 4 4 7 days 7 days Cause: Open Wound. Disadvantages: Lame, Missing Hand
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a fear attack succeeds, you are afraid, may only use move actions, and must move away from the source of fear until you reach a safe place. Fear effects generally last for a whole scene. If a fear attack scores confirmed critical hits, the gamemaster may assign permanent mental disadvantages.
FIRE When you are exposed to fire, the intensity of the fire determines the number of damage dice rolled each round against you. A burning torch might cause three damage dice. Standing in the middle of a burning building might result in 6 or more damage dice. Your armor provides protection from fire (treat as blunt damage), but if the fire wounds you, the armor provides no more protection and takes damage itself each round thereafter (see Destroying Items)
FRIENDS AND ENEMIES NPCs that you meet have different attitudes toward you. Some of the relationships with NPCs may be very complicated, but most NPCs will fit one of five categories: Allied, Friendly, Neutral, Unfriendly, or Enemy. Allied NPCs will risk their own safety to help you. Friendly NPCs will provide assistance or information if it doesn’t cost them too much. Neutral NPCs will help you if they benefit somehow. Unfriendly NPCs will avoid assisting you and may even try to hinder or harm you if there is little risk or cost to them. Enemy NPCs will risk their own safety to harm you. Some opposed social challenges, specifically those that require the targeted NPC to trust or agree with you, are affected by the NPC’s attitude toward you. Table 5.2 gives the bonus or penalty dice added to social skill challenges based on attitude.
Some social skills may allow you to temporarily, or even permanently change the attitude of an NPC.
LANGUAGES If you attempt a challenge with a skill that relies heavily on written or verbal communication in a language in which you are not fluent, you must first take a skill challenge for that language, [Intelligence + language skill] with a difficulty of 1. If your language challenge fails, add 4 penalty dice to your original challenge.
You are assumed to be fluent in your native language, and the gamemaster is free to determine when the language penalty does and does not apply.
POISON You might be exposed to poisons through ingestion, inhalation, contact with the skin, or by direct entry into your bloodstream through a wound. See Table 5.3 for example poisons. Each poison has a number of dice used in it’s attack challenge. You defend with a [Stamina] challenge and add 1 automatic success as the defender. This first attack occurs after the first effect period listed in the table. If the attack succeeds,
Table 5.3: Poisons Poison Attack Damage First Effect Recurrence
Arsenic (ingested) 6 2 3 days 1 day Belladonna (ingested) 7 4 12 hours 12 hours Cyanide (ingested) 8 6 Immediate 2 hours Thallium (ingested) 7 4 3 days 3 days Snake Venom (injected) 6 4 2 minutes 10 minutes
Table 5.2: Effects of NPC Attitude NPC Attitude Social Challenge Dice
Allied 2 Bonus Dice Friendly 1 Bonus Die Neutral No Effect Unfriendly 1 Penalty Die Enemy 2 Penalty Dice
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the poison takes a damage challenge against you with the dice specified. Additional attacks occur at the listed recurrence rate. Taking an antidote stops all further attacks. If 2 consecutive attacks do no damage, the poison has run its course and does no further harm. Each poison may also cause special critical effects instead of extra damage. A First Aid challenge may be used to assist a poisoned character’s next damage resistance challenge. The values for most ingested poisons in table 5.3 are based on typical doses that could go undetected when administered. Larger
doses can increase the attack and damage values and shorten the first effect times and recurrence times.
SUFFOCATION If you are unable to breath for any reason, you must succeed on a difficulty 1 [Stamina + Self Control] challenge every round or take 1 stun damage. Increase the difficulty by 1 for every 10 rounds you suffocate. If you can breath freely for one complete round, suffocation ends and all stun damage from suffocation is healed.
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CHAPTER 6: MODERN SKILLS AND ABILITIESThe skills listed in this chapter are available to your character in a modern setting. Each description includes the general types of challenges to which that skill applies. Some descriptions include very specific challenges involving that skill. These are labeled with italics, and you can use them if you have at least 1 die in that skill. Each skill description may also include abilities in bold. You can acquire these by spending skill dice as described in chapter 4. Some specific challenges and abilities are marked (action). If you use one of these during
a cinematic scene, it counts as your action for the round.
SPECIALTY The Specialty ability is available for all skills, subject to approval of the gamemaster. A character with Forgery skill might specialize in forging checks, or a Vehicle Mechanic might specialize in sports cars. Specialty: Choose an area of specialty within this skill. You gain 2 bonus dice when taking a challenge involving that specialty. The Specialty ability can be taken multiple times for different specialties.
SKILLS AND ABILITIES SUMMARY
ADMINISTRATION SKILLS Business Finance Good Credit, High Finance, Keen Investor, Price Negotiator Law Trial Lawyer Management Coordination Politics Discredit, Endorse ARTISTIC SKILLS Art Forge Art Photography Writing ATHLETICS Acrobatics Evade, Jumping Attack, Rough Move, Safe Fall, Tumble Climbing Climbing Coach, Combat Climber, Reckless Climb Running Combat Runner, Long Distance Running, Sprint Sports Swimming High Diver, Hold Breath CLOSE COMBAT SKILLS Armor Armor Mobility, Find Chink Blade Blade Parry, Disarm, Feint, Multiple Blade Attacks, Power Blade Attack,
Quick Draw, Two Handed Blade Club Club Parry, Disarm, Multiple Club Attacks, Power Club Attack, Stunning
Blow, Sunder Armor, Two Handed Club Combat Reflexes Awareness, Defensive Charge, Improved Initiative, Prod Ally, Zone of Control Shield Guardian Shield, Shield Bash, Multiple Blocks, Ranged Block, Shield Mobility
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Unarmed Multiple Unarmed Attacks, Multiple Unarmed Blocks, Pin, Silent Kill, Weapon Defense
Whip Disarm, Strangle, Trip COVERT SKILLS Disguise Mimic Explosives Forgery Stealth Diversion, Sneak Attack Surveillance Case, Tail Theft Quick Crack CRAFT SKILLS Cooking Craft Superior Item Masonry Craft Superior Item Metalwork Craft Superior Item Tailor Craft Superior Item Woodwork Craft Superior Item DISCIPLINE SKILLS Concentration Focus, Focus Other, Stay on Task Self Control Out of Character HUMANITIES SKILLS History Researcher Literature Researcher Religion Researcher LANGUAGE SKILLS Specific Language LOCAL KNOWLEDGE SKILLS Specific Location MECHANICAL SKILLS Industrial Mechanic Vehicle Mechanic MEDICAL SKILLS First Aid Patch and Go Pathology Precise Diagnosis Pharmacy Psychology Surgery Superior Surgeon NATURE SKILLS Animals Calm Animal, Treat Animal Earth Science Plants Riding Mounted Combat
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Survival Guide Tracking OPERATE MACHINERY SKILLS Operate Construction Operate Industrial Driving Combat Driving Piloting Combat Piloting Sailing Combat Sailing PERFORMANCE SKILLS Acting Dance Music Singing RANGED COMBAT SKILLS Bow Precise Aim, Quick Load Handgun Melee Handgun, Moving Handgun Shot, Multiple Handgun Shots, Precise
Aim, Quick Draw, Quick Load Handgun Rifle Moving Rifle Shot, Multiple Rifle Shots, Precise Aim, Quick Load Rifle,
Suppression Shotgun Multiple Shotgun Shots, Quick Load Shotgun, Shotgun Assault Special Weapons Thrown Weapon Quick Draw SCIENCE SKILLS Biology Researcher Chemistry Researcher Forensics Researcher Physics Researcher SOCIAL SKILLS Command Inspire Ally, Multiple Assists Deception Gambling Intimidation Frighten Persuasion Heroic Befriend Seduction Wiles TECHNOLOGY SKILLS Communications Computers Medical Technology
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ADMINISTRATION SKILLS Administration skills cover all aspects of the business world and general management, as well as politics and organizational leadership. You might use these skills to uncover who’s behind a mysterious corporation or to determine if the price offered for a service is fair. You may also need these skills if you want to succeed in a political career.
BUSINESS This skill applies to challenges involving running a business. It includes basic business finances, as well as marketing and business law. You could use it to run your own business, or to figure out the power structure or odd behaviors of someone else’s.
FINANCE The Finance skill applies to challenges involving money. You could use it when auditing financial transactions for shady deals or when determining the best way to finance a charitable organization. Good Credit: You may take on additional Debt disadvantage dice above the maximum allowed, up to the number of dice in Finance skill. High Finance: If you assist another character’s monthly income challenge using Finance skill, you may add multiple success dice to the final challenge, up to the number of dice in your Finance skill. You may use this ability once per month for each die in Finance. Keen Investor: After each monthly income challenge, increase the money you add to savings by 5% for each die in your Finance skill. Price Negotiator: Reduce the cost of any of your purchases over $1,000 by 5% for each die of Finance skill.
LAW This skill applies to challenges dealing with interpreting or applying the law. You could use it to figure out how to stop a criminal in a way that will hold up in court, or to argue a case before a judge.
Trial Lawyer: Take an [Intelligence + Law] challenge to assist any Social challenge involving a character accused of a crime. Provide 1 bonus assist die for each success, up to the number of dice in your Law skill.
MANAGEMENT This skill represents your ability to lead others in extended projects requiring complex coordination. Coordinate: If you assist in a challenge in a non-‐cinematic scene, the character taking the challenge can accept assistance from multiple character. The maximum number of characters who can assist for a given challenge is the number of dice in your Management skill.
POLITICS This skill applies to challenges involving understanding the motivations of politicians. It also applies to any attempt to be accepted, or elected, to political office. Discredit: During a public debate over a particular issue, you may take a [Charisma + Politics] challenge. For each success, your opponent in the debate takes 1 penalty die on his next publicized Administration or Social skill challenge. The number of penalty dice is limited to the number of dice in your Politics skill. Endorse: Take a [Charisma + Politics] challenge to assist another character taking a public Administration or Social skill challenge. Provide 1 bonus die for each success, limited to the number of dice in your Politics specialty.
ARTISTIC SKILLS These skills apply to challenges involving creative activities.
ART You use Art skill to create visual arts like paintings and sculpture. Forge Art: You receive 2 bonus dice when trying to copy an existing work or recognize a forgery.
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PHOTOGRAPHY You use this skill for challenges involving capturing images, both still and film.
WRITING You use Writing skill to create written works, both fiction and non-‐fiction. Writing of scholarly works generally requires a skill challenge in the area of knowledge, but Writing skill could be used to assist. When you take a Writing challenge, the number of skill dice you roll is limited to your skill in the language you’re writing in.
ATHLETIC SKILLS These skills apply to challenges involving running, jumping, swimming, climbing and other athletic activities.
ACROBATICS You use Acrobatics skill in challenges that require exceptional coordination, balance, and precise movement. Evade: If an enemy attacks you with a close combat opportunity attack while you’re moving, you can take a [Dexterity + Acrobatics] challenge, instead of a normal defensive challenge, to establish the difficulty of the attack. You can do this multiple times per round, up to the number of dice in your Acrobatics skill. Using this ability does not count as your active defense for the round and does not make you vulnerable. Jumping Attack: When you successfully jump at least 5 feet and immediately attack an enemy (most likely as part of a Charge action), you add bonus dice to the attack’s damage roll equal to the difficulty of the jump. The number of bonus dice cannot exceed the number of dice in your Acrobatics skill. Rough Move: When moving or running over rough terrain (difficulty 1 or higher), you can take an Acrobatics challenge to assist your movement challenge. You can apply multiple success dice to the assisted challenge, up to a maximum of your Acrobatics dice. Safe Fall: Reduce the damage dice you suffer from falling by the number of dice in your Acrobatics skill.
Tumble: When you move into the reach of an unengaged enemies close combat weapon (when you would normally have to stop) you may take a [Dexterity + Acrobatics] challenge opposed by the enemy’s [Dexterity + Weapon Skill] challenge to continue your movement. The enemy is considered the defender for this challenge.
CLIMBING You use Climbing skill when attempting to move up or down near-‐vertical surfaces or climb free-‐hanging ropes. Combat Climber: Climbing does not make you vulnerable. Climbing Coach: Make a [Perception + Climbing] challenge to assist another character with whom you are able to communicate clearly. You grant 1 bonus die for each success, limited to the number of dice in your Climbing skill. Reckless Climb: Add up to 5 feet to your base climb speed for each die in Climbing skill, but add 1 penalty die to your climb challenge for each additional 5 feet.
RUNNING This skill may allow you to travel extra distance and avoid falling in cinematic move actions. Combat Runner: Running does not make you vulnerable. Also, you may add 1 to the difficulty of your running challenge and also add 1 to the difficulty of ranged attacks against you until the start of your next turn. Long Distance Running: You may run up to 5 miles per day for each die in Running skill. Sprint: Once per scene, you may make a run action and add one bonus die for each persona pool die you add to the challenge.
SPORTS This skill covers general performance in team and individual sports. It reflects ability in sports that use multiple physical skills and have a relatively complicated set of rules. It does not apply to straightforward physical activities like running, swimming, acrobatics or climbing.
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SWIMMING You use this skill for swimming movement challenges. High Diver: Reduce the number of damage dice when you fall into water by the number of dice in your Swimming skill. Hold Breath: When suffocating, reduce the number of penalty dice you roll due to duration of suffocation by the number of dice in your Swimming skill, to a minimum of zero.
CLOSE COMBAT SKILLS You use these skills to attack and defend in combat with hand-‐to-‐hand weapons.
ARMOR You use this skill to effectively don and wear armor, and to determine how much you know about armor. Armor Mobility: Reduce your encumbrance penalty dice for armor by the number of dice in your Armor skill. This reduction cannot exceed your Strength attribute. Find Chink: When you apply any persona pool dice to attack an armored opponent in close combat, first take a [Perception + Armor] challenge and subtract any successes from the opponent’s armor value during this attack. The maximum amount you can reduce an opponent’s armor is the number of dice in your Armor skill and the reduction is not permanent.
BLADE Use this skill to attack with cutting and stabbing weapons like knives, swords, axes and spears. You can also use this skill for active defense against melee attacks if you’re holding a blade. Blade Parry: Instead of making a single active defensive roll in a round, you can parry with a blade up to a number of times equal to the number of dice in your Blade skill. When parrying, you take a [Dexterity + Blade] challenge as your defensive roll. Disarm: Reduce the penalty difficulty of disarm attacks by one. Feint (action): Assist your next attack, or another characters next attack by taking a
[Perception + Blade] challenge. The target of the assisted attack must be declared during the feint action and must be within reach of your blade. Grant 1 assist die for each success, limited to the number of dice in your Blade skill. If you or the assisted character take any other action before attacking, the effects of the feint are lost. Multiple Blade Attacks (action): Make multiple blade attacks, up to the number of dice in your Blade skill. Multiple action penalty dice apply. Power Blade Attack: Instead of applying all Blades skill dice to your attack roll, you may choose to apply some of them to the resulting damage roll instead. Quick Draw: You draw a blade as a free action. Two Handed Blade: If you wield a blade two-‐handed, add additional damage dice equal to the lower of your Strength or your Blade skill.
CLUB Use this skill to attack with blunt weapons like clubs, maces, hammers, baseball bats, etc. You can also use this skill for active defense against melee attacks if you’re holding a club. Club Parry: Instead of making a single skilled defensive roll in a round, you can parry with a club up to a number of times equal to the number of dice in your Club skill. When parrying, take a [Dexterity + Club] challenge as your defensive roll. Disarm: When you wield a club, you reduce the difficulty disarm attacks by 1. Multiple Club Attacks (action): Make multiple club attacks, up to the number of dice in the Club skill. Multiple action penalty dice apply. Power Club Attack: Instead of applying all of your Club skill dice to your attack roll, you may choose to apply some of them to the resulting damage roll instead. Stunning Blow: When attacking with a club, you may declare before the attack that you are making a stunning blow. Treat normal wounds inflicted as stun damage, but treat any wounds resulting from critical hits as regular wounds. Sunder Armor: When attacking with a club, you may declare beforehand that you are making a sunder armor attack. If any wounds
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penetrate the armor, apply one of them to the armor instead of the target character. Two Handed Club: If you wield a club two-‐handed, add additional damage dice equal to the lower of your Strength or your Club skill.
COMBAT REFLEXES You use Combat Reflexes to gain initiative in combat, and to gain access to special combat reaction abilities. Awareness: You may take additional active defensive challenges while vulnerable. The number of additional challenges cannot exceed the number of dice you have in Combat Reflexes skill. Defensive Charge: Charging does not make you vulnerable. Improved Initiative: You may add your Combat Reflexes skill dice as bonus dice to any initiative challenge leading to combat. Prod Ally: When rolling for initiative before combat, you may voluntarily give up any number of your successes, adding 1 bonus die to an ally’s initiative challenge for each. The number of bonus dice granted by this assist is limited to the number of dice in your Combat Reflexes skill. You must declare that you will use this ability before anyone rolls initiative. Zone of Control: You may make additional attacks of opportunity during a round, up to the number of dice in your Combat Reflexes skill. Each opportunity attack must be against a different target. You may also stop the movement of enemies within reach of your weapon, even if you are already engaged, The total number of engaged plus stopped enemies cannot exceed your Combat Reflexes dice.
SHIELD You can use this skill for defensive challenges against melee attacks if holding a shield. Guardian Shield: At the beginning of your turn choose an ally within 5 feet of you. Until the start of your next turn, the armor bonus from your shield applies to that ally instead of you, provided they remain within 5 feet. You may not use your shield for anything else during this time. Multiple Blocks: Instead of making a single active defensive in a round, you may block with
your shield multiple times, up to the number of dice in your Shield skill. When blocking, use a [Dexterity + Shield] challenge as your defensive roll. Ranged Block: While using your shield and taking a defensive stance, add 1 to the difficulty of ranged attacks against you. Shield Bash: You may make one additional attack in a round, using [Strength + Shield] as the attack challenge and [1d + Strength] as blunt damage. Shield Bash counts as your defensive challenge for the turn, and therefore cannot be used if you are vulnerable. Shield Bash does not count as an extra action for purposes of multiple action penalty dice. Shield Mobility: Reduce your encumbrance penalty dice for shields by the number of dice in your Shield skill. The amount by which you reduce penalty dice cannot exceed your Strength attribute.
UNARMED You use Unarmed skill to make close combat attacks without a weapon, including punching, kicking, shoving, etc. Unarmed attacks normally do stun damage, but confirmed critical hits cause wounds. You can also use this skill for active defense against melee attacks when unarmed, but penalties may apply when fighting armed opponents (see Chapter 3). Multiple Unarmed Attacks (action): You may make multiple unarmed attacks up to the number of dice in your Unarmed skill. Multiple action penalty dice apply. Multiple Unarmed Blocks: Instead of making a single active defensive roll in a round, you may defend with your Unarmed skill up to a number of times equal to the number of dice in your Unarmed skill. Pin (action): If you have successfully grabbed an opponent in a previous round, you may make an opposed challenge of [Strength + Unarmed] to attempt to pin them. If you succeed, you and the pinned character drop prone and are both vulnerable. Pinned characters can take no physical actions except Escape, and must add 2 penalty dice to Escape challenges.
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Silent Kill: When you make a successful close combat attack against a vulnerable opponent, you silence them for the rest of the scene. Weapon Defense: You do not suffer the 2 penalty dice normally applied when using Unarmed skill to defend against a skilled, armed attacker.
WHIP You use this skill to make close combat attacks using whips and long flexible weapons in their various forms (bullwhips, spiked chains, lassos, etc.). You can use this skill for active defense against melee attacks if holding a whip. Disarm: Reduce the difficulty of disarm attacks when wielding a whip by 1. Strangle (action): Treat your attack with a whip as a ranged attack against a human-‐sized opponent’s head (with the appropriate difficulty). If you get at least 1 confirmed critical success, your whip wraps the opponents neck and cuts off air and blood supply, suffocating them (see Suffocation in Chapter 5). Each round the target can use their action to attempt to break free with a successful [Dexterity + Unarmed Combat] challenge. You defend with an active defense [Dexterity + Whip] challenge, or just using [Dexterity]. Trip (action): You may use a whip to make ranged trip attacks against your opponent using a [Dexterity + Whip] challenge.
COVERT SKILLS You use covert skills for challenges involving actions that are intended to be secret and unnoticed, or to create false impressions.
DISGUISE You use this skill when attempting to physically disguise your own or someone else’s identity, or to look like another specific person. If you’re disguised as a specific person, anyone who knows that person will get bonus dice in any opposed challenge to detect your disguise as shown in Table 6.1.
Mimic: When disguised as a specific person, reduce the familiarity bonus dice by the number of dice in your Disguise skill, to a minimum of zero.
EXPLOSIVES You use this skill in challenges involving placing and setting off explosives. You can also use it to identify the effects of particular explosives or trace the origin of explosives.
FORGERY You use Forgery skill to create false papers or modify existing documents or images. You could use it to counterfeit currency, create new identity documents, or modify information on a paper receipt. You can also use Forgery to modify images and videos. Many official documents have properties that make them difficult to forge, resulting in penalty dice on the Forgery challenge as shown in Table 6.2. Table 6.2: Forgery Penalties Document Forgery Penalty
Signature/Signed Check None Notarized Signature 1 die Driver’s License 1 die US Passport 3 dice Surveillance Video 2 dice US Currency 3 dice
STEALTH You use Stealth skill for challenges when attempting to remain unnoticed. You could use it to hide in a dark alley, sneak up silently on an enemy, or hide a small object in the palm of your hand.
Table 6.1: Disguise Recognition
Familiarity Bonus Dice to Recognize Disguise
Acquaintance or Fan 1 bonus die See or Visit Monthly 2 bonus dice Co-‐Worker or Friend 3 bonus dice Close Friend or Family Member
4 bonus dice
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Diversion (action): You create a diversion to draw attention away from another character’s Stealth challenge. Roll [Intelligence + Stealth] to assist another character who is taking a challenge to remain unnoticed. Grant 1 bonus assist die for each success, limited to the number of dice in your Stealth skill. Sneak Attack: When you successfully attack a vulnerable opponent, add your Stealth dice to the damage roll.
SURVEILLANCE You use Surveillance skill to gather information about people or places by secretly monitoring them. You also use it when attempting to discover hidden surveillance devices.
Case: After spending a day inspecting a location, you gather enough information to take a [Perception + Surveillance] challenge to assist any Covert skill challenge within location. Grant 1 bonus die per success, limited to the number of dice in your Surveillance skill. Tail: After spending a day following and monitoring the activities of an individual, you gather enough information to take a [Perception + Surveillance] challenge to assist a Social or Covert skill challenge targeting the tailed individual. Grant 1 bonus die per
success, limited to the number of dice in your Surveillance skill.
THEFT You use Theft skill to steal items from secure locations, like a safe or a pocket. Theft skill also applies to attempts to bypass typical security devices. When you try to steal directly from another character, you take an opposed challenge against the target’s [Perception + Self Control]. Inanimate objects like locks and security systems typically have a set difficulty. Quick Crack: When taking an extended theft challenge, for example to bypass a security device, you may increase the difficulty for each roll by 1, but add 3 bonus dice to each roll.
CRAFT SKILLS Craft skills allow you to create relatively simple items, repair items and understand the quality and properties of crafted items. Rules for creating and repairing items are covered in Chapter 8. Craft Superior Item: This special ability is available separately for each craft skill. You may attempt to craft a superior item by increasing the creation difficulty by 1 and doubling the total successes required. Superior
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items generally have one of their attributes improved by 1. For instance, superior armor may have 1 less die of encumbrance, and a superior vehicle may have 1 extra point of maneuver or acceleration.
COOKING Use this skill to make special foods or drinks or discover the recipes for specific dishes. Superior cooked items might provide bonus dice for social challenges.
MASONRY Use this skill when building structures out of stone and mortar and brick. This could include walls, bridges, brick buildings, pyramids or tombstones.
METALWORK Use this skill when forming new items out of metal. This could be simple machines, tools, or steel girders.
TAILOR Use this skill to create new and original clothing and new textiles.
WOODWORK Use this skill to create items from wood. This could be furniture or wooden buildings.
DISCIPLINE SKILLS Discipline skills apply to challenges that require you to be focused, in control of your emotions, and aware of what’s going on in the world around you.
CONCENTRATION Concentration skill allows you to stay focused on a task that requires constant concentration, like being on watch or solving a complicated puzzle. Focus: Reduce the number of distraction penalty dice for your challenges by the number of dice in your Concentration skill. Focus Other (action): When another character near you is forced to add penalty dice to a challenge due to distractions, you may take a [Charisma + Concentration] challenge and reduce the distraction dice by the number
of successes, up to the number of dice your Concentration skill. This does not count as an assist. Stay on Task: When taking a challenge that requires heavy thinking or study, you may assist yourself with a Concentration challenge. You may apply multiple successes as bonus dice to your challenge, up to the number of dice in your Concentration skill.
SELF CONTROL The Self Control skill applies to challenges that require your mind to control your emotions and physical reactions. This includes toughness Challenges and resistance to many environmental dangers that affect behavior. Out of Character: When you take an action that goes against one of your personality patterns, you may take a [Charisma + Self Control] challenge to avoid giving up a persona pool die. The difficulty of this challenge is usually one, but the gamemaster may increase it based on the nature of your action. You may use this ability a number of times in each scene equal to your Self Control dice.
HUMANITIES SKILLS These skills represent your knowledge of classical humanities, as well as your ability to research new information within these field Extended Research: You may treat a humanities challenge as an extended challenge. Reduce the difficulty by 1, and then double the original difficulty to get the total successes required. Each roll on a research challenge represents a full day of research. The following abilities are available for each humanities skill. Researcher: When making an extended research challenge in humanities, add 2 bonus dice to each roll.
HISTORY This skill represents your overall knowledge of history. Local Historian: Receive three bonus dice when making a History challenge involving your home area.
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LITERATURE This skill represents your knowledge of important literature, both fiction and non-‐fiction.
RELIGION This skill represents your knowledge of religion in general. You can use it to determine religious beliefs or how to correctly perform a religious ritual.
LANGUAGE SKILLS Language skills reflect you fluency in other languages.
SPECIFIC LANGUAGE Each specific language is a separate skill. Thus, in the modern world, German is a skill, as are English, Mandarin, and Swahili.
LOCAL KNOWLEDGE SKILLS Local Knowledge skills represent your familiarity with specific locations.
SPECIFIC LOCATION Your knowledge of the people and places of each specific location (a region or large city) is a separate skill.
MECHANICAL SKILLS You use Mechanical skills to understand, modify, sabotage and repair mechanical systems. See rules for repair in Chapter 8.
INDUSTRIAL MECHANIC Use this skill to repair and modify industrial systems such as power plants, factory machinery, etc.
VEHICLE MECHANIC Use this skill to repair and modify mechanical vehicles such as cars, trucks, airplanes, boats and tanks.
MEDICAL SKILLS
FIRST AID Use this skill to deal with time-‐critical onjuries. Treat Injuries: You may take a [Perception + First Aid] Challenge to take care of a wound received during the same scene by yourself or another character. This challenge takes five minutes and is treated as an assist for the wounded character’s next Healing Challenge. Multiple success dice can apply to the Healing Challenge, up to the number of dice in your First Aid skill, and at least 1 can apply, even if you’re unskilled. Stop Bleeding (action): You may take a [Perception + First Aid] challenge during a cinematic scene to remove Bleeding disadvantage dice from yourself or another character. The difficulty is the number of bleeding dice your subject has. If the challenge is successful, you remove one die of bleeding. Any confirmed critical successes remove all bleeding dice. Once you have removed bleeding dice, you must remain near the subject and take the Stop Bleeding action every turn for the rest of the scene, or all bleeding dice you removed will return. Only one character may use the Stop Bleeding action on a given character in a single round. Patch and Go (action): When in contact with a character wounded during the current scene, you may take a [Dexterity + First Aid] challenge as an assist to the wounded character’s toughness challenge, provided they take a toughness challenge as their next action. More than one success die may be added to the toughness challenge, up to the number of dice in your First Aid skill.
PATHOLOGY This skill represents your knowledge of physical diseases and disorders and their symptoms. Use this skill to determine a specific type of disease and possible treatments. Precise Diagnosis: When you use your Pathology skill to assist challenges that defend against disease, you may apply multiple successes to the assisted challenge, up to the number of dice in your Pathology skill. You
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may assist one patient per week per die in Pathology.
PHARMACY This skill represents your knowledge of drugs, both legal and illegal, as well as poisons. You can use this skill to assist defensive challenges and against poison. You can also use Pharmacy skill to create pharmaceutical compounds or poisons from basic ingredients. The proper drugs may alleviate or cure some Physical Disadvantages. See Painkillers in Chapter 8.
PSYCHOLOGY This skill represents your knowledge of mental disorders and their treatment. At the gamemaster’s discretion, you may use this skill to treat or remove mental disadvantages.
SURGERY This skill represents your prowess as a surgeon. At the gamemaster’s discretion, it may be used to remove wounds or Physical Disadvantages. Superior Surgeon: When you use your Surgery skill to assist healing challenges, you may apply multiple successes to the assisted challenge, up to the number of dice in your Surgery skill. You may provide this assistance to one patient per week per die in your Surgery skill.
NATURE SKILLS
ANIMALS This skill represents your connection with and knowledge of animals. Calm Animal: You may use your Animals skill as if it were Persuasion skill to change the disposition of an animal or small group of animals. Treat Animal: You may use your Animals skill as First Aid skill when treating injuries to animals.
PLANTS This skill represents your knowledge of all plants, including their practical uses.
RIDING This skill represents your ability to ride and control animal mounts. Maneuver: You may take a difficulty zero Riding challenge when mounted and gain 1 additional maneuver point for each success. See Chapter 9: Vehicles and Mounts for an explanation of maneuver points. Mounted Combat: Being mounted does not make you vulnerable. You may also use [Dexterity + Riding] as your defensive skill challenge against melee attacks when mounted.
SURVIVAL This skill represents your ability to survive in the wild and endure extreme environments. In most situations, you may add your Survival dice to Endurance challenges involving extreme environmental conditions of heat, cold, etc. Guide: You may use your Survival skill to assist the Survival challenges of others. You may apply multiple successes to the assisted challenge, up to the number of dice in your Survival skill, and you may assist multiple people per day, up to the number of dice in your Survival skill.
TRACKING You use this skill for tracking animals or humans. The difficulty depends on the age of the tracks, the size of the creature being tracked, and any environmental factors that might make tracks more apparent, wash them away or cover them up.
OPERATE MACHINERY SKILLS These skills have to do with your ability to drive or operate machinery.
CONSTRUCTION This skill represents your ability to operate heavy construction equipment like cranes, backhoes, bulldozers, dump trucks, etc.
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INDUSTRIAL This skill represents your ability to operate industrial equipment, such as in a factory or power plant.
DRIVING This skill represents your ability to operate typical ground vehicles used primarily for transporting passengers or cargo. Maneuver: You may take a difficulty zero Driving challenge when driving a vehicle and gain 1 additional maneuver point for each success. Combat Driving: As part of a ground vehicle move action, you may take a difficulty 1 [Dexterity + Driving] challenge to move evasively. If you succeed, increase the difficulty of any ranged attacks against you, your vehicle, and your passengers by 1 until your next turn.
PILOTING This skill represents your ability to operate aircraft, including fixed wing airplanes and helicopters. Maneuver: You may take a difficulty 0 Piloting challenge when piloting an aircraft and gain 2 additional maneuver points for each success. Combat Piloting: As part of an aircraft move action, you may take a difficulty 1 [Dexterity + Piloting] challenge to move evasively. If you succeed, you increase the difficulty of any ranged attacks against you, your vehicle, and your passengers by 1 until your next turn.
SAILING This skill represents your ability to operate seagoing vehicles, including sailboats and powered boats. Maneuver: You may take a difficulty zero Sailing challenge when operating a boat and gain 1 additional maneuver point for each success. Combat Sailing: As part of a boar movement action, you may take a difficulty 1 [Dexterity + Sailing] challenge to move evasively. If you succeed, increase the difficulty of any ranged attacks against you, your vehicle, and your passengers by 1 until your next turn.
PERFORMANCE SKILLS
ACTING This skill applies to your challenges involving acting in plays, films, or just impromptu acting.
DANCING This skill applies to your challenges involving dancing, both solo and in groups.
MUSIC This skill applies to your musical instrument performances. It does not indicate your knowledge of music theory or history.
SINGING This skill applies to your musical vocal performances. It does not represent your knowledge of music theory or history.
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RANGED COMBAT SKILLS
BOW This skill applies when you attack with bows or crossbows. Aim (action): If you have a drawn and loaded bow, take a [Perception + Bow] challenge as an assist to your next action, assuming it is an attack with your bow. Aiming makes you vulnerable, just like any ranged attack action. Precise Aim: You may apply more than 1 success die from your Aim action to your bow attack, up to a maximum of the number of dice you have in your Bow skill. Quick Load: You may draw and nock an arrow as a free action, provided you have a quiver to draw from.
HANDGUN This skill represents your ability to fire and care for handguns. Aim (action): If you have a drawn and loaded handgun, make a [Perception + Handgun] challenge as an assist to your next action, assuming it is an attack with your handgun. Aiming makes you vulnerable, just like any ranged attack action. Melee Handgun: Ranged attacks with your handgun do not make you vulnerable, and you may use your handgun as a club. Using an Aim action still makes you vulnerable. Moving Handgun Shot (action): Make a normal move action and then attack with a handgun. Multiple action penalties apply to these 2 actions. Multiple Handgun Shots (action): Make multiple Handgun attacks up to the number of dice in the Handgun skill, provided the weapon has enough ammunition loaded. Multiple action penalty dice apply. Precise Aim: You may apply more than 1 success die from your Aim action to your handgun attack, up to a maximum equal to the number of dice you have in your Handgun skill. Quick Draw: You may draw a loaded handgun as a free action.
Quick Load Handgun: Reload a handgun’s ammunition as a free action. The maximum number of rounds or clips you can reload in a turn equals the number of dice in your Handgun skill.
RIFLE This skill represents your ability to fire and care for rifles. Aim (action): If you have loaded rifle, take a [Perception + Rifle] challenge as an assist for your next action, assuming it is an attack with your rifle. Aiming makes you vulnerable, just like any ranged attack action. Moving Rifle Shot (action): Make a normal move action and then attack with a rifle. Multiple action penalties apply to these 2 actions. Multiple Rifle Shots (action): Make multiple attacks with a rifle, up to the number of dice in the Rifle skill, provided the weapon has enough ammunition. Multiple action penalty dice apply. Precise Aim: You may apply more than 1 success die from your Aim action to your rifle attack, up to a maximum equal to the number of dice you have in your Rifle skill.
Quick Load Rifle: Reload a rifle’s ammunition as a free action. The maximum number of rounds or clips that you can reload in a turn equals the number of dice in your Rifle skill. Suppression(action): Make a normal attack to hit your opponent, decreasing the difficulty to hit by 1, or by 2 if you’re using an automatic
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weapon (to a minimum of one). If you succeed, you do no damage, but the opponent is suppressed and must succeed on a [Charisma + Self Control] challenge to take actions during their next turn. Any confirmed critical successes on your attack add to the difficulty of your target’s challenge.
SHOTGUN This skill represents your ability to fire and care for shotguns. Multiple Shotgun Shots (action): Make multiple attacks with a shotgun, up to the number of dice in the your Shotgun skill, provided the weapon has enough ammunition loaded. Multiple action penalties apply. Quick Load Shotgun: Reload a shotgun’s ammunition as a free action. The maximum number of rounds you can reload in a turn is the number of dice in your Shotgun skill. Shotgun Assault (action): Make a normal move action and then attack with a shotgun at close range. The attack does not count as a separate action when determining multiple action penalties.
SPECIAL WEAPONS This skill reflect your ability to use and care for special ranged weapons such as bazookas, guided missiles, or large caliber machine guns.
THROWN WEAPON You use this skill when you attack with thrown weapons, like knives, throwing axes, grenades, or rocks. Quick Draw: Draw a throwing weapon as a free action before throwing it.
SCIENCE SKILLS Science skills represent your knowledge of a given field of science, as well as your ability to research new information within that field. Research: You may treat a difficult science challenge as an extended challenge. Reduce the difficulty by 1 and double the total number of successes required. Each roll on a research challenge represents a full day of research. The following special abilities are available for each Science skill.
Researcher: When taking an extended research challenge with this skill, you add 2 bonus dice to each roll
BIOLOGY This skill represents your knowledge of the structure and processes of all living things.
CHEMISTRY This skill represents your knowledge of chemical reactions and formulas.
FORENSICS This skill represents your knowledge of the sciences of crime scene investigation and evidence identification.
PHYSICS This skill represents your knowledge of physics, both classical and quantum.
SOCIAL SKILLS
COMMAND This skill represents your ability to lead others in stressful situations, such as combat. Inspire Ally: If you can communicate with an ally within 30 feet, you may take a [Charisma + Command] challenge to assist that ally’s toughness challenge (you cannot assist with toughness challenges at the start of a scene). This occurs when the ally makes the toughness challenge and does not count as an action for you. Multiple Assists (action): During a cinematic scene, specify an action to be taken by another character or yourself. If multiple characters assist the designated action, the character taking the action may use assist dice from a number of characters equal to your Command skill.
DECEPTION This skill represents your ability to lie to other characters, or simply lead them to false conclusions.
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GAMBLING This skill represents your ability to play the odds in games of chance, as well as your ability to bluff and read other players.
INTIMIDATION This skill represents your ability to use fear to persuade an NPC. Its results only last as long as the NPC feels threatened by you. Frighten (action): Take a difficulty 0 [Charisma + Intimidation] challenge and treat successes as attack dice for a Fear effect on your target as described in Chapter 5.
PERSUASION This skill represents your ability to negotiate with another character or to make another character react more favorably to you. The Friends and Enemies section in Chapter 5 describes the effects of the attitudes of other characters. Befriend: When you take a Persuasion challenge, any confirmed critical dice indicate that the target’s attitude toward you (and your close friends) has permanently increased by one category. Attitude of an NPC may only improve one category per scene. Heroic Befriend: You improve attitude multiple categories from a single Persuasion challenge, one for each confirmed critical. The maximum number of category improvements in a single scene for a particular NPC is equal to your Persuasion skill dice. You can improve an NPC’s attitude by multiple categories in a single scene.
SEDUCTION This skill represents your ability to convince members of the appropriate gender and sexual persuasion to become romantically involved with you. Wiles: You may use a [Charisma + Seduction] challenge to assist a Persuasion challenge on a person potentially interested in your gender and sexual persuasion. You may apply multiple successes to the assisted challenge, up to the number of dice in your Seduction skill.
TECHNOLOGY SKILLS
COMMUNICATIONS This skill represents your ability to operate and maintain sophisticated communications equipment, including radios, telephone lines, cable television, etc. You could also use it when attempting to disable or intercept communications. Rules for repair are given in Chapter 8.
COMPUTERS This skill represents your knowledge of computers and computer programs. It applies when you use specific software to enhance challenges. You can also use this skill to repair computers, hack into secured computers, and craft new programs. See Computers and Software in Chapter 8.
MEDICAL TECHNOLOGY You use this skill to operate and repair complex medical equipment, like monitors, x-‐ray machines, and lab equipment.
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CHAPTER 7: ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES This chapter gives examples of advantages and disadvantages for characters. It is not intended to be an exhaustive list – the players are free to choose any advantages and disadvantages with the approval of the gamemaster. Note the difference between character traits that are just Personality Patterns, and those that are true advantages and disadvantages. Personality Patterns are attitudes or psychological traits that drive character decision making, while advantages and disadvantages are inevitable – their effects can’t be “willed” away or avoided through self-‐control. For example, an addiction to alcohol would be a Personality Pattern, but Epilepsy would be a Disadvantage.
ADVANTAGES
ACUTE VISION You have exceptionally acute vision. Bonus dice from this advantage apply to your Perception challenges requiring good vision.
ACUTE HEARING You have exceptionally acute hearing. Bonus dice from this advantage apply to your Perception challenges requiring hearing.
ALLIES You have one or more allies that may come to your assistance when needed. The gamemaster determines the nature of assistance and rolls your advantage dice to determine if assistance arrives.
ASSISTANT You have a loyal assistant. Bonus dice from this advantage apply whenever the assistant is able to help you with a task. Assistants generally have specific responsibilities and their bonus dice only apply in situations involving those responsibilities. For instance your butler’s bonus dice might apply when you’re trying to impress others, but would not apply when you analyze evidence from a crime scene.
ATTRACTIVE Bonus dice from this advantage apply to Persuasion, Seduction and Deception and attempts to influence others.
CONTACTS You have contacts in the community that make it easier to find information or acquire rare or contraband items.
DIPLOMATIC IMMUNITY You are a diplomat from a foreign country and are not subject to many of the laws of the nation where you reside.
FAMOUS OR GOOD REPUTATION You are well known, generally in a positive way, even by people you’ve never met. This die is generally added as a bonus to reaction rolls and might apply to income rolls if your income is based on performance skills that benefit from popularity.
GOOD LUCK Bonus dice for good luck are applied at the discretion of the gamemaster in situational rolls or challenges where your luck plays a major role with an important outcome. It would not, for instance, apply to all your rolls at a gambling table.
LAW ENFORCEMENT POWERS This advantage applies to your attempts to control other characters or gain the cooperation of bystanders. It also applies to when you are trying to determine correct law enforcement procedures.
MILITARY RANK In some settings, having a military rank conveys immediate authority. These advantage dice might apply to challenges involving convincing or intimidating others, especially lower ranking military.
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PATRON Each patron provides special help to you from time to time. In situations where the patron’s help might be beneficial, the gamemaster may roll the advantage dice and the number of successes determines the level of help provided.
POLITICAL POWER You have a political office or other influence within government that gives you some advantage when government agencies and red tape are involved.
WEALTH you have a wealthy family or receive large but unpredictable payments for services. This bonus applies when you determine your initial lifestyle, and it adds to your monthly income challenges.
DISADVANTAGES
BAD LUCK Penalty dice for bad luck should be applied at the discretion of the gamemaster in situational rolls or challenges where your luck plays a major role.
CRIMINAL RECORD You have a criminal record. Penalty dice apply whenever an NPC you’re interacting with knows about your record and it could matter to them.
DEBT You have taken on debt. This disadvantage applies to your Income Roll each month as described in Chapter 8.
ENEMIES You have specific enemies that actively want to harm you in some way. (See Friends and Enemies in Chapter 3). The number of dice in this disadvantage reflects that chance that your enemies will surface during an adventure.
ILLITERATE Although you are fluent in your native language, you have difficulty reading and writing in it. Add these penalty dice to any tasks involving extensive reading or writing.
INFAMOUS OR BAD REPUTATION You are well known, generally in a negative way, even by people you’ve never met. This die is generally added as a penalty to reaction rolls and might apply to income rolls if your reputation adversely affects your occupation.
INJURED ARM/HAND You do not have full use of one or both of your arms or hands. Penalty dice apply for any action that depends on the injured arm or hand.
LAME You do not have full use of one or both of your legs. Penalty dice apply for any action that depends on your legs.
POOR VISION/BLIND Add the penalty dice for this disadvantage to any challenge that would be significantly more difficult without the ability to see.
POOR HEARING/DEAF You have poor or no hearing and are unable to speak. Penalties apply to your perception challenges involving hearing and any challenges that require voice communication. Consider International Sign Language as a skill.
SECRET You have a terrible secret that would ruin your life if it got out. You must be always vigilant to cover it up. Penalty dice apply whenever protecting the secret interferes with a task.
UNATTRACTIVE You have deformities, scars, or just unusual features that make you visually or physically unattractive to others.
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CHAPTER 8: MONEY AND EQUIPMENTMONEY The money system in D6Pool is designed to reduce bookkeeping for your day-‐to-‐day expenses. You have a lifestyle that you must maintain through your source of income (generally a skill), and a certain amount of money in savings. You have free access to items that are typical of your lifestyle, without any bookkeeping involved. Anything beyond your lifestyle must be paid for out of your savings.
LIFESTYLE You have a lifestyle that, among other things, determines the difficulty of your monthly income challenges. It also determines what types of items and services you can have “free” access to during the game. Table 8.1 gives the annual income in modern dollars required to maintain each lifestyle. It also gives the bonus amount that you can earn on your monthly income challenge if you are at that lifestyle.
LIFESTYLE ABUSE Free access to items in a given lifestyle means reasonable items. Just because you are at
lifestyle 3 and have access to luxury cars, pickup trucks, minivans and SUVs doesn’t mean you could have one of each. If players are determined to abuse the lifestyle system, the gamemaster should feel free to abandon it and make them pay for everything out of their annual income.
INCOME Your income is determined by a monthly income challenge using an attribute and skill appropriate for your job. If you’re a politician, this might be Charisma and Politics, or Intelligence and Administration. If you’re a pickpocket, it might be Dexterity and Theft. For a street performer, it might be Charisma and Music. The gamemaster should feel free to apply bonus and penalty dice to your challenge for jobs that produce noticeably higher or lower income. If you’re a medical professional, you might get 1 or 2 bonus dice, but if you’re a street performer you might have to add penalty dice. The difficulty of your income challenge is your current lifestyle. If your challenge succeeds, you maintain your lifestyle. For each critical success beyond the lifestyle difficulty,
Table 8.1: Lifestyles Lifestyle Description Annual
Income Monthly Bonus
Example Lifestyle Items
0 Very Poor/Homeless
$10k $300 Tiny apartment, basic food
1 Poor $30k $1,000 Small home/apartment, food, local transportation, basic clothes, basic communication
2 Middle Class $100k $3k Nice home, vehicles, vacation travel, nice clothes, occasional entertainment and dining out
3 Wealthy $300k $10k Nice home, luxury vehicles, frequent travel entertainment and dining out, fashion clothes
4 Very Wealthy $1 million
$30k Mansion, sailboat, unlimited travel and dining out, etc.
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you receive the bonus income listed in the Table 8.1. For instance, if you are middle class and roll 4 successes, you receive 2 bonuses, or six thousand dollars. If you fail an income challenge, you must pay the bonus amount out of savings for each success you were short. For example, if you are wealthy and roll only 1 success, you would lose twenty thousand dollars of savings. If you are unwilling or unable to pay the penalty for failure, you may either take on debt to make up the difference, or voluntarily reduce your lifestyle (see below) before applying the results of the income roll.
DEBT At any time, you may receive money equal to the monthly bonus of your current lifestyle by taking on 1 die of the Debt disadvantage or removing one die of the Wealth advantage. You cannot take on more debt if you would end up with debt dice exceeding half the number of
dice you use for your monthly income challenge. If you somehow end up with debt dice equal to or greater than your income dice plus Wealth advantage dice, you are bankrupt. Immediately reduce your lifestyle by 2 and reduce your Debt and Wealth dice to zero. Debt can be paid off at any time from your savings. You pay one month’s bonus for each die of the Debt disadvantage removed.
CHANGING LIFESTYLE At any time, you may voluntarily increase or decrease you lifestyle. To increase your lifestyle by 1 point, you must pay money from savings equal to the monthly bonus of the higher lifestyle level. You also divide the number of your Debt and Wealth dice by 3, rounding up. When decreasing your lifestyle by 1 point, you pay nothing, but you multiply any Wealth or Debt dice by 3.
EQUIPMENT
CREATING ITEMS You can create items as extended challenges. The material cost is generally half of the value of the item as listed in the equipment tables. More sophisticated items require more sophisticated parts. The difficulty and total successes required are also listed in the table.
REPAIRING ITEMS Repairing a damaged item is an extended action with difficulty one less than the creation difficulty (minimum of 1). Total successes required depend on the extent of the damage.
SABOTAGE You can attempt to sabotage or damage items to make them less functional. You can directly attack and damage items with weapons. Items will typically lose 1 die of functionality (whatever that means for the item) for each die of damage. Typical armor dice for an item depend on the item and type of attack. Cloth items may have only 1 armor die against sharp attacks, but 2 against blunt attacks. A sports car could have 3 armor dice against all attacks.
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Some mechanical and electrical skills might allow characters to sabotage items in less obvious ways.
CLOSE COMBAT WEAPONS Table 8.2 lists typical close combat weapons for a modern setting. Damage: the number of dice you roll for damage challenges with this weapon. If the value has a plus (+) sign next to it, add your Strength dice to the damage roll. Type: whether the weapon is blunt or sharp. This determines how well the weapon damage penetrates various armor types. Reach: the maximum distance in feet between you and target for attacks with this weapon. A reach of 5 generally means you must be adjacent to the target. Skill: skill that applies when you attack or parry with this weapon. Lifestyle: minimum lifestyle required to have free access to this item. Create: difficulty and total required successes (in parentheses) to create this item. Each roll in the extended challenge represents one day of effort.
CLUB This is any elongated, blunt weapon. It could be a billy club, a baseball bat, or a broken chair leg. You can choose to treat damage caused by a club as stun damage, although any damage caused by critical hits causes normal wounds.
GARROTE This is a thin, strong string or cable used to strangle an opponent, killing them silently. Characters with Unarmed Combat skill and
Silent Kill ability add 2 bonus dice to their unarmed attacks while using a Garrotte.
KNIFE This is any knife shorter than 2 feet, sharpened on at least one edge for cutting, and pointed for stabbing.
PEPPER SPRAY This is a small capsule of pepper spray, which, when sprayed into the face of an opponent, may cause minor stun damage, but always causes 2 dice of temporary Poor Vision disadvantage and 2 dice of distraction.
SPEAR This represents any pole weapon at least six feet in length with a sharp point or blade at the end. Note that spears have reach of 10 feet, allowing you to attack non-‐adjacent targets.
SWORD This represents blades of 2 to 6 feet in length, used as both slashing and stabbing weapons.
STUN GUN A stun gun is a close combat weapon that delivers a stunning shock to its target. Your Strength is not added to the damage challenge for stun guns, and all wounds are considered stun damage.
Table 8.2: Close Combat Weapons Weapon Damage Type Reach Skill Lifestyle Cost Create Club 2d+ Blunt 5 Club 0 -‐ -‐ Garrote -‐ -‐ 5 Unarmed 0 -‐ -‐ Knife 2d+ Sharp 5 Blade 2 $20 1(4) Pepper Spray 2d Blunt 5 None 2 $20 1(4) Spear 2d+ Sharp 10 Blade 2 $30 1(4) Stun Gun 5d Stun Blunt 5 Unarmed 3 $120 2(10) Sword 3d+ Sharp 5 Blade 2 $80 1(5) Unarmed 0d+ Blunt 5 Unarmed -‐ -‐ -‐ Whip 2d Blunt 15 Whip 2 $40 1(5)
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UNARMED This can be any unarmed attack, like a punch or kick. All normal damage from unarmed attacks is considered stun damage. Treat any damage caused by critical hit dice as normal wounds.
WHIP You can use a whip for normal close combat attacks, with a reach of 15 feet, or it can be used for special disarm and trip attacks. See Whip skill description in Chapter 6.
RANGED WEAPONS Table 8.3 lists typical ranged combat weapons for a modern setting. Damage: number of dice you roll for damage challenges with this weapon. If the damage value is marked with plus sign (+), add your Strength dice to the damage challenge. Type: whether the weapon is blunt or sharp. This determines how well the weapon damage penetrates various armor types. Rounds: number of shots you can fire with this weapon before reloading. In general, it takes one action to reload a weapon. This column also indicates whether the weapon is capable of automatic or semi-‐automatic operation. Semi-‐automatic weapons can be used for multiple attacks in a single cinematic round if you have abilities that allow you to do so. Automatic weapons can fire four rounds in
a single attack, adding 1 bonus die to attack and damage rolls. Automatic weapons also grant a bonus for suppression fire. Skill: skill that applies when you attack with this weapon. Range: three ranges in feet. The first is close range, beyond which the difficulty of attacking with this weapon increases by 1.The second is medium range, beyond which the difficulty increases by 2, and the third is the maximum possible range. Lifestyle: minimum lifestyle required to have free access to this item. Create: difficulty and total required successes (in parentheses) to create this item. Each roll represents one day of effort.
ASSAULT RIFLE This is any rifle that can be fired as a semi-‐automatic or automatic weapon.
BLOWGUN This is small, concealable blowgun that fires a dart used to deliver poison or some other substance into the target’s bloodstream. If your damage challenge is successful, the dart delivers the substance. Blowguns never cause actual wounds.
BOW This is the classic bow and arrow.
Table 8.3: Ranged Weapons Weapon Dmg Type Rounds Skill Range
+1/+2/Max Life style
Cost 20 rnds
Create
Rock 1d+ Blunt 1 Thrown 15/30/75 0 -‐ -‐ -‐ Knife 1d+ Sharp 1 Thrown 10/20/60 2 $20 1(4) Bow 4d Sharp 1 Bow 20/40/200 3 $200 $80 1(6) Pistol 5d Sharp 8 Semi Handgun 20/50/300 3 $200 $8 2(8) Shotgun 7d* Blunt 4 Shotgun 30/60/200 3 $200 $10 1(6) Blowgun 1d Sharp 1 Thrown 20/40/100 3 $20 $20 1(3) Rifle 6d Sharp 10 Semi Rifle 30/100/400 3 $300 $10 2(10) Assault Rifle
6d Sharp 20 Auto Rifle 30/100/400 4 $500 $10 2(12)
Rocket Launcher
* * 1 Special Weapons
30/100/600 -‐ $1000 * 2(10)
Sniper Rifle
6d Sharp 12 Rifle 50/250/1000* -‐ $2000 $50 2(14)
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KNIFE This is a balanced throwing knife. When attacking with it, you can add your Strength dice to the damage roll.
PISTOL This represents any one-‐handed, rifled gun with a short barrel.
RIFLE This is any two-‐handed, rifled gun with a long barrel, generally fired from the shoulder.
ROCK This is any rock or heavy, blunt item that is relatively easy to hold and throw. Add your Strength dice to the damage roll for a thrown rock attack.
SHOTGUN This is any smoothbore weapon firing a cluster of large shot. Range penalty dice also apply to your shotgun damage challenges.
SNIPER RIFLE This is bolt-‐action, center fire rifle with precision tooled, extended barrel, a portable bipod stand and an optical scope. It requires special ammunition. The range values listed for the sniper rifle assume it is equipped with a scope.
ROCKET LAUNCHER This is a reusable launcher for rocket-‐propelled high explosive or armor piercing rounds. It is not available for purchase by the general population. See the Table 8.4 for damage details.
EXPLOSIVES Explosives automatically hit any targets within their blast radius. Each type of explosion is characterized by the number of damage dice at the source, plus a blast radius, as shown in table 8.4: Explosives. Damage: number of dice rolled for damage challenges with this explosive for targets within blast radius. Blast Radius: blast radius of this explosive. For each full blast radius a target is from the explosion, reduce damage dice by 1. Type: whether the explosive damage is blunt or sharp. This determines how well the weapon damage penetrates various armor types. Skill: skill that applies when you’re attacking with this explosive weapon. In general you need only a single success for the explosion to go as planned. Critical successes do not apply to damage. Range: three numbers in feet for thrown or rocket propelled explosives. The first is close range, beyond which the difficulty increases by 1. The second is medium range beyond which the difficulty increases by 2, and the third is the maximum possible range. Lifestyle: minimum lifestyle required to have free access to this item. Create: difficulty and total required successes (in parentheses) to create this item. Each roll represents on day of effort.
ARMOR When you’re attacked, armor adds to the difficulty of your attacker’s damage challenge. Each piece of armor in Table 8.5 has the following ratings.
Table 8.4: Explosives Explosive Damage Type Skill Blast
Radius Range
+1/+2/Max Lifestyle Cost Create
Dynamite 12d Blunt Explosives 5 -‐ -‐ $200 1(5) Grenade 6d Sharp Thrown 10 10/20/60 -‐ $200 2(4) Pipe Bomb 8d Sharp Explosives 5 -‐ -‐ $100 1(4) Semtex 16d Blunt Explosives 5 -‐ -‐ $1000 2(8) High Explosive Rocket
12d Blunt Special Weapons
5 30/100/600 -‐ $200 2(8)
Shaped Charge Rocket
12d Sharp Special Weapons
5 30/100/600 -‐ $400 3(10)
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Blunt: additional damage challenge difficulty when you’re attacked with a blunt weapon. Sharp: additional damage challenge difficulty when you’re attacked with a sharp weapon. Wounds: number of wounds the armor can sustain before it is destroyed. Most normal attacks do not damage armor. Encumbrance: number of penalty dice you must add to any physical activity challenges while wearing this armor. Lifestyle: minimum lifestyle required to have free access to this item. Create: difficulty and total required successes (in parentheses) to create this item. Each roll represents on day of effort.
SHIELDS Shields not only provide armor protection like other armor, but you can also use them to block attacks; similar to the way you can use weapons to parry attacks.
SPECIAL EQUIPMENT
HOLLOW POINT AMMUNITION Hollow point ammunition adds 1 bonus die to your damage rolls if the target has no sharp armor bonus.
ARMOR PIERCING AMMUNITION Armor piercing ammunition is triple the cost of normal ammunition but allows you to add bonus dice to your damage roll equal to the defender’s sharp armor value.
BINOCULARS These are portable binoculars with 10x magnification. When using them for any perception challenge for an object in the
distance, add 2 bonus dice to your roll. Costs $50. Lifestyle 2.
BUG This is a small microphone and radio transmitter, about the size of a small coin. Once activated, it will transmit whatever sound it picks up for about 2 hours, or you can connect it to AC power for unlimited transmission. Transmission range is about 500 yards. Cost, with receiver, is $120. Lifestyle 4.
COMPUTERS AND SOFTWARE Computers run software, and software helps you with challenges. If you have Computer skill and access to a computer, you can take a [Intelligence + Computers] challenge to assist a skill challenge, provided the available software supports the assisted skill. For example, a computer running physics software could be used to assist a Physics challenge. In Table 8.6, Computers and Software are both rated by the maximum bonus dice they can add to your challenge. The result of the assist challenge is limited by both of these values. For example, if the computer is rated for 2 bonus dice and it is running physics software rated at 3 bonus dice, the maximum bonus dice it can add to your Physics challenge is 2. Note that there is no limit on the number of software programs that can be loaded on a single computer, but you can only use one at a time. See the computers and software table for costs and creation difficulties. Software creation is an extended [Intelligence + Computers] challenge, and each roll takes one week.
Table 8.5: Armor Armor Blunt Sharp Wnds Enc Lifestyle Cost Create Heavy Clothing 0 1 3 2 1 $200 1(6) Body Armor 1 2 8 2 4 $1,500 2(8) Kevlar Mesh 0 2 4 1 5 $2,000 3(5) Riot Shield 1 1 4 1 4 $100 1(3) Improvised Shield 1 1 2 2 -‐ -‐ -‐ Winter Outfit 0 1 3 2 2 $400 1(8)
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EMERGENCY RADIO This is a two-‐way radio used by police and fire departments. It still works when the power goes out and is dedicated to emergency communications. Costs $1,000. Not available with any lifestyle.
FALSE PAPERS This is a set of official papers verifying that you are someone you are not. Purchase and possession of these documents is illegal. These documents add 3 bonus dice to your challenges involving a false identity, though the deceived character can take a [Perception + Forgery] challenge to notice that the papers are false. Cost depends on the difficulty of noticing they are forgeries: difficulty 1 costs $50, difficulty 2 costs $400, and difficulty 3 costs $2,000. Not available with any lifestyle.
FIREFIGHTER SUIT This is a set of protective clothing, including gloves, boots and a helmet, intended to keep a firefighter dry and protect against heat and flames and falling debris. This suit adds 1 die of encumbrance to all physical activity, but increases armor for sharp, blunt and fire attacks by 1. Costs $800. Lifestyle 4.
GPS A Global Positioning System uses satellites to pinpoint your geographic location and display it on a map. You can use this device to take a [Intelligence + Communications] challenge to assist a challenge involving direction finding. Runs on batteries. Costs $250. Lifestyle 3.
HIDDEN CAMERA This hidden camera is about the size of a pack of gum and is battery-‐operated and motion activated. It must be retrieved to play back its contents. Costs $50. Lifestyle 3.
MED KIT A med kit consists of basic bandages and tools for dressing wounds and administering first aid. When taking a First Aid challenge with a med kit, add 2 bonus dice to your roll. Costs $50. Lifestyle 2.
MAKEUP KIT A makeup kit consists of a set of sophisticated tools for doing professional makeup and disguise. When taking a Disguise or Seduction challenge after you have had sufficient time to use the makeup kit, add 2 bonus dice to your roll. Costs $200. Lifestyle 3.
MICROSCOPE This is a lab grade optical microscope. While a necessity for many areas of medical and biological research, it can also help with Perception challenges involving small objects or small details, like appraising a gem or checking documents for signs of forgery. A Microscope adds 2 bonus dice to such challenges. Costs $300. Lifestyle 3.
PAINKILLERS This can be any of a class of powerful drugs that relieve pain. They are generally not available without a doctor’s prescription. One dose of painkillers adds 2 bonus dice to your toughness challenges, but also adds 1 penalty die to any challenges requiring mental concentration. Effects last for four hours. Cost $30 per dose for injection, $10 per dose for pills (10 minutes to take effect). Lifestyle 2 with prescription.
Table 8.6: Computers Computers and Software
Bonus Limit
Lifestyle Cost Create
Basic Computer 1 2 $500 1(8) Portable Basic Computer
1 2 $1,000 1(8)
Intermediate Computer 2 3 $1,500 2(20) Portable Intermediate Computer
2 3 $2,500 2(20)
Powerful Computer 3 4 $5,000 3(40) Level 1 Software 1 3 $100 1(5) Level 2 Software 2 4 $2,000 2(20) Level 3 Software 3 5+ $50,000 3(200)
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SCOPE You can attach a scope to a rifle or assault rifle for better aiming. An optical scope adds 2 bonus dice to any aim challenge (see Ranged Weapon skills). A red dot scope adds three bonus dice to aim challenges, but the target may notice the dot. Scopes also double the maximum range of a rifle (though all other ranges stay the same). Cost is $300 for the optical scope or $400 for the red dot scope. Lifestyle 4.
SECURE SATELLITE PHONE This is a telephone about the size and shape of a brick that can be used to communicate
through encrypted channels to other satellite phones. Typically used by diplomats and news reporters in untrustworthy settings. Cost is $1200. Lifestyle 5.
WINTER OUTFIT This is a set of outer clothing intended to keep you warm in cold environments. It includes a coat, pants, gloves, hat and boots. When you wear the entire outfit, it adds 1 encumbrance penalty die to all physical, but increases armor for cold damage and sharp damage by 1. Cost is $400. Lifestyle 2.
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CHAPTER 9: VEHICLES AND MOUNTSVEHICLES In a modern setting, you may find yourself in car chases, boat chases, being shot at while in a car, or flying a helicopter to chase down a bad guy. This section presents a relatively simple system of rules for vehicles. Each vehicle in Table 9.1 has a set of statistics as described below. Skill: the specific skill used to resolve challenges and make special maneuvers with this vehicle. Some entries in this column also include a number in parentheses -‐ this is the number of penalty dice applied when driving this vehicle if you have no dice in the required skill. Speed: the vehicle’s maximum speed under normal conditions -‐ a car on a dry, paved road, an airplane with no head or tail wind, or a sailboat with no current, sailing on a beam reach in a strong wind. Speed is measured in miles per hour. Multiply this speed by 10 to get the number of feet per round of cinematic action. Maneuver: the maximum number of 45 degree changes in direction this vehicle can make in a cinematic round of action. Acceleration: amount by which the vehicle can increase in speed during a single round, measured in miles per hour. Maximum deceleration for land vehicles is equal to this value, or half the maximum speed, whichever is greater. Capacity: This value gives the number of passengers and maximum weight in tons this vehicle can carry. Cover: This number represents the increase in difficulty, due to cover, when you make ranged attacks against the occupants of this vehicle. Cost: Cost of a working vehicle in reasonable shape, but not necessarily new.
DRIVING VEHICLES Unless otherwise noted in a vehicle description, you can drive any vehicle in a
straight line and accelerate at the rate given in the vehicles table. Any character can also turn the vehicle at the rate given by its maneuver value by taking a level zero [Dexterity + Vehicle Skill] challenge. When you incur penalty dice while operating a vehicle because you have no dice in the skill, you must make driving challenges even while moving in a straight line in normal conditions. Note that driving in rough terrain or dangerous conditions increases the difficulty of your Driving challenges. Typical, bumpy off-‐road terrain is difficulty 1, while rocky, sloping terrain is difficulty 2. Similar difficulty increases apply for aircraft in rough weather and boats in rough seas.
SHOOTING AT VEHICLES When you make a ranged weapon attack against a character in a vehicle, increase the difficulty by the cover value listed in the Vehicles table. You must also roll 1 penalty die for every 10 mph (100 feet per turn) difference in speed between the you and the target. Characters within a moving vehicle are considered vulnerable.
VEHICLE DESCRIPTIONS
ARMORED CAR This is a powerful panel van protected by thick armor plating.
BULLDOZER This is a small construction vehicle with a front blade for pushing things and a detachable winch for pulling things. Bulldozers reduce rough terrain difficulty by 2.
COMPACT This is a small car that gets good gas mileage. It can transport two people comfortably or four people uncomfortably.
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HELICOPTER This is a relatively inexpensive 4-‐passenger helicopter like those used by most news agencies and personal transport companies.
MINIVAN This is a typical minivan capable of transporting six or seven people and a fair amount of gear.
MOTORBOAT This is a 25-‐foot inboard motorboat with a small enclosed cabin up front. Its 100-‐gallon fuel tank has a range of about 500 miles at 15 mph.
PICKUP TRUCK This pickup truck can hauling one ton of cargo. Passengers in the bed get only 1 die if increased cover. Pickup trucks reduce rough terrain difficulty by 1.
MOTORCYCLE This is a medium-‐sized road motorcycle.
SAILBOAT This is a small sailboat of about 25 to 30 feet.
SEMI TRAILER TRUCK This is a typical North American 18 –wheeler semi cab and trailer.
SMALL AIRPLANE This is a small, 2 passenger, single prop airplane. It requires about 300 feet of runway for takeoff, and landing (all depending on wind direction). Stall speed is 40 mph (360 feet per round). In general, climbing airplanes can trade 5 mph of acceleration in a round for 10 feet of altitude. Descending airplanes trade off 10 feet of altitude to gain 5 mph of speed.
SPORTSCAR This is an expensive two-‐passenger car designed for speed, acceleration, and maneuvering.
SPORTS UTILITY VEHICLE This is a heavy, rugged 4-‐wheel drive vehicle designed for rough terrain. SUVs reduce rough terrain difficulty by 1.
Table 9.1: Vehicles Vehicle Skill Speed Man Accel Capacity Cover Lifestyle Cost Motorboat Sailing 30 3 10 6p/1t 1 3 $12,000 Sailboat Sailing(1) 10 2 2 4p/0.5t 1 3 $15,000 Jet Ski Sailing(1) 20 4 15 1p/0.2t 0 3 $8,000 Armored Car Driving 70 2 15 6p/1t 3 4 $30,000 Bulldozer Construction(1) 10 1 5 2p/2t 1 5+ $40,000 Compact Car Driving 80 2 15 4p/0.3t 2 2 $12,000 Luxury Car Driving 90 2 15 5p/0.5t 2 3 $30,000 Pickup Truck Driving 90 2 20 2p/1t 2/1 3 $30,000 Minivan Driving 80 2 15 6p/0.5t 2 2 $28,000 Motorcycle Driving 80 3 40 1p/0.2t 0 2 $4,000 Semi Trailer Truck
Driving(1) 70 1 10 2p/24t 2 4 $60,000
Sport Utility Driving 90 2 15 5p/1t 2 3 $35,000 Sports Car Driving 120 3 40 2p/.4t 2 3 $40,000 Small Airplane
Piloting(2) 120 6 20 2p/.3t 1 4 $50,000
Helicopter Piloting(3) 130 8 30 4p/.6t 1 4 $200,000 Horse Riding 20 3 20 1p/.2t 0 4 $4,000 Bicycle Acrobatics 12 4 6 1p/.2t 0 1 $300