Wizards & Lizards — Core Rules

Version 0.10 · not yet playtested

Jon Mayo. PUBLIC DOMAIN (CC0-1.0)

1 Introduction

Wizards & Lizards puts tabletop skirmish combat and roleplaying rules in a single digest-sized book. One person is the Game Master (GM), who describes the world and plays everyone in it. The others each play a character, a hero or villain in a world of high magic and peril.

To play you need this book, a character sheet for each player, and three six-sided dice (3d6).

1.1 The Core Loop

The GM describes the situation.

The players say what their characters do.

When the outcome is uncertain and a failure would cost something, someone rolls. Otherwise it simply happens.

The GM narrates the result, and the situation moves on.

This one loop runs unchanged in every scene, and a single die ladder resolves every roll. Later chapters cover harm and healing, skirmish combat, the nerve a character spends, advancement, and the foes a party faces. Wizards & Lizards is a middle-weight game compressed to fit a zine. Separate components extend it into a full campaign: a playbook for each character and a setting book.

2 Resolution

When the outcome is in doubt, roll 3d6, add the relevant attribute (and any skill or situational modifier), and read the result on one ladder:

Total | Result
8 or less | Miss. It goes badly; the risk lands.
9–12 | Partial. You do it, but at a cost, compromise, or with harm.
13–17 | Success. You do it cleanly.
18+ | Critical. You do it, with an extra effect.

These thresholds are fixed: your bonus shifts the roll, never the ladder. Two outcomes are read straight off the raw dice, before modifiers, and no bonus or penalty changes them. A natural 3 or 4 flags a fumble: something goes wrong and the GM may make the outcome especially bad, even on a roll a large bonus would otherwise carry to a Success, so no one is ever too skilled to fail. Its mirror, a natural 17 or 18 (the dice all but maxed), is a Masterstroke: a character’s damaging blow deals +(level + 1) extra damage. Because both key off the raw dice alone, each stays a flat ~2% at every bonus, the swingy tail of the ladder. A creature, having no level, simply scores a Critical.

2.1 Attributes

Every character has four attributes, each from about +0 to +3:

Attribute | What it covers
Might | strength, melee, toughness
Agility | speed, finesse, ranged attacks, stealth, dodging
Wits | perception, lore, magic, awareness
Presence | willpower, command, persuasion, bearing

2.2 Actions

An action is a named way of engaging the dice. Six are shared by every character and printed on the sheet:

Strike (Might): attack a foe in melee.

Shoot (Agility): attack a foe at range.

Defend (Agility): dodge, parry, take cover, guard an ally, or hold ground.

Maneuver (Might or Agility): shove, trip, disarm, grapple, or feint.

Endure (the attribute that fits the threat): resist harm, poison, fear, or magic.

Skill (the fitting attribute): attempt any task using one of your skills.

You can always simply describe what your character does. If no action quite fits and the outcome matters, the GM sets the difficulty and calls for 3d6 plus the fitting attribute.

Five resolve on the ladder. Strike and Shoot run on the attack ladder (see Combat); the others read as below. (Defend, Steady, Suppress, Move, Stand, Recover, Interact are stances or upkeep, no roll.) On a Miss the risk lands; otherwise:

Maneuver. Partial: it half-works, the foe is Staggered rather than fully toppled, or it lands but you overreach and a foe in reach may make one immediate free Strike against you (a reaction, costing it no action, once per round); the GM picks the cost that fits. Success: your condition lands (Prone, Disarmed, Grabbed). Critical: it lands with an extra effect.

Endure. Partial: you weather it but pay (a little harm, or briefly Staggered). Success: you shrug it off. Critical: shrug it off and gain an edge.

Skill. Partial: done at a cost or only in part. Success: done cleanly. Critical: done with something extra, faster, safer, or you learn more.

Bram the hedge-knight swings at a bandit. He rolls 3d6 for a Strike: 4, 5, 2 is 11, plus his Might of +2 makes 13. A clean Success, and the blade bites home for full damage.

A wyrm’s venom burns through Mirel, and she must Endure it. The threat is to the body, so the GM calls for Might: the dice land 2, 4, 3 = 9, plus her Might of +1 makes 10. A Partial, in the 9–12 band, she weathers it but pays: a little harm now, and she is briefly Staggered until she shakes the poison off.

2.3 Stress

Stress is your nerve and stamina spent under pressure. You have a stress track of 4 + Presence boxes. Mark stress to:

Push (1 stress): take +2 on a roll you are about to make, or +1 damage on a hit, or one extra quick action.

Resist (2 stress): reduce a consequence by one step. Shrug off a condition, lessen a wound, or soften a blow.

Fuel an Advanced Action that lists a stress cost, including spellcasting. One with a fixed effect (a set heal, a bolt’s damage) simply happens for the cost, no roll; one that must beat a target still rolls.

What you spend for always happens, even the mark that overfills the track: you reach past your limit to get it done.

Faltering. When a spend would carry you past your last box, the effect still lands, then you falter: your stress empties to a fresh track and you take a lasting Shaken mark. While Shaken you are −1 to all rolls, and when something frightening confronts you, you must Endure it (Presence) or become Frightened (see Combat). Shaken lifts only with a full night’s safe rest.

Breaking. A Shaken hero who falters again, overfilling that fresh track, goes Down, out of the fight (see Gear and Harm). This is collapse, not a death-wound, so you make no death save. Your stress stays full: a comrade can rouse you to your feet, but only rest clears the track, so until you rest you cannot spend stress again. There is no second wind.

A short rest clears 2 stress; a full night’s safe rest clears it all, and lifts Shaken.

Doran must clear a widening gap with the guards a step behind. Before he rolls he marks 1 stress to Push, +2. The dice come up 3, 4, 4 = 11; his Agility +1 and the Push make 14, a clean Success where the 12 alone would have been a Partial (a hard landing, a dropped pack). One box of nerve bought the leap, and brought him a box nearer to faltering.

3 Tasks and Skills

Most of play is the Skill action: attempting something where the outcome matters. Roll 3d6, add the attribute that fits the attempt, add any skill, and read the ladder from the Resolution chapter.

3.1 Difficulty

The GM sets difficulty as a flat modifier to the roll. Most attempts are at +0.

Difficulty | Modifier
Favorable | +2
Ordinary | +0
Hard | −2
Daunting | −4

Tools, position, and circumstances shift the roll a point or two more. When an attempt carries no real risk and no time pressure, do not roll; it simply works.

3.2 Skills

A skill is any named area of training: Stealth, Smithing, Folklore, Riding, Arcana, whatever fits your character and the world. You gain skills from your playbook and from advancement rewards. Playbooks are self-contained and modular; nothing stops a GM or the players from naming a new skill at the table that fits the fiction.

A relevant skill adds +1 to the Skill action; a mastered skill adds +2. Without a fitting skill you simply roll the attribute. A few specialized things, such as casting spells or deciphering deep magic, cannot be attempted at all without the proper training, which lives in a playbook.

3.3 Help

One ally who can genuinely assist grants +1. They share the risk: on a miss, the consequence can fall on the helper instead.

Mirel searches a flooded crypt for a hidden lever. It is dark and the water is rising, Hard, so −2. She has the Searching skill (+1) and her Wits of +1. She rolls 3d6 for a Skill action: 5, 3, 6 = 14, plus +1 +1 −2 = 14. A Success.

3.4 Contests

When characters strive directly against one another, an arm-wrestle, a chase, two heralds swaying the same crowd, each side rolls the action that fits it, and the sides need not match: one shoves with Might while the other keeps her feet with Agility; one envoy argues with Wits while the other charms with Presence. Compare where each lands on the ladder, and the higher band wins, Critical over Success over Partial over Miss. Land in the same band and the higher total takes it. Should the totals tie too, the rawer dice break it, a natural 17 or 18 wins and a natural 3 or 4 loses; with neither edge (or matching ones), it is a deadlock, the struggle holds and the moment passes or escalates. The bonus still sets the band first, so a roll a bonus lifts to a Success beats a natural 17 or 18 a penalty left in the Partial band, the dramatic dice settle only a true tie.

When many vie for one prize, a footrace, a scramble, a bidding war, everyone rolls once and the best result wins, ranking ties by total. A long or swinging struggle can run as a few rounds, first to an agreed number of wins. A direct attack on another character is not a contest; it uses the combat roll against their Defense.

At dusk a Kobaloi creeps into camp to cut a pack from a tethered horse. This is a contest, its Stealth against whoever might catch it, and the two sides roll different actions. The thief sneaks on Agility +1 and its Stealth +1, and lands a Success. The party’s lookout is dozing and does not roll, but the horse is a sentry of sorts, so the GM rolls its Wits, twitchy and close, that is Favorable, +2, for a Partial. Success beats Partial, so the Kobaloi gets the pack, but the lower band costs it: the horse shies and stamps, and a light sleeper wakes to a small shape bolting for the dark. Now it is a chase, a fresh contest of Agility (or Speed across open ground), run as a few rounds, first to three wins. Catch it and a fight opens on the party’s terms; lose it and the camp is a pack and a story poorer.

3.5 Exploration

Scouting, searching, and survival use the Skill action with the fitting attribute: spotting an ambush or reading the land with Wits, scaling a wall or moving silently with Agility, forcing a door with Might. Traps are found with Wits and disarmed with Agility (or the Thievery skill).

Where a fight is counted in seconds and overland travel in days (see below), picking through a dungeon or ruin sits between, run in loose exploration turns of roughly ten minutes. Down an open, safe passage you simply walk at travel’s pace; it is the careful delving, creeping silently, mapping, sounding the floor, working a lock, that is slow by choice. Reckon a turn as about what a cautious party clears between one real choice and the next: a stretch of corridor and a room searched. It is this turn, not the footstep, that any clock in the dark runs on, a guttering torch, a wandering patrol, the watch you keep, so measure those against it rather than counting paces.

The party files into a narrow gorge where the GM has set bowmen on the rim. He calls for a Wits check to notice them; Hadia walks point, so she rolls, and the GM keeps the result to himself, a low number should give nothing away. Her Wits is +1 and her Watchfulness adds +1, but loose scree and failing light make it Hard, −2, for a net +0. The dice read 3, 4, 4 = 11: a Partial. She does not pick out the archers, but the quiet sits wrong, a dislodged pebble, a held breath, and she halts the column a stride short of the killing ground. The fight still comes, but on guard and not flat-footed (see Surprise, next chapter).

A lock opens two ways: quiet work, Agility with thieves’ tools (and the Thievery skill if you have it), or a loud break, Might against the lock, chest, or door, faster but it carries down the hall and may mar what is inside. Barring or spiking a door shut is no roll at all; it simply holds, and whoever would force it afterward does so at Hard or Daunting, or batters through with time and noise.

A Partial is the delver’s constant companion: the deed is done, but the price lands in the fiction. The trap is disarmed yet springs a lesser bite; the pick turns the lock but snaps off or rings out; the sneak slips past but is glimpsed or leaves a sign. In darkness or foul weather the GM applies a difficulty penalty.

3.6 Travel

Cross the wider world a day at a time. Pick a map scale, a hex or an inch to whatever distance suits your setting, and read every mode’s pace off that one scale:

A day covers | By
the base rate | on foot, or laden
twice | mounted, by cart, or pack train
three times | by river, sail, or steady current
four times or more | by air, or borne on great magic

A foot-day covers something like 20-30 miles (30-48 km) of fair country, so set the map scale to make a comfortable day’s walk land on the base rate; the multiples follow from there. Forcing the pace can win extra ground for a day or two, at the price of a harder navigator’s roll (treat it like rough country).

Each day the party names one navigator, whoever best fits the leg, and that character makes one Skill action with Wits (adding Wayfaring, Seafaring, or Riding if they have it): a Critical buys an edge, a day saved, a safe camp, a shortcut found; a Success spends the day as planned; a Partial still reaches nightfall, but at a cost, a lost half-day, a sprung hazard, supplies or a mount spent; a Miss turns the way against you, lost, weather-pinned, or set upon. Another traveler who scouts, tends the mounts, or keeps the boat may Help for the usual +1 (and shares the risk on a miss). Rough country, a night march, or foul weather slow the pace and sour the roll alike; a road, a fair wind, or a true map quicken both. The slowest traveler sets the party’s pace.

3.7 Talking to People

Most conversation is just roleplay, no roll: when a player makes a reasonable case in character and describes it, the NPC simply responds. Reach for the dice only when the table genuinely doubts the outcome, when an NPC might refuse, see through a lie, or take offense. Then it is an attribute check the GM assigns: persuading or intimidating usually leans on Presence, reading whether someone means it on Wits, a sly bluff perhaps on Wits as well; the GM picks the attribute the approach calls for and adds a skill if one fits. The ladder shapes the reaction:

Success: they come over, or you read them true.

Partial: a grudging yes with strings, or a true read that costs you (you tip your hand, they name a price, a third party takes note).

Miss: they harden.

Dice sway only the GM’s NPCs, not another player’s choices.

Doran leans on a wary harbormaster to let the party’s boat slip out unlogged. The GM calls it persuasion, so Presence: Doran’s is +1, and his Courtesy skill adds +1. The dice come up 3, 4, 2 = 9, for 11 total. A Partial, squarely in the 9–12 band: the harbormaster agrees, but he names his price, a cut of whatever they bring back, and he will remember the debt. They got what they came for, and it cost them.

4 Combat

When violence breaks out, play tightens into rounds. A round is a pass in which every combatant acts once.

4.1 Activation Order

Combat is fought between two opposed sides. The player characters are a party, and they face each fight together as one side, alongside their pets, summons, and allied NPCs. The Gamemaster runs the foes arrayed against them as the other side. In a fight the party and the GM are opponents.

The sides alternate, one combatant at a time. The side with the highest-Speed combatant activates one of its own first, then the other side activates one, back and forth until everyone has acted. On the party’s activation the players decide together which of their unacted combatants goes next, and only that one activates; the GM chooses likewise for the foes. When one side runs out of unacted combatants, the other finishes its remaining ones in a row.

4.2 Surprise

Sometimes a fight opens with one side unready, an ambush from the rocks, a knife in the dark, a sentry caught dozing. The unready side is surprised: the ambushers take the first activation regardless of Speed, and each surprised combatant has one fewer action (two instead of three) on its first activation. After that opening round the fight runs as normal, side-alternation by the highest Speed.

Whether a side is caught out turns on the Wits check to notice the danger (see Tasks and Skills):

Success or better: no surprise. The would-be victim sees it coming, and the fight opens by the usual order.

Partial: half-warned. The ambushers still seize the first activation, but the surprised keep all three of their actions.

Miss: full surprise, both the first strike and a lost action.

Roll only when the noticing is in doubt. A side with no chance to catch the danger, asleep, lured into the open, struck from a hide it could never have seen, is simply surprised, no roll required.

4.3 Your Activation

On your activation you take three actions, in any order:

Strike (Might): attack a foe within reach.

Shoot (Agility): attack a foe at range.

Defend (Agility): dodge or parry one attacker and gain +2 Defense against every attack from that foe until your next activation (the whole round, not just the first blow). Each action you spend defending is another +2: stack them on one dangerous foe (+4 or +6) or spread them across several attackers (+2 each), so an activation slides freely between offense and defense, attack twice and guard once, or turtle behind a full +6. To guard an ally, give that +2 to an adjacent ally instead of yourself, interposing against one foe (a Defense bonus, not the guardian’s blow-catching Intercept). A Defend action may instead take cover for the terrain’s cover bonus, or hold your ground: each action you spend holding readies a free Strike, loosed at the first foe to break from your reach, one per held action, no foe struck twice. Spend one and you tax a single escapee; spend two or three and you wall a lane, catching each of the first foes to slip past.

Maneuver (Might or Agility): shove, trip, disarm, grapple, or feint.

Steady: set your stance, take aim. Your next attack this activation is at +2 (it does not stack with itself).

Suppress (Agility): ready a loaded ranged weapon over an area or a foe’s path. The first foe to move into the open there draws your Shoot at once, and a hit or partial halts that move. You pay the action now, so this is no stress reaction; it holds until your next activation.

Move: reposition up to your Speed. You may split it across the activation, some spaces before an action and the rest after, but attacking ends it: once you Strike, Shoot, or Maneuver against a foe, any movement you held back is lost. So hit-and-run is no basic action (a playbook may grant it); a Disengage is no attack, so you can still thread it through a line.

Stand, Recover (shake one condition), Interact, a Skill (a task mid-fight; the GM sets the difficulty), or an Advanced Action from your sheet (most cost one action, some two; a few are reactions, below).

Multiple attacks wear you down: your second attack roll this activation is at −2, your third at −4. Mixing in movement, a maneuver, or a guard usually beats swinging three times. Steady spends one action to land a single clean blow rather than two ragged ones.

Weapons set their own pace through their keywords (see Gear): a heavy weapon lands one telling swing an activation, a reload weapon fires every other action, two weapons let the off-hand add a second Strike (its own action, at the Multiple Attack Penalty). A two-action attack, a heavy weapon’s sweep or some Advanced Actions, is a single roll counted as one attack; its price is the two actions it eats, not a worse roll.

You may mark stress on your activation as well, to Push an action or to fuel an Advanced Action (see Resolution). A few Advanced Actions are reactions: taken on another combatant’s activation for 1 stress, once per round, without spending an action of your own. A guardian’s Intercept, catching a blow meant for an ally, is one such reaction.

4.4 Attacking

Roll 3d6 + attribute + modifiers − the target’s Defense, and read the ladder:

Result | In combat
Miss (8−) | No effect; an alert foe may strike back.
Partial (9–12) | Hit, but at a cost: reduced damage, or the foe counters or breaks away.
Success (13–17) | A clean hit, full damage.
Critical (18+) | Full damage +2, and one condition (your choice).

A natural 17 or 18 on the dice (a Masterstroke, see Resolution) adds +(your level + 1) damage on top of the band’s result. It is read straight off the raw dice, so no penalty spoils it; a blow that misses outright simply deals no damage to add to.

Defense is how hard you are to hit: Agility + shield + cover; it is separate from Armor, which applies to damage, not the roll. Damage is your weapon’s value plus any ability bonus (Backstab, a Push), then −1 on a Partial, +2 on a Critical, then minus the target’s Armor (always at least 1 gets through). Subtract the result from the target’s Hit Points. At 0 HP a combatant is Down and Dying, out of the fight; a blow past 0 does not overkill. A felled monster dies, flees, or yields; a Dying hero is unconscious and rolls a death save on each of their activations (see Gear and Harm).

Bram, now a level-3 knight, brings his sword down on an ogre and the 3d6 land all sixes. That natural 18 is a Critical (full damage +2 and a condition of his choice) and, because the raw dice show three sixes, a Masterstroke too: +(3 + 1) more damage. His medium blade’s 4, plus 2 for the Critical, plus 4 for the Masterstroke, comes to 10; the ogre’s Armor 2 leaves 8 cut from its Hit Points, and Bram spends the Critical to leave it Staggered.

Weapon | Damage |  | Armor | Soak
Light | 3 |  | None | 0
Medium | 4 |  | Light | 1
Heavy | 5 |  | Heavy | 2

4.5 Position

Run a fight with tokens or miniatures and a ruler, on freeform ground or a grid. Measure in spaces: a space is one inch on the table, or one square or hex on a grid, whichever your table uses. All movement and range is counted in spaces. Reckon a space as about 5 ft (1.5 m) of ground and one activation as a handful of seconds: at Speed 2 a single Move is a 3 m stride, and putting a whole activation into moving carries you some 9 m, a quick-time advance under arms (about 1.5 m/s), brisk and watchful, well short of an open run.

[picture]

A cavern skirmish measured in spaces: the Hero stands engaged with a Skeleton in an adjacent space, while an allied Archer takes a short-range shot across the open floor; the rock outcrop is cover.

A Move carries you up to your Speed in spaces (Speed 2 for most; armor or a playbook shifts it). Standing from prone costs one action. Leaving melee is free, but a foe holding its ground (see Defend) draws a free Strike as you go. A Maneuver to Disengage waives it, no roll: for the rest of the activation you may leave the reach of every foe now threatening you untouched. It lapses the moment you enter a new threat’s reach (re-Disengage to peel off that one too, though Disengage and its Move already eat two of your three actions).

You may Move through an ally’s space, never through a standing foe’s; a downed, unconscious, or prone foe is no barrier (but a conscious prone foe still holds its ground like any active foe). You cannot end an activation sharing a space with another unit unless a trait allows it (a Tiny creature may share).

You Strike a foe in an adjacent space; a Reach weapon strikes one two spaces off. A Shoot carries to its weapon’s range band:

Band | Clean range | Long shot (−1)
Short (thrown, sling) | up to 4 spaces | 5–8 spaces
Medium (bow, light crossbow) | up to 8 spaces | 9–12 spaces
Long (longbow, heavy crossbow) | up to 12 spaces | 13–16 spaces

A shot past the long shot column is out of range. The GM applies flat modifiers for position, to Strike, Shoot, and Maneuver alike:

Situation | Modifier
Charging into melee | +1
Outnumbering the foe (flanking) | +1
Higher ground | +1
Target behind cover | −1 (to hit it)
A long shot (shooting past the weapon’s range band) | −1

These modifiers stack with each other (though never with a copy of themselves) and with a target’s conditions: a prone, flanked foe is struck in melee at +3 (+2 for prone, +1 for the flank).

4.6 Maneuvers and Conditions

A successful Maneuver inflicts a condition instead of damage. Conditions impose a flat −2 unless noted, and a creature can bear several different conditions at once, each in full. Inflicting one it already has worsens it instead (Staggered becomes Stunned; pile on enough and it goes Down, knocked out, not Dying, so no death save).

Pinned by a swordsman she cannot out-fight, Mirel Maneuvers to wrench his blade away rather than trade Strikes. Might or Agility serves; she rolls Might +1 against his Defense: 5, 4, 5 = 14, a Success. The sword skitters across the flagstones, Disarmed, and until he spends an action to draw another he is down to improvised blows. The Maneuver dealt no damage, but it bought the party a round.

Condition | Effect | Cleared
Prone | melee hits it at +2, it acts at −2 | Stand (1 action)
Staggered | −2 to its rolls | Recover (1 action), or it fades at its next activation
Stunned | loses one action | fades at the end of its next activation
Grabbed | cannot move; −2 to act | a Maneuver to break free
Disarmed | improvised attacks only | draw a weapon (1 action)
Frightened | −2 near the source; cannot approach it | Endure it, or the source gone
Ongoing N | N damage each activation, ignoring armor | tend it (1 action), or it runs out
Weakened | takes double from one named kind of harm | Recover (1 action), tend, or it fades

Each clears one condition at a time, so a foe buried under several spends an action or an activation apiece to dig free, the price (and the point) of stacking them. An Advanced Action that spends stress may lift more than one at once.

An ally can clear a condition for you when the fix is something hands can do from outside, paying the same action, and the same roll, it would have cost you, never a free favor. Where the clear is automatic, tending your Ongoing or putting a weapon back in a Disarmed hand, one ally action does it. Where the clear is a roll, the ally rolls it: prying you out of a Grab is a Maneuver against the grabber’s Defense, so a strong holder, an ogre’s fist, a roc’s talon, resists the rescue exactly as it resists your own struggle. One action buys the attempt, not the certainty. A few paths are yours alone, because they are you steadying yourself, Standing, Recover, Endure against fear; and the time-based clears (a Stunned foe shaking it off at its next activation) need no action from anyone.

A numeric condition does not add up: a second Ongoing (or Staggered, or the like) keeps the worse value and resets its clock, it never sums. So five small venom-bites still inflict only the single worst dose, not five, and a swarm’s threat is its many attacks and grabs, not a runaway tally of poison. One tend ends the Ongoing whatever its size.

Some creatures cannot suffer some conditions: you cannot trip or knock Prone a ghost, an ooze, a swarm, or anything without legs to take out from under it; a mindless thing feels no fear; a creature with no weapon cannot be Disarmed. A stat line notes what its kind shrugs off. When a condition will not stick, the Maneuver simply deals its damage (if any) and the GM says why.

Bram is flanked by two bandits. He spends his first action to Strike the leader (clean Success, 4 damage past its leather), then Maneuvers to shove the second prone, then Moves to put a wall at his back. Next round the prone bandit must spend an action to stand before it can close.

5 Characters

You build a character with a playbook, a guided sheet that asks about your character’s past. Each answer, rolled or chosen, grants a little, and by the end a complete adventurer has taken shape. Play through the questions together; the playbooks tie your characters into one another’s stories.

5.1 What a Starting Character Has

Attributes | one at +2 (your signature), one at +1, two at +0
Skills | three, drawn from your playbook and your past
Advanced Actions | two, one granted by the playbook, one chosen
Hit Points | 12 + your playbook’s toughness (0 to 4)
Stress | a track of 4 + your Presence
Speed | 2 spaces per Move (some playbooks more or less)
Defense | Agility + shield + cover
Kit | a weapon, perhaps armor, and a few useful things

An Advanced Action is the special trick of your archetype, a spell, a deadly strike, a thief’s craft. Most playbooks may trade one Advanced Action for two extra skills, or the reverse.

If you would rather skip the questions, the GM can hand out a quick array: attributes +2 / +1 / +0 / +0, three skills, and the playbook’s granted Advanced Action plus one choice.

5.2 Advancement

Characters grow over five levels. The GM picks how you earn them: a level at each story milestone, or one for every three significant challenges overcome (optionally counting hauls of treasure). Each level:

+4 Hit Points, always.

On levels 2 and 4: gain a skill (new, or deepen one to +2) and an Advanced Action.

On levels 3 and 5: raise an attribute by 1 (to a maximum of +3) and add +1 to your damage. Your playbook says what that raises, weapon damage for most, spell damage for a caster.

By level 5 a hero has about 30 Hit Points, attributes up to +3, five or six skills, four Advanced Actions, and +2 damage.

A level-0 character, a villager swept into adventure, has reduced Hit Points and no Advanced Actions, and, unlike a hero, gets no death save: at 0 HP a level-0 simply falls. Those who survive their first trials become full level-1 adventurers.

6 Gear and Harm

Carry what makes sense for an adventurer. The GM tracks only what matters: weapons, armor, and a handful of notable items. Mundane supplies, a torch, a meal, a coil of rope, are assumed unless scarcity is part of the story.

6.1 Weapons and Armor

A weapon deals damage by its size, light 3, medium 4, heavy 5, and may carry one or more keywords that shape how it fights. Bare hands or an improvised weapon (a chair leg, a thrown rock) deal 2, and bare hands are Quick (below); hurling something not made to be thrown (a rock) costs 1 stress, the fatigue a sling spares. A shield adds +1 Defense. Keywords mean the same on every weapon:

Keyword | What it does
Two-handed | Needs both hands, so no shield.
Heavy | Always two-handed, the hardest hitter but unwieldy: only one Strike an activation. To make that swing tell, a Success or Critical knocks the target Prone (Staggered if it cannot be felled), and you may swing all-out, −2 to the attack for +2 damage.
Quick | One action makes two attacks instead of one; the second takes the Multiple Attack Penalty, like any extra attack. Bare hands have it (a flurry of light blows).
Reach | Strike a foe two spaces off: a step beyond arm’s length, over an ally, or a charging foe before it closes.
Ranged | Attacked with Shoot, at a distance. Each has a range band (short 4 / medium 8 / long 12 spaces); a shot past it is a long shot (−1), and past that, out of range (see Combat).
Reload N | Spends N actions to reload between shots (crossbow 2, windlass 5): one telling shot, then a long wind.
Thrown | A melee weapon also hurled as a Shoot (short range).

Some thrown gear deals no damage at all but a condition: a net or bola hurled at short range, a pouch of caltrops scattered underfoot. These are a spent resource, you carry only a few, so they buy a moment, not a battle. Two such conditions ride on gear (and on a few monsters, like a spider’s Web) rather than on any Strike or Maneuver, so they are defined here, not in the Combat conditions table: Entangled (cannot move; −2 to act; one snare can catch up to 4 adjacent; a successful Maneuver or Endure tears free, a miss spends the action) and Slowed (Speed halved until your next activation; no −2 to rolls). Each item spells out which it inflicts; the setting’s gear cards carry them.

Armor soaks damage but slows you:

Armor | Soak | Note
Light (leather) | 1 |
Heavy (mail, plate) | 2 | Speed −1

Armor that soaks 3 or more is the mark of monsters and enchantment, not ordinary smiths, and such a creature always has a weakness worth finding.

6.2 Money

Coin buys gear, lodging, passage, and favors. Track a rough purse, not every copper; the GM sets prices to the setting and the moment. A new weapon or a night’s stay is small change to a successful party; a warhorse or a suit of plate is an expedition’s reward.

6.3 Harm and Recovery

Damage subtracts from your Hit Points. At 0 Hit Points you are Down and Dying: unconscious, prone and helpless, and bleeding out. A blow that would carry you past 0 simply drops you, there is no overkill, so no single hit kills a hero outright. (This is the heroic baseline; the desperate level-0 funnel is far more fragile.)

You can also be put Down without Dying: knocked out, not bleeding out, by a stress collapse (see Resolution) or by Staggering piled past Stunned (see Combat). A hero Down this way is out of the fight and helpless, but makes no death save; they come round on rest or a comrade’s aid. Dying is only the 0-Hit-Point state, and only Dying calls for death saves.

6.3.1 The death save

On each of your activations while you are Dying, make a death save: an Endure roll using your best attribute (the highest of Might, Agility, Wits, or Presence, as written on your sheet), read on the ladder. Anything that aids a roll aids the save, a Push, a Blessing, an ally’s reroll; the will to live takes every hand it is offered.

Death save | Result
18+ | You rally, conscious and back in the fight at 1 Hit Point.
13–17 | You stabilize: still unconscious, but out of danger. Stop making death saves unless harmed again.
9–12 | You cling on, still dying. Save again on your next activation.
8− | You die.

It is an ordinary Endure, so everything that helps a roll helps you here: mark stress to Push it (+2), a comrade’s Blessing, a rogue’s Fortune, a reroll. Harm taken while Dying forces a death save at once, and a foe who takes the time to finish a helpless hero simply does.

Choosing when to roll. Because your side sequences its own activations (round-robin by default), a dying hero is usually held for last: every ally who goes first is a chance to reach them and spare them the roll.

6.3.2 Getting back up

An ally beside you can act instead of leaving it to the dice:

First aid, a Skill roll with Medicine or a healer’s kit: on 13+ you are up at 1 Hit Point, hurt but standing; on 9–12 stabilized but still Down; on 8– no progress, and likely trouble.

Healing, a draught or a cleric’s Tend or Lift the Fallen, brings you up if it lifts you above 0.

Rousing a hero who is Down but not Dying (a stress collapse, a stagger knockout) needs no medicine, only a moment: an ally spends 1 action to haul them up, or they come round on their own after a short rest. There is no wound to mend, so first aid and healing are for the Dying. A hero roused from a stress collapse rises with their stress still full and Shaken, upright but with nothing left to spend until a rest clears the track.

A hero who returns from Down rises Shaken (see Resolution): the brush with death tells until you sleep it off. Going Down is survivable, but it always carries a cost. A felled monster simply dies, flees, or yields, as the GM plays it.

Bram takes a club to the head and drops to 0, Down. His side holds his activation for last: the rogue goes first and reaches him, spending an action on first aid with her healer’s kit. She rolls Wits +1 and Medicine +1: 4, 6, 3 = 13, +2 = 15. A Success, so Bram is back on his feet at 1 Hit Point, Shaken. Had no one reached him, Bram would roll his own death save on his activation, and could mark stress to Push it +2 if he dared.

6.3.3 Falling

A fall deals crushing harm, and the longer the drop the more of it your body must weather. For every 12 ft (about 4 m) fallen, make an Endure roll, Agility to twist and land with it or Might to take the impact, whichever the GM judges fits the fall (a dead-weight faller, unaware, bound, or unconscious, gets no roll and takes each span in full):

Per 12 ft (4 m) | Crushing damage
Miss (8−) | 6, the span lands hard
Partial (9–12) | 3, you half-roll with it
Success or Critical (13+) | 0, you ride it down clean

So a tumble off a low roof is one easy roll; a cliff or a roc’s parting gift is several, and even a sure-footed faller leaves a long drop bruised. Falling ignores armor, gravity cares nothing for plate, but Resist or Weakness to crushing still counts: brittle bones (Weakness: crushing) take 12 / 6 a span, a stone-tough hide half. As with any blow there is no overkill, so even a killing fall only drops a hero to Dying, the rocks below finish what the GM plays out.

6.3.4 Resting

A short rest with food and water restores a few Hit Points and clears 2 stress.

A full night’s safe rest restores all Hit Points and stress, and clears Shaken.

The Medicine skill, or a healer’s attention, mends faster and tends poisons, disease, and lingering conditions.

7 Adversaries

A creature needs only a short line of numbers and one idea that makes it interesting:

Name: HP · Defense · Armor · Attack +N (damage) · Speed · special

The GM rolls a creature’s attacks like a character’s: 3d6 + its Attack, minus your Defense, read on the ladder. A creature’s tier (Lesser, Common, Greater, Dire; see Attributes) sets the four attributes it saves with, so the line need only spell out HP, Defense, Armor, Attack, and Speed. Everything else, skills, morale, cleverness, the GM simply plays.

Foe | HP | Def | Arm | Atk | Dmg | Speed
Giant Rat | 2 | 2 | 0 | +1 | 1 | 3
Goblin | 4 | 3 | 0 | +2 | 3 | 3
Bandit | 6 | 2 | 1 | +2 | 4 | 2
Wolf | 5 | 3 | 0 | +2 | 3 | 3
Ogre | 36 | 1 | 0 | +3 | 5 | 2
Wraith | 10 | 4 | 0 | +3 | 4 | 3

A creature’s special is the one idea it brings to a fight: the wolf hunts in a pack and gains +1 when it outnumbers you; the giant rat is Tiny (below), batted aside by a glancing blow but hard to truly crush; the wraith’s Bane is fire (or a blessed blade), and ordinary steel passes through it untouched.

A swarm’s danger comes from how long each body survives, not how hard it hits. A mob of giant rats is more trouble than its hit points suggest, because each is Tiny: a glancing blow only swats it away, so the swarm lingers and keeps nipping until the party lands clean blows. Goblins, nimble but fragile, drop to a single blow and rarely land more than a scratch. A band of hardened bandits, with the hit points and armor to soak a wound and keep fighting, is a serious fight for a starting party; expect to carry someone home. Give a weak foe a point or two of armor and a few extra hit points and it stops being a nuisance and becomes a threat.

The ogre shows how a single big foe stays dangerous against a whole party. It is easy to hit (low Defense) but hard to hurt: a Tough Hide turns aside non-magic blows (−3 damage from anything but spells and fire). It strikes with two fists each activation (or hurls a rock at a distant foe), and a solid hit knocks you Prone (a critical also knocks you back), so you waste an action standing and repositioning while it pounds the next hero. Without those tricks a lone monster simply drowns under four heroes’ actions.

7.1 Attributes

A creature attacks with its Attack, and saves like a character, 3d6 + the fitting attribute (Presence against fear or a Rebuke, Might against a shove, and so on). Rather than write four numbers on every line, take them all from its tier and note only the exceptions:

Tier | Attributes
Lesser | +0
Common | +1
Greater | +2
Dire | +3

So the ogre saves at +3 by default; you note that its Might is higher still and its Wits lower. A steadier foe takes a higher Presence, or a flat immunity, the way the mindless dead feel no ordinary terror.

7.2 Immunities

Note in a creature’s stat line the conditions its kind ignores. The wraith cannot be tripped, knocked back, or Grabbed, there is nothing solid to take hold of; the mindless skeleton cannot be Frightened; the great serpent cannot be knocked Prone, being already low to the ground. An immunity makes a foe markedly harder, since the party loses the openings those conditions buy, so hand it out deliberately, the way you would any other defense.

7.3 Tiny

A Tiny creature, a rat, an imp, a sprite, is too small and quick to crush with a glancing blow. A partial hit (9–12) deals it at most 1 damage (an attack that would have hurt it does just 1; one already turned aside by armor does nothing) and bats it flying: it is knocked back, so it spends its next action scrambling into reach. Only a solid hit (13+) lands clean. This is why a swarm outlasts its hit points: keep each one’s damage low, a Tiny thing nips, it does not maim, and let the threat be numbers and persistence. A dozen Tiny rats make a fitting first scrap for green adventurers. A Tiny creature is small enough to share a space: it may end its activation in an occupied space, and other units may end in its. That is co-occupancy only, so a Tiny creature still cannot move through a standing hostile (it can perch in a doorway a guard blocks, not slip past to the far side).

7.4 Resist and Weakness

Between plain armor and an outright Bane sits a softer harm-sensitivity family, named in plain language on the stat line. Resist (kind) takes half from that kind of harm (or Tough Hide N, a flat −N from all but magic, as the ogre’s does). Weakness (kind) is its mirror, taking double from one named kind, the far-milder kin of Bane. Keep the named kind narrow, and do not hand a whole encounter the same weakness, or the doubling snowballs into a wipe.

7.5 Bane

Some creatures are harmed only by one named thing, their Bane; all other harm passes through and deals nothing. A Bane is a puzzle whose answer is printed in plain sight: the stat line names it (Bane: fire), so the table can find and exploit it. A creature the party’s weapons cannot touch demands another approach, the right element, a blessed weapon, the environment, a parley, or a swift retreat. Keep a Bane creature low on Hit Points: the party that finds the answer is rewarded, and one that has not yet found it is steered to think, not made to grind.

Telegraphing the Bane. The Bane is only a puzzle if the players can find the answer. Name it in the stat line so you do not forget it mid-fight; more importantly, signal it in play before they discover it through futile sword strokes. Useful tools:

Describe the immunity. When the first blow passes through untouched, say so vividly: the blade slides through the wraith’s chest and comes out cold, leaving no mark. That is the clue, not a punishment.

Put the answer in the world. A local legend, a scratched warning on a dungeon wall, an NPC’s offhand remark (“grandmother swore only fire keeps them down”) can reach the players before the encounter does.

Make it findable by looking. A Wits or lore skill roll before the fight, or after the first miss, is a fair way to surface the counter: “you recall the old stories — these things fear holy ground and open flame.”

Do not leave the Bane a surprise the party cannot prepare for. If the party has had no plausible route to the answer, give them one in the moment; the point is the choice (fight, run, improvise), not the helplessness.

The party’s swords pass through the wraith like smoke. Then the cleric remembers the old rhyme, “cold things fear the hearth,” and thrusts a torch into its heart, the wraith’s Bane, and it recoils as fire bites where steel could not.

8 Running the Game

Your job as GM is to present a living world, play its people and perils honestly, and let the dice and the players’ choices steer the story. A few principles carry the whole game:

Ask for a roll only when failure costs something. Otherwise, say yes.

Make Partials sting. The 9–12 result is the heart of the ladder: success with a price keeps every roll moving the story.

Telegraph danger. Show the trap’s worn flagstones, the ogre’s reach, the wraith’s untouchable chill, before they matter, so choices are real.

Set difficulty by fiction, not formula. Hard is −2, daunting is −4; most things are +0.

8.1 Building a Challenge

Match the threat to the party. A pack of Lesser foes (HP 4–6) tests the party’s position; a single tough foe (HP 12–20) tests their focus and their tricks; a Bane creature tests their wits. Mix freely, and remember morale: foes flee, surrender, or bargain when the fight turns against them.

A hard fight is not as fixed as its numbers look. Trading blow for blow is the deadliest way to meet one; a party that Defends its wounded, holds a chokepoint, and focuses fire can carry a fight that a slugfest would lose, so telegraph the terrain and the exits. The exception is a Bane with no answer in hand: there a defensive stance only delays the end. Steer such a party to find the counter or to retreat, and keep retreat, surrender, and parley live, the deadliest fight is the one neither side can leave.

Terrain is a force multiplier. Because no one may move through a standing foe, a passage one or two bodies wide lets a small line hold off a crowd: only as many attackers as the gap is wide can strike at once, so a swarm’s numbers stop counting, and a second rank behind the first is a fresh line for when the front falls. What breaks a held line is not more bodies but harder ones, a Dire bruiser whose blow cracks the tank, or a foe that flanks, flies, or shoots over the wall. Build a hold the door or protect the envoy set-piece around that: give the defenders a chokepoint and name it, then menace it with per-hit power or a way around, not a bigger mob. Whoever shelters behind the line, a caster, a wounded ally, an NPC, is safe only until the last defender drops.

8.2 Awarding Advancement

Whichever track you chose, advance the party together. Pace it so a campaign reaches level 5 over its arc, fast enough that growth is felt, slow enough that each new power lands.

8.3 A Session in Brief

Open on a hook. Let the players investigate, talk, and prepare. Bring a complication to a head. Resolve it in skill, words, or steel. Close on a consequence that opens the next door. Roll for what is uncertain; narrate the rest.

The rhythm of every session: describe the world, ask what they do, roll 3d6 when it is in doubt, read the ladder, and keep the story moving.

Beta: not yet playtested. This is a working draft (version 0.7). Its numbers and procedures are reasoned and simulation-checked, but unproven at the table, so expect them to change between versions. Play it, push on it, and report what breaks.