Trait Roll
Each character has a dice pool with dice of different colors:
• Brawn (Black dice) is your physical prowess: strength, agility, and toughness.
• Guile (Grey dice) is your mental prowess: reason, wits, and willpower.
• Weird (White dice) is your magical prowess: spiritual power, intuition, and ability to control and resist magic.
When a character attempts to perform an action that carries significant difficulty, danger or stress, determine the scale and the stakes of the roll,
choose up to three Trait dice (of any color), and roll them.
- Each die that shows a 4, 5, or 6 is a "success" or a "hit".
- 6s count as two hits if the dice color matches the type of action (e.g. black Brawn dice for physical actions).
- Each success allows you to resolve one of the stakes (remove a
Risk or gain a
Reward)
OOC:
To help with the rolls, I have implemented the dice color and success/fail rules automatically using the character sheet provided (see below)
Effort
Note that the number of dice you roll determines the effort your character puts into the action:
* Roll one die for "moderate effort":
You can only achieve one hit (two if the color fits), so you cannot accomplish a lot at one time, but neither will you be stretched too thin.
* Roll 2 dice to make an "extraordinary effort":
You exert yourself to have a better chance of success and can achieve greater degrees of success. However, you run the risk of exhaustion: if you roll doubles, you lose one of your dice from the roll.
* Roll 3 dice to make a "supernatural effort" for a magical power, such as your Dark Gift:
If you roll doubles or triples, you lose one Trait die and gain another Mark of your Curse.[ +- ] Example
Lydia Rookwood is a pale, willowy girl with a manic demeanor but an impressive aura and intimidating presence. She has 0 Brawn, 1 Guile, and 4 Weird dice.
If she rolls her 1 Guile die to pick the lock on a door, she could get an extra success if she rolls a 6, but she could choose to roll one of her Weird dice if she wanted. She’s in a hurry and makes an extraordinary effort to kick the door open quickly, so she rolls two dice. She has no Brawn so she chooses 1 Guile and 1 Weird. She rolls and gets 5 and 5--Success with two hits!--but she rolled a double and strained herself with the effort. She has to lose one of the two dice she rolled. She chooses to drop the Weird die because she has them to spare. She now has 0 Brawn, 1 Guile, and 3 Weird dice.
Later, she uses her dark gift to summon a murder of crows to attack her enemies. She rolls 3 dice for a supernatural effort: her 3 remaining Weird dice for best effect. She gets 6, 4, and 4. That’s 4 hits--huzzah!--but also a double so she loses a die and gains a new Mark. Blood drips from her nose and she stares with the glossy, totally black eyes of a carrion crow as she directs her birds to attack.
Assets and Resources:
You can spend
Family Resources or
Individual Assets once per session to help you with your actions, as long as you can justify it:
* If you spend one before a dice roll, you gain one automatic success.
* If you spend one after a dice roll, you can re-roll any number of dice.
Even though you have "spent" the asset or resource, remember that they don't just vanish. You can still use them narratively, you can't gain this one-time bonus again.
Pushing Your Luck
If you roll a Trait check with one or two dice and do not roll any hits, you can increase your effort at a cost. You can add more dice to the roll (up to 3 total), but you must add another Risk for each die added. If there are no obvious additional Risks, use
"It might exhaust you: lose a Trait die".
The Curse
When you use your Curse, you make a
Trait Roll like any other action,
but you must make a supernatural effort and roll 3 dice. If you have less than 3 dice to roll, you can’t control your Gift.
With every attempt to use your Gift carries the chance of rolling a double and gaining another Mark. Keep in mind that not only this moves you closer to be lost to the Curse,
when attempting a non-supernatural Trait Roll , your Marks may inflict additional
Risks to all actions where they can interfere.
For example, you may sink if you try to swim as your skin turns to stone
At the cost of 1 Weird die, you can suppress your Curse and hide your Marks for one scene, but only during daylight hours. From dusk to dawn, darkness is dominant and the Curse cannot be suppressed.