Playing the Game

Actions
When you want to take an action, roll two dice and take the highest one. If they end up the same, add them together. This number represents how well you did. It’s then compared to a Difficulty Number set by the Game Master or to a roll made by someone else. If you beat it, you succeed!

Two dice are your basic pool, but it can increase or decrease depending on Bonuses or Penalties:
* Bonuses: When you have an appropriate Ability for the thing you're trying to do, add a number of dice equal to your level in that Ability, sometimes, more than one Ability are relevant for an action, in this case, you use the bonuses of both or more! Otherwise, situational Bonuses can also work in your favor, these are decided by the GM.
* Penalties: The same way Abilities give you dice, Weaknesses take them away from you, and the situation also can give you a Penalty.

More dice are handled the same way. With doubles, add them together and compare the sum to any other number rolled. If the added dice are highest, use them. If not, use the other highest die. Triples, quadruples, and so on are all added together.

Going by the rules, you may soon realize it’s possible to have fewer than one die to roll. Don’t panic; all is not lost! When dice are reduced this low, you roll Negative Dice instead. At zero, roll two dice and take the lowest. For each number below zero, roll an additional die and again take the lowest. Duplicate dice are never added together when rolling this way.

Difficulty
Except on opposite rolls, your Difficulty Number for a check is as follows:


Drama Dice
If you feel success is vitally important, you may spend Endurance to help improve your result. For every 5 points you spend, you may roll one additional die, a Drama Die. These dice can be gained even after you have rolled! But be careful, as Endurance spent in this way cannot be regained in the usual manner. This drive to succeed at any cost takes a piece of your character’s very soul, and recovering that can only happen between adventures or another lengthy stretch of time determined by the GM.

Miracles
By expending 30 Endurance, a character may guarantee the success of a single action. If the degree of success is important, as for an attack, add six dice to your roll. Regardless of the actual outcome, you succeed by at least one. The Game Master may refuse a miracle if the scenario is not appropriate.

Special Considerations
Amazing succes
Rolling above max difficulty grants an Amazing Success, which means that the character just achieves something above what they were aiming for. This can be related purely in the narration, but it may also change the local circumstances in a way beneficial to the PCs. If a character rolls an Amazing Success in an opposed roll and their opponent does not, the PC can choose to inflict a Complication on their opponent, like giving him a temporary flaw or triggering one of his own flaws.

Declarations
Declarations are effectively when a player proposes their own challenges. Normally, the GM sets the challenges and opposition for the PCs, but sometimes the players themselves want to be sure of the concrete benefits of their Abilities, so they may propose taking an action they're not sure about, like whether they can really afford that fancy mobile HQ with Wealth, or track down that very rare, very illegal item with Connected. If there is doubt, the GM can set a difficulty and make the player roll- and if they player succeeds, that just becomes a thing that the PC can explicitly do.

Extended Actions
Extended Actions are lengthy activities that can use a broad skill set and can involve the entire party- a Difficulty number is set, and the party has to achieve a certain number of successes before they hit a certain number of failures.

Teaming up
Teaming up is basically aid another, but handled fairly simply- one character is designated the leader, and then rolls all of their dice plus one extra for every extra person helping out.

Rolling all ones
Ones don't add together, and a roll of all ones is always a catastrophic failure. At negative dice, any roll of 1 is considered as this.

Combat is divided by rounds and players take turns. At the start of the combat, everyone roll initiative, which is a standard roll, modified by the Ability Quick and the Weakness Slow. In a tie, the one rolling the most dice goes first. Refooting: at the beginning of every round, any character can reroll their initiative if they want, but they must stick with the new roll.

Your Turn
Any actions that don't take much effort and have no chance of failing are considered free actions; E. g. drawing a weapon, scanning a room quickly.

Attack!
After picking a target and choosing your move (if you have more than one), you make an Attack Roll:

Attack Roll is Two Dice
+ bonuses, abilities, & perks (Agile, Combat Expert, Accurate…)
– penalties, weaknesses, & flaws (Impaired, Clumsy, Inaccurate…)

Defend!
This roll is treated as an opposed roll, against the opponent's Defense Roll:

Defense Roll is Two Dice
+ bonuses, abilities, & perks (Evasive, Quick, Defensive…)
– penalties, weaknesses, & flaws (Impaired, Slow, Unwieldy…)

Unless explicitly stated otherwise, everyone always has the opportunity to make a Defense Roll, whether they have already attacked, received a Complication (described later), or lost their next action.

Countering
If you're feeling really ballsy, you can choose to Counter instead of Defend, in which case you compare attack rolls, and the winner rolls damage as though they were attacking a defense roll of ZERO. In addition to being incredibly risky, a character that Counters loses their next round's attack.

Range
basically, if the character has some feasible means of getting into hand-to-hand combat with an opponent, they can, but if the enemy is flying, shooting from some inaccessible vantage point, or is otherwise very distant and difficult to get to by means a character has at their disposal, then combat occurs at range, and attacks without the Ranged Perk just don't hunt.

Damage
Once a successful hit is landed on an opponent, Damage is calculated. For every point your Attack Roll exceeds your opponent’s Defense Roll, you deal your Damage Multiplier (or DX). The total is then subtracted from your opponent’s Health.

Damage Multiplier is 1
+Abilities & Perks (Attack, Strong, Effective…)
- weaknesses & flaws (Weak, Ineffective…)

An opponent’s Armored Ability can reduce the DX of your attack. Should this reduce your DX below 1, treat it as ½ instead. Abilities and Weaknesses like Resistance and Vulnerability can modify your Damage, too.

Combat Complications
Now, if a character takes a nasty hit that deals at least half of their maximum health, the also gain a Combat Complication, which can generally fall into one of three varieties. Stunned means the character loses their next action (even stunned characters get a Defense Roll, however). Impaired means the character gets -1 die to all actions until the end of combat. And then there's Weakness complications, which means that one of the character's Vices or problems comes knockin'.

Health & Endurance
Health is generally reduced by damage, and Endurance is generally reduced by actions you take, but things happen when one of those reaches zero. If your Health is reduced to zero, you can continue to fight on at a penalty (-1 on all actions), and any further damage is done to Endurance. If your Endurance reaches zero, you can continue to fight on, but at the same penalty, and you can still use Endurance-costing things- they're just taken from Health. Vehicles do not get the benefit of coupled Health/Endurance. Once per combat, a character may use their action to recover 10 Endurance, this is called Recovering. Once a character loses all of their Health and Endurance, they're out of the fight.

Other Combat Actions
Multiple Actions
you can actually take more than one action per round, but at penalty equal to the total number of actions taken- so if you take two extra actions, all three are at -3 dice. Any Defense Rolls made this round also suffer this penalty. Also, the same action may not be taken against the same target twice, so you can't get multiple attacks against the same target. This does not allow you to bypass losing an Action to Stunned or similar effects.

Adjusting Attacks
You have options to adjust you attacks at whim, here they follow:
Reckless Offense: Increase your Attack Roll by 2 but reduce your Defense Rolls by 2 until your next turn. (Accurate x2, Unwieldy x2)
Kamikaze Strike: Increase your Attack Roll by 5 but make no Defense Rolls until your next turn. (Accurate x5, Open to Attack)
Defensive Stance: Reduce your Attack Roll by 2 but increase your Defense Rolls by 2 until your next turn. (Defensive x2, Inaccurate x2)

Don't Hurt Me!
By forfeiting your next action in the pursuit of not getting hurt, you may double the number of dice in your Defense Roll.

Protect
Risking life and limb, you can help a character who has failed their Defense Roll. By forfeiting your next action, you may make a Defense Roll against the attack as if it were made against you and take any Damage received as well.