Monsters and Magic

Chapter 1: Playing the Game

Dice

Dice are what you roll with! While you may be used to thinking of dice as little six-sided cubes, dice can come with many different numbers of sides!

What dice, with how many sides, you should roll with is indicated by a d followed by a number–a d6 is a six-sided die, a d20 is a 20-sided die.

The number of dice you should use is indicated by a number before the d–if you’re asked to roll 2d6, you’ll be rolling 2 six-sided dice.

If you’re told to increase or decrease a dice’s size, it means choosing a die with either more or less sides. Dice sizes are:

1d2<>1d4<>1d6<>1d8<>1d10<>1d12<>2d6<>3d4.

If you’re asked to roll a d%, roll either 2d10, treating one as the “ones” digit and one as the “tens” digit (two 0s would be 100), or 1d100.

Ability checks

When you make an ability check, roll 1d20 and add the corresponding ability to determine how successful you were in accomplishing your task.

While all dice rolls are ability checks, it’s useful to have specific names for different kinds of ability checks to distinguish them:

  • Skill check - ability check made with a relevant talent
  • Attack roll - ability check made to attack a creature with a spell or weapon, using +POWER for weapons (or optionally +FOCUS for precise weapons and +CUNNING for _agile weapons), and +SPELL for spell attacks
  • Saving throw - ability check made with a provided ability to resist an effect
  • Focus roll - ability check made with +FOCUS
  • Cunning roll - ability check made with +CUNNING
  • Power roll - ability check made with +POWER
  • Luck roll - ability check made with +LUCK

You may also make a damage roll, this uses a weapon or spell’s damage die instead of 1d20. When attacking with a weapon, add the ability you used to make the attack roll with to the weapon’s damage.

Some ability checks will have a Difficulty Class (DC), which changes the minimum roll you need to score a weak hit. If you’re told to roll with advantage, roll 2d20 and use the higher result of either d20, disadvantage the same but you use the lower result. You can’t have multiple instances of advantage or disadvantage at the same time, and having both at once cancels each out.

If an effect happens at +1 step or -1 step, take the result you’ve rolled and either go up or down the result chart by one step. Unless otherwise specified, this cannot turn a strong hit or miss into a critical hit or critical miss.

Ongoing, Forward, and Hold

Throughout the game, techniques, spells, or feats may tell you to take +1 ongoing, -1 forward, or to hold 3-things. They are modifiers to the game and will include a description, for instance take +1 ongoing to attack rolls until the end of combat, or +3 forward to your AC, or hold 3-arrows. Each has a different expiration: ongoing continues until its described end condition is met, forward ends the next time the roll is needed or its end condition is met, and hold ends when all of its charges are used up, its end condition is met, or you take a rest. Whenever you gain hold, it will be of some type (here, arrows); hold of the same type stacks