Essence Posted April 25 Clone Share Posted April 25 (edited) "It's not the will to succeed or the potential to win that matters—everyone has that. It's the will to prepare to succeed that matters." - Paul "Bear" Bryant StrengthSTRENGTH is a measure of how tough you are. It is the ability to take and deliver a beating. It determines things like how long you can go without food or rest, and how easily you pry open a blocked door. Close CombatWhen fighting unarmed or with a melee weapon, you use Close Combat. How much damage is inflicted by a successful attack is specified for each weapon. By rolling more successes than required, you may increase the damage by one for each extra success. EndureEndure is your ability to withstand hunger and cold, as well as being able to march for long periods without rest. It lets you withstand poison and disease. In some situations, you may transfer any extra successes to other PCs or NPCs in the same situation. ForceForce is your ability to lift heavy items, smash open blocked doors, or achieve things that require brute strength and determination. AgilityAGILITY is a measure of your coordination and motor skills. It is used, for example, when you sneak away from something dangerous, when you try to balance on an icy rooftop, and when you shoot a gun. MobilityMobility is the ability to run fast, climb high, and leap out of danger. You make a Mobility test when you flee from or chase after someone. Driving a car in difficult situations is also handled by Mobility. In combat, you can use your Mobility to take cover or flee. If other PCs or NPCs are climbing, running or in other ways using Mobility along with you, you may give them any extra successes to help them. Ranged CombatWhen attacking with ranged weapons or explosives, use a Ranged Combat skill test. How much damage is inflicted by a successful attack is specified for each weapon. By rolling more successes than required, you may increase damage by one for each extra success. If you are in close proximity to an enemy, you roll for Close Combat instead, even if you’re using a ranged weapon. StealthWhen attempting to sneak, hide, pick locks, tail someone, or perform tricks that require sleight of hand, make a Stealth test. You may transfer extra successes to people who are attempting the same as you. Failing a Stealth roll means that you get noticed or exposed. WitsWITS is your intellectual capacity, which you use to solve problems. It also reflects your prior education, and your general level of world-weariness. ScoutYou mainly use Scout in two types of situations. The first is when you are moving somewhere on the area map. Scout lets you determine if the sector you are about to enter is safe, and lets you find a good place to stay for the night. You lead the party in a way that minimizes risks. You can’t be helped with extra successes from others when you use the Scout skill this way, because only one person can lead the group. The other way to use Scout is to get an overview of your immediate surroundings, or to spot threats or hidden things. For example, a success may let you see that there is a sniper hiding on the rooftop, or spot hidden equipment in a building, or notice someone trying to sneak past you, or discover the best way in or out of a fortress. Extra successes can, at the GM’s discretion, give a +1 bonus per success (maximum +3) on one skill roll where you or someone else uses the information you got. A failed roll most often means that you do not get any information. But it could also mean that you are detected by your enemy or end up in a bad situation. PASSIVE ROLLS: When a hidden threat closes in, the GM can call for a passive Scout roll. Each PC present may roll to spot the threat. Passive rolls cannot be pushed. SurviveEverything you need to know about surviving outside the haven is handled with Survival. It lets you know how to set up a camp safely, how to find water, and how to know if that water is potable. Survival lets you set up traps to catch animals, fish and hunt, and it represents your knowledge of handling wild animals. There are three specific ways to use Survival. The first is when you scavenge for food and other resources. If you succeed, you get to roll on the Scavenging table. Each extra success lets you find one ration. The second way to use Survival is to track people or animals. If the person you follow tries to cover their tracks, you roll an opposed roll: Survival against Survival. Otherwise, you only need to succeed with the roll. A third way to use Survival is to use your recollection and understanding of the world before the outbreak to make an educated guess about where a specific item could be. If the group needs to find food or a radio transmitter, you could roll Survival to get information on where this might be found. If you fail your roll, that item is probably still there, but there are unforeseen complications. Extra successes most often mean that there is more to find than you asked for. Others cannot help you on the skill roll, and once you have rolled for a certain item, none of you are allowed to roll again to locate the same thing. TechTech is used to repair or build gear or weapons. When you engage in projects to enhance your haven, varying levels of Tech will be required to successfully complete them, depending on the project. Tech also gives you knowledge about how various types of mechanical and/or electrical devices work. EmpathyEMPATHY represents your ability to understand other people, and to persuade, charm, or trick them. LeadershipWhen you want to sway a crowd or inspire another person, roll for Leadership. Swaying a crowd works similarly to Manipulation, but you address a group of people. When you roll for Leadership, you cannot get help from others. There can only be one leader at a time. When inspiring someone with Leadership, each success rolled gives the subject +1 on a skill roll in one situation within a reasonable amount of time. They can wait to decide which skill roll gets affected until they make use of the inspiration effect. A failed attempt to inspire someone means you take one point of stress. ManipulationWhen you want to make another person do or think something by lying, bribing, threatening, or coercing them, use Manipulation. Play out what you say and do, and state what you want to achieve, then roll the dice. On a success, you get what you want. In difficult situations, you might need more than one success. Failure could mean that the other person disagrees with you, or even starts disliking you. If you talk to a group of people, use Leadership instead of Manipulation. When you try to make another PC think or do something, roleplay the situation and let the other player decide how their PC reacts. They can ask you to roll for Manipulation anyway, to help them decide what the PC thinks of what you are saying. MedicineMedicine lets you use your expertise to help someone who is hurt. The skill can also provide knowledge about anatomy, diseases, and injuries. It can be used to determine healing time for a wound, and what medicine or treatment is required. USING SKILLS There are twelve skills in the game that allow you to handle or endure difficult situations. Each of them is linked to an attribute. When using a skill, add the skill level and its associated attribute together. The sum determines how many six-sided base dice you roll. Note that you may use a skill even if you have no skill level in it – in that case, just roll a number of base dice equal to the attribute. If you have stress points (next page), you must also add one stress die to your roll for each point of stress. Rolling at least one six counts as a success. You rarely need more than one success in order to pass a skill test. ADDING MODIFIERS A basic rule is that everything affecting the skill roll is added together. If you have a talent or item that adds +2 to the roll and someone else helps you, granting a further +1 bonus, you get to add a total of three extra dice to roll. In rare cases, you may also need to roll fewer base dice. MEANS AND ENDS Before you make a skill roll, you must describe what your PC is trying to achieve. The GM may ask you to explain further, or to change your goal. This usually happens when they cannot get a clear picture of what you want to do, or find your goal unrealistic. For example, you cannot use Stealth to sneak past a guard who has already seen you. FAILED TESTS Failing a skill test means that you don’t get the result that you want. If you, for instance, are trying to climb over a fence to get away from a swarm, they grab your feet and pull you back down. If you try to inspire others to take up arms, they feel reluctant to follow you. If you fail building a camp in the wilderness, the dead might be able to attack without warning, or it will start to rain and all of your supplies will get wet. At times, the GM will let you get some of what you want, even if you fail. This could mean that some of the NPCs agree to fight with you but not all, or that you manage to climb the fence to escape the dead chasing you, but others appear on the opposite side, or that you manage to set up camp, but the next day you leave behind a trail that will lead others to you. PUSHING THE ROLL When you fail a test, you can choose to give it one more try. This is called pushing the roll. You have found another way to achieve what you want, or you simply muster your last reserves of strength and resolve. If you cannot explain what your PC does that lets them try again, you are not allowed to push the roll. You can only push a specific roll once. When you push a roll, you re-roll all dice that are not successes. You also take one stress point and add a stress die to the re-roll. You can push rolls that have already succeeded, since there are situations where multiple successes are needed. TALENTS When you create your Survivor, you get to choose one talent specific for your archetype. As you play, you will get XP that lets you buy new talents, either from your archetype, another archetype, or among the general talents below. Each talent has a name, a rule effect, and a prerequisite that has to have been achieved either through your backstory or in game. PREREQUISITES: The prerequisite is something that must have happened for you to learn this talent. When you choose your talent as a part of creating your survivor, you should describe this event as something that happened in your past life, either after or before the outbreak. When you acquire a new talent, you must either point to something that happened in the game that fulfills the prerequisite, or come up with an event in your past that does. CREATING NEW TALENTS: If a player wants a talent not described in this chapter, the GM may create it. The mechanics should be based on how other talents are constructed. Most talents either give a +2 bonus in a specific situation, or let a PC use one skill instead of another. Talents can also let PCs avoid taking stress under a specific circumstance, or let the player have a more active say in what happens during a particular scene. Talents that allow a survivor to have more health states or armor points are allowed. No talent will ever let a PC push a roll without taking stress. General Talents ANIMAL COMPANION: You have a pet that you can rely on once per session to get +1 on a dice roll where it is evident that your pet is of use. You won the trust of an animal. CENTER OF THE STORM: You don’t take stress when walkers spot you (the Threat Level reaches 3). You managed to keep calm in an extremely dangerous situation. EAGLE EYES: Gain +2 to Scout when you are trying to spot danger in a new sector. Your eyesight saved your life. HEALTH NUT: When you get a critical injury, you heal in half the normal time. During a period of your life, you got all the food and supplies you needed. HERB COLLECTOR: You can collect herbs and use them as basic medical gear. Someone taught you about herbs. ICE IN THE VEINS: You do not take stress when you are attacked by one or a few walkers (single attack). You survived an attack from a walker. INTENSE EYES: Gain +2 to Manipulation in a flirty situation. You had an overwhelming love affair. MARKSMAN: Gain +2 to Ranged Combat on the first shot in a fight. You killed on the first shot. MARTIAL ARTS EXPERT: Gain +2 to Close Combat when you fight unarmed. Someone trained you. NINE LIVES: When rolling for a critical injury, you may decide which of the dice represents the tens and which represents the ones. You should have died, but you didn’t. OBSESSIVE: Relieve one point of stress when you roleplay an Issue in a way that creates a problem for yourself or others in the group. You got on someone’s nerves. ON EASY STREET: Once per game session, you may at any point relieve one point of stress. Something made you believe things will work out. PACKMULE: You can carry one extra slot of items. You trained your body. PET KEEPER: You walk with chained living walkers. You get +2 to Stealth when you try to get past walkers this way. Name the two corpses that walk with you now. You chained two corpses and brought them with you. PSYCHOPATH: Never roll to handle fear. You have the shattered Issue: Psychopath. At some point you started to enjoy other people’s pain – or it has always been that way. SENSITIVE: You can use Scout to learn what other people feel and intend to do, and even their Issues. You saved a life by understanding someone’s true intentions. SKULL CRACKER: Gain +2 to Close Combat when you fight walkers. You took on a group of walkers and came out on top. SPECIALIST: Gain +2 to a specific skill when you use a specific item. Decide what the item is and for what skill you get a bonus. You saved the day with the help of your signature item. SPRINTER: Gain +2 when you use Mobility to outrun or chase someone. You ran fast in a crucial situation. SURGEON: Gain +2 to Medicine when you stabilize a critical injury that needs advanced medical gear. You saved someone’s life on the operating table. UNBITEABLE: When rolling on the Walker Attack table (page 81), you may decide which of the dice represents the tens and which represents the ones. You were attacked by the dead and survived. UNBREAKABLE: Once per session, when you take the third point of damage and become Broken, you immediately stop being Broken and regain one Health Point, as if someone had given you first aid. You still take a critical injury. Someone tried to break you and failed. WHISPERER: You do not have to make a skill roll to handle the walker swarm by disguising as one of them. You have walked among the dead many times, dressed in skin and blood. STRESS STRESS DICE Frightening, dangerous, or tense situations in the game can cause your character to suffer stress, in the form of stress points. And as described above, you also take one stress point every time you push a skill roll. You never take more than one stress point at a time, no matter how stressful a situation is. The Stress Factors table indicates typical situations that will lead to you taking stress. For each stress point you have accumulated, you add one stress die to any skill roll you make. This is not optional. Stress makes you more focused and more inclined to succeed with what you are doing. However, it also makes you more likely to make mistakes. Rolling a 1 on a stress die is called “rolling a walker.” It means two things: you cannot push the roll (if you have not done so already), and you mess up. It is possible to succeed with a roll and still mess up – you get what you want but something else goes wrong. The effect of messing up is the same whether you roll one or several walkers on your stress dice. Stress Factors These are examples of situations that will give you a stress point: Pushing a roll. Not getting enough food and water. Being attacked by the dead. Being shot at. Being framed for murder. Being rejected by your lover. Killing another human being in cold blood. Seeing someone in the group get bitten. Seeing someone in the group Broken by damage. Being Broken by damage. Being bitten. MESSING UP When you roll a walker on a stress die, you mess up. Typically, this means that you have attracted the dead and are now under attack. When you mess up in this way, the GM either raises the Threat Level by 1, or you suffer a single attack. When you mess up, the GM most often says something about what happens and then lets you describe it. This way you can portray your PC’s reaction in a way that makes sense to you. If you see your PC as a badass warrior, it would not be fun to have them stumble on a banana peel surrounded by enemies. You may instead have your PC fight for their life, beat two opponents to the ground, and then fail to see a third that sneaks up from behind. The PC goes down as a hero. At times, the GM will decide that the situation you are in is messed up enough as it is. In that situation, your only consequence would be that you can’t push the roll. Messing Up When you mess up it could mean that you: Alert the swarm by making noise (raise Threat Level one step). Fail to notice a couple of undead who close in on you (single attack). Run out of bullets/gas/spare parts/other resources. Offend someone. Hurt yourself. Break something important. Get lost. Lose your hostage. MESSING UP IN OTHER WAYS: When you have played a couple of sessions, you could let messing up mean other things besides making noise that attracts the dead. It could be anything from realizing that you are out of bullets to unknowingly offending an important NPC who will now start working against you. THE ART OF SUCCESS EXTRA SUCCESSES Rolling more successes on a skill roll than required means that you are extra successful. You impress the people around you, or you get a little more than you wanted. HELPING EACH OTHER When you make a skill roll, others may help you. They need to describe what they do to help, and it has to make sense that they are actually contributing – just being there or saying encouraging words is not enough. When you are helping someone, you cannot do anything else at the same time. You gain +1 to your skill roll for every person helping you, up to a maximum of +3. PCs can help even if they have a zero in the relevant skill. NPCs can only help you if they are Trained, Expert or Master in the skill. PARALLEL ACTIONS When two or more PCs are doing an activity at the same time, they cannot help each other. For example, if you are all trying to sneak out of a house where you have been held hostage, or if you’re both swimming to a boat – in such cases each of you must pass your own test without help from the others. However, some skills allow a PC whose roll results in more than one success to give the extra successes to other PCs or NPCs. A good runner who gets several successes on her Mobility roll, for example, may give one of each of her extra successes to others who failed their tests. In the game, this probably means that the overachieving PC offers to carry supplies for the others, or that she clears the road for them, or tells them which way to run. If a player cannot explain how their PC can help the others, they cannot give them their extra successes. OPPOSED ROLLS When you and another PC or an NPC are competing, or otherwise working against one another, you make an opposed roll. It could be when you and an enemy race to get to the armory first, when you are hiding and someone is trying to find you, when both of you are trying to convince a crowd that your stance on a subject is correct, or when you try to outsmart each other. You and your opponent each roll. The person with the most successes wins. A draw means that you and the other character are forced to compromise – you either both get some of what you want but not all, or you hurt each other simultaneously. EXTRA SUCCESSES: In an opposed roll, extra successes are counted as the sixes rolled beyond what’s needed to win the roll. If you get one more success than your opponent, you simply win. Each additional success is counted as an extra success. EXTREME DIFFICULTY Normally, when you get at least one success on a roll, you succeed. But in extreme cases, the Gamemaster may decide that it takes more than one success to achieve your goal. This should only happen in situations when you are trying to do something almost impossible, such as jumping between two cars racing on the highway or trying to calm an angry mob. OPPOSED ROLLS: If you roll an opposed roll, and one side is doing something that is challenging enough to raise the difficulty level, take away one of that side’s successes on the skill roll, before the rolls are compared with each other. BONUSES FROM GEAR When you use a tool or weapon, or when you drive a vehicle, you get a bonus – a number of extra base dice that get added to your skill roll. Edited May 1 by Essence (see edit history) Name xDiceName xDiceResult xDiceString xDiceRolls Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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