How a Dice Pool is Described
Pools of d10 (10 sided dice) may be described as
height and
width.
Heigh is usually the highest number rolled with the pool. So for a pool of 4 dice if you rolled 1,5,3,8 the 8 would be your highest result. Height can also be the sum of all dice rolled, so 1,5,3,8 would be 17, though this is an unusual use and would be explicitly defined. Width is the number of dice, so a width of 4 would be a pool of 4 dice you roll.
What the Numbers Mean
So you roll your dice pool, which is always at least one dice (if you have no skill you still roll one die) plus a die for each level of skill (1-4) plus a die for any relevant gear. So if you have a skill of 2 for stealth and gear of soft quiet boots (1 extra die for walking quietly) then you have a pool of 1+2+1=4 dice so you roll 4 d10.
The basic result is the
number of successes you rolled, which are dice that gave a 6 or better result. For each d10 the result is as follows:
| Roll |
Success |
Complication |
Special |
| 0 |
1 |
|
Impose a complication, or if 1 die a second success |
| 9 |
1 |
|
Impose a complication |
| 8 |
1 |
|
|
| 7 |
1 |
1 |
|
| 6 |
1 |
1 |
|
| 5 |
Only if 1 die |
1 |
|
| 4 |
|
|
|
| 3 |
|
1 |
|
| 2 |
|
1 |
|
| 1 |
|
3 |
|
If you roll only one die then you simply get that result, with a special case of a 5 being a success with complication and a 0 being two successes (so you have a 10% change to do something
Challenging if untrained).
If you roll a pool, 2 or more dice, then you choose which ones you will count, though you must choose at least one. So if you rolled 1,3,5,8 you would choose the 8 which is a success and so you would succeed at doing something that was average (1 success). Easy things (0 successes) are not usually rolled for. If you were tring to do something challenging (required 2 successes) then you would have failed. Below is a table of
Target Number (
TN) of successes needed depending on the
Difficulty of the task or action.
| TN |
Difficulty |
1d10 |
2d10 |
3d10 |
4d10 |
5d10 |
6d10 |
7d10 |
| 0 |
Easy |
100% |
100% |
100% |
100% |
100% |
100% |
100% |
| 1 |
Average |
60% |
75% |
88% |
94% |
97% |
98% |
99% |
| 2 |
Challenging |
10% |
25% |
50% |
69% |
81% |
89% |
94% |
| 3 |
Hard |
- |
- |
13% |
31% |
50% |
67% |
87% |
| 4 |
Severe |
- |
- |
- |
6% |
19% |
34% |
50% |
| 5 |
Extreme |
- |
- |
- |
- |
3% |
11% |
23% |
| 6 |
Legendary |
- |
- |
- |
- |
- |
2% |
6% |
Complications
You can use the impose a complication of a 0 to cancel out one imposed on you from a 6 or 7. Other players and the GM suggest complications and the player agrees to one. Note complications could apply to another player or help an NPC if that makes sense.
Helping
You can help another player succeed by giving them one of your successes. They can save it for a future action (though depending on the situatuon they might need to use it immediately or loose it). Optionally you can save one for yourself to use later, or to impede (count against) someone else's future action.
Example
Bart gets a success to set-up a bar patron, and Bart's partner Bella uses it to make her play.
Jenny uses her attack to briefly bind her opponent’s sword, and thier partner Jack uses it to weaken the opponent's defense.
Ernest steps in front of a guard which slows them down so that his partner Lena gets a little more distance as she runs from them.
Advantages
Lastly most
advantages/disadvantages add/remove successes. This is applied after the dice pool above, so if you roll a success and you have a disadvantage that removes a success. If you did not have a success then you move a level down the table (called a
Shift), so a single success would become a success with a complication or a fail (5) wold become a fail with a complication (3). So its best to be carefult if you try doing whatever you are bad at.
Example
So Bella hasa stealth
skill of 2, soft quiet books (
gear), so she has a dice pool of 4 (base +2 for skill +1 for gear). She rolls 1,5,7,0 so has two successes (7,0). The 7 imposes a complicatio on Bella but she can use the 0 to remove it. Lets say Bella had the
Advantage silent (1) so gets a third success. No lets say the situation was Bella was sneaking up to to someone on an abandoned loose gravel road. Its abandoned, so its quiet, so the
TN goes up from
Average (needs 1 success) to
Challenging (2). Further, the loose gravel is noisy so that increases
TN to
Hard (3). Its a good thing Bella has her boots (
Gear) and a quiet
Advantage otherwise she would have failed! Under normal situations (some ambient noise from other people walking on a normal floor or road) you would have been incredible (two successes above what was needed).
| Situation |
Effect |
| Push |
Extra dice |
| Gear |
Extra dice |
| Advantage |
Extra success |
| Disadvantage |
1 less success or shift |
