Resolving Actions

Feat Table

Feats and Contests are decided by rolls of 3d8 compared to the Feat table. A Feat level is determined by deducting the acting character’s Ability or skill from the difficulty level determined by the GM, or from another character’s Ability or skill if they are opposing or resisting the action.

Roll 3d8 dice coloured (for example) Red, White, Blue. In the following table, if the green numbers are rolled then the action succeeds. For negative feat levels, any green number on each die indicates success. For positive feat levels, all dice must roll green numbers to indicate success.

In practice, this will mean at least two rolls for all attempted Player Character feats. i.e. roll a d100 to see the level the character is operating at for this feat and then three d8s rolled together. In some circumstances, the GM should let players know what their target roll for a particular Feat this is when the PC would understand the difficulty of the task she was facing. The circumstances of when a player is made aware of this could differ. For example, if a player were to attempt to climb a cliff they might be able to make a fair assessment of the difficulty before commencing and choose not to try. However if a player were trying to pick the pocket of an unknown NPC they would not be aware of the NPC’s skill until they made the attempt. Thus in the former case, the GM might tell the player before attempting the climb what he would have to roll, whilst in the latter case the difficulty should not be revealed until the player was committed to the action.

Any task with a Feat level above 8 is so improbable as not to be worth rolling for (at least not without the expenditure of Wyrd Points) and similarly any task below –8 is so very likely as to be unnecessary to roll for. Thus the Feats attempted by NPCs tend to be in the –3 to +3 range. PCs may attempt more difficult Feats and may ‘buy’ several unrolled 8s with Wyrd Points. Since this is quite expensive players will tend to do this only for crucial actions or else their characters will very quickly use up their ‘luck’.

Note: the order of the dice results rolled is important. This is why the die in the table are colour-coded d8s. One colour always represents the first d8 rolled, a different colour the second and so on. Picking the dice order after you roll changes the probability of success, which is cheating.

Where a character is attempting an action where the difficulty is related to another character or creature the Feat level will be arrived at by deducting the opposing character’s skill from that of the character making the attempt.

Degrees of success and failure

Where an action requires a judgement of more than simply success or failure the GM can determine the degree of success or failure by comparing a character’s roll to Feat levels above and below the basic Feat level for the action.

For example, if the Feat level for a particular action is determined to be 1, a simple success is given by a roll of 7 or 8 on the first d8 (the white die). However to determine the level of success the GM also considers the second and third d8s (the red and blue). If the first die is 7 this will indicate a success. A roll of 8 would have succeeded at Feat level 2 and so would indicate a higher level of success. If the first two dice (white and red) were both 7 or 8 then this would have been a success had the Feat level been 3. If all three dice rolled 8 then this would have been a success at Feat level 8 and could be judged to be a spectacular success for an original Feat of level 1. Similarly, if the first die were to roll 1 or 2 this would be a failure at Feat level -1 and could be seen as a fumble or worse for a Feat level 1 action. A roll of 1 on all three dice would be a failure at Feat level -8 and could be a disastrous failure for a Feat level 1 action.

It will take a little practice to become familiar with the interpretation of the rolls but once this is achieved the results of all actions can be resolved by one roll of 3d8.