What this is

This is my nearly finished (tm) tabletop RPG system.

The system uses three six sided dice with modifiers added for checks. It has its roots in D20, but I prefer the clustering of results around the middle values you get with 3d6, and 3d6 vs 3d6 opposed checks make even a single point of advantage mean something. Points in a skill are capped at 6 for this reason, and an enterprising player with some bonuses and good gear should have difficulty getting modifiers much higher than 9 for checks.

I've never really liked hit points, classes or levels. This iteration of the system is using levels because having gotten rid of them I ended up with the need to place a cap on skills, but characters don't have classes because I like players to have characters who "are also a..." without being too over or under powered. Playtesting has reminded me that too much choice can be paralysing so everything is broken down into "paths" which reflect general archetypes, and if not present already there will be a set of sample characters available covering traditional role setups.

This system has been built somewhat around the style in which I run games, because it would be impossible and counter productive not to. I expect maybe a combat every one or two sessions, occasionally two back to back with a focus on interaction, investigation and player led planning filling the rest of the time. I started trying to write a gritty, brutal combat system and at low skill and gear levels that's very much the case. As characters get more skilled and geared the game becomes more cinematic than gritty, a character fully armoured with a 4-6 point check advantage can wade into a pack of enemies and take them out using mainly counter-attacks with little danger of getting more than slightly hurt.

These rules are strong guidelines more than rules. There need to be established precedents and boundaries for things but people brave enough to run a tabletop session need to be given some wiggle room. The reader will likely see turns of phrase such as "You can survive almost any fall without taking damage" throughout the rules. The "almost" is there to protect whoever is running the session from rules lawyers, and to remind players that there will be situations in game the rules simply haven't anticipated. The intent is to be able to avoid conversations like this:

Player: I jump off the bridge and land on the lava.
GM: ...
Player: The rules say I don't take damage when I land. Now, with my next action...

Even in a world where magic, science and faith let people perform fantastic and amazing deeds, there are boundaries and limits. The rest of the system is based around a number of core assumptions as follows:

Anyone who dedicates themselves to a task is capable of achieving things that defy expectation but are really cool. A skilled thief might move unseen through a crowded room, or leap the full width of a street. High level characters should be able to do awesome things. Low level characters are still scrubs who can fail hilariously even the most basic tasks.

Magic is based on an extension of understanding. It allows a character to exert influence within their area of understanding. It cannot create but it can change. Energy to make these changes is drawn from the caster but may be supplemented by ritual preparation. There are a number of arcane runes that are often used as a focus for this power.

The gods are real and powerful but they can't act directly on the world, only grant that power to their followers and those they think will act in their interests. It is widely but not universally accepted that the faithful live on after death and the godless fade away. Those gifted power by the gods are more often out in the world being impressive than they are leaders of churches. It's also possible to draw power from the lingering souls of the faithless, however one of the few areas that all the churches agree is that no-one should ever do this.

Science is on a par with magic in terms of the impact it can have on the world, and widely believe to be safer. Alchemical transmuters can change the properties of materials, making wood as hard as steel or metal that bends like cloth. Augmenters brew potions that can bring joy or sorrow, quicken the mind or strengthen the body. Reactionists specialise in the creation of heat, light and smoke brought about by the mixing of materials. Binders produce adhesive pastes, frictionless greases and even preparations that attract and repel from a short distance. The study of medicine stretches beyond first aid and into setting bones and curing poisons and diseases.

To make a character you need to pick a name and a heritage and then learn some skills and customisations. Skills and customisations are grouped into paths to make it easier to build a character, each path represents a common theme or archetype. You can pick skills and customisations from any number of paths.

Heritages

Each character should have exactly one heritage (it's like picking a race in other systems), which will give some specific customisations unique to that heritage, and may offer the opportunity to purchase others.

Most of the nonhuman heritages represent groups of people who were alchemically augmented for a specific purpose.

Skills and Customisations

Skills and customisations are grouped into paths. Characters can pick and choose from across all paths, or specialise into one or two.

There are two levels of competency in skills, partial and trained. Partial competency costs one experience and lets you add half your level, rounded up to checks using the skill. Trained costs another experience and lets you add your level to checks using the skill.

Customisations allow your character to perform specific actions or modify how and when you can use specific skills. They cost one experience each to learn.

Levels and experience

Player characters start at level 2, with 10 experience to spend on skills and customisations. The level cap is 6, and experience can be awarded separately from level ups.

Sample backgrounds

If you're lacking inspiration, below is a list of starting points for a character (unless I forget to put them in before you read this):

How to make checks

When you want your character to do something, all you have to do is say so. In some cases, it'll just happen, for example if you want to open or shut an unlocked door. For actions that aren't a guaranteed success or are under pressure, you may have to make one or more checks to succeed. The decision as to when there's enough uncertainty to require a check rests with your game master.

All checks are made by rolling three six sided dice, adding a relevant skill if you have one and then adding to or subtracting from the result based on circumstance (see advantages and disadvantages below). Some checks have a fixed difficulty and have a target score (TS) that must be equalled or beaten to succeed. Other checks are opposed checks where you have to beat a check made by someone else. For opposed checks the attacker or instigator wins ties.

Opposed checks should only be used when you're using a skill against someone competent who's in a position to actively 'oppose' you. eg pretending to be a noble walking through a town doesn't mean you have to make an opposed check against everyone in the crowd, but you do need to make a check when trying to get past the palace guards.

Success and failure

Succeeding at a check (by equalling or beating the TS) should result in a tangible positive effect.

For example, in combat if you win a check you get past your opponent's guard and inflict a tangible wound on them. Winning by a large margin (scoring at least 3 more than required) is a critical success and should grant an even larger benefit. For example not only does the owner of the house you're trying to talk your way into agree to shelter you but they also offer to feed you and put you in contact with someone sympathetic to your cause.

Similarly, failing a check means whatever your character was trying to so didn't work, with no unexpected consequences.

For example, an attack misses, a lock remains unpicked or the guy in the above house shuts the door in your face. If you fail by a wide margin (more than 3) then you critically fail and something worse happens. For example you open yourself up to a counter attack, snap your picks in the lock or the house owner starts shouting for the guards.

These are deliberately rough guidelines, all benefit and penalty assignments should be at the GM's discretion and based on the check and situation. Just because you got 18 picking the lock on a diary doesn't mean it's going to come with huge benefits.

Bonuses and penalties

Sometimes things are easier than they would normally be, for each of the below that apply you get a stacking +1 bonus on the check

• Advantage: The situation you're in makes this check a little easier, maybe you have someone helping you, the person you're trying to persuade is an old friend or the guard you're trying to sneak past is drunk.
• No pressure: You can spend as long as you need on this check.
• Right tool for the job: If you're using an expensive or custom item designed for this exact task.
• Spend big: If you have a consumable item that's just right for the task you also get +1 if you use it.

Equally, you might end up in a less than optimal situation where there's a penalty in place on your checks. Each of the below that apply add a stacking -1 penalty on the check

• Disadvantage: The situation you're in just makes this check harder, maybe there are two guards to sneak past instead of one, the place you're trying to break into already had a break-in this week or the person you're trying to persuade irrationally hates everyone of your gender.
• Time is a factor: You don't have enough time to do the task properly: -1 to the check.
• Wrong tool for the job: You have something that you can use for the task, but it's far from ideal: -1 to the check.

Combining skills

You might want to do something that falls outside the scope of any of your skills individually, but makes sense if you combine two (or more) of your skills. For example you might want to make a convincing illusion that talks by combining sound and light magic, or anima and mechanisms to make a prosthetic limb.

To use skills in combination requires a check with each of the separate skills being used be successful. In combat if you start your turn with one or more unspent reactions, you can use your quick action for one skill check and your main action for another. Out of combat you can combine as many skills as it makes sense to, and if the situation allows you might be able to combine skills with another party member.

Turn Structure

Combat happens in turns, with every character getting one action and at least one opportunity to react before the first can act again. Most combats will have two clear sides, who act alternately. Where there are three or more groups they take their turns in order. A normal combat will go Players, Enemies, Players, Enemies... and so on. A three sided combat might go Players, Guards, Thieves, Players, Guards Thieves...

Combat begins with whichever group starts the combat taking their actions. After that, each group of participants acts, in an order of their choosing. Within the group's actions the order isn't fixed and can be changed turn by turn to take account of wounded party members or to gang up on an opponent effectively. If the players are unable to agree a combat order, either get new players or use awareness checks to determine order.

From a player perspective combat could look like: We start the fight and get an action each (in any order the players are happy with), enemy takes an action each (some or all of which we can react to), we get a full turn, enemy gets a full turn etc.

Movement

As part of your turn you can move your character 10m. You may need to make a check if your character isn't moving across unobstructed, flat ground, or if you want to use a skill to get to your destination. You can move up to an enemy with no risk (unless they have some fairly specific customisations or weapons), but if you move past them by travelling through (into, and then out of) a square in their striking range or away from them, the enemy may use their reaction to attack you with a melee or reach weapon. You can take your action before, after, or during your move.

Actions

An action is the main thing your character does on their turn. You can use an action to:

• Use a weapon or other offensive skill to attack an opponent
• Use a skill to distract or disadvantage one or more opponents
• Prepare an action to take later in the turn if a condition is met, e.g. "I want to shoot the guy at the back if he breaks cover"
• Move again (dash).

You can also do some things when it’s not your turn, such as use a weapon or skill to defend yourself against an attack. You can also do things like talking on your turn without using an action to do them (within limits, the turn represents about 10 seconds for the character).

Reactions

Each character can react one (or more) times during each turn. Typically a reaction is used to counter an opponent's action by parrying or avoiding it.

You can use a reaction to:

• Defend yourself from an attack with an appropriate skill, potentially stopping it.
• Defend someone else from an attack aimed at them if you have an appropriate skill (e.g. air magic vs a ranged attack) or customisation (e.g. Guardians in melee).
• Attack an enemy who moves away from you.

Once you have used all your character's reactions they can't use skills to defend against incoming attacks and will have to rely on their armour / minimum defence.

Unspent Reactions / Quick Actions

If you start your turn with at least one unspent reaction from the previous turn, you can take a "quick" action suck as drinking a potion from a potion belt, kicking over a table, picking up an item that's near you, or similar.

If you don't take a quick action, you get advantage on your next action instead. Some customisations give your character the option to do something more impressive. You can only take one quick action each turn, even if you had several unspent reactions.

Making and avoiding attacks

You can use a combat or appropriate magic skill that your character has to perform an attack in combat as your action for the turn. If your target is aware of you and has a reaction left they can make a check to defend themselves. If they make this check and it's better than their armour value, this is the minimum you need to score on your check to hit them, otherwise you need to get more than their armour, which is 9 for a normal, unarmoured target. The result of your attack depends on how much you succeed or fail by:

• If you win the check, your character inflicts a serious wound on the target. You choose where the serious wound is inflicted and it applies further penalties based on where it is. You can only choose arms or legs for a location unless you rolled any 6s to hit.
• If you win by 3 or more points or if you strike an already seriously wounded location with another serious wound a critical wound is inflicted instead.
• If you fail the check the attack misses.
• If the attack was made in melee and you fail by 3 or more points then you lose a reaction, if somehow you don't have any reactions to lose you're disadvantaged until the start of your next turn instead.

The numbers above are the default values for attacks made with normal sharp or blunt one handed weapons. An attack made by a character can inherit a number of qualities from both weapon and customisations that change or improve them. An attack can have zero or more of the following qualities:

• Sharp attacks can cut, slice or pierce. Wounds caused by sharp attacks bleed until treated, causing a stacking -1 penalty every hour until treated (TS 12). Critical wounds cause by sharp attacks bleed profusely, causing a stacking -1 penalty every minute until treated (TS 15). Strenuous activity can re-open these wounds.
• Blunt attacks crush, fracture and break. Wounds caused by blunt attacks are harder to treat (TS 15) but less immediately threatening. Similarly for critical wounds (TS 18).
• Deadly attacks are more likely to inflict a critical wound. A successful deadly attack counts as being one point higher than scored for the purposes of determining what kind of wound it inflicts.
• Fast weapons are easier to wield defensively. A successful defence check with a fast weapon counts as being one point higher.
• Precise attacks that are successful hit any location regardless of if any 6's were rolled to hit.
• Powerful attacks get a +1 bonus.
• A weapon with the thrown quality can be thrown as a ranged attack using either the skill normally associated with it or the ranged skill.
• Projectile weapons inflict wounds that leave something (such as an arrow) stuck in the target that must be removed first before the wound can be treated. Removing a projectile is automatic, but a TS 12 check is required to do so without causing a fatigue.
• Melee weapons can strike and defend against adjacent foes (up to 2m or 1 square away). Weapons which don't have this quality can be used to make defence checks but can't counter attack.
• Reach weapons reach can strike further away than regular melee weapon attacks, allowing an attack to be made against targets two squares (2m-4m) away.

Injury

When a character takes a wound they have received a solid hit to some part of their body. The character suffers penalties to checks or actions involving the injured area.

1. Left Leg - movement is halved, checks involving movement are disadvantaged.
2. Right Leg - movement is halved, checks involving movement are disadvantaged.
3. Left Arm - checks involving off hand are disadvantaged
4. Right Arm - checks involving main hand are disadvantaged
5. Torso - all physical checks are disadvantaged
6. Head - all checks additional are disadvantaged

Wounds need to be treated to stabilise them so that natural healing can begin. Stabilising a wound has a TS of 12 for wounds from sharp attacks and 15 for blunt attacks. A wound that goes untreated for a day, or is subjected to a stabilisation check failed by 3 or more progresses on to become a critical wound. A second successful check is required for healing to begin. Natural healing of a wound is 1d6 weeks (or 1d6 days if the location was armoured) but this can be accelerated with alchemical treatments.

Critical wounds are like wounds, but significantly worse. In addition to the penalties above, if you're critically struck in a limb you may not use it. If it's one of your legs your speed is reduced to one quarter and you can't run or jump. If it's one of your arms you drop anything you're holding and can't use any skills or items involving that arm. If you're critically wounded in the chest or head your character is dropped and will need to receive treatment within a few minutes or risk death.