Ability checks
Use the ability that matches the approach. Add proficiency when a trained skill, tool, weapon, save, or feature applies.
Steps 06–07 · Player quickstart
Know enough.
Enter anyway.
Use this page during the first session. The character sheet contains your exceptions; these are the shared rules underneath them.
At the tableDescribe the intent.
The GM tells you whether it happens, needs a roll, costs something, or exposes a danger. The rules resolve uncertainty; they do not limit what you may attempt.
The basic roll
Roll a d20 when the outcome is uncertain.
d20+ability modifier+proficiency, if trainedvs.difficulty or defense
Advantage
Roll two d20s and keep the higher. With disadvantage, keep the lower. If both apply, roll normally.
Helping
Explain how you assist. When your help could meaningfully change the attempt, the acting character usually gains advantage.
An engagement turn
Move, act, and watch for an opening.
Move
Move up to your Speed. On a grid, every square is five feet. You may split movement around other actions.
Action
Attack, Dash, Disengage, Dodge, Help, Hide, Ready, Search, Use an Object, activate an Action feature, or attempt another reasonable task.
Bonus Action
Use one only when a feature, Grant, or circumstance specifically gives you a bonus action.
Reaction
Use one between the start of your turn and the start of your next turn when its trigger occurs.
Harm, recovery, and resources
Track what the danger takes.
Hit points
Damage reduces current HP. Temporary HP are lost first and do not stack. Healing cannot raise you above maximum HP.
At 0 HP
You fall unconscious and begin death saves at the start of your turns: 10 or higher succeeds. Three successes stabilize you; three failures kill you.
Short rest
Spend one or more Hit Dice, adding Constitution to each die, to recover HP. Features refresh only when their rules say so.
Long rest
Restore all HP, regain spent Hit Dice equal to at least half your maximum, and restore resources marked “long rest,” including level-one Grant uses.
Profession resources
Drive, Quarry, Precision, Supply, Influence, Treatment, Analysis, and other Profession resources follow the feature on your sheet.
Grant
Your Deal explains who granted the power and why. The Grant card controls its action, range, effect, uses, duration, save, and recovery.
When you do not see a button for it
Say what you are trying to accomplish.
Question a witnessRead a dangerous roomForce a locked routeCreate a distractionProtect someone elseUse the environmentCall in an Origin connectionCombine a Grant with a Profession feature
A completed concept
Tamsin Vale
Use her as a model for scope and specificity, not as a required template.
Level 1
- People & form
- Common; her shadow now chooses turns a heartbeat before she does
- Origin
- Condemned Transit Line
- Profession
- Pursuer · Rank 1
- Want
- Find her brother, who vanished aboard a train the city insists never ran
- Crisis
- A sealed platform reopened for thirteen minutes and called her by name
- Force
- The Regretful Door
- Grant
- Marked Route
- Promise
- Open a safe way home for one traveler the city deliberately abandoned
- Principle
- Never mark someone merely because an authority wants them found
- Anchor
- The retired signal operator who taught her to read the old line maps
Her playable hook
“I know where people went. The frightening part is learning whether they meant to go.”
Tamsin can pursue a target without magic through Quarry, Investigation, Perception, Stealth, route knowledge, and patient observation. Marked Route can reinforce that work or function independently when ordinary tracking fails.
Build someone different →FirstJob
Opening engagement · level one
The Address That Came Back
At midnight, a courier collapses outside the crew’s meeting place carrying an eviction order for a tenement erased from every city map eleven years ago. The address has reappeared for one hour. A child is still inside. A Quiet Firm recovery team is already on its way.
Get inside. Find the child. Decide who owns the door before the hour expires.
This opening tests:
- 01Getting information from a frightened courier
- 02Crossing a shifting urban environment
- 03Solving a problem through Origin and Profession
- 04Using Grants under time pressure
- 05One level-one combat with an alternative objective
- 06A choice no attack roll can settle
Ready for engagement
Bring the Ledger into play.
Open the generated character, keep this reference available, and let the first impossible problem introduce the rest of the city.