Embers How To Play

Forming a Dice Pool

Anytime you roll dice in Embers, you'll form the dice pool using the following rules.

Your Positive Dice

Whenever the GM asks you to roll dice, it will be for a given Characteristic and Skill.

Whichever of the two is higher determines how many green Ability Dice to grab. Whichever of the two is lower determines how many of those green dice get "upgraded" to yellow Proficiency Dice.

Examples: The GM calls for a Stealth (Agility) roll. Ada has Agility 3, Stealth 1, and thus grabs two green Ability Dice and one yellow Proficiency Die. Bob has Agility 1, Stealth 3, and thus also grabs two green Ability Dice and one yellow Proficiency Die. Cade has Agility 4, Stealth 0, and thus grabs four green Ability Dice. Dan has Agility 2, Stealth 2, and thus grabs two yellow Proficiency Dice.

Sometimes assistance, gear, or other circumstances will add blue Boost Dice to your roll.

Your Negative Dice

The GM will tell you what to add here. To summarize, the purple Difficulty Dice represent the difficulty of whatever you're trying to do. Sometimes this difficulty "upgrades" those dice into red Challenge Dice. And certain circumstances can add black Setback Dice.

Example: Sneaking past these guards is an Average (2) task, which means the players would add two purple Difficulty Dice. However, the guards have a special talent which upgrades one die, so the GM tells the players to add one purple Difficulty Die and one red Challenge Die to their Stealth rolls.

Reading the Dice

After you've rolled the dice, follow these steps.

Your Success symbols and Failure symbols cancel each other out. (For this purpose, count a Triumph as a Success and count a Despair as a Failure.) If this leaves you with any Success left over, you succeeded! If not, you failed! The amount left over determines the magnitude of success or failure.

Example: You roll 3 Success, 1 Failure, and 1 Despair symbol (which counts as a Failure for this step). The 2 Failures cancel out 2 Successes, leaving you 1 Success left over, so you just barely pulled it off.

Your Advantage symbols and Threat symbols cancel each other out. If this leaves any Advantage left over, you can use it to gain a helpful benefit (see the relevant table). If it leaves any Threat left over, the GM can use that to make your life worse (also via a table). This is completely unrelated to Success/Failure! You can succeed with threat, fail with advantage, etc.
Finally, if you rolled any Triumph you can spend it for a potent benefit (think super-Advantage). And if you rolled any Despair the GM can spend it to wreck your day (think super-Threat). Neither Triumphs nor Despairs can be canceled, not even by each other; if you roll both, things are about to get interesting.

Assistance

If two characters are working together on a task, they may use the Characteristic of one and the Skill of another when forming the dice pool. If this wouldn't give any benefit, instead add a blue Boost Die.

In combat (below), the assistant must go earlier in the initiative and take a Maneuver to help. The primary actor then takes whatever type of activity the task requires (usually an Action).

Combat

As usual for an RPG, fighting requires a few extra details.

Initiative

At the beginning of a combat, each character rolls Cool (Presence) if they were expecting this fight and prepared for it, Vigilance (Willpower) otherwise. The Difficulty is usually 0 (no negative dice). Characters are then ranked by Successes, using Advantage to break ties. (If still tied, PCs beat NPCs.)

These "initiative slots" can be shared freely among PCs! In other words, if Ada is at the top of the initiative track, but she'd rather have Cade go, that's fine — as long as each character acts once during the turn. The same applies to the NPCs on a given side.

Actions

Some things (talking, dropping something, etc.) are "incidental", but most actions in combat fall into one of two categories:

Maneuvers: Aiming, moving one range band, assisting someone, opening a door, standing up, etc.

Actions: Attacking, unlocking a door, performing first aid, hacking a computer, etc.

In a single combat turn, characters may take one Action and one Maneuver. They may "downgrade" their Action to a second Maneuver or they may suffer 2 Strain to add a second Maneuver, but these may not be combined — there is a hard limit of two Maneuvers per turn.

Attacking

An attack is just a combat skill check, usually against a fixed Difficulty. The target doesn't make any sort of "dodge roll", but Defense and some Talents make a person harder to hit.

If you hit, look at your weapon's Damage, add +1 for every Success, and subtract the target's Soak. The remainder (if any) adds Wounds to the target — or Strain, for nonlethal weapons. When someone's Wounds or Strain exceed their Threshold, bad things happen.

Advantage can be spent during an attack for a variety of effects, possibly including a Critical Injury. The amount of Advantage required to cause a Critical Injury varies from weapon to weapon; a lower "Crit" value is better.

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