During play, there will often be situations that arise where a character's chance of success at an activity depends on his/her capabilities and the nature of the activity. For example:
To make the game as simple as possible, there is a single game system to handle all of these circumstances. Under all of the above examples, the referee would ask the player to "make a dice roll", and the results of this dice roll would determine the success or failure of the activity. Usually, the dice roll result is compared with the difficulty of the dice roll - if the result is greater than or equal to the difficulty, the activity succeeds.
All dice rolls are made using one skill and one characteristic score. When a character makes a dice roll, the referee will tell the player which skill and which characteristic are most relevant to the situation. The player then adds together the character's skill score (including relevant specialisms), characteristic score, and any bonuses or penalties, to give the dice roll basic value.
The dice roll process involves converting this basic value into an dice roll result that shows how effective the character was at the activity. The dice roll result will always be less than or equal to the basic value, which represents the maximum that the character could ever achieve.
To determine the dice roll result, the player chooses how much risk the character wants to take:
For example, in the middle of a bar-room brawl, Cogan the Barbarian attempts to punch another character:
Usually, the dice roll result will be compared with a simple difficulty value, determined before-hand by the referee.
Sometimes, the extent of success will depend on the amount by which the character succeeds in the dice roll. For example, a character uses Trance skill to meditate and recover from tiredness quickly. The basic difficulty is 5 to regain one tiredness level in an hour, but for each additional 5 points the character recovers an extra tiredness level.
Sometimes, the degree of failure is important too. For example, a character has to make a dice roll every hour of activity to avoid becoming tired. The difficulty depends on the level of activity and degree of encumbrance. If the character fails the dice roll, he/she becomes more tired by one level per 5 points (or part thereof) by which he/she failed the dice roll.
A character with a talent for a particular skill receives a +2 bonus on all his/her dice rolls using that skill. A character with a limitation in a particular skill receives a -2 penalty on all his/her dice rolls using that skill.
A character may be in a situation where it is particularly important for him/her to succeed in a dice roll. Under such circumstances, he/she can expend exceptional effort to maximise his/her chance of success. In exchange for sacrificing one tiredness level, he/she gets a +3 bonus on the dice roll (which can of course be converted into an extra D). Only one tiredness level can be sacrificed on any dice roll. Note that the new tiredness penalty applies to the dice roll, so pushing becomes a bit less effective as characters become more tired.
If a dice roll is knowledge-based and the character has no knowledge of that area (e.g. his/her skill score is zero), then the referee may apply a penalty of -3 to the dice roll. This represents the fact that knowledge-based skills are harder to "wing" using natural abilities.
A character with luck talent can choose to be lucky on a dice roll before the dice roll is rolled. This can be any dice roll affecting the character (i.e. could be one the character is making or one that is targeted at the character). There are two impacts of applying luck:
(a) the character can apply a modifier of +3 or -3 to the dice roll; and
(b) the dice roll is made twice and the player can choose the result which is best for the character out of the two results.
A character with unluck disadvantage can have the referee choose before a dice roll that the character is unlucky. Again, this can be any dice roll affecting the character, and the two impacts are the same:
(a) the referee can apply a modifier of +3 or -3 to the dice roll; and
(b) the dice roll is made twice and the referee can choose the result which is worst for the character out of the two results.