The core rules cascade

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**Choose Your Rules**

Cascading rules set                                                                                                                                                                       Any game we play is really just a collection of agreed upon rules and roles.  When planning to begin a game it is necessary to choose which rules you and your fellow players are going to use.  Here are a series of rules grouped in sets of five.  Playing the game doesn’t require any rules at all but if you are learning the rules sets then you should be sure to grasp the uses and values of one set before tackling the next.  Each set is more involved and sometimes reliant on the set before it.

**A**. **the Basics**

1.Character and archetype selection

2.Ability scores

3.Score comparisons and diceless resolutions

4.Proficiencies and experience

5.Movement rates

**B**. **the Novice**

1.Ability checks

2.Proficiency levels and comparisons

3.Flight and Pursuit

4.Action types and initiative

5.Combat stats

**C**.**Professional Grade**

1.Weapon skill advances

2.Time over a full round

3.Reactions and instants

4.Character creation

5.Situational and Size bonuses

**D**.**Master Class**

1.Challenge rolls  2.Fail States and Divesaves  3.Combat Proficiencies

4.Items-magic items and master crafting  5.Cover and penetration

**E**. **Epic Control**

1.Spell and magic crafting  2.Healing magic  3.Dispel magic

4.Summoning magic  5. Time magic

**Magic crafting** is separated into five cascading difficulties itself because each increases in difficulty and collective resolution when compared to the stage before it.

Each and every rule set adds complexity to play and takes time to resolve.  Each rule set also adds an ability or option for the players to use stylistically and even exploit.  Any of these rules can be picked up or left out individually and the game will run just fine but if you do choose to include a rules set, be sure that everyone playing knows that you are.  Like anything else, be sure the game master and narrator allow them.

**A**

**Character and archetype selection**

How do you pick who you want to play as?  What skills or abilities would you want to focus on?  The weapons of a warrior, a sly rogue or fast archer?  Acrobatics, investigation, evasion?  It’s all in there.  What personality or ideals fit your character and what skills would support that?  What changes to the set archetypes would make it fit your idea better?

**Ability scores**

If your character ideals and archetype are the heart of your character then scores are the main body of your character.  How average is this character?  How extreme?  When you choose skills to fill out your character, try to focus on skills that suit your higher rated ability scores.  What should your character be good at?

**Score comparisons and diceless resolutions**

When a character contests the action or decision of another in the story, there often comes time for a decision to be made on whether one is stronger or faster or sturdier than another.  Air a look at their scores.  Which ability score best fits they’re not that the character is making?  Whose is higher?  Now, who is willing to take a penalty to that score for the remainder of the day to get a bonus for right now?  That exhaustion typically is enough to resolve a tied contest and it is recovered after a good long rest.

**Proficiencies and experience**

What does your character know? What do they choose to learn at the moment or for the next adventure?  This is expressed as experience points.  Xp or Exp for short.  Experience points expended or allocated account for what skills a character has invested into learning or honing.   What has your character learned to do at a professional level?  What do they know so thoroughly that they could teach it and what have they learned -or can they do, so well that they cannot teach it to just anyone?  This is professional, mastery and genius, the levels of proficiency. Know how much a proficiency or its advancements costs and know what the proficiencies you see or know typically do and their in-game effects.  Compare difficulty in opposing proficiency levels.

**Movement rates**

How fast do I go?  How fast can I go?  How far can I go?  How fast can they go?  Can they catch up to me?  How long would it take?  Can I get through this?  What if I’m wearing this?  How much of that can I carry and how fast can I haul it?  All these questions are answered with movement rate with encumbrance, terrain and size class adjustments.

**B**

**Ability checks**

Roll below your appropriate ability score.  Get a one for increased success.  Get a twenty and roll boxcars.  Roll when the outcome is possible but uncertain.  The twenty sided die is used to decide and rolling equal to it below the desired number is considered a success.  Don’t roll for the impossible or the absolute.  The question most often is can they complete the action in time or against the actions of another.  The individual situation often adds a bonus or penalty to the score being used.  Knowing the situations that offer bonuses and penalties can be a real advantage.

**Proficiency levels and comparisons**

Do I have a relevant proficiency?  Do they have a relevant proficiency?  If not, what does trying anything cost?  Novice, Professional, mastery and genius.  Each out does the ones learned before it.  Each one increases the level and quality of the skill and successes.  Having the right skill at the right grade allows a character to be successful at things their ability scores don’t always support.  Having high enough ability scores on the other hand offers your character access to a lot of proficiencies at a novice level that come as a natural aptitude.  A score naturally high enough will still often roll a success just because it can withstand the five point non proficiency penalty.

**Fail States and Divesaves**

Get a number of successes before s total number of tries.  3:5, ⅗, 3 of 5.  Just don’t fail more than two and you succeed.  The game master decides on the number of successes over attempts in any case.  Sudden field-wide dangers, picking a lock or a trap being neutralized often call for these staggered rolls.  Powerful magical attacks may also damage in a way that is mitigated with fail state successes.  Petrification creeping up the body comes to mind.  Fail states allow varying levels of success in challenges and offer success at a low level instead of a pass/fail challenge.  Dive saves on the other hand involve dropping everything you’re doing in the first instant available and diving for safety from whatever just happened.  Events such as an explosion, building collapse, or some magical spells will offer a dive save to decrease the effects on targets.

**Action types**

Main action- skill, speak, support, strike, shove, sunder, stall, snatch, split and concentration.  Five seconds is all you got.  What are you gonna try this time?  Your main action is the chance you get each round to make a decision or attempt to cause an outcome.  The most common main actions are here.  You can attempt to use a skill, try and speak, act to support or hinder another action.  You can attempt to strike a foe, shove, snatch or pull something, try to break something.  You could wait a second or two til you see what happens or you can take off like a shot!  Just be aware of what actions are going to need your focused attention in dangerous situations.

**Combat rolls**

Attack rolls, situational bonuses, defensive scores, situational penalties , damage reduction abilities, reactive actions, and challenge rolls all use the twenty sided die.  Damage rolls all use the six sided dice to determine hit points lost.

 Attack roll- accuracy ability score, situational boosts and penalties to ability scores, Target defensive scores lower target number, if the attack succeeds, the target uses any defensive skills abilities or challenge rolls available to reduce or ignore incoming damage and then they take any reactions triggered.  Once all of this is complete, so is the single, second long game turn.  A bit complex but after a few tries it will go more smoothly in play.  Now we ask “has anyone moved this turn” and then “Who’s up next?”.

**C**

**Weapon skill advances**

Just gaining proficiency in a weapon or attack type is not enough and mastery is not as straightforward as it is with trade professions.  Damage, recoil, accuracy and other abilities are increased separately and with separate costs.  These increases only apply when wielding the particular weaponry that they are attached to and rarely are they ever transferable.  It costs the same to learn the professional use of armor, a shield, a lance, a riding horse and mounted combat as it does to learn to use a sword with two accuracy boosts and a damage increase.  Choose wisely for your skills and train for how you plan to fight.

**Time and initiative**

Each character engaged or acting in combat gets a turn each round.  There are about ten rounds in a full minute.  Taking a break takes minutes while taking a rest lasts hours.  Budget your free time well and advance.  Rest, heal, tend to others, repair and construct gear and weapons.  Sleep enough to be unhindered by weariness but be sure to outfit your character for the adventure they have ahead.  The turn is the miniature of the round.  The short breaks and long breaks are the miniature of short rests and long rests.  Rest and recover.

**Reactions and instants**

The fastest things you can do.  Reactions are triggered and act only then.  Instants can interrupt actions, reactions and even other instants.

**Character creation**

How do you make a character to play on paper?  Ability scores are listed on your character sheet.  Your description and size and the notes of what you are carrying are kept here along with skills snd proficiencies you’ve chosen.  All of your combat information is on your character sheet.  Deflection and evasion scores, hit points and negative hit points and also magic points all originate from the ability scores on your character sheet.  Your character sheet holds everything you are gonna need, often e em your backstory.  It’s easier than trying to remember it all.

**Combat proficiencies**

There are a lot of things that you can train for in combat.  Know what your combat skills are, what they do, how and when to use them.

**D**

**Challenge rolls**

These rolls are used specifically to oppose the successful roll of another character.  The challenger announces the challenge and it’s origin then the two roll.  The higher number without going past their own target number is the winner.  Crits font apply here.

**Flight and pursuit**

Sometimes running away is the best decision.  The flight action is the safest way.  After that, compare your skills and check your abilities.  Most foes won’t bother to follow you once you’ve left their territory or  they lose sight of you. Some do have tracking skills though and they are immediately more dangerous.

**Situational and size bonuses**

Ability checks are adjusted by the situation for better and for worse.  Knowing when to take advantage is often what turns the tables of a combat encounter.  Simply being bigger or smaller enough than your opponent are very specific situations to take advantage of in combat.

**Items, magic items and master crafting**

Having an item replaces the need fir a skill.  A rope ladder mimics a successful climbing check just by using it.  Making your own custom gear allows you to craft the treasures that you want.  Magical items offer characters spells that they otherwise woukd need to spend a great deal of effort learning and practicing before use.  It introduced magic without the need of spellcraft.

**Cover and penetration**

Additional damage mitigation and defense abilities add a layer of complexity and another option to choose how your character defends themselves.  Hiding behind something provides concealment.  If what you are hiding behind is stronger than the attack coming at you then you’ve got cover.  If the attack cannot penetrate then there’s a chance the only damage you will take from a successful hit is just ricocheted or glancing blows.

**E**

**Spell and magic crafting**

Requiring an entire new suite of rules, charts and cross verifications with the narrator and game master but offers such control over the game and story.  If you can manage to craft the spell without internal conflict, calculate its cost, pay what it takes to learn and then to use it, you can do most anything.  Attacks or effects that don’t miss or need a roll, striking huge areas and wielding massive damage are just a bite of the cookie.  For those who desire power, magecraft is often prohibitively expensive but just as often a very direct route.

**Healing magic**

Restore, repair, revive, resist, recover.  Medical, magical, divine and natural.  Choose to change the world by deciding life and death yourself.

**Dispel magic**

Stop the effects of Mp expenditure.  Elemental magic may resist being dissipated or redirected if the magical elements are pure enough.

**Summoning magic**

Call on additional assistance through theme or mechanics.  Spend your points on creating non player characters to act on your behalf.

**Time magic**

The most difficult mechanically and the easiest thematically, time magic is for the hardest working spell crafters in the business.

**Remember**                                                                          Any block or blocks can be used alone, together or without any other single or grouped rule and any rule can be made up to fit the story.