9.1 Exploration Phase
The exploration phase occurs when your characters are in unfamiliar territory where there is a risk of danger. Each stage of exploration is assumed to take about half and hour in a typical location. Some examples of the exploration phase are:
- Hunting a bounty through the wilderness
- Navigating the sewers under a city
- Pushing deeper into a delve
- Traveling to a location without a maintained road
- Resting overnight in a dangerous location
During the exploration phase the party uses their primary stat points (FORT, REF, WILL) to make skill checks in order to navigate their environment. Some examples of how skills are used during the exploration phase are:
- Athletics. Clear rubble from a blocked tunnel, move at forced march, carry heavy items a long distance.
- Awareness. Spot enemies, traps, or treasure while moving quickly.
- Stealth. Avoid watchful eyes, obtain the element of surprise.
- Lore. Recall features of an ancient ruin, recall weaknesses or strengths of monsters that you have encountered.
- Survival. Navigate the world.
- Influence. Reduce the effect of madness on your exploration DC, negotiate with neutral NPCs.
During exploration, your primary stat points represent do not recover, but multiple characters may contribute to the same skill check.
To make a group skill check one player declares that they are making a skill check. All other players may decide to contribute dice to group skill check by spending primary stat points from the relevant skill. The player leading the group skill check makes one roll using all of the dice from the group, applying any special traits from their character, and adding them together for the result.
Example of a group skill check.
Aldric the Assassin is leading a group Stealth check using REF. He gets two dice from his ally, Annie the Archmage, and two dice from Daerl the Duelist. He chooses to add three dice from his own REF and rolls all seven dice together. He is skilled at Stealth, so he reroll’s any 1’s on the group roll. The total result is a 27. The group of goblins that the party is trying to sneak up on roll 1d6 each and add them to make their group Awareness check. Aldric’s 27 beats the Goblin’s 13 Awareness check, so the party remains undetected.
Skill Check DC
The skill check DC is the minimum required result for success on a group skill check, ranging from 5 (easy) to 15 (very difficult).
| Difficulty | DC | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Easy | 5 | Navigating in town, recalling common knowledge, influencing a friendly NPC, traveling on a road |
| Medium | 10 | Navigating in the wilderness, influencing a neutral NPC, recalling specific lore about a monster or location, navigating in light fog, light rain, or at night |
| Hard | 15 | Navigating in a confusing or hostile location, recalling lost or secret lore, influencing a hostile NPC, navigating in heavy fog, heavy rain, or underground locations |
The difficulty of a task may be further affected by the relative level of danger in the area and by the party’s total levels of Madness.
Special Group Skill checks
Awareness.
A group Awareness skill check is used to prevent the group from being ambushed during travel or rest. Instead of a static DC the group result is directly compared against an opposed group Stealth check from any potential threat.
Stealth.
A group Stealth skill check is used to prevent the group from being noticed during travel or rest. Instead of a static DC the group result is directly compared against an opposed group Awareness check from the potential threat.
Survival.
A group Survival skill check is used to navigate in the wilderness or within a delve. The Survival check DC is
In particularly dangerous locations, it becomes significantly more difficult to navigate successfully. More on how this plays out in a Delve location in section 9.3.
Design Note
Note that the difficulty of group skill checks rapidly scales with increasing danger levels. This should function as an effective gating function for lower level parties exploring extremely dangerous locations. Even high level parties will likely have to invest significant points into successful navigation if the difficulty and danger are both high.
Influence.
A group Influence check may be used to eliminate the effect of Madness on the difficulty of the next group skill check. The DC for this check is
Madness and Skill Checks
Characters suffering from madness make it more difficult to succeed on group skill checks. A madness modifier is subtracted from any group skill check to represent the additional difficulty of performing a group skill check while some characters are on the brink of insanity. The group madness modifier is equal to
9.2 Rest
Resting allows your character to recover expended primary stat points, use mundane items, and use some character traits. The party can attempt to rest at any time during exploration, but doing so without finding a Place of Respite runs an increased risk of discovery or ambush.
In order to take a rest, which takes about half an hour, the party must have sufficient rations for all members to consume. If a character takes a rest without a ration they gain no benefit from the rest.
During a rest characters may choose to use one item, use one rest-related trait, or make one skill check. After completing a rest, characters fully recover all of their expended primary stat points.
Ambush
If the party chooses to rest without finding a place of respite they run the risk of discovery and possible ambush. Make a flat d6 roll against an ambush DC. The ambush DC starts at 2+, but is increased by the local danger level.
A successful group Stealth check can reduce the ambush DC by one to a minimum of 2+.
Place of Respite
A Place of Respite is a secluded area that is relatively safe for resting. While resting in a Respite the ambush DC is 2+.
9.3 Delves
A delve is a sprawling location crawling with enemies, dark secrets, and long lost treasures. It is an optional challenge that a player company can choose to take on to test their mettle and seek legendary treasure. While on a delve the players will face an endless series of challenges and the delve only ends when the players decide to retreat.
Wealthy patrons in large settlements may offer optional quests to seek a certain item or kill a certain creature while on a delve, but the large draw of a delve will be the chance of finding magical items.
A delve will always contain at least one legendary reward, buried deep within, and one legendary monster as the guardian. This section will describe the relevant information for players to navigate a delve. We will go into how to construct a delve in detail sometime later.
Size
While a delve will always be a sprawling location, some may consist of several layers with increasing levels of danger. Layers can be a simple as a physical layers, e.g. deeper into an abandoned mine, or as abstract as multiple planes overlaid on the same location.
Design Note
It is assumed that each level of a Delve is so sprawling that they can contain countless locations, so I encourage presenting a Delve as an abstract series of locations with no fixed mapping.
This allows for a greater degree of flexibility when designing the locations in a delve, and cuts down on both preparation time for the gamemaster and time spent carefully mapping each individual hallway and room by the players.
Danger
Each layer may have its own level of Danger, which increases the difficulty of skill checks and combat encounters, but increases the value of the potential reward. There are three levels of Danger.
| Danger Level | Example |
|---|---|
| 1 | Wandering monsters, no-man’s land, a spooky forest |
| 2 | Occupied ruins, contested territory, cursed land |
| 3 | Teeming ruins, a hive of monsters, active patrols |
The Guardian
Each level of a delve will have its own guardian, which represents the ultimate challenge on that level of the Delve. As the name suggests, the guardian prevents access to the legendary rewards available on that level. Finding the guardian will require a minimum number of combat or non-combat encounters within the Delve.
Other Features
Each level of a delve will have at least one exit, which may be lead to previous levels or an escape route, at least one Place of Respite, and exit, and an entrance to the next level of the Delve (if applicable).
Exploration
Randomized exploration occurs when the player company is first setting foot in an unknown location. The players make a group survival check to attempt to navigate against a DC set by the local difficulty and danger level. A success generally provides more beneficial encounters, while a failure generally leads to more dangerous encounters. See an example exploration table below.
| Success | Failure | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| d6 | Outcome | d6 | Outcome |
| 1 | Medium encounter | 1 | Hard ambush encounter |
| 2 | Neutral location | 2 | Strong horror location |
| 3 | Easy encounter | 3 | Hard encounter |
| 4 | Treasure | 4 | Weak horror location |
| 5 | Benefical location | 5 | Medium encounter |
| 6 | Place of Respite | 6 | Neutral location |
NAVIGATION
The players can choose to attempt to navigate to a known place, such as an exit or a Place of Respite, by making a group Survival check against the local Survival DC. On a success, they successfully navigate to the target location without mishap.
Valor
Being successful in combat improved your character’s confidence and reduces the chance they will take Sanity damage. When your party is successful in combat, every character gains a point of Valor, which reduces your Sanity Check DC by 1 to a minimum of 2+. Some effects can reduce Valor, notably character death and entering a new level of a delve.
- Character Death. Losing an ally is a serious test of your mental tenacity. If a character in your party falls in battle, remove all points of Valor. Additionally, take Sanity damage equal to the fallen character’s level.
- Entering a new level of a Delve. Pushing deeper into unexplored territory is uncertain ground. When you enter a new level of a delve, reduce your Valor by a number of points equal to the danger level of the new area.