TOTE:Rules

The Basic Rules (v1.2)

Totems

There are eight totem animals for the game, each linked to either a column or a row of skills. Totems are linked to the Juhga for that animal... a kind of platonic ideal of the animal and what they represent to mortal folks. See below for information on invoking totems and earning experience from them.

Dice

Whenever the rules ask you to roll dice in Tales from the Torn Earth, you will roll regular six-sided dice (often abbreviated as "d6"s). One die must be different from all the others... this is called the Paragon die and is only used when the heroes need to make Skill Tests (most rolls in the game are skill tests). The remainder of the dice are either called Skill Dice (when making a skill test) or Effect Dice (when making an Effect Test). Each player needs only one Paragon die and up to five plain dice.

Skill Tests

Most every time your hero undertakes a dangerous or uncertain action, the GM will ask you to make a skill test. There are sixteen different skills and each skill can have up to three specializations (special categories of actions that give you bonuses). Skills are ranked from 0 to 5 and specializations can give a +1 to +5 bonus to the total.

To make a skill test, roll a number of skill dice equal to your rating in the skill and select one die to be your final result. Many times the GM will tell you what skill to test, other times you will choose to take an action and announce the skill yourself.

After you've selected your skill die, roll the Paragon die. Add the two dice together and add any bonus from a specialization to that total. You might have other bonuses or penalties to add, based on the circumstances. The final result is compared to a Target number, which is abbreviated as Tnumber -- for example T8 means your final total needs to 8 or higher in order to succeed. A test of moderate difficulty will often be T8, a challenging test might be T10 and a very difficult test might be T12. See below for some ways to add bonuses to the result so that your hero can succeed at these higher target numbers.

Bonuses

Each result of '6' on the final two dice produces an additional effect, called a Bonus. Different parts of the rules will explain how Bonuses are used (for example, in combat they produce an opportunity to cause additional weapon damage) in those sections.

Criticals

If you roll a 1 on your Paragon die and rolled at least 1 on your skill dice (even if you didn't select it for your result) you have rolled a Critical. Criticals don't automatically succeed, but they are one way to earn Experience Points and can trigger special effects (usually they trigger good effects when you succeed in the test, sometimes they trigger bad effects when you fail the test). Only skill tests can produce criticals.

Above each skill column and to the right of each skill row are Experience bubbles. When you fill in one of these bubbles, you earn an Experience Point to be used when your Tale (adventure) comes to an end. Whenever you score a critical, you may fill in the bubble in that row or column. Once the bubbles are filled in, further criticals in that skill won't produce any more experience points. In other words, any one skill can't produce more than two experience points (by filling in the column bubble once and the row bubble the next time).

The rules will call out many other times when successful or failed criticals will produce certain effects. Also, a hero's Special Abilities can also be triggered by critical tests. Only skill tests can produce criticals.

Invoking Totems

If you don't succeed on a skill test, you can invoke the Totem that belongs to the row or column of that skill (for example, Persuade has the totems of Stag and Turtle) to the total. To do so, simply fill in the bubble next to the totem and add the value to your result. Once a totem has been invoked, it usually cannot be invoked again until the end of the Tale.

You may not invoke a totem on a roll that you have already succeeded at. {This means that new heroes use totem invocations quicker than more experienced heroes}

Aspects

If you selected an aspect for your hero, you can invoke the aspect once a scene to use any totem's value. This aspect invocation does not cause the bubble next to the totem to fill in, and can even be used if the totem has already been invoked.

See Aspects for more information.

Injuries

When you fill in a bubble on the Injury Track, there may be a number associated with that space. If so, you cannot select that value on the skill dice for your result. For example, if you've filled in the first bubble on the Injury Track ([•] 5) and you roll 5,3,1 on three skill dice, your skill die result will be 3, since you can't select the 5.

Effect Tests

When you need to measure the effectiveness of something that is outside the direct control of the heroes, you make an Effect Test. One example of effect tests is the bonus damage from weapons. Efffect tests use only the plain dice and are given in the format number (bonus). You will roll the number of dice and select two dice to be your final result (some effect tests will have you roll only one die, which means you'll only have one die for the result total). You then add the bonus to the result. This is then compared to a Target value. If the final result is equal to or a higher than the Target, the effect takes place.

Effect tests do not create Criticals or Bonuses, and are not affected by Totems, Aspects or Injuries.

Extended Tests

{man, these rules are ugly. But at least semi-functional.}

Sometimes the heroes will have the ability to convert a difficult test into a series of efforts, perhaps by more than one hero. Or in certain segments of the rules (most notably in the Travel and Meeting rules), the heroes will be obligated to do so. In either case, the rules for extended tests may be invoked.

An extended test has a Threshold, which is the total number of successes that must be accumulated. For individual tests within the extended test, each bonus result counts as an additional success. So a hero that has a 6,6 result on a roll would produce 3 successes towards the Threshold. Once the Threshold has been met, the extended test has succeeded. If the hero(es) accumulate a total of three failures the extended test has been failed.

Calculating Threshold

For a self-initiated extended test, the Threshold is equal to the original Target number. For Meetings or Travels, the Threshold is provided by those rules.

Calculating the Target

For a regular test converted into an extended test, the new Target is 2 less than the original one. Specific subsystems will assign the Target instead.

Assistance

Unless the GM rules otherwise, any hero may attempt an individual test in the extended test. This allows more than one hero to invoke totems or aspects in order to help the group succeed.