Firefly Prime: Dice Pools
Determining what dice to include in your dice pool essentially boils down to a series of simple questions:
- What do I want to accomplish? Pick the most applicable Role for what you want to do.
- How will I accomplish it? Choose the best Attribute for how you want to get things done.
- Which aspect of who I am is helping me or hindering me? Choose the Distinction that best fits the fiction of your action, either as something that helps you or something that gets in your way.
These first three questions provide the three dice that make the base of every dice pool. Then ask:
- Do I have a Knack (associated with the Role I have chosen) that might help?
- Do I have any Assets that might help?
- Is there an SFX that applies, and do I want to pay the cost to use it?
Always Include
You always include one of each of your three Primary trait dice in every roll. Primary traits are Roles, Attributes, and Distinctions.
ROLES
- Roles each frame a broad range of skills that should cover most anything you want to do. Need to convince someone to do something? Diplomacy and Command is the go to for that in most situations. Want to specifically convince a passenger to throw the switch to the collector panel on your mark while you tighten the guide valve? Mechanics and Engineering is an appropriate substitute, etc.
- The core Roles for this game cover most actions that fit within the framework of Firefly things, but it is not exhaustive of possibilities by any means. If the thing you want to do is not covered by one of the seven (7) Roles on your list, it means you are not significantly trained in whatever Role does cover that thing. Provided the GM doesn't rule that the action is not possible without training, roll
as your Role die to indicate the character's lack of training.
ATTRIBUTES
- Attributes cover how you want to do a thing. Shooting someone is pretty much a straightforward Physical action most of the time, but what if you want to shoot specifically for the purpose of impressing onlookers? Social might be a better choice. Likewise calculating a three surface ricochet might want Mental.
- There will pretty much always be a logical default Attribute for most actions, but that default Attribute might not facilitate desired results, while another would.
DISTINCTIONS
- Each of your three Distinctions offers a kind of snapshot of who your character is. If Role decides What and Attribute decides How then the Distinction you settle on tells us what you bring to the table as an individual and how that shapes the fiction
- Of all the Prime traits. Distinctions tend to give newcomers to Cortex the most trouble. It can be hard sometimes to see a Distinction fitting a specific action. Instead of asking if a Distinction applies, ask how it applies.
- If you are The Best Cook on Four Moons should that somehow help you to play the violin just because some gangster is requesting you do so at gunpoint? Maybe. Instead of focusing on if a Distinction helps, decide how it helps.
- Maybe years of cooking at fancy restaurants has made you a fan of violin music and you have secretly been practicing. Or maybe you gorramn hate violin music because it was always playing while you cooked so instead of helping, that Distinction hinders your chances.
- Hinder means you roll instead of
but you earn a free pp for your trouble.
Sometimes Dice
Primary traits always supply dice. Secondary traits only supply dice conditionally.
- Knack dice represent character specialties but are linked to specific Roles and may only be used with the Role they are linked to and in situations that cover that specialty.
- Signature Assets and Scene/Episode Assets may be applied wherever they would sensibly interact with the fiction.
- SFX can be added wherever their definition allows them to be applied for the cost listed.
- Hero Dice: may be added at the player's discretion by paying a pp.
Tallying Dice Pools
With each roll you get to add two dice as your final total. Some SFX allow you to add a third die, as do Hero Dice. Ones (1s) are never added.
You also will sometimes need an effect die. Effect dice cannot come from any of the dice you pick for your total. This includes extra dice added in to your total via pp spends. Hitches also can't be Effect dice.
The number rolled on your effect die doesn't matter. The rating of your effect equals the total number of sides on the die. 
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If you run out of dice and have no Effect die remaining, your effect is 
which is null value as we are playing the game.
Note: Effect dice are only necessary for determining Stress, Asset, Complication, or Hero Dice values.