The Basics

You should probably read this first: Anatomy of a Character

Most rolls in the game focus on a simple roll-and-keep mechanic using your ablities, attributes, and skills. The following steps are used to resolve most actions in the game: For example: Jade wants to use her rifle to hit a target from a fair distance. She has a Body of 1, a Finesse of 2, and a Ranged skill of 3. She rolls three dice (1 from her Body ability and two from ranks 1 and 3 of her Ranged skill) and keeps all three of them (2 from her Finesse attribute and 1 from rank 2 of her Ranged skill). She rolls, and gets a 3, 4, and 6. The GM decided before the dice were rolled that the number of successes required was two, so she hits her target- Although perhaps not as well as she could have.
 * 1) Roll dice equal to your ranks in the action's relevant ability plus every odd rank in the relevant skill.
 * 2) Keep dice equal to your ranks in the action's relevant attribute plus every even rank in the relevant skill. Start from the highest rolls and work your way down.
 * 3) Compare the kept rolls. A roll of four or higher is counted as a succcess. A roll of three or lower is a failure. The number of successes rolled determines whether the action was successfully performed and if so, how well. The number of successes required for a successful action is called the Obstacle (Ob), and is determined by the GM before the dice are rolled.

If the number of kept dice exceeds the number of rolled dice, move a die from the kept pool to the rolled pool until the numbers are balanced. For example, 3k5 would become 4k4, and 2k3 would become 3k2.

For opposed checks, where multiple entities are competing to accompish a goal, each involved party rolls and compare their number of successes. The number of successes that one scores above another is their degree of success (DoS), and counts as the degree of failure (DoF) for the losing party.

For example: ''Dave, John, and Rose challenge each other to a foot race. Since acts of athleticism have no relevant skill, they simply roll their Body score and keep their Power score. Dave rolls 3k3 for three successes, John rolls 1k1 for one success, and Rose rolls 2k2 for two successes. John wins the race with a degree of success of 1 over Rose and 2 over John. Similarly, Rose has a DoF of 1 below Dave but a DoS of 1 above John. John, in dead last, has a DoF of 1 below Rose and 2 below Dave.''

In cases where one entity is applying the same effect to multiple entities, such as with attacks and spells that have an area of effect, each targeted individual rolls against the targeter's successes and is affected by their DoF.

For example: ''Jack uses a particularly powerful form of destructive magic while fighting six people. He rolls 8k7 and gets five successes. If each of the defenders only rolled two successes, they have a DoF of 3 and take three increments of damage as a result. ''

In some cases, effects don't scale. In these cases, DoS and DoF don't matter, only that the defending party did or did not successfully resist the effect. If in the above example Jack's spell paralyzed his opponents for four rounds, then each of the defenders are paralyzed for four rounds, and that's that.