The engine picks the right roll type for your verb or skill, then builds two pools:

your pool = stat modifiers + skill bonuses + equipped-gear bonuses

their pool = the target’s defensive stats

Your chance is simply your share of the two:

chance = your pool ÷ (your pool + their pool)

So even pools is about a 50% chance, and twice their pool is about 67%. It always lands between 1% and 99%, so there’s never a sure thing or a hopeless cause.

Those gear bonuses come only from gear you've equipped. Your hero has four equip slots (weapon, armor, tool, and trinket), and just one item fits each. Only what's slotted adds to your rolls; everything else in your pack is storage, not power. Craft or pick something up and it auto-equips into an empty slot of its kind; to swap a filled slot, vote equip <item> (or unequip <item>).

When there’s no one to beat

Some actions have no opponent: foraging, a stat check, healing yourself. With no one to share the odds against, the bar is simply how a typical hero of your level would do at the same thing. Put points into the stat it leans on and you’ll clear it comfortably; ignore that stat and you’ll struggle, whatever your level.

A head start for brand-new heroes

A brand-new hero gets a little help on every roll while they’re still finding their feet. It’s strongest when you have nothing equipped and fades as you gear up. Once you’re properly kitted out, your equipment has taken over and the bonus is gone.

One die, two jobs

Then you roll one d100. Your bar to clear is 100 minus your chance, and you must roll over it: a 60% chance means you need 41 or higher. Clear the bar and you land the action. That same die does double duty. How far over the bar you roll is how hard it lands: barely clearing it is a glancing result (around half your power), rolling near 100 is a crushing one (close to double). No second die is rolled. The outcome falls into one of four bands (critical success, success, miss, or critical failure), and the narrator ties whichever band the dice picked back into the story.

Damage, healing & armor

When you connect, the card builds the effect from scratch so no number appears from thin air. Your raw power is your stats blended together (weighted toward the stat that matters most for that action), plus a mastery bump from your level and the action’s base floor. The roll quality from that one die then scales the power up or down. Finally, the defender’s armor can shrug off part of a hit, but never more than 50%: tanks soak blows with hit points, not an unbreakable wall. Healing is never armored; if anything, the target’s own Spirit nudges it higher.

Here's a trick most players never notice: every event card carries a roll badge, and it's clickable. Click it to see the die, every modifier on both sides, the bar, the worked damage or healing breakdown, and anything the action spent. Try a few real ones:

Area of Effect Roll Types

Some roll types (flagged AoE in the roll-type compendium) strike several targets at once, and they can go wrong in a way single-target attacks can't: fail the targeting roll and you can hit your own friends.

• First, a targeting roll. Succeed and only hostiles are caught, up to that roll type's cap.
• Then, a damage roll per target. Each struck target rolls against its own defenses. On a failed targeting roll, up to the cap of anyone present can be struck, friend or foe.

Naming a target (fireball goblin) makes them a guaranteed focal point, struck even on a failed roll. Each AoE type caps how many it can hit; the compendium lists every cap.