Rolls & outcomes

Every action rolls a d100. See exactly what adds up on each side.

Two pools, and your share of them

The engine chooses a roll based on your command’s verb and target. Most actions use a die roll; moving, speaking, giving, and equipping take effect directly, without one.

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 means 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

Roll one d100. Your bar is 100 minus your chance. At a 60% chance, the bar is 40, so you need to roll 41 or higher to succeed. The higher you roll above the bar, the harder the action lands: barely clearing it gives a glancing result (around half your power), while rolling near 100 gives a crushing result (close to double). The engine uses this same roll to place the outcome in one of four bands: critical success, success, failure, or critical failure. Each critical band takes one face of the d100. The narrator tells the settled outcome. No second die is rolled.

Damage, healing & armor

When you connect, the engine 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.

On an action card that rolled, click the roll badge to see the die, all modifiers for both sides, the bar, the damage or healing breakdown, and what the action spent. Try a few:

Try it

Roll breakdowns The real in-game roll UI: click a summary to expand it.

A landed blow (combat) A heavy melee hit. Attack 42 vs defense 20 is a 68% chance, so you needed to roll 33 or higher, and the d100 of 81 clears the bar by 49 for a crushing hit. Armor then shaves off 20%.

Physical Attack Melee Success

A check that fails (non-combat) Foraging with no rival. The mark to beat is what an average hero of your level manages at this task (30). You’ve invested little in the two stats this check uses, for a total of 10 and a 25% chance. You need 76 or higher, but the d100 comes up 12.

Skill Check Survival Failure

A costly spell (resource-heavy) A magical strike. Attack 31 vs defense 21 is a 60% chance (need 41+), and the d100 of 91 lands it hard. This target has only thin magical defenses, so its armor shrugs off just 4% of the damage. It drains mana, dipping into a HP fallback when mana runs low.

Magical Attack Direct Damage Success

Ran low: 2 mana short, paid 4 health.

A healing prayer (support) A restorative spell on yourself, with no rival. The bar is what an average hero of your level would heal for (54); you’ve poured into Spirit, so you’re well above it at a 63% chance. You needed 38 or higher, and the d100 of 78 clears it solidly. Healing is never armored; your own Spirit even boosts it.

Heal Success

A persuasive word (social) Talking someone around. Charisma-led attack 52 vs their 30 willpower is a 63% chance (need 38+), and the d100 of 55 clears it. Social rolls deal no damage; the payoff is the outcome and the experience earned.

Social Persuade Success

Click any roll summary above to expand the full modifier breakdown.

Notice there are no per-item rows: a sharper weapon or sturdier armor shows up inside the stat lines. A better blade raises your Strength number; it isn’t listed as its own modifier. The only environmental line is Location Difficulty, which scales with the location’s level.

The Crowd row

One line on the card is not about the hero at all. When enough of the people voting land on the same command, the winning action carries a crowd bonus: a percentage added to the pool before anything is rolled, shown in points like every other line and labelled with the round that earned it, such as 4 of 5 voters agreed. It takes at least 3 voters and at least 60% of them agreeing, and it is worth 5% per doubling of the agreeing crowd up to 50%. The only hero that never carries it is a solo hero, driven by one account, because there is nobody there to agree with. Crowds & Free To Play heroes has the whole rule and a demo you can drive.

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) puts them in the blast as the focal point. They still have to fail their defence to be hit. An area attack can hit up to three targets; see the compendium.