YOU ARE A PLANESWALKER

One in a million sapient beings are

born with a spark, an elusive magical
trait that allows them to travel from
plane to plane in the wide world
known as the multiverse. Every
planeswalkers awakening is different,
but no story isnt worth telling.

Welcome to Gatherer, the roleplaying

system built with One Roll Engine to
allow you and your friends to tell your
own stories. The only limit is your
imagination, now go and carve your
place in history.

Timaeus Faustus
GATHERER yaldobaoth.tumblr.com -
timaeus.faustus@outlook.com

A One-Roll Engine Hack for the Magic: the Gathering universe.

 Table of Contents
Contents
Forward ................................................................................................................................................... 5
An Introduction to Roleplaying ............................................................................................................... 7
Roleplaying for Beginners ................................................................................................................... 7
For new GMs ...................................................................................................................................... 8
What You Need to Play Gatherer............................................................................................................ 9
Whats the Recipe for a Planeswalker? .................................................................................................. 9
Statistics .............................................................................................................................................. 9
Skills .................................................................................................................................................. 10
The Sanity Meter............................................................................................................................... 10
Damage ............................................................................................................................................. 10
Chapter One: The One Roll Engine ....................................................................................................... 11
Dice Pools and How They Work ........................................................................................................ 11
The Cardinal Rules of One Roll .......................................................................................................... 11
Expert Dice & Trump Dice ................................................................................................................. 12
Static or Dynamic Rolls...................................................................................................................... 13
Variety Is the Spice of Life ................................................................................................................. 14
Dice Penalties ................................................................................................................................ 14
Minimum Width ............................................................................................................................ 14
Taking Your Time ........................................................................................................................... 15
Co-operating.................................................................................................................................. 15
Multiple Matches & Multiple Actions ............................................................................................ 15
Floating Dice .................................................................................................................................. 16
Chapter Two: Statistics, Skills and The Sanity Meter ............................................................................ 17
Statistics ............................................................................................................................................ 17
White............................................................................................................................................. 17
Blue ............................................................................................................................................... 17
Black .............................................................................................................................................. 18
Red ................................................................................................................................................ 18
Green............................................................................................................................................. 18
Mundane ....................................................................................................................................... 19
Skills .................................................................................................................................................. 19
Core Skill Rules .............................................................................................................................. 20
 Creating Your Own Way ................................................................................................................ 37
The Multi-Colour Approach .......................................................................................................... 39
The Sanity Meter............................................................................................................................... 40
Six Styles of Sanity......................................................................................................................... 40
Hardened vs Failed........................................................................................................................ 41
Glimpse the Unthinkable (Examples in Action) ............................................................................ 41
Getting Better ............................................................................................................................... 44
Chapter Three: Combat ........................................................................................................................ 45
The Four Phases of a Combat Round ................................................................................................ 46
Upkeep .......................................................................................................................................... 46
Declare .......................................................................................................................................... 46
Roll ................................................................................................................................................ 47
Resolve .......................................................................................................................................... 47
Damage ............................................................................................................................................. 47
Types of Damage........................................................................................................................... 47
Long Term Injury ........................................................................................................................... 48
Hit Locations ................................................................................................................................. 49
Healing .............................................................................................................................................. 50
Melee Combat................................................................................................................................... 50
Called Shots ................................................................................................................................... 51
Blocking & Dodging ....................................................................................................................... 51
Grapple Rules ................................................................................................................................ 52
Complex Manoeuvres ................................................................................................................... 52
Ranged Combat................................................................................................................................. 53
Aiming ........................................................................................................................................... 54
Called Shots ................................................................................................................................... 54
Multiple Shots ............................................................................................................................... 55
Range ............................................................................................................................................ 55
Chapter Four: Artifacts, Scrolls and Equipment .................................................................................... 56
Equipment ......................................................................................................................................... 56
Armor ............................................................................................................................................ 56
Weaponry...................................................................................................................................... 57
Artifacts ............................................................................................................................................. 61
Artifacts in Your Game .................................................................................................................. 61
Artifact Creation............................................................................................................................ 64
Chapter Five: Other Threats.................................................................................................................. 65
 Drowning in Three Inches of Dirty Water ......................................................................................... 65
Poisons .............................................................................................................................................. 65
Burning .............................................................................................................................................. 65
Falling ................................................................................................................................................ 65
Suffocation ........................................................................................................................................ 65
Curses ................................................................................................................................................ 65
Being Swallowed ............................................................................................................................... 65
Chapter Six: Building a Character.......................................................................................................... 66
Step One: Number of Dice & Statistics ............................................................................................. 66
Step Two: Description ....................................................................................................................... 68
Part One: Making a Special Snowflake.............................................................................................. 68
Part Two: Asking the Right Questions............................................................................................... 69
Character Generation Tables ........................................................................................................ 73
Step Three: Traits .............................................................................................................................. 75
Mundane Traits ............................................................................................................................. 75
Magic Traits ................................................................................................................................... 76
Racial Traits ................................................................................................................................... 77
Chapter Seven: Character Advancement .............................................................................................. 78
Pips .................................................................................................................................................... 78
Spending Pips In-Game ................................................................................................................. 79
Play of the Game ............................................................................................................................... 79
Chapter Eight: NPC Sheets .................................................................................................................... 80
Gideon Jura ....................................................................................................................................... 80
Jace Beleren ...................................................................................................................................... 80
Liliana Vess ........................................................................................................................................ 80
Chandra Nalaar ................................................................................................................................. 80
Nissa Revane ..................................................................................................................................... 80
Nicol Bolas ......................................................................................................................................... 80
Chapter Nine: Monsters........................................................................................................................ 80
Angels ................................................................................................................................................ 80
Sphinxes ............................................................................................................................................ 80
Demons ............................................................................................................................................. 80
Dragons ............................................................................................................................................. 80
Hydras ............................................................................................................................................... 80
Soldiers.............................................................................................................................................. 80
Merfolk.............................................................................................................................................. 80
 Zombies ............................................................................................................................................. 80
Goblins .............................................................................................................................................. 80
Beasts ................................................................................................................................................ 80
Chapter Ten: Plot Hooks ....................................................................................................................... 80
Setting Specific .................................................................................................................................. 80
Zendikar ........................................................................................................................................ 80
Innistrad ........................................................................................................................................ 80
Ravnica .......................................................................................................................................... 80
Tarkir ............................................................................................................................................. 80
Theros ........................................................................................................................................... 80
Afterword .............................................................................................................................................. 80
 Forward

Welcome to Gatherer, my fourth and hopefully final attempt at making a tabletop roleplaying
system for the Trading Card Game Magic: the Gathering, created by Richard Garfield PhD. Over the
course of my involvement in the game, it has come to my attention that the worlds of Magic and the
worlds of tabletop gaming frequently intersect, but every game Ive ever seen ran in one of the
worlds many settings have either been freeform, Dungeons and Dragons, or some form of crude
Homebrew. It has always been a goal of mine to solidify a rule system which could translate to every
setting in the Magic multiverse without overcomplicating things to allow for a low barrier for entry.

The goals I had in mind when writing this system were as follows:

1: The game should be easy to pick up and play for people with zero experience.

2: The game should include enough potential and variance for any kind of character to be
created in it.

3: The game should be fun and rules light, in order to make it easy for mechanical conflicts
to be resolved.

4: As Magic is a story heavy world, the game should be able to reflect that narrative focus in
a system that is more qualitative than quantitative in its execution.

5: Character generation should be open to personal input in order to support a truly

diverse smorgasbord of characters in all senses of the word, the system should be classless
and modular, so that people can run whatever they would like to run.

One Roll Engine is a tool that allows for that, but many of the elements Ive utilised in this system
were also inspired by the system engine Cortex, which is another system I thoroughly recommend
for new and old GMs alike. Im aware that for a lot of people, a D20 system is their only real
understanding of a tabletop game, so Ill highlight some of the differences here to make it a little
easier to understand why Ive gone for this direction instead of simply, say, making custom
Dungeons and Dragons classes/rules.

Firstly, D20 systems are largely dependent upon the outcome of a single die. While its true that
youre adding to your roll and that distinguishes your character somewhat, under the basic rules of
most D20 systems, anyone of any profession has a 5% chance of succeeding at anything the first
time. Theyre not reflective of a characters skill, not in a true sense, whereas systems that have
more of a bell curve in their rolling systems even out a lot more, and those chance successes feel a
lot more earned. On top of this, the system Im creating requires you to describe your actions as you
do them, personalised to your character. Instead of 1D20 + 12 = I pick the lock, your roll and
choice of skills will couple with your narrative to tell you precisely how you achieve something while
youre doing this. This makes the system feel more like telling a story, and less like playing a game.

On top of this, while not the rule, a D20 system is usually dependent upon classes. While a lot of
players get a lot of excitement about saying Im playing the Wizard! or Im playing the Rogue!, at
the end of the day, this is a false variety classes are a great guiding hand for creating a style of
character, but in reality, they shoehorn you into a certain style of playing, no matter how much
variance on the categories there is. With a system like this, every angle of your character is created
by you, and therefore, the only limit on your utility is what you can create.

Finally, due to the descriptive style of the system, the focus is removed from combat as the core of
each character. While you can make combat capable characters, if that isnt your playstyle, its not a
requirement. Utilising this system and others like it, Ive ran for characters that have never
contributed to a fight and yet still saw value in the party balance, because they were good at
speaking to others, or they had valuable local knowledge, or they could swindle their way through a
trade. While these things are always accounted for in other systems, they are rarely if ever given
priority over combat stats. The ORE system allows for all stats to be equal, which is a requirement in
narrative storytelling.

How should you run Gatherer? Well, Im not here to tell you that, but I will include a number of
short campaign ideas at the back of this document if your party really needs a kick-start. This system
can be utilised to run any style of campaign, from high stakes Planeswalkers vs Eldrazi battling on
Zendikar, to stealthily navigating the cores of Mirrodin to not be beset by the Phyrexians, to the
interpersonal politics of running a non-regulation coffee-house right under the Azorius nose on
Ravnica. One thing I will recommend, however, is the Art of Magic: the Gathering books that have
recently begun being published by Wizards of the Coast. Zendikar and Innistrad are currently
released, with Kaladesh on the way, and they make great setting reference documents for any GM
or party wishing to play in those settings, providing cultural, historical and environmental backdrops
for your campaigns. Theyre a great starting point.

I hope you enjoy yourself,

Timaeus Faustus

DISCLAIMER

THE ONE ROLL ENGINE WAS DEVISED BY GREG STOLZE AND THE AUTHOR OF THIS BOOK DOES NOT MAKE ANY CLAIMS
AS TO OWNERSHIP OF THE INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY THAT IS THE ONE ROLL ENGINE. SPECIAL THANKS SHOULD ALSO GO
TO DORIAN T HAWKINS FOR THEIR WORK ON THE ORE TOOLKIT AND DENNIS DETWILLER, GREG STOLZE, AND SHANE
IVEY FOR THEIR WORK ON THE NEMESIS ORE SYSTEM, WHICH THIS SYSTEM WAS PARTICULARLY INSPIRED BY.

ANY ORIGINAL MATERIAL USED WITHIN THIS BOOK FOR USE WITH THE ONE ROLL ENGINE MAY BE USED FREELY UNDER A
CREATIVE COMMONS ATTRIBUTION-SHARE ALIKE 2.0. THAT IS: USE IT FOR NON-COMMERCIAL PURPOSES BUT GIVE
CREDIT WHERE ITS DUE!

MAGIC: THE GATHERING IS OWNED BY WIZARDS OF THE COAST, A HASBRO COMPANY. THE AUTHOR MAKES NO CLAIM
OF OWNERSHIP AND ALL REFERENCES ARE MADE AS PART OF FAIR USE.

THE AUTHOR ALSO CLAIMS NO LICENSE TO OTHER GAMES USING THE ONE ROLL ENGINE, THE LIST OF WHICH IS NON-
EXHAUSTIVE, AND ANY MENTION OR REFERENCE TO THOSE GAMES SHOULD IN NO WAY INFER SUCH CLAIM TO LICENSE
OR USAGE THEREOF.
An Introduction to Roleplaying
Roleplaying for Beginners

Roleplaying is a common affliction amongst humans of all ages wherein people of nerdy
subcultures with a traditional bias towards poor social skills come together to lock themselves in a
room and do nothing but talk for hours on end. Common antidotes include not caring anymore and
moving to a different city where you dont know the gaming shop all that well.

Roleplaying games have been a mainstay of basement culture for decades, longer even than the
Dungeons & Dragons infamy of the 1970s. Typically fantasy based, a roleplaying game is a method
for a number of people to collaboratively tell a story whilst they themselves play as the main
characters, reacting in real time to the challenges presented by the Game Master and indeed the
random chance created by the dice (or other tools). It is an incredibly social venture, and one that
lends itself to team-building, friendship, and nostalgia naturally.

Of course, if youre reading this section, you likely know that already, or at least, someone you know
has clued you in to the scene perhaps youre humouring your partner, friend or sibling. Why youre
here doesnt matter, what you decide to do from this point onwards is.

If you dont like people, roleplaying is not for you. By that, I dont mean the Get home from work
or I just got my coffee spilled on me by some asshole barging past kinds of I dont like people.
Roleplaying requires you to be naturally co-operative the vast majority of roleplaying games sort
you into a party anyway, you have to treat the fellow people around your table like compatriots
before you even get talking about systems or settings or sheets. Get to know the people youre
playing with if you dont already find out what makes them tick, smile and what pisses them off,
and then respect those boundaries and encourage those smiles. Lifes too short to have a weekly
meeting you get enough of those at work, a hobby should be something where everyone feels
comfortable. Unless its Zorbing.

Got that? Good. This isnt going to last if youre not willing to be familiar with the inner psyche of
those youre playing with. Many seasoned gamers have had campaigns that have spanned years in
real life, but they dont happen through luck. If effort isnt put into getting to know the player base,
then things can easily fizzle out, and a little bit of respect is all you need to make sure that 30% of
your sessions arent character generation.

This goes double for your Game Master. Game Masters, contrary to belief, are a dime a dozen.
Everyone has a story that they want to run at some point, everyone fantasizes about some kind of
tale when listening to their Sunday playlist of Swedish Folk Metal its common to us all. What
arent common, however, are good Game Masters. Some people who give the whole running a
campaign thing a go can have a bad time of it, either finding theyre incompatible with their party,
or what theyve planned just isnt going to work out. This is fine it happens to everyone, but its
your responsibility as a player to make sure they dont regret the process. Similarly, if you do have a
great Game Master, try to take into account how much work goes into the game theyre crafting for
you its not something you can just do, and good campaigns are like art; they look natural, but
there are thousands of hours of practice behind that craft.

So, that stern telling off didnt put you off? Good. Roleplaying is honestly a wholesome hobby, and if
you stick with it, and build relationships through it, youll find it makes some of the best memories
youll ever have.
For new GMs

Oh dear. Youre the patsy. Youve come together as a group to celebrate your friendship and maybe
play a tabletop game, and youre the poor sap whos gonna run that story.

Dont worry, nobodyll tell you this, but Game Masters (GMs) actually have the most fun its an
equivalent exchange thing. Its a lot more work but theres also the satisfaction of watching an entire
table of your peers squirm, laugh, plot and, if youre great, crying is involved in there too. There is no
more satisfying a feeling than crafting an appreciated story for your players, or watching a combat
you spent a while on go off exactly how you imagined, or even being surprised by the machinations
of your own setting as it starts to grow a life of its own.

We both know why youre here though; youve googled Advice for New GMs and nothing too easy
to grab a hold of has popped up for you (if you havent, do that now, there are some useful
resources out there and nobody should do this alone for the first time).

Well, my first point of advice is to let go of that story idea youve had in your head, because it
doesnt belong to you anymore. The players are your children, which means that, while you will have
to baby them and steer them away from obvious danger, everything you make from now on will
belong to them. That includes your story its their story, now. You build your setting to their
specifications, what they need, want and enjoy, but you dont let them know youre doing it. Its
your job to foster an environment where the players can flourish and really get into the meat of
their character.

This is where most would tell you to never, under any account, railroad. For the uninitiated,
railroading is when a story is crafted in such a way that player agency is completely taken away it is
the tabletop equivalent of a walking simulator, where the player is only there to experience the GMs
creation. Im going to go one better: if you must railroad, railroad well. A true plot-track cannot be
detected. Of course, choice and variety should always be the focus, but sometimes the players are
content to just completely avoid any modicum of adventure you had planned, and no amount of
hooks is going to get them to take the bait. This is where railroading becomes a necessity, but like all
forms of manipulation, for it to be successful the target must think that the result was their idea in
the first place, otherwise its not gonna work.

My final point of advice would be something cheesy, like have fun or something, but if youve read
up to here, then that seems like a redundancy. In reality, its more useful to tell you that you
probably wont get thanked, or at least, not directly. People rarely get up at the end of the day and
shake the GMs hand, it just doesnt happen most likely because a roleplaying session is enough to
take everybodys mind off of such trivial things as being awake. Sessions can be long, emotional, and
even draining, dont take it personally if people are quiet about how satisfied they are at the end
ask for advice and feedback another day, when theyve had time to calm down.

I hope this helps you to feel equipped to handle the game youre about to run, whether it be with
this system or another. Enjoy, Id love to hear about it sometime.
 Section 1: The Game System
What You Need to Play Gatherer
Other than this document, you dont need much to play Gatherer. Firstly, you need a healthy supply
of ten-sided dice. D10s can usually be found in bundles of ten online, as they are popularised by
many roleplaying systems, including White Wolfs World of Darkness, and so, you shouldnt really
have much trouble finding a set. You only need ten of them in total, for the whole group, but many
may want their own set; just understand that youll never need more than a set of ten dice. You may
want more, but we wont ask you to roll them all at once, cackling like a maniac as you rain
destruction down upon your enemies.

Secondly, a stack of paper always comes in handy, whether its for map drawing, note taking, or
making aeroplanes while your GM is edging into their 40th minute of chewing the scenery. Ive
found in the past that those scratchpads journalists use in the movies are really useful for keeping
information that may become useful, especially in those campaigns where a close eye for detail is
necessary to advance the plot, like mystery or horror games.

You can use this paper to create your character sheet, create your own, or make a copy of the one
Ive provided here and edit it to your content - anything works, as long as you have a workable
record of your characters stats. The old-school method is graph paper, but Ive seen someone use
an etch-a-sketch for a one-shot game before.

If youre the GM, you may want to invest in maps, minis, extra dice, funny hats, things like that. It
helps to keep notes on your setting(s), or the session(s) you have prepared in advance, but literally
none of this paragraph is necessary for a good time. Something you might want to invest in is a
whiteboard, because thats easier to draw scenery on that spending hours building a map with
minifigs and lego blocks.

Players, if youre meeting in person and not online, bring food. Cookies, crisps, drinks, candy.
Chances are, youre getting this experience for free, and unless the group meets at your house, its
good manners to contribute to the tab in other ways.

Whats the Recipe for a Planeswalker?

Before we get into the bulk of this system, lets have a look at the basics. Here are the key
components of the game that youll come across frequently, what theyre for, and what they mean.

Statistics

Your statistics, or Stats for short, fundamentally describe who your character is and what they
prioritise in their personality and their ideals. These are the five colours of magic, plus their focus on
the more every day, mundane parts of everyday life. They tell you how much your character
prioritises magic over normal life, order over chaos, nature over nurture, and the collective vs the
self. They also represent a characters more human qualities, in less philosophical terms. A character
more focussed in red and green is more physically focussed than one in blue and black, for example.
In normal mortals these range from 1 to 5, with 2 representing average human competency in the
statistic. In characters that are vastly more powerful than humans, such as dragons or sphinxes,
these dice can range all the way up to a value of 10.

Skills

Skills are specific learned abilities such as summoning a demon, understanding the leylines of a
plane, or speaking Goblin. Like statistics, skills range from a dice value of 1 to 5 in people with mortal
competency, and all the way up to 10 in those beings who have near-godlike power. Were talking
Emrakul, Nicol Bolas, Marit Lage, and Storm Crow. Every skill is based upon a stat. Launching a bolt
of fire at somebody requires an innate knowledge of Red mana, so the Burn skill is located under the
Red statistic. Rallying the troops of a well collected army is a typically White trait, so the Command
skill is located under White. Things like Commerce and the Senses are largely independent of the
colour pie, so these fall under the Mundane statistic.

The Sanity Meter

Each character begins play with six pillars of stability - the sanity meter. The madness meter is a
completely optional rule for those parties who would like the ability to track the long-term impacts
of their story on their characters mental health. We all know that the vast majority of heroes in the
real world would be labouring under a toll of PTSD and other issues that would create lasting, non-
physical damage. The categories are thus - Disorder, Abandonment, Helplessness, Violence, The
Unnatural, and Self. Over time, your character will come across situations or events that will
challenge these six pillars, and the meter will allow you to track how a character is affected by these.
Reach the end of a meter without finding some way to address your problems? Hand your character
sheet over to the GM, theyre an NPC now.

Damage

Hit locations are where you take damage when an attack hits you. Most characters have six hit
locations; head, chest, left leg, right leg, left arm and right arm. Each hit location has a number of
wound locations, which are filled when your character takes damage. Damage comes in either the
form of Shock or Killing damage. If a hit location is filled with shock damage, that area becomes
incapacitated for the rest of the scene. Killing damage does not go away on its own, and if you
receive more shock damage to a location that is already full of shock, that shock gets converted to
killing damage. A location that is filled with killing damage is permanently destroyed. If the location
is the head or torso, that character is dead.
 Chapter One: The One Roll Engine
Dice Pools and How They Work

Whether youre using a spell, an artifact, a stat by itself or a stat and a skill, every roll in the system is
resolved with a collection of ten-sided dice known as the Dice Pool. No dice pool should ever have
more than 10 dice, and if any dice come up as a match, the roll is usually a success. The more dice
that match (the width of the roll) and the higher face value of the match (the height of the roll)
the better. Matching a set of ones is good, but matching a set of tens is much, much better.
In combat, an attack rolls width determines the amount of damage dealt, and which attack goes
first. Its height determines the damage location. Outside of combat, a rolls width determines how
long the action takes (such as a research roll), whereas its height determines the quality of that roll
(how much you discover with that research).
In order to determine the amount of dice to roll, first, find the relevant statistic. Well use Jace
Beleren as an example. Jace wants to create an illusion that hes working hard so not to attract
attention from his warden, Lavinia, that hes actually napping. The Statistic for this is Blue, as
illusions are blue magic, and the skill is Jaces Illusion skill. Jace has a value of 5 in blue, and 3 in
illusions, rolling a total of 8D10 to determine the result of his attempt to get off of work. The dice
come out as follows:
Roll (8d10)
1,1,5,7,9,7,1,8
As you can see, Jace rolled two sets - a set of ones and a set of sevens. The width of the ones is 3,
whereas the width of the sevens is 2. Fortunately, Jace is not in a hurry to produce the image of a
valuable member of Ravnican society, so he can take his time and craft a better image, utilising the
sevens to do so.
Now, hypothetically, Lavinia wants to check up on Jace, and shes confronted with the illusions. If
Lavinia was an NPC, the GM could rule how well these illusions work, but hypothetically, well go
with the idea that Lavinia is another player character, and the player wishes to challenge Jaces
Illusion roll. A 4 in White and a 3 in Enchantments gives Lavinia a dice pool of 7D10. Depending upon
which colour the Enchantments skill is flavoured as on Lavinias sheet, the GM may decide to remove
a dice from her pool as a penalty.
Roll (7d10)
8,8,2,1,6,8,4
Lavinias set of 8s trumps Jaces set of 7s, and Jace is discovered for the lazy slacker that he is.

The Cardinal Rules of One Roll

There are a couple of rules to keep in mind when playing Gatherer. While Gatherer is a modular
system which you can chop and change as you please, exercise caution when messing with these
two cardinal rules, as they may have unforeseen circumstances for your game.
Rule 1: Only Roll When the Task is Difficult or the Outcome Significant
While its true that Gatherer can theoretically handle any situation, you should only really roll when
you meet two requirements.
First, the situation must be challenging enough to require a roll to resolve it. If an action is trivially
easy, theres no point in rolling it. You dont need to roll for opening doors, sitting down, jumping
over regular things, or petting cats. Yes, petting cats is free. Likewise, however, you cant just declare
youre rolling to do something impossible (I wish to use diplomacy on the ocean!), so dont bother
with that either.
Secondly, dont roll if the outcome wouldnt be relevant. Yes, you could make a taste roll to see if
you can detect what kind of grape that wine was made of, but unless youre afraid youre about to
be poisoned, youre probably wasting everybodys time. Dont make a roll unless the GM allows you
to. You can always ask for a roll if you believe you deserve one, but the GMs word should be final -
they know whats coming next, after all.
Rule 2: Never Roll More than Ten Dice
The more dice you roll, the better your chance of a success. Roll one dice? Youve got no chance of
getting a set, but if you roll eleven, its impossible to fail. Even if your stat + skill adds up to more
than 10D10, you always cap your dice pool at ten dice, so theres always that slim chance of failure.
Size of Dice Pool Odds of One or More Matches
2d 10%
3d 28%
4d 50%
5d 70%
6d 85%
7d 93%
8d 98%
9d 99.6%
10d 99.9%

Of course, sometimes you want to know how well you succeed, whether to eke out an extra few hits
of damage, or just for style points. For some kinds of actions, we use special dice reserved for
important characters, called Expert Dice (ED) or Trump Dice (TD). See below for details.

Expert Dice & Trump Dice

Gatherer uses one type of die (d10) for all rolls, but there are also two special ways of rolling dice:
Expert Dice and Trump Dice.
Expert Dice and Trump Dice are significantly more powerful than regular dice. Use regular dice to
resolve most actions, whereas Expert Dice are used to resolve highly skilled actions, and Trump dice
are only ever involved in epic spell craft or artifact use. As a result of this, Expert and Trump dice are
available only to stats and skills that are above a rating of five, and therefore, rare and exceptional.
Expert Dice are abbreviated as ED, so seven Expert Dice are 7ED. An Expert Die is special. You can
either assign it to the height you want before you roll all the other dice in the pool, or roll it regularly
with the rest of the dice. When you assign a number to an Expert Die there is a catch; each number
assigned must be a different number. Expert Die represent a level of ability not easily achieved by a
normal planeswalker.
Like every other die, Expert Dice count towards the ten-dice maximum. Expert Dice also have
another advantage, in that they automatically buy off other dice penalties. Each Expert Die
counteracts the effect of a -1D penalty, and remains in the pool as a regular die. This is mandatory. If
you face a dice penalty and have Expert Dice, you must use them to buy off as much of the penalty
as possible.
The downside of Expert Dice is that, while theyre effective at directed pools towards a certain
outcome (they make it more likely to get the result you declare as part of a set), they are also blind.
You wont know what roll youll get when you pick the number, you could roll a match or not.
A Trump Dice is like a wild-card in poker. You can assign it to any number you want, AFTER the
resolution of a roll. This makes Trump Dice much more efficient than Expert Dice; any dice pool that
includes a Trump Die is guaranteed to succeed, and if you roll two, you get to choose the level to
which you can succeed. You can even opt not to succeed, a luxury not afforded to any other type of
roll. Trump Dice are abbreviated as TD, so six Trump Dice would be 6TD.
They represent near godlike ability, and are rarely, if ever, wielded for long.

Static or Dynamic Rolls

A static contest is when youre struggling against an inanimate object or situation. The situation is
staticit isnt actively changing in response to you and trying to make life more difficult. Just roll the
dice. If you get a match, you succeed.

A dynamic contest is when youre competing against another person whos trying to confound or
surpass you. Running a race, having a knife fight, playing chess, interrogating someone for
information, or lying to your interrogator these are dynamic contests. In a dynamic contest,
youre rolling against someone elses roll. The widest set finishes first, but the highest set wins. If
width is a tie, the highest set goes first.

Which is more importantheight or width?

That depends on the contest. If its a foot race, width (speed) matters most. A racer that rolls a 4x2
outruns someone with a 2x10; he might not run with the grace of the guy that rolled a height 10, but
he finished first. The winner with a wide but short result might be out of breath and disoriented
compared to the loser with a high but narrow roll, but he still came in first, and sometimes thats all
that counts.

If time is no object, the victor may simply be the person with the tallest roll. In a chess match
where what matters is the move, not how quickly you choose itsomeone with a 2x10 beats the
fellow with a 4x4. The 4x4 player moves more decisively but not as wisely.
Variety Is the Spice of Life

Dice Penalties

There are two types of modifiers to rolls to reflect easy or complex tasks. The GM can set a simplicity
rating, a number of dice added to the dice pool before it is rolled; or a difficulty rating, a minimum
height necessary for the particular action to count as a success.

Simplicity ratings range from +1d to +3d. The GM assigns a Simplicity Rating to any action he feels is
so simple it should almost assure success, depending on the character, situation and circumstances.
For example a master swordsman trying to show off by performing a complicated sword maneuver
might gain a +2d dice pool bonus due to its relative Simplicity (since hes used to doing much more
complicated things with a sword), while a normal Joe trying the same gains no Simplicity dice (since
he has no experience with a sword). Dice gained in this manner are rolled normally with the dice
pool (up to the 10d maximum) and only for that particular action; they may be combined with any
normal bonuses up to 10d. When and where this bonus is available is up to the GM.

Difficulty ratings work a lot like an opposing height in a dynamic contestif your match isnt equal
or greater than the difficulty number, you fail. The GM assigns a minimum height necessary to
succeed based on the circumstances.

If a door is extremely thick, the GM can decide that a Red + Brawl match equal or higher than 5 is
needed to break it down. If an aroma is somewhat subtle, he can decide that your Mundane + Sense
match must match a height of 2 or you dont detect it.

Dice Penalties Tasks that require exceptional finesse, luck or effectiveness get a difficulty rating: but
some tasks are difficult because circumstances are so chaotic, that they reduce your overall ability to
succeed. Instead of a difficulty rating, such actions suffer a dice pool penalty. A dice penalty removes
a die (or multiple dice) from your pool before its rolled. When dice are removed, they are always
removed in this order: regular dice first, then Expert dice and only then Trump dice.

Keep in mind that each Expert die negates a -1d penalty (but in turn it must be rolled as a normal
die).

Minimum Width

Minimum Width Sometimes a task is difficult because you have to accomplish it quickly. After all,
blasting a car before it rounds the corner is harder than if its parked at the curb. Since width
indicates speed, the GM can assign a minimum width necessary for a roll to succeed.

Bear in mind, requiring a width greater than 2 substantially reduces the chance of success. A width
of 3 is improbable with a normal dice pool, while a width of 4 is nearly unheard-of without special
dice. When width is used as difficulty, a width of 3 is usually sufficient to make a task very, very hard.
Taking Your Time

This only works on a task with a difficulty rating.

With the GMs permission, if youre not under threat of attack and you have some time to think, you
can take your time and reduce the difficulty of a task.

Every extra unit of time you spend concentrating on the problem reduces the difficulty by 1. This is
different than simplicitythe task doesnt get easier, you just have more time to figure it out.

For example, say cracking a code is measured in days, and the code you want to break is difficulty 3.
If you take three days of concentration on the problem and then roll, you roll against difficulty 0.
(The time it takes after all that preparation is still 5 width days; just add the time spent preparing
to the total.)

Even better, with the GMs permission, you can take an automatic success in an action without
rolling, by taking the maximum amount of time the task requires. For example, if the action normally
requires 5 width hours, and you take 5 hours to attempt it, with the GMs permission you
automatically succeed with a 1x1. This is the only way to succeed without a matching set.

Co-operating

Two or more characters can cooperate on a single static contest. All characters involved combine the
appropriate dice pools, up to 10 dice. For dynamic contests where timing doesnt matter, combine
dice pools in the same wayjust add all the pools together, up to 10 dice.

If the contest is dynamic and time does matter, it gets a little more complicated. The people working
together roll their dice pools separately. If one gets a match and another rolls that number on any
die in his pool, he adds it to the first guys match, expanding the width. If both score matches, use
the tallest roll but the lowest width, because the faster guy has to wait for the slower one to catch
up. Expert and Trump die work normally when cooperating. (In this case Trump dice are
exceptionally good, since they can be made to match the other guys pool.)

Multiple Matches & Multiple Actions

If you roll 5d and get 1, 1, 1, 10, and 10, then you actually have two matches3x1 and 2x10. Which
do you use? The answer: whichever you prefer, but not both.

If your character is running a race, the 3x1 is a good idea because its faster. If quality is more
important than speed, the 2x10 is best.

Sometimes, however, you roll a dice pool specifically looking for multiple matches so you can
perform more than one action at the same time. Thats called attempting multiple actions. Say for
example your character would like to do two things; riding a horse and countering a spell, for
example. Firstly, you determine what dice youd roll for each action (Green + Ride and Blue +
Countermagic) and then you roll the smaller of the two, -1D for each action youre attempting to
perform past the first. Multiple sets mean multiple successes. All other dice function the same.

Floating Dice

So youve rolled a set with a width of 3 but you dont need it? Well, that doesnt have to go to waste.
Any extraneous sets you roll you can save a floating dice from them. The amount you save is equal
to the width of the roll minus 2. So, say for example, you roll 5D and receive a result of 8, 8, 8, 10,
10, you can use the set with a height of 10 in your roll and save a single 8 in your Float for later.

You can only save one kind of dice in your float at a time, so, for example, if you have a 6 in your
float and roll three 8s, you can drop the 6 and replace it with an 8. If you then roll another three 8s,
you can increase your float to hold two 8s.

Float dice, like expert dice, can only be declared before a roll is made, but do not count towards the
pool total. Float dice do not persist between sessions.
 Chapter Two: Statistics, Skills and The Sanity Meter

Statistics

Stats are the essential core of your Gatherer character, they define your character's beliefs, abilities,
and qualities, and are the basis of most dice rolls. Five stats govern how your character interacts
with the colour pie, while one stat remains to determine your characters abilities that arent related
to one of the five core pillars of magic.

Normal humanoids have stats between 1d and 5d, with 1d being subpar, 2d being average, 3d being
exceptional talent, 4d being prowess in the area and 5d being the peak of human capability. Those
beings that have surpassed the natural restraints on their form can exceed this, with any stat valued
at 6d or more, or containing Trump Dice, verging on Godliness.

White

White cares about structure. White cares about order. About working as part of a team. Whites
magic is involved in protecting people and things, and functioning as a unit, and any magic similar to
this falls under whites domain. Healing, warding, buffing large groups of people, defensive walls,
and large creatures that provide boons to armies are all magical qualities within this domain. Bare
them in mind if you decide to create your own skills under this statistic.

If it involves the military or discipline, white uses it as part of its combat style. Sword fighting, shield
walls, martial arts, commanding officers, and knights are all styles of combat that white can make
use of. If youre creating combat skills along these lines, then white is where they go.

Socially, white is adept at making fair trades, and utilising the structure of society for itself and
others. If youre considering social skills, white knows its religion, its law, its diplomacy, and its
charisma very, very well.

Blue

Blue cares about perfection. Blue cares about knowledge. Blue cares about the constant quest to
improve. Blues magic is involved with the mind, with time, and with the concept of magic itself.
Counterspells, ice magic, wind magic, mind reading, time dilation and big, bad sea monsters are all
parts of blues domain. Bear them in mind if you decide to create your own skills under this statistic.

Combat-wise, blue likes to be prepared and have a plan - the best fight is one that blue has an
answer for before it starts. Because of this, blue is much more focussed on controlling the enemy
through manipulation of the battlefield, counters or debuffs than it is on actual fighting, until it
actually has to defend itself, where itll call in a big, bad friend from the deep.

Utility-wise, blue is the skill that professes with technology and research. Youre a character focussed
on engineering, reading, or appraising old artifacts? Go with blue.
Black

Black cares about survival. Black cares about power. Black cares about looking after itself. Blacks
magic is involved with death, disease, vermin, and demonic deals. Afflictions, assassination, curses,
blood bargains, rituals, and sacrifice are all parts of blacks domain. Bare them in mind if you decide
to create your own skills under this statistic.

When it comes to butting heads, Black is a big fan of anything goes; stabbing people in the back,
poisoning their food, paying someone else to do your fighting for you black fights dirty. Black will
use every possible opportunity at its disposal at the end of the day the only thing black isnt
sacrificing for victory is itself.

When it comes to things outside of combat, black is the most adept at politics. Need a character to
lie through their teeth, secure a trade deal, organise a smugglers run or intimidate the hell out of
the local mafia? Black would be a good start.

Red

Red is all about the here and now. Red is emotion. Red is fire. Reds magic is involved with the
elements, fire, lighting, rock, magma, with dragons, with anger, and with love. Raw power, affection,
destruction, chaos and luck are all parts of reds domain. Bare them in mind if you decide to create
your own skills under this statistic.

Reds all about the combat. Go in hard and fast, take no prisoners, and show off exactly what youre
capable of. Reds not a fan of holding back you know about it if Reds gunning for you. Reds
passion for what it does eclipses that of every other colour.

Reds passion extends beyond war, though. On a social level, Red is the colour that understands
others best it connects through empathy. It cares about those closest to it, and looks after its own.
Red is great for those characters whore focussed on making sure others are happy, as it
understands better than any how emotions can get the best of you. Want a character that attracts
love to your party? Reds the place to go.

Green

Green is harmony. Green is predation. Green is destiny. Greens magic revolves around embracing
things as they are, and making the most out of what the world gives you, rather than accidentally
messing things up by meddling in areas you dont understand. Predators, enchantments, life-magic,
leylines, growth, healing and plant-life are all part of greens domain. Bare them in mind if you
decide to create your own skills under this statistic.

In the natural world, its kill or be killed. Green used the hierarchy of the wilds to its advantage.
Theres no need to be clever when you can be big and mean. Green takes a heightened perspective
on combat, either literally or philosophically, by utilising the wisdom of the world to its advantage.
Greens a fan of utilising all creatures of the world, from spiders, to wolves, to the elemental spirits
of the forest.

Green is the colour that most represents family, and closeness. Green knows about things that help
contribute to its harmony intrinsically, and utilises its wisdom appropriately. If you want a character
that can heal the rifts in your group and keep everybody fighting together, then Green should be a
factor you consider.

Mundane

The mundane stat is different, its a catch-all for everything else that doesnt fall into a philosophical
ideal. Crafting, perfomances, professional skills, innate things like perception and singing voices. This
is the statistic that these things come under.

If you are running this system with restrictions on certain colours (later in the book) then ensure you
do not lock off this statistic, as then more than ever, itll be needed.

Skills

While stats measure innate ability, skills represent training and practice at specific tasks or subjects.
You may have a great deal of predetermined skill when it comes to Red magic, but you wont be able
to cast anything without knowing how the spells work. In some endeavours, pure talent only takes
you so far.

Skills range from no dice (no training at all) to 5d (world-class mastery)the average skill, 3d,
represents a typical amount of training and experience for someone who uses that skill often. Any
skill with more than 5d, or with Expert or Trump dice is unusual, and its wielder can be considered to
be enhanced beyond normal capability.

Every skill is governed by a stat. Brawling is a Red skill, while Elementalism is a Green skill. Add the
stat and skill together to get your total dice pool. If your stat + skill exceeds 10d, you only roll 10d.

Some skills are more specialized than others, applying only to a particular type of action. If you have
dice in the Summoning [Type] skill, choose what type of summoning you are skilled in: elementals,
krakens, goblins, and demons, whatever. In these instances, you must determine on the colour pie
which stat your Summoning would fall under. The same applies to the Craft and Performance skills
under mundane; you must specify what kind of Craft or Profession youre skilled it, it cant be
generic.

A basic list of useful skills is available below, but dont feel limited to those. Nearly anything that
takes time and effort to learna language, a trade, any useful body of informationcan be a skill.
New skills should be fairly specialized and restricted in application; use the basic skills as examples.

Finally, each skill has rewards for investment. Ive included some examples with the core skills, but if
you were to make your own, you should be aware of this. Typically, skills award Trinket Abilities for
the first and fifth dice invested into that skill. You dont need to be limited to this, but these
milestones help show a persons ability. The difference between a skill below five dice and one
above five dice, however, is similar to the difference between an undergraduate degree and a PhD:
anything beyond five is specialised to that individual, and if you were to make Trinket Abilities for
these ranks, youd have to have a discussion between player and GM about what those might be.

Core Skill Rules

Below is a list of the core skills created for this document. Remember, this list is not exhaustive, you
do not have to use these, but these are recommended for play. The list will be organised by Stat, and
then each skill will have a description detailing what its for, and a number of Trinket Abilities. If
there are only two Trinket Abilities, they apply to the first and fifth dice bought in that skill
respectively. If there are three, then they apply to the first, third and fifth dice bought respectively.

Finally, for each colour, two examples of summoning skills will be given appropriate to that colour to
showcase how those skills are built, as they are the ones most likely to require tweaking for unique
character concepts.

White

Healing: This skill is associated with the magical ability to heal wounds, traumas and ailments.

First Trinket: The character can diagnose common ailments, diseases and injuries without rolling.

Second Trinket: Once per day, the character can remove three shock damage from a target without
rolling.

Third Trinket: Once per day, the character can convert three killing damage on a target to shock
damage, without rolling.

Command: This skill is associated with the ability to lead a group, whether theyre a small party or
soldiers in an army. Similar to Intimidate, this skill is supported by legitimacy rather than fear.

First Trinket: One combat per day, the character can inspire their allies, causing them to do one
more damage on their attacks.

Second Trinket: This character exudes command. Soldiers and warriors are far more likely to respect
them, and they can pull rank in social situations to potentially greater effect.

Tactics: This skill is associated with a characters ability to tactically understand a situation, whether
its a small ambush or a large scale battle. This skill can give characters insights into the enemy, as
well as their own potential.

First Trinket: This character is adept at assessing resource levels at a glance, and can keep track of all
resources the party has with little effort.

Second Trinket: This character can gain a critical insight into the weaknesses of an enemy or an
opportunity in the surroundings that can be exploited without rolling.
Hieromancy: This skill is associated with the magical ability to impose laws on a situation - an
example in the modern Magic: the Gathering lore would be Gideon Jura. The usual implementation
from this skill is to reduce damage.

First Trinket: This character gains a protective shield that reduces all shock damage taken by one.

Second Trinket: This character, once per day, can create a zone of truth that applies to all who
willingly enter it. The Zone lasts for as long as there are willing participants in the area.

Third Trinket: All killing damage dealt to the character is dealt as shock damage.

Religion: This skill is associated with a characters piety and their understanding of religious
doctrines. An example of characters that would excel at this skill in the Magic: the Gathering Lore
would be Odric, Innistrads Master Tactician or Teysa, Ravnicas Orzhov Scion.

First Trinket: The character receives special insights into religious orders they are familiar with - the
GM can give that player advanced knowledge on key facts that are important when dealing with the
religion.

Second Trinket: Once per lunar cycle, the character may make contact with the patron of the
religion of their choice. Once chosen, this religion cannot be changed. (For example, a Therosian
might choose to commune with Kruphix; a Kamigawan might choose to commune with OKagachi).
This effect can be used on other planes, at the GMs discretion.

Law: This skill is associated with an understanding of legal systems and those that enforce them. It
allows for characters to understand what is fair, legal, and also impose those laws if they are in a
position of such power. An example of such a character would be Tarkirs Anafenza.

First Trinket: The character is aware of all rights afforded to them on their home plane.

Second Trinket: The character chooses a second plane to understand the customs of without rolling.

Third Trinket: The character has multiple connections in office which they can use to bend, but not
break, the law.

Diplomacy: This is the skill associated with legitimate social manipulation. Understanding both
parties, arguing without escalation, conflict resolution and presenting an excuse all come under this
skill.

First Trinket: The character can add an extra dice to their pool when attempting to stop two parties
from fighting.

Second Trinket: The character can present themselves in such a way that they are not affected by
their partys reputation. (This is way more valuable than you first realise).
History: This is the skill associated with the academic practice of understanding a planes history. In
Magic: the Gathering lore, Tamiyo would have this skill over her interest in archiving the history of
different worlds.

First Trinket: You may reveal relevant information about a location or artifact.

Second Trinket: Choose an ancient language, you may now read that language. Examples include
Ojutai, Onnake, and Eldrazi Runic.

Grapple: This is the skill associated with combat manoeuvres designed to imprison or subdue an
opponent, either peacefully or non-lethally.

First Trinket: Any grapple you are involved in where you have more dice in grapple than your
opponent gains you an extra 1D to your dice pool.

Second Trinket: You can maintain spells while grappling an opponent.

Third Trinket: If you have grappled an opponent for two consecutive rounds, you no-longer have to
make rolls to keep that opponent grappled, and can use your hands to do other things, provided you
do not move.

Summoning [Spirits]: This summoning skill makes you adept at all things involving spirits. On
Innistrad, youd be a Geist Caller, on Kamigawa, youd commune with the Kami, and on Tarkir, youd
be killed by the Dromoka clan.

First Trinket: You occasionally hear voices from nearby spirits, some offer guidance, some are
malicious.

Second Trinket: You have a spirit familiar that is bound to an object on your person. You can call
upon this familiar to perform minor tasks.

Third Trinket: You can raise the spirits of the recently deceased to fight alongside you, but doing so
causes an instant Sanity check against The Unnatural and takes you out of the encounter while you
channel this ability.

Summoning [Angels]: This summoning skill makes you adept at all things involving angels. You can
call down aid from the heavens, but this rarely manifests as actual angelic intervention unless you
are very skilled in this area of summoning.

First Trinket: Once per day, you can call one of the following boons on an ally from the heavens:

+2D to a non-combat, non-sanity dice pool

-1 damage for the next five minutes

Remove two shock damage from the torso or head

Second Trinket: Your boon increases to include the following options. You may also call it three
times a day:

Negate the need for a sanity check

 Negate the need for food and drink for the day

Negate the need for sleep for a night

Third Trinket: You may call down an angelic emissary to fight alongside you.

Blue

Scrying: This is the skill associated with locating things from afar, whether those things are people or
concepts, or that distance is mileage or time. Scrying can be used to clear ones mind to better
understand information, or, at higher levels, to locate people or objects over large distances.

First Trinket: Skipping your current turn in the round order, you may gain 1ED on your next combat
or knowledge-based roll.

Second Trinket: You may increase this bonus to 1TD if you spend an hour preparing.

Third Trinket: If you obtain part of your target (hair, nail, tooth) you may track it from a distance, as
long as you are on the same plane as it. This takes one day to complete, and provides insight into
their movements for another day before needing to be recast.

Countermagic: The skill associated with negating anothers magical prowess. It is GM discretion
what can be countered and what cant, as in a game like this, theres a hell of a lot of difference
between a run of the mill counterspell and a world ending threat, whereas in the card game, any old
blue mage can spend two blue mana to stop Kozilek from turning up. Bare this in mind when
appealing for freebies.

First Trinket: You may opt to hold action until a targeted opponent makes a move.

Second Trinket: Once per combat round, you may cause an opponent to lose 2D from their dice pool
as they are casting.

Third Trinket: Three times per day, you may negate a spell cast without rolling. GM discretion
applies.

Illusions: The skill associated with conjuring imagery and other sensory deceptions. In the Magic: the
Gathering lore, Nicol Bolas is exceptionally adept at this form of magic.

First Trinket: The character can conjure small illusions without rolling, like changing somethings
colour, or masking the sound of a falling object.

Second Trinket: The character can conjure large illusions without rolling, within reason. These
include things like covering a hole to look like a section of wall, or creating signals in the sky.

Water: The skill associated with the element of water. While magical in nature, this skill can be
useful for other reasons.

First Trinket: The character can swim in rough seas with little trouble.
Second Trinket: The character can breathe below water.

Arcana: The skill associated with the study of magic, rather than the use of it. Characters with this
skill understand why and how magic works, and can study enchantments, rituals and artifacts from
an academic perspective. In Magic: the Gathering lore, Urzas brother, Mishra, would be a good
example of someone well practiced at this.

First Trinket: You can identify the effects of spells as they are being cast. This does not apply to
spells cast from a dice pool more valuable than your Blue + Arcana dice pool (10D is less valuable
than 9D + 1ED, which is less valuable than 9D + 1TD)

Second Trinket: Researching a field of magic for six months converts your fifth dice in that skill to an
expert dice. If that dice is already an expert dice, gain a trump dice instead.

Trapfinding: The skill associated with carefully understanding your surroundings so you dont die.
Particularly useful to thieves and dungeon runners, this skill allows for the user to avoid deadly traps
with a careful eye.

First Trinket: Your GM must alert you if there is a magical quality to the air that suggests a trap is
nearby. This doesnt guarantee a trap, but is simply information in your arsenal.

Second Trinket: When disarming traps, you may attempt to salvage them. If your roll reaches a
height determined by the GM, you can safely retrieve the parts that made the trap without
damaging them, and have the option to construct it again elsewhere.

Wind: The skill associated with the element of air. While magical in nature, this skill can be useful for
other reasons.

First Trinket: The character can move small items without touching them. GM discretion applies.

Second Trinket: The character can fly short distances, at moderate heights. Their flight speed is
equal to whatever speed they could normally move at.

Disguise: The skill associated with masking yourself and blending in with a crowd. Think more Clever
Imposter and less about Jaces leather jacket in Shadows over Innistrad.

First Trinket: The character knows how to dress to pass by in a crowd unnoticed, and can accustom
themselves to the dress codes of different planes quickly.

Second Trinket: Gain 1ED to your Bluff and Diplomacy roles if you are in appropriate disguise.

Mind Control: The skill associated with the magical ability to read and control an individuals mind.
Characters in the Magic: the Gathering lore that have displayed this ability include Vryns
Alhammaret and Innistrads Gitrog Toad. Again, restrictions can be placed upon this (and all) abilities
at the GMs discretion.
First Trinket: You can read the surface intentions of anyone not actively resisting without rolling.
(Intentions can be summarised in one word - Run, Attack, Food, and Attractive are all strong
examples).

Second Trinket: You can read the surface thoughts of anyone not actively resisting without rolling.

Third Trinket: You can communicate with allies non-verbally, and allies can communicate through
you non-verbally.

Summoning [Kraken]: This summoning skill makes you adept at all things involving kraken and
leviathan. You can call aid up from the murky depths, but this rarely manifests as actual leviathan
unless you are very skilled in this area of summoning. Kiora from Magic: the Gathering lore would be
a good example of someone whos adept at utilising this skill.

First Trinket: Once per day, you can call one of the following boons from the depths:

Target ally can breathe below water

Fish collect at the nearest shore for you to catch and eat

Create rain within a mile radius for the next hour

Second Trinket: Your boon increases to include the following options:

All allies standing in water gain 1ED to all rolls

All enemies standing in water lose 1D to all rolls

Third Trinket: You may call a titanic aquatic emissary from the depths to work alongside you.

Summoning [Birds]: Your allies take to the skies and you are skilled in the summoning magic of all
things avian. Youre famed for your ability to work alongside the birds, and those who underestimate
your abilities with the small, feathered, flying fighters soon regret it.

First Trinket: Gain a small bird familiar, non-magical, that you can communicate with. If it dies, you
must go through a mourning period before retrieving a new one. This partner can be trained to
perform small tasks.

Second Trinket: You can fly for short periods of time. For every dice you have in Summoning [Birds],
you can fly for a minute in every hour.

Third Trinket: Triggering a Sanity check off of the Self pillar, you may channel a storm of crows down
upon the battlefield. The GM should treat this as an environmental threat that deals 3 shock damage
to everything still standing in it at the end of every round.

Black

Necromancy: The skill associated with the ability to commune with the dead. In Magic: the
Gathering lore, Liliana Vess is the perfect example of a necromancer. This style of magic is very much
frowned upon by most societies on most planes, but there are some exceptions, such as the
Silumgar clan of Tarkir or the Orzhov of Ravnica.
First Trinket: You can speak with the recently deceased, asking them up to three questions before
you lose grasp of their soul.
Second Trinket: Killing damage does not cause your limbs to stop working until your head or chest is
destroyed.
Third Trinket: Once per day, you may raise a corpse as a zombie without rolling to do so. It has the
same physical statistics as the person it once belonged to, but cannot cast, speak or do anything else
that requires higher order thought.

Death: The skill associated with magic that surrounds, deals with, or causes death. Kill spells in the
card game of Magic: the Gathering, like counterspells, are insanely overpowered when converted to
a roleplaying system, so the GMs discretion is advised for what exactly you let this skill do. The
trinkets provided should give you some indication.
First Trinket: Death does not cause you to roll Violence checks on your sanity meter, unless the
situation is particularly exceptional.
Second Trinket: Convert all shock damage on target hit location to kill damage.

Bluff: The skill associated with the ability to present a face to protect yourself. This can involve lying,
passing secret messages to other party members, or skewing facts to your benefit.
First Trinket: Add 1D to an allys Diplomacy, Emotion, Politics, Commerce or Reputation roll when
you lie to support them. (This stacks with cooperative dice-rolling).
Second Trinket: Gain a pip whenever you get caught in a complicated lie.

Stealth: The skill associated with passing by unseen, the stealth skill is ubiquitous in roguish
characters, allowing them to go about their business without interference or pesky things like the
law getting in the way.
First Trinket: Running does not alert people to you if your stealth roll was 5 or higher.
Second Trinket: If a party member gets caught, you can immediately reroll your stealth roll to
attempt to avoid capture yourself.
Third Trinket: The shadows are your friend, you can hide in darkness as if you were invisible. Under
shadows, you cannot be seen, but can still be heard, smelt, or walked into.

Trapmaking: The skill associated with creating little engineering miracles that can poison foes if they
open the wrong box, or basic things like a well-hidden pitfall. Trapmaking is similar to trapfinding,
and indeed, to two go hand in hand, if flavoured differently.
First Trinket: Your skill at creating traps can give you insight into where you might place one in a
room, which can also double as information on where your opponents might have hidden theirs.
Second Trinket: Triggering a trap now provides you with a second roll to attempt to escape the trap
unscathed.
Poisons: The skill associated with the craft of making, distilling and understanding poisons on an
intricate level. Those who utilise this skill dont have to be murderous assassins, but it helps.
First Trinket: After inspecting a poison for ten minutes, you can deduce what it is without rolling.
Second Trinket: You can add poisons you have detected to your recipe list.
Third Trinket: You are able to create an antidote for any poison you have made, and are immune to
any poison you know how to make.

Politics: The skill associated with the social manoeuvres of the political spectrum, politics allows you
to understand your opponents on a more non-violent style of battlefield. Keeping track of debts,
doing favours and dodgy dealings, understanding loopholes and keeping a big smile on your face all
fall under this category.
First Trinket: Anyone attempting to lie to you faces a -3D penalty to their bluff roll.
Second Trinket: Anyone attempting to tell if youre lying faces a -3D penalty to their roll to do so.
Note, this doesnt mean you can pretend anything is true, only make people believe that YOU
believe it.
Third Trinket: You cannot be magically compelled to tell the truth. Alongside this, strangers instantly
treat you as favourable unless they have reason not to.

Theft: The skill associated with sleight of hand and borrowing things indefinitely without letting the
owner know.
First Trinket: You can sell stolen goods at no penalty.
Second Trinket: You can spend a day in a city scoping out which guards are bribable in advance.

Cheating: The skill associated with being underhanded in games of chance, and ensuring that you
always come out on top, whatever the odds.
First Trinket: Once per game session, you may add another dice to your dice pool, just because.
Second Trinket: Once per game session, you may knock a dice from your pool onto the floor and
reroll it because floor dice dont count.
GM NOTE: You may want to change these trinket options. Some groups might find them
fun, others might find them annoying or abusable. Your call.

Summoning [Nightmares]: You find compatriotism in the darkest corners of worlds, where the
concepts of monsters dwell. You control flocks that can invade people's dreams, and youre adept at
hunting people when they feel most vulnerable.
First Trinket: You gain the ability to communicate with someone through their dreams, causing them
to have a nightmare that involves your message. You can use this ability on anyone you know the
location of, as long as they are asleep at the time and on the same plane as you.
Second Trinket: Gain a Shade familiar, in the shape of whatever small animal you wish. You can
instruct this to sneak along shadows, retrieve information, and spy on your enemies.
Third Trinket: Once per day, you may voluntarily fail an Abandonment sanity check in order to
weaponise your fears. Deal shock damage to target persons head equal to the number of failed
marks you have on your sanity meter in total.

Summoning [Demons]: Youve committed the cardinal sin of magic, one that no planeswalker
should ever consider, and youve made a pact with a being of the abyss. The rewards are plentiful,
but are they worth it? If your Pact Demon dies, youll have to invest in this skill again, losing all but
the first die in it until you find a new Pact Demon.
First Trinket: Once per week, you may ask your Pact Demon a question that it must answer
truthfully. In return, it may ask you a question that you are bound by oath to answer truthfully.
Second Trinket: Once per week, you may ask your Pact Demon to heal your wounds. In return, you
are forced to make a Sanity check in Disorder, Helplessness and The Unnatural.
Third Trinket: You may request your Pact Demon attempts to kill a target of your choosing. In
return, once the deed is done, the Demon will return, and name a sacrifice that you are bound to
give within six months. Failure to do so results in your damnation. The need for a sacrifice is negated
if the Demon dies before your six months are up. You cannot make another request until your end of
the bargain is given.

Red

Fire: The skill associated with the element of fire. While magical nature, this skill can be useful for
other reasons.
First Trinket: You may conjure fires warm to the touch anywhere on your body. These do not burn
you or anyone who touches you with your consent, and can provide light in darkness up to 30ft.
Second Trinket: You do not need to roll to destroy small, non-magical objects such as books,
wooden doors, metal sigils or old locks.

Empathy: The skill associated with the social ability to understand ones peers on an emotional level,
and engage with those feelings. This skill is particularly useful for anyone who is looking to support
their party from a therapeutic role.
First Trinket: You may spend time each week talking to an individual about their problems, and
helping them to come to terms with their issues. For each week you have a deep and understanding
conversation with an individual like this, they may make a Stat + Equilibrium check to remove a
notch from the Failed or Hardened meter of their Self, Helplessness or Disorder pillars.
Second Trinket: You may now empathise with two people in this way.
Third Trinket: Your engagement with your close ones now allows people to remove notches from
any pillar, not just Self, Helplessness, or Disorder.
Escape: The skill associated with loosening yourself from grapples, rope-ties, manacles, and prison
cells. This skill is particularly useful for those who frequently find themselves on the wrong side of
the law, or indeed, a brawl.
First Trinket: When attempting to pick a lock, you may re-roll any single die in your dice pool.
Second Trinket: You can untie allies without rolling.

Intimidate: The skill associated with utilising your imposing personality to dominate social situations,
demoralise your opponents and get what you want.
First Trinket: Whenever you roll an attack with a height of 8 or more, you may make a free
intimidate check to demoralise your enemy. Demoralised enemies have a -1D penalty to their dice
rolls.
Second Trinket: You can now stack demoralisation onto enemies up to three times, for the same
effect.

Emotion: The skill associated with the magical ability of manipulating a targets emotional state to
your advantage. This skill can be dangerous in the wrong hands, so GMs should be aware of
potentially sensitive or problematic applications in their game.
First Trinket: Once per combat, you may startle an opponent into hesitation, causing them to lose
their round.
Second Trinket: Once per combat, choose an opponent - that opponent becomes infatuated with
you, regardless of gender. For each attack they make against you, they must roll their dice pool twice
and take the worst result.
Third Trinket: Choose an opponent, once per combat. That opponent switches allegiances to your
party, regardless of prior conflicts. At the end of the combat round, if that NPC survived, you may
burn your pip pool, if it contains fifteen or more pips, and make that allegiance switch permanent.

Dragons: The skill associated with the near cult-like culture surrounding dragons. A perfect example
of a character who is heavily invested in this skill is Sarkhan Vol, the Tarkirian Time-Traveller who
said A dragon to his childhood dreams questionnaire and never strayed from the path.
First Trinket: You have insider knowledge on draconic culture; you can speak and read their
language, and understand their customs.
Second Trinket: Your mouth can breathe dragon-fire, an attack that can be used even while you are
fully bound.
Third Trinket: For an hour a day, you may turn into a dragon equal in size to your usual size. You are
capable of flight, and gain an extra two hit locations (one for your tail, one for your wings). All shock
damage from these areas is removed upon transformation back into your usual form. All killing
damage is relocated to your torso as shock damage.

Luck: The skill associated with the magical ability to manipulate chance. Characters skilled in this
area are often alive beyond any logical means, and get away with far more than they have a right to.
First Trinket: Before you roll, you may pick a number between one and ten. After rolling, choose a
dice that has landed on that number, if any, and reroll it.
Second Trinket: As above, except reroll all dice that match that number.
Third Trinket: As above, except choose two numbers.

Brawling: The skill associated with undisciplined combat, where raw power over finesse is utilised.
Characters that utilise this skill are often barbaric in nature, but brawling itself can also be an art
form if done correctly.
First Trinket: You may treat any object you can lift with one hand as though it was a weapon. The
GM decides the weapons stats.
Second Trinket: Killing damage no longer incapacitates your limbs.

Relationships: The skill associated with forming a close, loving bond with people close to you.
Examples of characters in the Magic: the Gathering lore that would be Kiran and Pia Nalaar,
Chandras parents from Kaladesh, or Hal and Alena, the lesbian hunting couple from Innistrad. And
now for a sentence Ive always wanted to write: polyamory may be mechanically overpowered with
this skill - consider alterations on a case by case basis.
First Trinket: You and your partner get a bonus 1D when defending each other in combat back to
back.
Second Trinket: You and your partner can counsel each other on your problems. For each week
spent together in your committed relationship, you or they may make a Stat + Equilibrium check to
remove a notch from the Failed or Hardened meter of their Self, Helplessness or Abandonment
pillars. This cannot completely remove notches from a pillar, if the number of failed or hardened
notches would reduce below one, it reduces to one instead.
Third Trinket: You fulfil each other completely. You no longer need to roll to remove the notches
from the above meters, simply remove one notch for every week spent together in your committed
relationship. This cannot completely remove notches from a pillar, if the number of failed or
hardened notches would reduce below one, it reduces to one instead.

Summoning [Goblins]: You are a master of the warrens, the goblin horde looks up to you with fear
and respect as their leader, and you know them intrinsically. While some may view them as cannon
fodder, you understand the value goblins have in an army - and all must serve your horde. You have
the sway over this blight to order them to volunteer.
First Trinket: Twice per day, you can form a facsimile of a goblin from the ether, summoning a
conjuring similar in appearance and power, even on planes where goblins do not reside.
Second Trinket: Once every combat, you may make a Red + Summoning [Goblins] roll. Summon X
Goblin mooks to your side, where X is the height of your roll. If your width is 3 or more, you may
perform this ability a second time this combat.
Third Trinket: Goblins you control deal an extra shock damage with each successful attack.
Summoning [Phoenixes]: The spirit of the firebird courses through your veins, and you can conjure
the mighty forces of the mystic phoenix to fight alongside you. Some say dragons rule the skies, but
you know that raw power doesnt match to the tradition beauty of a phoenix in flight, and that their
magical lineage can empower people far beyond the need for armies.
First Trinket: You are unharmed by rudimentary fire, and even magical fire doesnt harm you as
much as it could. Negate the effects of any non-magical fire that would harm you, and reduce any
damage dealt by magical fire by two shock damage or one killing damage, whichever applies.
Second Trinket: You grow a tattoo, on a location of your choosing. This is a tattoo of the firebird,
whichever is native to your home plane. At any time, you can call the bird forth from your tattoo.
This serves as a familiar - it can perform tasks for you, it can carry messages for you, and you can
teach it other tricks, but it cannot fight in combat. You must name it. If the phoenix dies, it simply
returns to your skin, and can be called forth again after the next lunar cycle.
Third Trinket: If you die, if this is the first time you have died, negate the effects of that death
completely. Your body will shatter into a pile of smouldering ash, and you will be reborn revitalised,
with no sanity notches or damage to any locations.

Green

Elementalism: Elementalism is the study of the primal forces that create the world. An elementalist
of Alara might study the Maelstrom, whereas one on Zendikar may have focussed their time on the
Roil. This skill is different to the skill associated with summoning elementals, which I have given an
example of below.
First Trinket: You can track leylines, and understand where the foci of a planes mana are stored.
Second Trinket: Your consistent time studying the makeup of planes has provided you with a sort of
preternatural early warning system. Cataclysmic events like the Roil on Zendikar and the Great
Aurora of Lorwyn are foreshadowed to you.

Enchantments: The skill associated with the study of enchantments as a means of magical
commitment. Enchantments can provide protection, buffs, curses, or any other utilitarian task that
one can put their mind to.
First Trinket: Given time, you can deconstruct most enchantments. For enchantments this applies
you, your GM will give you a difficulty rating. Spending that amount of hours on the project will
allow you to dismiss it without rolling.
Second Trinket: This time is reduced to minutes, instead of hours.
Third Trinket: Once per day, you can create an enchantment that lasts for 8 hours on an item or
area. Choose from one of the following effects.
The enchantment sounds an alarm when someone not named crossed its boundary.
The enchantment causes all within its vicinity to go without sleep without penalty.
The enchantment causes all within its vicinity to deal an extra two shock damage upon a
successful hit.
 The enchantment attracts woodland creatures to it, who are not scared away by your
presence. Be careful with this on planes like Alara or Muraganda.

Family: The skill associated with those who are particularly adept at working with those they grew
up with, this skill is designed to assist those who have invested time into developing their familial
relationships into a lasting bond. Examples in the Magic: the Gathering lore are few and far
between, but one might strain to give Gisa and Geralf Cecani the spotlight on this one. They do work
together, after all. Sometimes.
First Trinket: Attempts to defend your relative or for your relative to defend you are treated as if the
pool was 1D higher. If the pool is already at 10D, replace a dice with 1ED instead.
Second Trinket: If you and your relative both cooperate on a skill you both have, add 2ED to that
dice pool.
Third Trinket: As above, but add 2TD instead.

Nature: The skill associated with a deep and respectful understanding for the natural world. This
includes understanding flora and fauna and identification of species.
First Trinket: You can identify plant life that is safe to ingest, use as medicine, or utilise in other
helpful ways.
Second Trinket: You are able to quickly hunt down meals that would sustain a group of four without
rolling. Furthermore, you can identify what kind of fauna live in the vicinity through a simple search
of your surroundings.

Ride: The skill associated with being able to utilise large animals as locomotion. This skill allows for
the user to ride a selected animal particularly efficiently. Examples include horses, stags, goats,
bears, and pegasi.
First Trinket: The character gains a steed of the species they chose (with GM permission).
Second Trinket: The character can name a second species they wish to become adept at riding.
Third Trinket: The character can manoeuvre their ride without the need to roll, allowing them to
perform other actions without penalty.

Medicine: The skill associated with utilising the natural world to create potions, salves, antidotes
and cures from resources available to you from the natural world.
First Trinket: You can identify most common poisons, and with enough time, engineer an antidote
from them if you can find the plant or animal they were created from.
Second Trinket: You can cure any non-magical disease provided you see to your patient twice
weekly and have access to the appropriate flora and/or fauna.
Endurance: The skill associated with the supernatural ability to outlast your surroundings.
Characters that invest heavily into this can perform athletic feats for longer than would be normally
possible, and survive other situations outside of normal comfort zones.
First Trinket: You are no longer affected by the effects of extreme weather. You can march through
snow in regular furs without feeling exceptionally cold, for example.
Second Trinket: You can go the night without sleep for days on end and not feel the effects of
exhaustion.
Third Trinket: You can now sustain yourself on one large meal a month. Foraging for fibrous material
that is non-poisonous will keep you moving regardless of how long its been since you at a
realistically sized meal.

Tracking: The skill associated with the understanding of movements through the wilds, whether they
be animal or humanoid. This skill allows you to hunt, follow quarry over long distances, and read into
situations that have happened in a location in the past.
First Trinket: You can identify animal tracks by sight, and tell how long it has been since the animal
was in that location.
Second Trinket: Looking at a scene, you can describe what occurred there, if anything revelation-
worthy did. For example, a tracker with this trinket could describe the events of a kidnapping from a
broken down campsite.

Mana: The skill associated with understanding the intricacies of mana that power magic on every
plane in the multiverse. One character that excels at this skill in Magic: the Gathering lore is Sorin
Markov, who used his knowledge of the intricacies of mana to lure the Eldrazi to their cage on
Zendikar alongside Nahiri and Ugin.
First Trinket: You may use any of the five statistics associated with mana to roll any skill without
penalty, three times a day.
Second Trinket: As above, five times a day.
Third Trinket: As above, but without limit.

Summoning [Wolves]: You are the leader of the howlpack. Bitten by a beast in the Ulvenwald long
ago, you now call the Kessig your own hunting grounds, and have an affinity with the wolves that
work there. For an example of a character from Magic: the Gathering lore associated with this skill,
look no further than Arlinn Kord, werewolf and planeswalker extraordinaire.
First Trinket: You have the Curse of the Bitten, and suffer from lycanthropy. Your form changes with
the wanings of the moon, but you can also turn into your lycanthropic self at will. Doing so may ruin
your reputation, but confers great bonuses in combat. Any weaponry made of silver that damages
you during this transformation deals an extra two killing damage alongside what it would normally;
be careful.
Second Trinket: Your natural affinity with the wolfpack allies them to your cause. Once per combat,
you can call upon the spirit of the wolf to fight alongside you. This can be summoned at any time,
regardless of the plane. Additionally, you may howl, attracting the attention of any wolves in the
nearby area. This also attracts the attention of any further enemies out of sight you may be facing,
so use this ability at your own discretion.
Third Trinket: You may choose to fail a sanity check on the Self pillar. If you do, you are imbued with
the strength of the night pack, and your allies receive bonuses. For each enemy slain this night, you
and your allies may add 1ED to their rolls, to a maximum for 5ED. If this failed sanity check brings
you to a total of 3 or more failed Self notches, you turn upon your allies when there are no more
enemies within reach. If you reach 5 failed Self notches, your character becomes an NPC. Hand your
sheet over to your GM and create a new one.

Summoning [Elementals]: Your willpower and innate understanding of the plane around you has
awoken the world to fight on your side. Summoners who can conjure elementals arent entirely in
control, and simply channel power given to them, rather than create the power themselves. This
does not mean they should be underestimated. An example of an Elemental summoner in Magic:
the Gathering lore would be Nissa Revane, Zendikars own World Waker.
First Trinket: As a companion in combat and utility, you can summon an elemental from the
following choices. Each provides its own minor boon. In order to change the element of your
companion, the Elemental youre utilising must first day, or you must perform a week long ritual to
commune with a replacement.
Water: You may conjure drinking water from the air.
Earth: You may cause small patches of ground to be fertile and grow small berry bushes.
Fire: You may create light at will, holding a small flame in the palm of your hand.
Air: You can always cause the air around you to be still, regardless of the weather.
Gravity: You can lift small objects from a distance, manipulating them without touching
them.
Mana: Spell damage against you is reduced by one shock value.
Second Trinket: Your boon increases to include the following:
Water: You may breathe underwater.
Earth: You may move through earth at half of your normal movement speed, but not rock.
Fire: Non-magical fire no longer harms you.
Air: Fall damage from heights below 100 ft is completely negated.
Gravity: You may jump up to triple your height.
Mana: Spell damage against you is reduced by one killing value.
Third Trinket: Your boon increases to include the following:
Water: You can now swim at 10 meters (30 feet) per second.
Earth: You may now move through earth and rock at your normal movement speed.
Fire: You can divine secrets about your short term future by staring into fire.
Air: Falling no longer hurts you, nor can you be flung against walls, or thrown further than
five feet against your will.
 Gravity: You may now fly at your movement speed.
Mana: Spell damage you deal is now increased by one killing value.

Mundane

Acrobatics: The skill associated with exceptional athletic ability, this allows you to perform feats of
mundane skill beyond what most would be able to achieve.
First Trinket: You can jump clean over gaps over 10 feet without rolling.
Second Trinket: When falling, you may make a roll to catch yourself on something without injury. If
your roll has a width of three or more, you may immediately recover yourself to the location you fell
from.

Sense: The skill associated with how one perceives their surroundings and their contemporaries. This
skill allows you to pick up on sensory cues about your environment and conversations.
First Trinket: If someone attempts to pass a hidden message in a conversation in front of you, you
are prompted to make a roll to discover it.
Second Trinket: If you notice an ambush before it is enacted, you may alert your allies and act first in
the turn order.

Local: The skill associated with local knowledge, it is particularly useful for smaller campaigns that
are localised to one or two planes.
First Trinket: Name a location on your home plane. Treat that location are your home location, and
create three NPCs that serve as useful contacts there. (Examples include guards, shopkeepers, and
gang leaders).
Second Trinket: You are well respected in your named location, and can usually pull enough strings
to get away with most reasonable requests.

Commerce: The skill associated with trading and business, commerce allows a character to make the
most of market stalls and underhand dealings the world over.
First Trinket: You have enough sway with your regular contacts to get most mundane items on
credit. Just try not to take too much without paying, it could backfire.
Second Trinket: You have access to the black market, and can locate items a lot more difficult to find
anywhere else with the right contacts.

Counselling: The skill associated with understanding people on a therapeutic level and helping them
to heal.
First Trinket: You may keep regular counselling sessions with an individual. For each consecutive
week you do so, they may make a Stat + Equilibrium check to reduce one of the notches on their
Sanity pillars (either hardened for failed). This can reduce pillars to zero.
Second Trinket: Your patients no longer have to roll to reduce notches, and instead simply remove
one for each week you talk through their problems in depth.

Reputation: The skill associated with the associated beliefs about a character. A character with a
better reputation can often get more leniency when dealing with established members of the
community (such as the law, organised crime rings, or restaurant owners).
First Trinket: You can always find work if you need it, and are the first port of call if anybody has any
jobs for someone in your industry.
Second Trinket: Youre a legend in an area of your choosing. People have essentially accepted you as
a hero/scourge (delete as applicable). This usually means youre safe in that area, as very few people
would mess with someone like yourself.

Profession [Hunter]: You are a practitioner of one of the original crafts, and know your wilderness
like most know their streets. The profession skill adds legitimacy to your backstory, and gives you
access to knowledge that only someone in your profession would have.
First Trinket: You can utilise an animal for all its worth, able to make clothes out of furs, tools out of
bones, and medicines out of offal.
Second Trinket: You may treat your Profession [Hunter] as a Tracking or Trapfinding skills on rolls
only.

Profession [Sailor]: Youre a jolly sailor bold, able to brave the high seas and stand firm on any ship,
where most would be bent over heaving up their guts. The profession skill adds legitimacy to your
backstory, and gives you access to knowledge that only someone in your profession would have.
First Trinket: You are able to sail most craft without rolling.
Second Trinket: You may treat your Profession [Sailor] as a Water or Command skills on rolls only.

Craft [Artifacts]: Youre a craftsman of a fine trade, weaving magic into artifacts that people will pay
a pretty penny for or, at a higher quality, start wars over. Craft skills offer an opportunity for your
party to convert unwanted materials into things of value, either to themselves or others.
First Trinket: You may appraise the value of any non-unique artifact with five minutes of inspection.
Second Trinket: You may replicate the qualities of any non-unique artifact after an amount of time
dictated to you by your GM.
Creating Your Own Way

What if your players dont want these skills? Well, thats simple, I invented all of those trinkets you
see above you; its a modular system, and anybody can do it. Well get into the details of dice value
later on in character generation, but short rules of it are thus: skill with a value of five is 2.5 times
more invested into than a skill with a value of three, and 15 times more invested into than a skill
with a value of one. Your trinkets should reflect this.
Lets run through an example, which is easier than me just telling you what to do. Youre running a
Zendikar campaign, set just after the events of the Worldwake set. Two of your players want to play
Zendikar natives; one Merfolk and one Kor. As both are native to the plane in what could be
described as quite a lively period in its lifespan, the two players believe their characters should be
somewhat skilled in understanding the Eldrazi. Your Merfolk player only wants a passing interest in
the Eldrazi, but the Kor players character concept wants them to be a full on cultist, eventually
culminating in having powers associated with the tribe.
First of all, what Stat do we place this skill under? Well, the Merfolks interest is so that they can
prepare themselves for the battle ahead, so they would put the skill Eldrazi under the Blue statistic.
Our Kor, however, wants to gain as much power from these new Gods as they can, so they would
place the skill under their Black statistic. Id like to point out that I specifically chose Eldrazi as the
example here because, while they are colourless in Magic: the Gathering lore, your characters will
not be. The placement of your Eldrazi skill would be based upon your motivation for
understanding/utilising them, not their nature themselves.
Secondly, how do we decide upon how many trinkets to provide for this skill? Two or three? Well,
we have two players that are invested in it, one of which is leaning heavily into the skill as a
character concept. For that purpose, we provide three trinkets, so as to reward both parties for their
investments. If it was a minor skill that people only wanted to dip into, provide two trinkets - one of
which is the 5th rank capstone that provides interesting benefits that are unique, but also balance
the character in areas they may have neglected.
So, this first trinket: both characters are going to have this ability, and its something that should be
unique enough to help define their characters, but not so related to the other two trinkets that the
Merfolk feels the need to invest wholly into the skill to complete the set, as it were. For this, we
can usually provide something flavourful with little to no mechanical benefit. The example Im going
to use this thus:

First Trinket: You may now read and translate ancient Eldrazi runes, as well as recognise the
different brood lineages by sight.

This is an ability that can be utilised by each player in vastly different ways. The Merfolk player may
want to use it to further their research for defensive purposes, or translate ancient warnings carved
into the rocks deep below the Sea Gate. It also provides the Kor player with an avenue to research
their new favourite religion, learning the secrets of the Eldrazis power and their legends, rather than
searching for their weaknesses.
Now, the second trinket is the one we have to be careful with. To get a skill value to three costs six
times as much as getting it one rank, but its still well within the realms of possibility. Our Merfolk
player might develop their character to have a deeper interest in the Eldrazi, so we have to keep this
option open for them. At this point, we represent the skills trinkets as the slow slide into cultism -
the first trinket is a healthy respect, the second trinket should be sliding into dangerous territory.

Second Trinket: Your interest in the Eldrazi has started to bite back. You frequently hear whispers or
see visions from the blind eternities. These are often non-sensical, but through study, you can glean
important insights into the nature of the world around you, your future, and the past of the plane
you are on.

This is potentially a very powerful ability, but is again, not related to mechanics in any way. The
emphasis for this ability is where it can take your plot, and your characters, from a roleplaying
perspective. It provides strong flavour to a character that invests in it, and it shows them that theres
potentially danger about going further down this rabbit hole.
Now, our Kor cultist doesnt care about danger. They care about power. They wish to be a herald to
the gods themselves, and believe a full devotion to the Eldrazi is the only true way to accomplish this
prestigious standing. Their third trinket might look like this:

Third Trinket: Choose a titan to devote yourself to:

Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger: Whenever you deal two or more killing damage in a single
attack, that damage cannot be healed.
Kozilek, the Butcher of Truth: Once per combat, you may make an illusory clone of yourself.
You do not have to choose which version of you is the clone until a conscious entity touches
one of the versions.
Emrakul, the Aeons Torn: Choose a hit location that isnt your torso. Gain a hit location of
that type (for example, choosing Right Arm grants you an extra Right Arm). This new body
part is fully functional.

See, this is where things get irrevocable, and the player is rewarded for their investment. This is
whats referred to in game design as a capstone ability, a unique and powerful ability that rewards
a player for investing time into a particular skill tree or class. Examples in other games include
Arceus signature move judgement in Pokemon or the end game class abilities in Pathfinder. Each
of these options are mechanically powerful, and difficult or impossible to achieve investing
elsewhere. This rewards a player for a developed character concept, providing bonuses to those who
roleplay well, and discouraging run-of-the-mill, cookie-cut characters.

Levelling Past Rank Five

While difficult, it should be possible for a player to level a skill past rank five. This represents a skill
that they are unrivalled at, something that is so specialised to them that they have surpassed all
mortal restrictions and achieved new heights.
As a result of this, each trinket should be reviewed on a case by case basis, and crafted in order to
better accompany that player. Sit down and have a discussion with them about their character goals
and fears; factor both into your consideration.

The Multi-Colour Approach

Some players might want to consider some of their skills or abilities to belong to two colours. There
are multiple ways to handle this.
First, and simply, a player may choose to permanently relocate a skill to another colour, for example,
they might move diplomacy from White to Black. This is perfectly fine, if they can justify why thats
happening. For the above example, they might choose to relocate because they believe their
methods of diplomacy are more self-centred than they are community centred. This is fine, and can
be done at character creation for no cost. If the player decides to do it post-character creation, you
may decide to impose a pip-penalty, depending on how much of an advantage said player gains from
the move.
Secondly, on occasion, a player may decide to roll a skill from a different statistic, to better match
the flavour for what they are trying to achieve, or you may force them to do so as a penalty. Again,
this can be a positive or a negative to the dice pool, and you should allow it, as long as it can be
justified.
Finally, the true multicolour approach. A player may choose to devote a skill to two statistics at the
same time. For example, as a member of the Izzet guild of Ravnica, they might choose to have the
Lightning skill under both Blue and Red. Each time this skill is levelled or invested in, it costs twice as
much as it would normally to do so, both in game and at character generation. The trade-off for this,
however, is that the skill also affords twice the amount of Trinket abilities, up to a maximum of six at
rank five. In such an occasion, I recommend you grant two trinket abilities for the first investment,
and then a bonus trinket ability at every rank. These should be flavoured appropriately, see my
example below:

First Trinket: Gain a ranged lightning attack that can strike for shock damage from up to 300ft away.
Second Trinket: If your lightning attack strikes with a width of three or more, your opponent is
stunned for one round.
Third Trinket: Stunned opponents may choose to move, taking two points of shock damage to the
torso if they do so.
Fourth Trinket: Your reaction speeds increase. Gain 1ED on any roll attempting to dodge projectiles.
Fifth Trinket: Your ranged lightning attack now deals two killing damage upon a hit, and stuns the
opponent on a width of two or more.
Sixth Trinket: Once per day, you may grant an ally (including yourself) a second round in combat. If
that allys next roll has a height of seven, you may take a free round immediately after theirs.

You may find the above abilities familiar: I used Ral Zareks planeswalker card from the Dragons
Maze set as inspiration for them. Take this as a freebie for all you wannabe guild mages out there.
The Sanity Meter

There are six categories of mental stabilitythe six pillars upholding sane and productive thought.
These categories are: Disorder, Abandonment, Helplessness, Violence, the Unnatural, and Self. Its
perfectly possible to have one piece of the foundation crumble while the other five are solid.
Horrific experiences can erode a persons ability to cope, and someone who has seen too much loses
control over some aspect of their personality. Perhaps they develops a crippling phobia of something
that reminds them of their traumas. Perhaps they obsess on what they saw, or creates an elaborate
rationale that shields them from accepting the truth. Perhaps they simply fade into catatonic
passivity.
On the other hand, some people resist madness by becoming rigid and inflexible. While they retain
control over themselves, its a control that comes at the high price of increasing distance from the
world and the people in it. It is possible to become so experiencedor numbthat just about any
stimulus, no matter how alienating or nauseating, can be handled calmly and with equanimity. The
downside of treating a mangled corpse as if its as ordinary as breakfast is that you also treat
breakfast with the caution and reserve most reserve for mangled corpses.
Strength of this sort is a burden as much as a blessing, because those who possess it are, by
necessity, alienated from their fellows and from themselves.
So why is sanity an important consideration for your game? A person is a sum of their experiences,
and the most believable player characters feel like real people you could meet every day. 1 in 5
people are affected by mental illness at some point in their lives, and those who see active combat
rarely come home without the psychological scars to prove it. The worlds of Magic: the Gathering
are ultimately worlds of conflict and, like it or not, your characters are going to face difficult
challenges as they go through life. These challenges contribute to their growth, but they also leave
an impact. For the most realistic and emotionally available experience, I recommend you keep an
understanding of how these impacts shape your character.

Six Styles of Sanity

Disorder: This gauge dictates how well you handle being in chaotic situations that are startling and
unpredictable.

Abandonment: This gauge dictates how well you deal with being left alone: whether by choice,
death, or being separated from your group.

Helplessness: This measures your reaction to traumatic events that you cant control. Being held
captive, being unable to escape, having your authority undermined.

Violence: This gauge dictates how you handle violence; whether inflicting or suffering from it.

The Unnatural: This gauge deals with things that fall outside of the status quosupernatural events
beyond the normal human range of experience.

Self: This gauge deals with internal conflict, especially guilt. Commit a crime, injure someone you
love, lie to your best friend, this is all covered by the Self gauge.
Hardened vs Failed

The six gauges of the Madness Meter measure how damaged or hardened your character has
become to their particular influences. When confronted by a shocking event that falls under a
particular gauge, you must make a Sanity check by rolling a dice pool that represents how resistant
you are to that stimulus.

When you succeed at a roll in a particular gauge, you gain a Hardened notch in that gauge, thus,
leaving you resistant to it in the future. When you fail a roll, you gain a Failed notch, and suffer some
ill effect as your mind fails to cope with the stimulus. That usually means one of three trauma
reactionsfight, flight or freeze.

As a GM, you should be aware of making your PC roll Sanity checks, as if any gauge reaches more
than five failed notches at any time, that player should realistically hand over their character sheet,
as their character has become too dislocated from their identity to function normally. For this, you
have two options:

1. Only ever make a character roll a sanity check when it would be reasonable for that
character to check out in response. Dont make a character roll a Violence check for
something that, realistically, is not all that important, for example, a broken leg suffered
from falling down a hill.
2. Instead of making the collapse of a Sanity pillar require the permanent retirement of a
character, either:
a. Take that character out of action for an undetermined amount of time while they
recover, allowing their player to play another character for the time being.
b. Remove that characters ability to roll dice for an undetermined amount of time
while they recover, to indicate the severity of the characters condition without
removing their players ability to roleplay.

And of course, in all situations, only run with rules the game group is comfortable with. If a player
does not feel comfortable playing in a game where mental illness is tracked so attentively, your
group may want to consider removing this section of the rules from their game and amending areas
that mention it to suit.

Glimpse the Unthinkable (Examples in Action)

There are many strains and trials that can threaten someones mental equilibrium. Not only are they
divided by type, they differ by intensity. Having someone shoot at you is clearly a stress in the
Violence region, but getting shot and then having to drag yourself a mile to the nearest farmhouse is
a lot more difficult to internalize and overcome. Threats to sanity have Intensity ratings from 1-10.
This works exactly like a difficulty numberyour roll must match or beat the Intensity to succeed.

Sanity checks are managed with the characters Equilibrium value. Unlike most skills, Equilibrium
does not fall under a single stat. Rather, the stat that couples with it varies depending on the
situation. A characters equilibrium is calculated by measuring the width of their highest set in their
statistics. For example, if a character has the statistics [4, 3, 3, 3, 2, 2], their equilibrium is 3. If a
character has the statistics [5, 5, 3, 3, 3, 3], then their equilibrium is 2.
For Disorder checks: Roll White + Equilibrium. You can find a rational in everything, and know that
with your community, your ideals, or your god, you can make it through anything. Barbarism is
temporary, control is what creates lasting peace.

For Abandonment checks: Roll Blue + Equilibrium. Emotional investments only weigh you down
anyway, time without might give you more chance to focus on your work. Even if youve lost a loved
one you know that, logically, theres no used pining over them now.

For Helplessness checks: Roll Black + Equilibrium. You are powerful. You are better than this, better
than whatever situation youre in right now, and youve always been able to do whatever it takes to
pull through.

For Violence checks: Roll Red + Equilibrium as your instincts kick in to preserve your skin in a
circumstance that is clearly not safe. Your familiarity with anger, with rage, with passion and the
more aggressive sides of the world can help you to overcome these events.

For Unnatural checks: Roll Green + Equilibrium. Clearly unnatural events and entities are beyond
common experience, and the only hope for putting it into a framework to which a character can
relate is embracing the unpredictability of the worlds around them. Even if the reasoning turns out
to be mistaken, its better than nothing.

For Self checks: Roll Mundane + Equilibrium. Subtracting the magic, subtracting the adventure, and
subtracting the circumstances, all you really have left is yourself. Is that enough? Do you know what
that is?

Hardened notches in a gauge offer powerful protection against challenges of that type: you do not
have to roll if the Intensity is equal to or lower than your Hardened rating on a gauge.

Example: Gideon Jura has four notches in his hardened pillar for Violence, whereas Nissa
Revane has one. The two are on Shandalar when they discovered Garruk Wildspeaker in his
demonic form, having broken a man in half. The GM judges the intensity of the check to be a
four, meaning Gideon does not have to roll, whereas Nissa does.

This means that every time you confront a challenge with intensity equal to or less than your
hardened gauge, your notches will remain consistent. Youll note that this is capped to level of five,
whereas sanity challenges can be of an intensity anywhere up to ten - there are some things in the
world that nobody can weather. Every time you face a Sanity check more intense than your
hardened meter, your notches ARE going to increase - you will either receive a failed notch or a
hardened notch. Either way, the situation wont leave you the same afterwards.

Hardened Notches

Its possible, albeit difficult, to completely fill a gauge with Hardened notches. Characters with full
gauges have pretty much seen it all and are immune to further shocks. This sort of callousness has
additional effects, however, as that sort of alienation from mainline humanity impedes ones ability
to function as a person.

Characters with 5 Hardened notches in Violence get an automatic +2d bonus to Intimidate or
combat rolls. However, no skill rolled with the Red stat can ever have a width greater than 2. Any
additional points of width are discarded.
Characters with 5 Hardened notches in Unnatural get an automatic +2d bonus to other Sanity rolls.
However, no skill rolled with the Green stat can ever have a width greater than 2. Any additional
points of width are discarded.

Characters with 5 Hardened notches in Self get an automatic +2d bonus to rolls associated with
lying. However, no skill rolled with the Mundane stat can ever have a width greater than 2. Any
additional points of width are discarded.

Characters with 5 Hardened notches in Helplessness get an automatic +2d bonus to escape and
stealth rolls. However, no skill rolled with the Black stat can ever have a width greater than 2. Any
additional points of width are discarded.

Characters with 5 Hardened notches in Abandonment get an automatic +2d bonus to research based
rolls. However, no skill rolled with the Blue stat can ever have a width greater than 2. Any additional
points of width are discarded.

Characters with 5 Hardened notches in Disorder get an automatic +2d bonus to command and
diplomacy. However, no skill rolled with the White stat can ever have a width greater than 2. Any
additional points of width are discarded.

Failed Notches

When you fail an Equilibrium roll, you get a Failed notch in the relevant gauge. No matter the
relative Intensity of the situation, its just one more Failed notchreally horrific experiences are not
necessarily more scarring than minor ones. After all, a hallmark of decaying reason is a lost sense of
proportion.

In addition to the Failed notch, however, you should immediately choose to react in character, and
roleplay the consequences of that failed roll. This can be whatever you deem appropriate for your
character, but for those who arent quite sure what their reaction might be, there are three stock
trauma reactions to choose from based upon snap decision.

The trauma reactions are:

Flight: You run away at top speed from the terrifying stimulus. If youre carrying anything
that weighs more than a couple pounds, you drop it. If the problem is less physical and more
psychological, this might involve pretending the problem does not exist.

Fight: You attack with primal, berserk fury until you either obliterate the stimulus, fall
exhausted from failed Endurance rolls, or are destroyed (or just knocked out). If the
problem is less physical and more psychological, this might involve directly denying or
confronting the problem in an unhealthy way.

Freeze: You either hide or dont come out until youre sure the dangers passed, or you
simply freeze like a deer in headlights. Freezing may mean perfect paralysis, or weeping in
the foetal position. If the problem is less physical and more psychological, this might involve
fixating on the problem beyond rational measures, forcing yourself to be one track minded
in your obsession.
Getting Better

The Counselling skill lets a character talk down someone whos just emerged from a trauma,
providing immediate psychological triage. The counsellor rolls Mundane + Counselling against a
Difficulty equal to the characters current Failed or Hardened notches (whichever the counsellors
addressing).

With a success, a Failed or Hardened notch is erased (this can only be attempted once per traumatic
event). However, the counsellor has to be able to talk with the patient, hear the patients answers,
and have a meaningful exchange of ideas (or, at the minimum, comforting platitudes). This takes at
least a half hour. It also requires a setting that is, if not perfectly safe, at least not immediately
dangerous.

This ability can only be used the same day as the traumatic event. After which time, a more long
term, drawn out solution must be found.

Finally, counselling can be used to snap an individual experiencing a psychotic break, panic attack, or
dissociation out of the situation immediately after a failed roll. The counsellor must make a
Mundane + Counselling check at least equal in difficulty to the number of failed notches that
individual has on the respective pillar.
 Chapter Three: Combat

Heres where we get into some of the most important rules in the gamethe things that can injure
or kill your character. Because combat and other threats change the game so drastically, the rules
for them are quite specific.

Note, these are important rules, not necessarily important for plot. They are just complicated, as
figuring out what the magical effects of some rare kind of flower might be are largely descriptive,
and only mechanically change on a pass/fail basis, but, if some cultist swings at you with a machete,
you need to know exactly when, where, and how well he does it.

First thing to know? Combat round order. When combat is declared, everybody at the table rolls
their Red + Brawling, their White + Tactics, or just the single total of Red or White, whichever is
highest. The round descends in order of who got the widest roll, and then prioritised height.

For example, Jace, Chandra, Nissa and Gideon are approaching a fight with a demon. Each rolls their
dice pools like so:

Jace = White (3) and Tactics (2) = 1, 4, 4, 7, 9

Thematically, white is Jaces secondary colour, being a bastion of the law and all. In his time, hes
seen a lot of combat, and would take an academic approach to studying it, so has quite a high
tactical roll, considering.

Chandra = Red (5) and Brawling (3) = 1, 1, 3, 6, 6, 9, 9, 9

Prioritising her instincts and always ready for a scrap, Chandra is usually the first to leap to action
when a situation escalates to combat. Her hasty priorities in life usually mean shes ready to fight
with little to no warning.

Nissa = White (2) and Tactics (1) = 1, 3, 10

It would be amiss to say that Nissa has lived a pretty calm life, but she is not a soldier. Nissas magic
is patient, she assesses situations to react to, rather than hunts proactively. Shell wait until she
knows the target she should exploit before jumping into a fight.

Gideon = White (5) and Tactics (5 +1ED) = 10, 3, 1, 3, 3, 2, 3, 4, 2, 7

A natural born soldier, Gideons approach is instinctual. He uses his Expert Die in tactics to pre-
declare a 10 in his roll, but the other nine dice he actually rolls show him a width of four - lightning
fast reflexes.

Once this has resolved, the turn order is determined to be:

1st - Gideon
2nd - Chandra
3rd - Jace
4th - Nissa

The GM can then decide where they are going to place any enemies along this turn order, though do
not have to roll for this, or even reveal this information to the players.
The Four Phases of a Combat Round

Each round of combat is broken into four phases: upkeep, declare, roll, and resolve. When all three
are done and every character in combat has acted, the next round begins and the cycle starts all
over again.
Upkeep

This is the part of the combat round where continual effects such as the effects of curses,
environmental hazards or continuous spells apply. Say for example, a character was standing in a
patch of fire at the beginning of their turn, this would be the combat phase that the fire does its
damage in.

Declare

The combatant declares their intentions. If they are a player, they must detail what they are about
to attempt in a short sentence. If it is an NPC, the GM must only declare what the player characters
could work out visually. For example:

Jace: I am going to make that barbarian forget where he is for a short time.

OR

Chandra: I am going to set fire to that mans beard.

OR

GM: The Octopus raises a single tentacle menacingly.

It is at this point people can declare to respond to these actions. Following turn order, the GM will
ask each individual if they would like to respond to a declaration. A PC may only respond once per
full combat round, whereas an NPC can respond as little or as much as the GM allows. For example:

Gideon: I throw my buckler to distract the barbarian.

OR

Nissa: I roll my eyes at Chandra.

OR

Chandra: I push Gideon out of the way of the tentacle.

You cannot respond to a response. It gets silly.

The declare step is also when all Expert Dice values are declared, before the roll.
Roll

The player whose turn it is rolls their dice pool. Since all characters have already declared their
actions and responses, all roll at the same time and figure out their actions width and height.

Each person who declared a response makes a roll to attempt their response. Anything that can be
justified may be rolled, for example, Gideon might roll Red + Brawling to throw the buckler and help
Jace with his mind-wipe attempt, or Chandra might roll White + Grapple to attempt to save Gideon
recklessly. Generally, a width of 3 or more is required to succeed at a response, but a GM may elect
to create a greater difficulty challenge or a lower one.

A GM may also declare no roll is required, or the action is impossible to achieve as quickly as it
would need to be done to work.

Resolve

Before the dice are read, anyone with Trump dice assigns them. Then the character with the
widest roll always acts first. If two sets are equally wide, the taller roll goes first. All actions are
resolved in order of width. If five characters roll 5x5, 3x6, 4x6, 2x3 and a 3x10, their actions are
resolved in the following order:

5x5 first, then 4x6, then 3x10, then 3x6, and then 2x3. This means any action wider than your roll
happens before your actioneven if youre trying to dodge or defend against that attack. If its
wider, it happens before you can act or react.

When an attack hits, it immediately inflicts damage. If you suffer any damage before your roll is
resolved, you lose a die out of your highest match since being punched, stabbed, or set on fire is
very, very distracting. If your set is ruined (reduced to no matching dice), the action fails, even if you
rolled a success. You lose a die every time you take damage.

Thats all there is to a combat round. Everyone says what theyre doing, they roll, actions happen in
width order, and then the whole thing starts over again. Upkeep, Declare, Roll, Resolve.

Damage

Damage in Gatherer is specific; when youre hit, the roll tells you exactly where youre hit, and for
how much damage.

Types of Damage

There is a world of difference between getting punched in the gut and getting stabbed there. A
punch aches and bruises, but unless youre pummeled for a long while youre unlikely to suffer any
lasting harm. Being stabbed or shot with an arrow is entirely differentyour internal organs are re-
arranged and exposed to all kinds of germs, viruses, and pollutants. Damage that penetrates the skin
is serious.

In Gatherer there are two types of damage: Shock and Killing.

Shock damage dazes you and can be dangerous in the short term, but is usually shaken off. It
represents bruising, blunt trauma, concussion, shallow surface cuts, or light bleeding.

Killing damage is just what it sounds like damage that can quickly end your life. It represents
puncture wounds, deep cuts, organ trauma, ballistic damage, heavy bleeding, or burning. Sometimes
Killing damage is reduced to Shock damage due to armor or other effects; when this is important, 1
point of Killing damage is equivalent to 2 points of Shock.

Every character sheet has an area for recording damage, each with its own selection of hit locations
(head, torso, arms, legs). Each location has a number of boxes attributed to it (5 for each arm, leg
and the head, 10 for the torso), which are for marking down damage on said character. If an area is
dealt points of shock damage, this fills up boxes on the location with a slash ( - ) for each point
sustained. If the damage is killing, denote it with a plus ( + ).

The GM should decide how to describe the damage and assign any penalties. Taking 5 Killing to the
torso might not be immediately fatal, but it will probably kill you eventually if you dont get medical
treatment; the GM might call it broken ribs or maybe a punctured lung. It might be worth a -1d
penalty on most actions to reflect shock and pain; or maybe the damage itself is penalty enough. Its
up to the GM.

When new damage strikes a hit location, always fill unmarked boxes first, if there are any. Shock
damage becomes Killing damage if all a hit locations wound boxes are filled. Once all the wound
boxes are marked with Shock, any further damage to that location is automatically counted as Killing
damage.

Optional Rule: Aggravated Damage

Your party might decide that they dont want their game to be quite as brutal and gritty as this, and
might prefer a more heroic angle on their battles. In order to make fights less punishing, just include
a third damage step for Aggravated Damage ( -- ) between Shock and Killing. Treat it mechanically
as Shock damage for the purpose of healing and damage stacking, and enjoy less consequences in
your combats.

Long Term Injury

Long term injury is something that should be considered on a case-by-case basis, and should not be
a tool just to inject some quick shock into a plot - for multiple reasons, but in this format - the player
has to roleplay around the effects of that injury potentially indefinitely.

If an area is completely filled with Killing damage, that area can be considered permanently
damaged. If that area is the head or torso, the result is usually lethal (but, again, GM discretion may
apply).
The effects of this permanent damage may very well result in a permanent disability. A character
who has received full Killing damage to their legs may very well never walk again, or a full-Killing
spread to the left arm may cause that limb to be amputated. Full destruction is also avoidable - the
individual could be left with nerve damage or chronic pain. The statistical effects and implications of
these situations should always be considered individually.

Hit Locations

The location of an injury is usually much more important than the amount of damagegiven the
choice between having someone stomp on your foot or on your face, youll pick the foot every time.
Because location is so important, in Gatherer, the height of an attack roll (i.e., the quality of the
attack) defines the hit location, while the width of the roll (speed and power) determines damage as
well as telling you who goes first. The higher the attack roll, the more dangerous the attack.

Height Hit Location

1 Left Leg

2 Right Leg

3-4 Left Arm

5-6 Right Arm

7-9 Torso

10 Head

Once all the wound boxes in the head (sometimes called brain boxes) are filled with Shock
damage, youre unconscious. If your head boxes fill with Killing, youre dead.

Once all the wound boxes in your torso are filled with Shock damage, take a 2d penalty on all rolls,
until you heal at least one point of Shock. If your torso boxes fill with Killing, youre dead.

When a limb is filled with Shock damage, you cant use it to perform any skill or action. If a leg is
filled with Shock damage, your running speed is cut in half; if both are filled, your movement is
reduced staggeringly, so that you can only crawl or limp to locations. Once all wound boxes in a limb
fill with Killing, any further damage to that limb goes straight to the torso.

Non-Human Hit Locations

Some supernatural creaturesand many mundane oneshave bizarre body configurations and
more or fewer wound boxes than a human. There are several ways to reflect this. A quick and dirty
solution is to take the creatures highest stat, multiply it by 10, and split that figure between six hit
locations as wound boxes. As a matter of course, the largest portion of the body should take the
torso slot (7 to 9), the smallest should take the head slot (10) and the limbs should be split between
the remaining numbers.

To reflect even more bizarre configurations you can simply spread the head boxes throughout the
body of the creature in odd locations (say, one in the torso, one in the arm and one in the head).
This makes knocking out such a creature nearly impossible without extensive knowledge of its body
structure.

Healing
Damage is nasty stuff, so youre naturally wondering how to get rid of it.
Healing Shock damage: Shock can be healed with the Medicine skill, Healing skill, or a relevant
Profession, if you have the right toolsa complete first aid kit with bandages, splints, and painkillers
usually does the trick. The character performing first aid makes a Green + Medicine roll with the
total amount of damage in the hit location as a difficulty number, up to a maximum of 10 (so if a
limb has 2 Killing and 4 Shock damage, the difficulty is 6). Each successful use of the First Aid skill
heals a number of Shock points equal to the width of the roll; a failed roll, however, inflicts 1 point of
Shock.
First aid can be used once per wound. To keep track, simply put a checkmark next to the hit location
each time you take a wound and erase it when you get treated with first aid.
Medicine can never heal Killing damageonly sustained magical healing or sustained medical
treatment can do that.
Shock can also be healed with rest. Every game day, if you get a good nights rest, you recover half
the Shock damage on each hit location (if you have only 1 point of Shock on a location, it heals
completely).
Healing Killing damage: Killing damage takes a lot longer to heal. Short of divine healing magic, it
can only be cured by serious medical attentionmeaning surgery and a hospital stayor prolonged
bed rest.
When you get real medical treatment, the doctor rolls a Green + Medicine dice pool, or the Healer
rolls a White + Healing dice pool. The procedure converts a number of Killing points to Shock equal
to the height of the successful roll, taking 5 width hours. Treat each hit location with a separate
operation.
You can also recover Killing damage with extensive bed rest. For each week of complete rest, 1 point
of Killing is converted to Shock on each hit location.
If its in a hospital or sanctified safe place, roll the doctors Green + Medicine pool or the healers
White + Healing pool and convert width in Killing to Shock instantaneously on top of the reduction
from height.

Melee Combat

Hand-to-hand attacks are usually done in a variety of styles. If youre unarmed, use the Brawling,
Wrestling or even a Martial Arts skill. Generally its your choice, unless the GM decides a particular
skill is requiredif your opponent has wrestled you to the ground, you may be forced to use your
Grappling skill instead of Brawling. If you have a weapon, use its Melee Weapon skill. As usual, the
height of your roll determines the hit location: Roll a 3x1 and you hit the guy in the leg. Roll 2x10 and
you smash him in the face. Width determines who goes first in a one-on-one fight, as well as
damage.

Unarmed damage deals Width - 1 shock damage at base, whereas your weapons basic damage is
determined in its individual statistics. See Chapter 4 for details.

Called Shots

Just getting the edge on an opponent in hand-to-hand combat is hard enoughtrying to hit a
specific body part is truly tricky. Heres how it works: Lose one die from your dice pool because its
harder to target a specific hit location (skill dice can offset this penalty, but are lost or you can take
the penalty and use the skill die normally). Next, set a die in your remaining pool to the hit location
youre hoping to hit. Now roll the remaining dice. If you score a match and it beats your opponents
roll, you hit. If you score a match with the set hit location die, youve successfully struck that
particular hit location. Expert dice buy off the dropped die penaltyas usualbut must be rolled
normally.

The most popular hand-to-hand called shot is the knockout, a jab or blow to the head of a target (hit
location 10) hoping to knock him unconscious. Be careful, thoughif the targets head fills with
Killing damage, thats it, hes dead.

Blocking & Dodging

Most people dont like being hit, stabbed, or strangled, and the attack rules assume the target is
trying his or her best to avoid it while still trying to get an attack in. But there are some times when
you dont care about attacking backyou just want to survive. Heres how getting the hell out of
the way works in Gatherer.

There are three ways to defend against an incoming attack: dodging, blocking and defending with a
magical ability. Dodging uses your Red + Escape or Mundane + Acrobatics pool. Blocking uses your
Red + Brawling, White + Grappling, or Green + Endurance pool.

Defending with a magical ability uses the appropriate skill area as either a block or dodge. For
example, with your Fire skill you can block an incoming attack by lightning-bolting an arrow out of
the air.

All three types of defense work pretty much the same way. Dodging, blocking, or defending with a
magical power is a combat action that replaces your attack or other action for that round (unless you
attempt multiple actions).

This is always a dynamic contest against your opponents attack roll. Your rolls width must equal or
exceed the attack rolls width, or the attack happens too quickly for you to react. And your roll must
equal or beat the attacks height, or you dont defend well enough to avoid it.
On a successful dodge, block, or magical defense, each die in your matching set becomes a gobble
die that removes 1 die from the attackers matching set. Any attacking set that is reduced be low
width 2 is ruined and misses completely.

You can spread your gobble dice between multiple attackers, as long as your roll is equal or better
than each individual attack rolls width and height. Even better, if youre blocking with a shield or
some other object that gives you a lot of coverage and was specifically built for blocking, you dont
have to use gobble dice to defend. You still must roll to block and score a matching set, as usual, but
every attack directed against you that you know is coming must beat your block rolls height to hit
youin other words, for that one resolve phase enemies must beat your blocks height as a difficulty
number. As always, if the attack goes first it hits before you can get your guard up.

Grapple Rules

The standard hand-to-hand attack is a punch or kick, but many fights start out with an exchange of
blows and end up with both fighters rolling around on the asphalt, each looking to hold the other
guy down.

To pin someone, first announce thats what youre doing in the declare phase. Then roll your Red +
Brawling, White + Grappling, Black + Cheating, or anything else the GM deems relevant. If you beat
your targets roll, you inflict 1 point of Shock to the indicated hit location and knock the target down.
The target is now pinned until he escapes.

When pinned, you cant dodge or take cover, and you cant attack anyoneincluding using firearms
or Supernatural powersexcept the character that pinned you. Even worse, while youre pinned any
hand-to-hand attack made against you gains +1d to its dice pool.

You remain pinned until one of three things happens:

Your attacker declares hes doing something else and lets you go.

Your attacker is knocked out or killed.

You beat your attackers Red + Brawling, White + Grappling or Black + Cheating roll in a dynamic
contest with your own or your Red + Escape dice pool. You can attempt this once per combat round.

Complex Manoeuvres

Choking and Smothering

Smothering, choking, and drowning are all the same thing: First you cant breathe, and then you pass
out and die. The cause of death is lack of oxygen.
To choke someone with your bare hands (outside a pin), use your Red + Brawling, White + Grappling
or Black + Cheating pool. First, declare a called shot to the head. If you succeed, you inflict 1 point of
Shock and continue doing 1 point of Shock to the targets head per round, until one of the following
things happens:

You declare that youre doing something else.

You take damage from any source.

The victim beats your Red + Brawling, White + Grappling or Black + Cheating roll in a dynamic
contest with your own or Red + Escape dice pool. The victim may attempt this roll once a combat
round.

You can begin choking a pinned opponent with any successful grapple attempt you dont need to
make a called shot to location 10. But if you attempt a choke and fail, the target automatically
escapes your Strangling a target works just like choking, but it cuts off the flow of blood to the brain
instead of just air. Strangling inflicts 2 points of Shock to the head per round and requires a some
form of weaponry such as a strip of rope.

Disarming

If someones coming at you with a weapon, youre probably going to want to knock it away from
him. Good luck.

Make a called shot on the arm holding the weapon. If you succeed, and you beat or match your
targets Body stat as a difficulty number, you do no damage but force the target to drop the weapon.
If your width is a point or more greater than the width of your targets attack, you can choose to
either knock the weapon away or snatch it from the targetand if you snatch it, you can use it
normally the next combat round.

If you fail to beat the targets width and the weapon has an edge, you suffer 1 point of Killing to
whichever limb youre using to disarm, even if you succeed in knocking the weapon away. If that
seems harsh, just remember that when someones trying to use a sword on you, theres not much to
grab onto but the pointy bits.

Ranged Combat

The nasty thing about getting shot at is that once the arrow is in flight, theres not much you can do
about it. Projectiles are fast; people are slow. The first clue many people get that theyre being shot
at is the sensation of an arrow shaft ploughing through their flesh.
That means ranged volleys are almost always a static contest. The target isnt interacting with your
arrow once its in flight; if you shoot before the target can get out of the way, you either hit or you
dont. Dont want to get shot? Get behind cover before the shooting starts.

To keep every fight from stagnating into endless repetitions of I shoot him. I shoot him. I shoot
him, there are various tactical options that skew your chances a bit. As always, these options must
be chosen during the declare phase of combat, before you roll.

Most of these rules can also be used for any distance attackbe it a thrown rock, a fireball spell, or a
bow.

Range damage deals Width - 1 shock damage at base for thrown objects like rocks and bricks,
whereas your weapons basic damage is determined in its individual statistics. See Chapter 4 for
details.

When ranged damage is dealt with spellcasting such as Red + Fire or Black + Death, the spell damage
and effects are down to the GM, but a handy guide is:

1 shock to target at rank 1

2 shock to target at rank 3

3 shock to target at rank 5

With rolls dealing an extra point of damage for every point of width beyond three.

Aiming

By taking your time and sighting your target carefully, you can improve your chances of hitting: For
every combat round spent squinting down the sights at the target, add +1d to your dice pool. You
cant take any other action while aiming, or add more than +2d in this fashion. And if youre
distracted (i.e., you have to roll another dice pool) or you suffer any damage while aiming, the bonus
is lost.

In addition to normal aiming, attacking a large or stationary object at close range automatically
grants a +2d bonus to the attack. After all, its simple to shoot a house at 20 feet of distance.

Called Shots

Sometimes you want to shoot a target in a specific body part. This is known as a called shot. It works
pretty much the same way as in hand-to-hand attacks (see above). Drop 1d out of your dice pool, set
one other die in your pool to the number of the hit location youre targeting, and roll the remaining
dice looking for a match.

Sometimes you want to call a shot at an object worn or held by a target, not the target itselflike
the focus jewel on a ritual, a mystic amulet, gadget, or doomsday device. In that case, make a called
shot for hit location 9.

Multiple Shots

Sometimes you fire more than one shot at someone (or at more than one person). With weapons
designed to fire once per combat round (like all bows and single fire crossbows) this is handled by
the multiple actions rules (see above) in other words, its very hard to pull off.

However, you may be casting a spell or utilising an artifact that your GM designated is able to deal
damage in a spray - in this instance, all separate sets in the roll can be assigned to separate targets at
no penalty. This is particularly useful in instances such as creating walls of water, fire, or similar
effects. Your GM may opt to reduce your damage output in such an event.

Range

The range to the target modifies the attacking dice pool:

At close range, add another die to your pool.

At medium range, your dice pool is unaffected.

At long range, reduce your dice pool by one die.

What constitutes as long, medium or close range is determined by your GM and what the nature of
your ranged attack is.
 Chapter Four: Artifacts, Scrolls and Equipment

Equipment
Armor

Armor is any substance that protects against physical attack. Anything that absorbs any amount
of incoming damage is, by definition, armor. There are two categories of armor in Gatherer: light
armor and heavy armor. Both types are defined by an armor rating: light armor rating (LAR) and
heavy armor rating (HAR). Armor absorbs a number of damage points equal to its rating from
incoming physical attacks. If the armor eats up more damage than an attack inflicts, the armor
deflects the attack. Any damage that gets through the armor is inflicted on the target normally.
What kind of damage is absorbed depends on the type of armor.

Light armor absorbs 1 point of Shock damage per point of LAR. Light armor represents cushioning of
some sort, such as pads, foam inserts, leather or any other type of light shielding. If you have a light
armor rating of 3, it absorbs 3 points of Shock from incoming attacks. Light armor doesnt defend
against Killing damageeven 1 point of Killing punches right through it.

Heavy armor absorbs 1 point of Killing damage and 1 point of Shock per point of HAR. Heavy armor
represents strong, usually rigid material, such as ceramic plates, metal, or stone. If you have a heavy
armor rating (HAR) of 5, it absorbs 5 Shock and 5 Killing. Dont convert one type of damage to the
other; if you have HAR 3 and youre punched for 4 Shock, you take 1 Shockthe unused Killing
protection does you no good.

You can stack different types of armorheavy armor with light armor underneath, for example, or
light armor with heavier pieces built into it. Damage is absorbed in the order theyre stackedso if
you wear heavy armor on top of light armor, the HAR protects you first and whatever damage is left
over is blocked by the LAR.

Armor Level (Type)

Padded Leather Jacket (Hit Location 7-9) 2 LAR

Full Body Padding (All Hit Locations) 2 LAR

Steel Helmet (Hit Location 10) 1 HAR + 1 LAR

Flexible Breastplate (Hit Locations 7-9) 2 HAR + 2 LAR

Plate Armor (All Hit Locations) 3 HAR + 2 LAR

Buckler Shield (Hit Locations 5-7) 1 HAR + 2 LAR

 Stacking Body Armor

Heavy Armor is just that - heavy. When stacking armor, this restricts the average humanoid to 5
points of HAR maximum and 8 points of LAR, regardless of how many hit locations they cover. As an
example, using the above table, if a character were to equip Plate Armor, a Buckler Shield and a
Steel Helmet, the would not be able to equip anything else that contributed to their HAR, as they
would have reached their threshold.

Any character with 4 HAR equipped reduces the width of all roles by 1, to a minimum of 2. Any
character with 5 HAR equipped cannot normally roll wider than 2.

Taking Cover

Cover functions much in the same way as armor, and should be treated as such when someone is
hiding behind it. Cover is given an LAR or HAR rating to overcome (usually a HAR) and does not
contribute to a characters max equipment load.

Similarly, cover will hide certain areas of a character. If a character is hiding behind, say, a rocky
embankment, and only their head and left arm are visible, then Hit Locations 3, 4 and 10 are the only
ones that damage can land upon. Cover can absorb damage up to its HAR level before it breaks, and
any damage dealt beyond this level is dealt to the person behind cover. See below for a table of
cover examples:

Cover Level (Type)

1 Wooden Door (Same Stats as Shield) 2 HAR

2 Wooden Wall 3 HAR

8 Stone Wall 6 HAR

4 Steel Sheet 8 HAR

3 Ice Wall (Magical, Cannot Break) 2 HAR

16 Steel Vault Door 10 HAR

By the way, a human body is equivalent to HAR 2the victim being used as cover takes full damage
from the attack, but only stops 2 Shock and 2 Killing from getting to whatever is on the other side.

Weaponry

Most weapons do damage in the ordinary wayyou attack with a stat + skill roll and the weapon
does width in Shock damage, or width in Killing damage, or both.
But some weapons do more damage than others, and some have special properties, like being able
to penetrate armor or exploding over a certain radius. The four weapon qualities that define what a
special weapon can do are Penetration, Area, Burn, and Spray. There are also non-lethal attacks that
reduce a targets stats and skills.

Penetration

Penetrating weapons are designed to pierce armor. Their effectiveness is measured in points. They
reduce the HAR of a target by their point amount before applying damage, for that attack only. If
they reduce the HAR to 0 or less, the target suffers full damage.

Penetrating weapons automatically ignore all light armor. If a penetrating weapon is explosive (that
is, it has an Area rating), it permanently reduces the HAR of the target.

Examples of Penetrating Weapons include Siege Ballistae, Bottled Explosives and Composite Bows.

Area

A weapon with the Area quality explodes when it hits, inflicting extra damage to the target and
everything within a certain radius. Dynamite, grenades, and artillery shells are examples of Area
weapons.

The Area quality is measured in dice. The specific target of the attack takes the non-Area damage, as
usual. In addition, the target and every character within the radius takes 2 Shock to every hit
location. Also, the target and every character in the radius rolls a number of dice equal to the
weapons Area rating during the resolve phase of combat. Each die indicates the hit location that
suffers 1 point of Killing. Dont look for matches herejust take the damage from each die on the
appropriate hit location.

If the initial attack misses, the Area dice dont get rolled at allthe attack goes wide and explodes
harmlessly. If youre the GM and a bunch of NPCs get caught in an Area blast, you may want to roll
the dice just once and apply the same results to every character. This means that they all take the
same damage to the same hit locations, which is unrealisticbut its a lot easier than rolling 3d over
and over for each NPC.

Area weapons are particularly good at destroying structures and cover. When an Area weapon
scores a hit on a structure and does damage past its armor, all Area dice are focused on that specific
hit location.

Burn

The Burn quality has no points or dice pool associated with itit simply takes effect. Targets
damaged by a Burn weapon are on fire. When a Burn weapon strikes, it does normal damage. In
addition, every hit location of the target except the head is now on fire and takes 1 point of Shock
damage.

Burning hit locations suffer an additional point of Shock damage on that characters Upkeep until the
fire is extinguished.

Weapons with both Burn and Area qualities have a different sort of Area effect than usual. Instead of
causing an explosion; Burn/Area weapons blanket a radius in flame. Rather than taking 2 Shock to
every location and Killing damage from the Area dice, affected targets only suffer 1 point of Shock
damage to each hit location rolled on the Area dice. But those areas are now on fire.

The Burn quality can also be used to simulate other threats that stick with you, such as acid or a
swarm of insects. The game effect is the same; just describe it differently.

Spray

A spray weapon is a weapon that can affect multiple targets in an area of effect in front of its
wielder. Spray weapons can make multiple attacks with no dice pool penalty. Instead, a number of
dice equal to the weapons Spray level are added to the dice pool for the attack roll. Each match is a
successful hit by the weapon on the target inflicting normal damage. The weapons Spray level also
determines how many free multiple attacks the Spray weapon can make before suffering dice
penalties. These weapons are particularly useful, and usually magical in nature.

Examples include rapid-firing crossbows, spike traps or wands of dragon fire.

Basic Weaponry

Weapons do different amounts as well as different types of damage. Some weapons cause only
Shock, some only Killing, and some a combination of both. All are based off the width of the attack
roll. Damage is listed in shorthand: Width + 1 in Killing and Shock is W+1 in KS. Width in Shock +1
Killing is W in S+1K. Got it?

Weapons Table (Basic)

Weapon Damage Penetration Area Burn? Spray

Axe, Spear, Sword W+1 in K 1 - N -

Club W+2 in S - - N -

Fists and Feet W in S - - N -

Dagger W in K - - N -

Isochron Scepter of Lightning W+1 in K 3 (Only metal) - N 2

Crossbow (Lever Action) W+1 in KS 1 - N 2

Stick of Dynamite W+3 in K 3 2D N -

Bottle of Alchemists Fire W+3 in K 2 3D Y -

Claws W+2 in S - - - 1

Compound Bow W+1 in K 1 - - -

Siege Ballista (Cooldown - 5 rounds) W+5 in KS 8 - - -

Flaming Trebuchet (Cooldown - 5 Rounds) W+5 in KS 4 5D Y -

Artifacts
Artifacts are crucial to the world of Magic; entire plotlines have revolved around them; entire planes
are built on them and six of them are the most expensive Magic cards in existence. Obviously,
theyre going to need a place in any system that attempts to capture the feel of Magic in a
roleplaying format.

Artifacts in Your Game

Artifacts at their core change the rules in some way they affect interactions, positively or
negatively, and as a result, they can define the roleplaying experience, the feel of a combat, or the
execution of a story. Think carefully about the use of powerful artifacts and how they might affect
your plot. Im going to include a non-comprehensive list of potential artifacts to include in your
story, of which there will be three classes Personal, Group and World.

Personal artifacts are the most common, and affect the individual carrying them. As a result of this,
they are usually less powerful, but can range all the way up to plot defining. Just, try not to give one
player all of that responsibility and story focus, it gets a little boring. Examples in Magic include:
Sword of Fire and Ice, Krakens Eye and The Chainveil.

Group artifacts affect, well, a group. This can range from two people, to a party, to an army, to a
race of creatures, depending upon the power of the artifact in question. Examples in Magic include:
Coat of Arms, The Dragon Throne of Tarkir and Gauntlet of Might.

World level artifacts are where things get intense. These define story arcs, and effect everything in a
plane. Sometimes they might not even do anything, with their importance being political. The
perfect example of this in the Magic story is That Which Was Taken from Kamigawa, but also
includes things like Tangle Wire and Howling Mine.

So what do artifacts do? Well, thats entirely up to you and your party, or your GM, but as a rule,
they have more of a qualitative benefit than a quantitative one. In other words; story, not
mechanics, is the real way to go. Lets look at some examples.

Time Vault

Category: Group
Effect: Creatures under the effect of a Time Vault can act twice as often in combat as those not
under its effects.

Isochron Scepter

Category: Personal
Effect: Functions as a wand for minor spells. Can cast a spell with a small effect indefinitely, even in
the hands of a non-caster.

Elbrus, the Binding Blade

Category: World
Effect: When used as part of a ritual sacrifice, summons Withengar the Unbound Demon. Stats can
be found in the Bestiary section later in this document. In order to wield the Binding Blade, a
severely complicated ritual must first take place to mantle those who would use it to the blade.
 Skyship Weatherlight

Category: World
Effect: Can transport multiple passengers through the air to different planes, even if the passengers
themselves cannot planeswalk. Can fly through magical means, and requires continuous mana
fuelled into it to work efficiently.

Trigon of Infestation

Category: Personal
Effect: A cursed Phyrexian artifact, it creates malicious swarming insects that can be controlled and
made to target enemies.

Sunforger

Category: Personal
Effect: A Warhammer imbued with battle magic. When thrown to the ground in anger, it can have
one of the following effects chosen at random:

Deal four shock damage to target enemy.

Destroy target artifact at random.
Allies of the Sunforgers wielder each removes two points of shock damage.
Deal two killing damage to a random character on the field (ally or enemy).
Allies gain 1ED until the end of their next turn.

Can only be used in this way once a day.

Voyager Staff

Category: Personal
Effect: A glass tube capped with silver at each end. If broken on a creature, that creature is blinked
out of time for 10d10 seconds.

Whispersilk Cloak

Category: Personal
Effect: The wearer of the Whispersilk cloak makes no sound when moving, and can blend with
shadow in low levels of light, granting them 2ED in Stealth rolls.

Trailblazers Boots

Category: Personal
Effect: When wearing these regular looking boots, magic keeps you energised. While exploring areas
youve never previously visited, you cannot get tired and only need to eat once every few days.

That Which Was Taken

Category: World
Effect: As long as That Which Was Taken is intact, those blessed by it are immortal.

The Mirari

Category: World
Effect: Grants anyone who uses it one wish, which will be granted. However, within 1d10 months, a
great tragedy will befall anyone who uses it for a wish. Anyone who sees the Mirari also must make a
Intensity 5 Self Check or be under a compulsion effect to use it.

Helvault

Category: World
Effect: Anything cast into the Helvault is trapped until the Helvault is destroyed by outside forces.
There is no other way to escape the Helvault.

Mindlock orb

Category: Group
Effect: Whilst in the presence of a Mindlock Orb all thoughts scatter away. A character must pass an
Intensity 3 Abandonment Check or freak out temporarily due to their inability to process information
over the long term.

Cumber Stone

Category: Group
Effect: All damage dealt in the presence of a Cumber Stone is shock damage, and is reduced by 1.

Grafdiggers Cage

Category: Group
Effect: Corpses in the presence of a Grafdiggers cage cannot be raised from the dead.

Pithing Needle

Category: Personal
Effect: Spells cannot be cast by a mage while that mage is under the effect of a pithing needle.
Removing the pithing needle immediately ends this effect with no long term side effects.

Soul Conduit

Category: Group
Effect: Soul Conduit immediately trades all Shock and Killing damage from one character to another,
and vice versa.

Prototype Portal

Category: Personal
Effect: Once a day, this portal may create a copy of one man-sized or smaller Personal artifact. The
original artifact needs to be fed to the portal in order to initiate this effect. The portal will continue
to create copies until a new artifact is fed to it.

Black Lotus

Category: Personal
Effect: Choose a colour. When using skills with that colours statistic, treat that statistic as if it were
one higher. If this would bring your statistic to a higher number than 5, gain a Trump Dice in that stat
instead.

Null Rod

Category: Personal
Effect: Negate the effects of all artifacts within 50ft of the Null Rod.
Artifact Creation
In order to create an artifact, the PC wanting to must have the Craft: Artifact skill. Creating an
artifact takes time and patience, with each level of artifact taking longer to make, depending upon
its complexity. In addition to this, players can only attempt to create Group class artifacts if they
have at least 3 dice in the Craft: Artifact skill, and World class artifacts if they have at least 6 dice in
the Craft: Artifact skill.

When attempting to make an artifact, the player must pitch their idea for the artifact to the GM. The
GM will then give that artifact a rating out of 10.

Personal artifacts are rated based on how beneficial to your character they will be.
Group artifacts are rated based upon how much they would impact a group of people.
World artifacts are rated based upon how much they would change the story being told.

The rating given is the difficulty class of the check required to craft the artifact. For example, if your
GM determines an Isochron Scepter to be a rating of 5 as a personal artifact, you must roll a 2x5 or
higher on a craft artifact roll to make it. If you fail the check, you may not reattempt it for:

One week, if the artifact in question was Personal class.

One month, if the artifact in question was Group class.
One year, if the artifact in question was World class.

Though GM discretion can alter this. The artifact will also take an amount of time to create. This time
is equal to its difficulty class x its time increment:

Personal artifacts take days to create.

Group artifacts take weeks to create.
World artifacts take months to create.

So a Group artifact with a difficulty class of 3 to make would take 3 months to complete, with each
point of width beyond two reducing this by one time increment. If you rolled a 3x3 to create it, for
example, youd be able to create the artifact in 2 months, instead of 3.

Finally, if you are creating an artifact, you cannot attempt to create another of the same class or
higher until the project you are currently working on has been completed or abandoned. You cant
make a World artifacts while working on a Group artifact, for example, but you could make a
Personal artifact while also working on a Group artifact.
 Chapter Five: Other Threats
Drowning in Three Inches of Dirty Water
Poisons
Burning
Falling
Suffocation
Curses
Being Swallowed
 Section 2: Planeswalkers
Chapter Six: Building a Character

This is probably the chapter most people skip to first. Now, this is by no means a comprehensive
ruleset; like most of this system, the character generation cannot cover every option your group
might want to utilise. As always, all rules displayed in this section should be considered subjective
your group may wish to chop, change and ignore as many or as little as they want.

Step One: Number of Dice & Statistics

Dice are the economy of Gatherers character generation. They help us to balance our characters
against each other in a quantifiable way in order to ensure no one player over shines another. Dice
have a number of uses during character generation, but the primary one is deciding upon your
numbers for play.

Statistics
First, before any dice are allocated, the GM will decide upon exactly how statistics are to be spread.
In the method I prefer to use, each player gets the following spread of numbers to assign to their
Statistics:

4, 3, 3, 3, 3, 2
For example, one player may choose to allocate their four to Green, their two to Black and the
threes everywhere else, allowing them to show a slight specialisation in Green over the other
colours of magic.

Well, what if you want a character whos less well-adjusted than this? Simple, after being given each
of these numbers, each player then has the choose of bumping one number higher at the expense of
another. As a GM, you have the choose for how often this can be done, but I like to cap it at two. For
example, our Green planeswalker is clearly going to want to develop more into their specialist
colour, so their spread might look like one of the three below each of which has been achieved
with either no, one or two bumps:

Colour Iteration 1 Iteration 2 Iteration 3

White 3 3 4
Blue 3 2 2
Black 2 2 1
Red 3 3 3
Green 4 5 5
Mundane 3 3 3
This allows for a very wide range of tweaks that can be applied to any character to give variety,
whilst also allowing for a balanced approach to character generation. A player may choose not to
bump at all, leaving themselves with a 4, 3, 3, 3, 3, 2 spread. This can be used to develop dual colour
characters like the one above, wedge coloured characters with three level 4 statistics, or even
universalists, who begin with a balanced 3 in every statistic. No statistic should go higher than level 5
at character generation. While GMs may choose to ignore this rule, its highly recommended unless
youre generating characters for an Epic Fantasy or Oldwalker game, where it doesnt make sense to
have characters who havent already honed their crafts.

Dice Allotment
After this step has been completed, the GM will then give out a number of dice that each player is
allowed to use to complete their characters statistics. The number given out varies depending upon
the style of game youre attempting to run.

Number of Low-Powered Standard High-Fantasy Epic Fantasy Oldwalker

Dice 50 75 90 110 140

NB:- If youre running a game thats Epic level or higher, you might want to allow for more bumps in the spread of

statistics to really let people define themselves from the get-go.

Dice are then spent on the characters different skills. So, lets stick with our Green planeswalker
that we generated earlier, and imagine weve given them 75 dice to spend. How would they spend
those? Well, lets go through it. Our Green planeswalker wants to develop their Enchantment skills
lets say theyre an Oran Rief Druid. As a result, their player is going to want to have a rating of 5 in
the Enchantments skill under the colour Green. This would cost them fifteen dice, as for each time
you buy a skill, you have to pay dice equal to the rank youre buying it to. See below:

Skill Level Total Dice Spent

1 1
2 3
3 6
4 10
5 15
6 21
7 28
8 36
9 45
10 55

As with the statistics, I dont recommend allowing any player to bump a skill above Level 5 in
character generation, unless theres a good reason for doing so. Also, before spending all your dice,
be aware that they can be spent on other things or earnt back, which well look at later in this
chapter.
Step Two: Description

Characterisation is always a difficult stage of the roleplaying experience, and Ive yet to meet anyone
who can do it easily. The character generation experience is one that youll become familiar with, as
by nature it should be the first thing you do when sitting down with your friends to make your story.
Im going to show you a number of methods for creating a character that you can feel at home in,
whilst also being comfortable in your campaign, your party, and your play group. Ill do this through
a combination of my own experiences and those that Ive watched players go through as a Games
Master, highlighting some of the choices people made while creating the avatars that would
represent them in the story, why they made those choices, and most importantly, what you can
learn from them. Also, if none of this works for you and you just want to have a quick character right
off the bat? Keep going past this section; Ive put together a load of tables thatll help you very
quickly randomly generate a character that you can just tack description onto as you see fit.

When done well, a player character can live with you for years, and you can learn from them and be
guided by them as much as theyre guided by you and grow from you. Ive seen people cry over the
deaths of these characters, talk about them as if they were in the room, and speculate about their
nuances with as much furore as anyone who loves a character from a book, movie, or video game.
Id love to give you the kind of guidance that can help you have these kinds of experiences, but the
most important part of the work is the beginning.

Part One: Making a Special Snowflake

Im fully of the mind-set that the best way to get to know a person is to ask them questions, and
then watch how they respond to those questions. Understanding your Player Character is no
different, and the person you should be asking those questions is them. Before you get to that part?
You need to question your Game Master. To get started, try these three out for size:

1. What tone are you aiming for with this story?

2. What themes are you looking to address with this story?
3. What character restrictions are in place?

If you bare the answers to these three questions in mind, you will never create a character that
doesnt feel somewhat a natural part of the story they were created for, and this is one of the most
important parts of characterisation. You could make one of the most complex and emotionally
nuanced sorcerers in the world, with interesting flaws, well-developed strengths, and a well-
developed and emotionally engaging backstory none of that matters for anything if that character
doesnt fit the setting. That kind of character will just feel awkward in, say, a Wild West game, for a
Hard Sci-Fi game, or a high-stakes political game set in Wall Street. Thats not to say a character like
that couldnt fit in those games, but it all depends on what tone, themes and restrictions the Game
Master has in place for their stories.

I dont like to throw the term special snowflake around due to its dismissiveness and unfair
stereotypes, but this is where that kind of sentiment gets recognised most. It can also be reversed,
and the amount of liberties you can get away with in context will amaze you.
Ive been running a game over Skype for over three years now; in this game, I can summarise the
player characters weve got in short

- An Elven assassin whos the heiress to an ancient arcane lineage and a multinational
corporation.
- A young woman who wants to discover the mysteries of her parents scientific work and her
own destiny. Shes also a Goddess.
- A machine who slowly discovered they had a soul, and is shaping themselves into the
woman that soul once belonged to.
- A war chief devoted to defeating dragons to avenge their national history.
- A cowboy-cum-survivalist with a Goddess in his head who regularly battles eldritch
monsters alongside their own insecurities.
- A skeleton who plays a harmonica despite being in possession of neither lips nor lungs.

In short, without context? They sound ridiculous. And in some cases, they are. But thats not
important; what is important is that they fit the context of the story that were putting them in.
Well try another one, shall we?

- A good-looking billionaire whos also a super-genius. Hes an engineer whos made a

superweapon that makes him impervious to most damage, capable of flight and can fire
rockets.
- A Russian assassin running from her past (inexplicably in a cat-suit).
- A 90 year old patriot whos put all of their combat specs into fighting with their shield, but
all of their ability points into charisma.
- The God of Thunder. Drinks a lot. Has a beard and an evil brother. Also he can fly by
throwing his weapon really hard and holding on for dear life.
- A scientist whos basically a rip-off of Jekyll and Hyde.
- An archer who never misses a shot and lives deep in the woods with his family and nature,
away from society.

Again, without context? They sound appalling. Theres that phrase again Special Snowflake.
However, put them into context, into the guidelines that the story has created to match the tone?
Well, the Avengers line-up doesnt sound so weird anymore theyre not so much defined by what
they are, but what they do, and how they interact with the story around them. Dont be afraid of
making a character too weird, because sometimes, weird fits.

Part Two: Asking the Right Questions

The best way to learn a process is to go through the process, so well do that. Hypothetically, our GM
has set a game in a world Im pretty sure 90% of this readership will be familiar with Innistrad,
before the recent Shadows Over Innistrad storyline. Now, coming up with this character, we have a
number of questions to answer with Innistrad in mind. Ill give you ten short ones to start off with,
and then well work through them together.

1. Fundamentally, who is this character; what is their identity?

2. How does this character view themselves and their place in the world?
3. How does this character view the world around them?
 4. Where did this character come from, and how did they get here from there?
5. Where is this character going, and how will they get there from here?
6. What are this characters hopes and goals for the future?
7. What are this characters fears about their future?
8. What is this characters defining philosophy?
9. What would make this character defy their defining philosophy?
10. Who, or what, would this character die for?

I guarantee you having an answer prepared for each of these questions will help you to understand
your character on a much more emotional level than simply having a stat block for them, a race, a
name, and a class archetype. So, in this scenario, our Game Master has told us they are running a
mystery campaign set up around discovering a cultist plot devoted to an arch demon on the plane of
Innistrad each character must be old enough to be considered an adult, and were allowed to be of
any moral alignment, as long as we can work well in a group. Simple, now lets create.

1. Fundamentally, who is this character; what is their identity?

Innistrad offers us a wealth of character identity choices vampirism, lycanthropy, alchemists, hell
even geists are prevalent on the plane (though you might have to check with your GM about that
one). This campaign is about investigating cultists, so it makes sense for us to build a human
character that works for the Church of Avacyn, as that would fit into the campaign narrative quite
well. Its not necessary, of course, but as this is our hypothetical first campaign, its always easier to
build a character that goes hand-in-hand with the story. I like the idea of playing an Inquisitor, whos
very sceptical of things around her, as cynicism is an interesting weakness to play with, so thats
what well build.

2. How does this character view themselves and their place in the world?

Innistrad is full of humans just trying to make a living, or monsters just trying to survive weve built
a character with a bit more purpose, which is always useful. As an Inquisitor of Avacyn, shell
probably see herself as a force for good, for purity. However, this also means that shell see herself
as a smaller part of a large effort to spread light and purity throughout the world, meaning her self-
esteem and sense of moral purpose could also lead her to put herself in danger more readily, or
even lead to self-sacrificial behaviour or a belief that her life isnt as important as others. Themes like
these could be useful for us to explore as we develop her further during the campaign.

3. How does this character view the world around them?

Being a world of gothic horror and light fighting against the darkness, Innistrad is full of people who
see the world around them as dangerous, depressing or grief-ridden. Being an emissary of a church
that represents the people, and that protects the community, our Inquisitor might be a little more
hopeful. I enjoy the idea that she might see the potential in her community, even if she might be
cynical of people on an individual level. The focus of her work, then, might be protecting the good in
the world, rather than destroying the bad this is good for growth, as it makes her less combat-
focussed and more social, giving us wider options for our problem-solving than punch evil things in
the face.

4. Where did this character come from, and how did they get here?

This question is one of the most important ones; a characters backstory often helps define what
drove them to be what they are, and what theyll become in future (well get to that next). An easy
method of creating drive is tragedy the death of a relative or loved one, usually. This is an option,
of course, but youll find that a lot of Player Characters you play with are orphans because of this,
and familial relationships are usually fun to explore. Theres nothing wrong with Dead Parent
Syndrome, per say, but with a little more thought, original motivations can always be created.

Ive seen a character want to become a military general to impress their aristocrat father, because
they werent as academically gifted as their older brother, and they had to play to their other
strengths (literally) to make their family proud. Another good character backstory that didnt involve
death was that of a London-born car-thief, who stole because their dad was never around and they
had to provide for their mother and baby sister.

Our Inquisitor could be the daughter of a Cathar, born and raised into the church, and inspired to
defend her townsfolk as a few years ago when she witnessed Avacyn herself fight off a small
incursion of devils. This explains her devotion to the church, and gives her a point of turmoil when
Avacyns corruption really sets in.

5. Where is this character going, and how will they get there from here?

Avacyns corruption is a nice jumping off point for our next section. While creating a character, you
shouldnt plan their entire future out for them that only risks disappointment, or worse, ruins any
hope of surprise further down the line. It doesnt, however, hurt to have an arc in mind, and you
discover what that arc might be by assessing the situation they might find themselves in during Day
0 of the story.

Our Inquisitor? Shes about to go through a period of internal conflict, as dramatic irony tells us that
Innistrads storyline very quickly takes us through the downfall of Avacyn as a godlike figure, and the
corruption of many of the planes residents. The Archangel she put the entirety of her faith in is
about to undermine her belief system, and the people shes sworn to protect are about to turn into
the kinds of monsters shes been saving them from. How she deals with that is something we should
be bearing in mind as we play her story through.

6. What are the characters hopes and goals for the future?

This is a good question to have answered for your GMs knowledge, as well as your own. If you know
what these are, you can aim to fulfil them every few sessions, in order to help your character make
progress in their own personal development. Goals can be as big as wanting to save/own the world,
or as small as wanting to save/own a cat. Goals are part of how your character moves forward. For a
heroic character like our Inquisitor, a simple life after the jobs done might be the ultimate goal.
Settle down in a home, with pets, a spouse, and a well-stocked larder.

7. What are this characters fears about the future?

Another good question to have answered for your GMs knowledge challenges and restrictions are
what make a character real, and without conflict a character can never really be explored to their full
potential, and its hard to engage with a character whos always safe. If theres no risk for someone,
emotionally or otherwise, then we as an audience cant mimic their worries, their anguish, or their
hope, because we know its always going to be okay.

At this point, our Inquisitors fears should be pretty obvious. Losing her faith, her father, her
community. Try to understand what her reactions to these problems might be, so you can feel more
natural while piloting her as a character.

8. What is this characters defining philosophy?

Feeling good yet? Were at the point of summarisation we have a strong idea for how our Player
Character is, what they feel, how they think. If we can summarise into a defining philosophy, we can
understand what our character is about on a fundamental level, and how theyll act in the world
around them. Ive seen some great defining philosophies in my time lets look at some examples.

This character believes that the only thing thats important is their own survival.

This characters one purpose in life is to protect her party.

This character acts exactly like a wild animal with sapience.

Our character believes in good above all, protecting those that need protecting, about fighting off
the darkness and providing an example of hope for those in her community. How do we summarise
that in a sentence? Easy:

Just because peace cannot be perfectly achieved, doesnt mean it shouldnt be strived for.

9. What would make this character defy this defining philosophy?

It is a pretty well-known idiom that any man has his price what is your characters? Everyone has
a breaking point, somewhere they fundamentally crack. This isnt inherently a negative thing, but is
often used as such. A defining philosophy being broken, something so important to your character
that they build their personality around it, is an important moment for any individual. In a villain, it
might be a moment that causes them to feel care or protection over a member of the good guys
the perfect example is Darth Vader, who breaks his stranglehold attachment to the dark side at the
sight of his son being tortured, fundamentally changing his character.

What would push your character to that breaking point? What would undermine their belief system
so much that theyd spin on the head of a dime and change their outlook on life. In the case of our
Inquisitor? Youd have to change the nature of what shes protecting to make her want to stop
protecting it anymore. Good job theres no chance of that on the horizon.

10. Who, or what, would your character die for?

Plan for the end, then hope it never comes. In our case, for our Inquisitor? Probably anyone who
deserved it.

And there you go. A nice, robust character that you can live and breathe as. Lets see what yours
looks like, shall we?
 Character Generation Tables

Still having trouble? Here. Lets randomly come up with some aspects about them. For each table,
roll the appropriate dice. For example, for our first table, we have four options, so pick up a d4.

Table 1. Gender (d4):

Number Gender
1 Male
2 Female
3 Other
4 None

Table 2. Age (d6):

Number Age
1 Child
2 Teenager
3 Young Adult
4 Adult
5 Middle-Aged
6 Elderly

Table 3. Race (d10):

Number Race
1 Human
2 Elf
3 Goblin
4 Merfolk
5 Leonin
6 Ratfolk
7 Vedalken
8 Aven
9 Dwarf
10 Dragon
Table 4. Home Plane (d10):
NB: If your race and Home Plane dont match, make one match the other.

Number Home Plane

1 Ravnica
2 Innistrad
3 Kaladesh
4 Zendikar
5 Mirrodin
6 Tarkir
7 Amonkhet
8 Theros
9 Alara
10 Lorwyn

Table 5. Specialisation (d10):

Number Specialisation
1 Healing
2 Combat
3 Diplomacy
4 Bartering
5 Stealth
6 Summoning
7 Knowledge
8 Faith
9 Intimidation
10 Luck

Table 6. How did their spark ignite? (d6):

Number Spark Ignition

1 Death of a Loved One
2 Suffering/Violence
3 Great Discovery
4 Magical Incident
5 Falling in Love
6 Near Death Experience
Step Three: Traits

Traits are special abilities that in most cases can only be bought at character creation (you must get
the GMs permission to get one later). They represent certain abilities or special skills found only in
particular characters. There are two types of traitsmundane and supernatural. Mundane traits
are traits that any normal person can buy, like a character whos more resilient mentally usual, or
someone with access to large amounts of money. Supernatural traits represent unique abilities or
special characteristics found in certain creatures or caused by spells, like inhuman biology, superior
insight, or huge size.

All traits are bought with the dice youre given at character generation, Ive got some examples of
traits below, with each denoting its price in the title. This is how theyll be laid out:

TRAIT TITLE (1D):

This is a trait. It does things. It costs one dice as you can tell by the fact that 1D is written in
brackets next to its name. If it was a better trait, it would cost more dice.

Hope thats cleared things up.

Mundane Traits

BACKUP (1D/2D/4D)
You have contacts that can bring in significant backup in dangerous situations. At 1d this just means
more equipment; at 2d summons, animals or equipment; at 4d it means people, equipment,
animals, summons whatever the GM deems necessary or you can get away with. The exact effects
remain up to the GM to decide. Some characters can call for help without this trait; any guard or
soldier can call out an emergency and have several others come running to help. The Backup trait
represents unusual gear and specialists.

BARTERER (1D)
There is one plane where you always get the best prices. Upon taking this trait, decide with a GM
exactly where you have your in the effects and discounts you get with this trait are down to a
discussion between you and your GM. If you want to have this trait apply to multiple planes, you
have to buy it multiple times.

GOOD CHILDHOOD (4D)

You had an extremely stable home life and a solid emotional foundation from early childhood. This
allows you to modify insanity rolls against any gauge of the Madness Meter, sacrificing a point of
width for a point of height. So, if you roll 4x5 against an Intensity 6 check, you can squish the roll
to a 3x6 (dropping 1 point of width and adding 1 point of height) succeeding where you would have
failed.

THE LAW (2D)

You are the law in your area. This gives you authority to enforce the standard laws of your city,
county or country. This would represent something like a local sheriff. To increase your pull, add the
Backup and Resources traits. For example, an Azorius agent on Ravnica might have The Law (2d),
Backup (4d) and Resources (2d) for a total cost of 8 dice.
RESOURCES (1D/2D/4D)
You have pull and can call someone to look into things. At 1d this means you know someone who
has access to the research materials, a good head on his or her shoulders and who owes you a
favour; at 2d this jumps to someone with a little more professional skill who can travel to locations
and look things up; at 4d it means access to nearly any official file. Of course, the more important
and useful the files, the more trouble your contact could get into for accessing them.

RESILIENT (5D)
At the end of a combat or spellcasting session (as judged by the GM), all the Shock Damage you
suffered evaporates. GMs strongly consider whether this trait fits the feel of your game.

EXPERT (4D)
This allows you to purchase Expert dice in skills, or upgrade existing dice in skills to Expert dice.
Without it, you cannot possess Expert Dice. This allows you to buy them in any skill through normal
character development. Expert Dice cannot be purchased in stats.

MONEY (3D)
Youre rich. For whatever reason (and this reason m u s t be defined at character creation) your
character doesnt have to worry about money; its just there. How much you can buy and when
remains up to the GM.

ELDRAZI INSIGHT (2D)

Your character has lore on the creatures from the blind eternities, which allows them to be more
comfortable around the abominations. You are less susceptible to their alien geometries and their
mind-warping magic than most.

LOCAL KNOWLEDGE (1D)

You know your way around town. Pick a plane that isnt your home plane. You are fluent with the
customs and traditions there, and can navigate the basic conversations and tasks without making a
faux pas, and can even educate allies. This trait can be picked up to three times.

FAST TALKER (2D)

Any time your antics and lies get you or your party into trouble, you may gain one temporary expert
die to talk your way out of it.

Magic Traits
AGELESS (5D)
You are effectively immortal and cannot die from old age. Other things can still get you, however.
Watch out.

VAMPIRISM (8D)
After you have an opponent pinned, you can make a Stat + Brawling roll to begin draining his blood.
If you fail this roll, the victim escapes the pin. If you succeed, make a Stat + Brawling roll each round
and deal the width in Killing damage. This damage is distributed equally throughout the victims hit
locations. Blood also sustains you. For every point of damage done, you may heal one point of Shock
damage, or for two points you may heal one point of Killing.

Enemies you kill in this way come back as your thralls.

This trait gives you the benefit of Ageless. You lose this benefit if you do not drain a victims blood at
least once a week. If you spend an additional 2D when taking this trait, you gain the ability to fly at
the same speed as your movement speed.
LYCANTHROPY (5D)
Add 2D to your brawling, endurance and intimidation skills. This can push this above level 5 in
character generation.

Every time you are harmed by a weapon, if it is silver, it is automatically killing damage.

Every time there is a full-moon in the sky, you must succeed an intensity 8 Self check on the
madness gauge. If you succeed, you maintain control of your character during their transformation,
but must roleplay more aggressively. If you do not succeed, the GM takes control of your character
until they transform again or die.

NECROMANTIC AFFINITY (6D)

You may only take this trait with if your Statistic in Black mana is 5 or higher.

Add 2D to your Necromancy skill. This can push this above Level 5 in character generation.

Zombies do not notice you if you concentrate on keeping them distracted. You may spend 5 pips to
permanently gain control of a zombie (GM discretion applies).

You cannot be healed through faith based magic.

CONSTRUCT BODY (10D)

All killing damage dealt to you is reduced to shock damage. Anyone with a repair skill can heal you as
if they had access to healing instead. Your limbs can be replaced.

If you encounter Phyrexian oil, you are twice as susceptible to it. Any magic that damages artifacts
can also damage you. You cannot take the Vampirism or Lycanthropy traits with this trait, or any
other that your GM would not allow.

Racial Traits
HUMAN (0D)
This is the default race. Humans gain an extra 3D to spend on Mundane skills at character
generation, and can be inconspicuous on all planes except Lorwyn.

LEONIN (0D)
Leonin start with their Brawling skill at level 3. For an extra 3D a Leonin character may increase their
White statistic by 1 at character generation. This cannot increase the stat above 5.

MERFOLK (0D)
Merfolk characters can swim and breathe underwater. For an extra 3D a Merfolk character may
increase their Blue statistic by 1 at character generation. This cannot increase the stat above 5.

RATFOLK (0D)
Ratfolk are smaller than most races, and are nimble on their feet. Ratfolk start with their Stealth skill
at level 3. For an extra 3D a Ratfolk character may increase their Black statistic by 1 at character
generation. This cannot increase the stat above 5.

GOBLIN (0D)
Goblins are more resilient that most races, after a long history of being cannon fodder. Fire damage
can never be killing damage to a Goblin, and explosions caused by the Goblin cannot hurt it. For an
extra 3D a Goblin character may increase their Red statistic by 1 at character generation. This cannot
increase the stat above 5.
ELF (0D)
Elves are in tune with the nature around them, and as a result, gain a 1D bonus to any summoning
specialism they choose to invest in if this would push a skill above level 5 at character generation,
that 1D bonus instead becomes and Expert Dice. For an extra 3D an Elven character may increase
their Green statistic by 1 at character generation. This cannot increase the stat above 5.

VEDALKEN (5D)
Gain a 2D bonus to two knowledge-based or diplomacy based skills of your choice. Gain two extra hit
locations (two extra arms).

AVEN (3D)
You may fly at twice your land movement speed (default is 110ft every 5 seconds). Gain a 2D bonus
to your perception. This may not push it above level 5.

DWARF (3D)
Gain a 3D bonus to a craft skill. While underground, you always know the direction of north.

DRAGON (25D)
Gain The ability to fly at twice your movement speed. Three extra hit locations (two wings, one
tail). A tail that can be used as a W+2 in S weapon. +5 slots to all of your hit locations. A breath
weapon that does Shock damage equal to the your statistic in Red over a 40ft by 10ft area.

Lose The ability to be subtle in any way whatsoever. -2D penalty to all stealth and diplomacy
related skills at GM discretion.

Chapter Seven: Character Advancement

Developing your character over time is one of the major draws of roleplaying, and character
development doesnt have to be limited to story-based benefits. Our experience system in Gatherer
is Pips, and they have two benefits advancement and short-term rewards.

Pips
There are two ways to gain Pips; through successful rolls in difficult situations and by GM reward.
Individual Pip rewards number from 1 to 10, and accumulate over time. You can spend 20 Pips to
buy a die in a skill; you can spend 50 to buy a die in a stat. (If you have the Expert or
Supernatural trait, you can upgrade a regular skill die to an expert die for 40 pips, a regular skill die
to a Trump die for 80 pips, an Expert skill die to a Trump die for 40 pips, or a regular stat die to a
Trump die for 160 pips). All upgrades require the GMs permission. The GM awards Pips at the end
of a game session to represent how well your character did in the trials and tribulations of the game.
Usually its a number between 1 (for minimum player effort) and 10 (for a role-playing dynamo who
also keeps the game running smoothly).

You can also be awarded pips in game for other things; for example, you could be given a quick 2
pips as a thank you for a really clever way of thinking your way out of a situation, or as an apology if
your character messes up in such a way that it harms your roleplaying. Think of them as a running
total of your achievements and experiences.
Spending Pips In-Game
With the GMs permission, you can spend saved-up Pips in the game to buy off damage before it
takes effect. Eight Pips buy off a point of Killing and four pips buy off a point of Shock. These must be
spent during the resolution phase of combat right when the damage occurs, otherwise the damage
sticks and cant be bought off. Another use for Pips is altering rolls. With the GMs permission, you
can spend 10 Pips before you roll to expand the width of a successful roll by 1, or 5 Pips to increase
the height of a successful roll by 1. If the roll fails, you still lose the Pips.

Play of the Game

At the end of each session, the party decides upon the Play of the Game. Players must come to a
unanimous decision upon which character did the most remarkable thing that session whether it
be single-handedly taking on a full-party worth of combat, healing at a critical moment, talking
around a politician or just supplying the great jokes to keep spirits up. The person who is voted play
of the game is awarded bonus pips as a thank you for their efforts. This bonus is equal to the
number of players in the party (6 PCs, 6 pips). The player can then choose to keep the entire bonus
for themselves, or share them out so each player gains 1 pip.

This is an optional rule, depending upon how well your group gets along.
 Section 3: A Helping Hand
Chapter Eight: NPC Sheets
Gideon Jura
Jace Beleren
Liliana Vess
Chandra Nalaar
Nissa Revane
Nicol Bolas

Chapter Nine: Monsters

Angels
Sphinxes
Demons
Dragons
Hydras
Soldiers
Merfolk
Zombies
Goblins
Beasts

Chapter Ten: Plot Hooks

Setting Specific
Zendikar
Innistrad
Ravnica
Tarkir
Theros

Afterword