Scores and checks

Beating 6

The basic mechanic of the Grit System is to roll a single die and try to get a 6 or higher. This is called making a check. The type of die you roll depends on what you’re trying to do. Contested rolls are won by the higher result (or, among many actors, the highest one). Ties go to the initiator of the action unless otherwise stated.

For all uncontested checks, unless otherwise stated, a result of 6 or higher is a success on a roll of normal difficulty. When one or more people help you do something, you get a +1 to your roll. You can also boost your rolls (see “Powers” below).

Some powers give you the ability to roll with advantage, and some negative situations cause you to roll with disadvantage. When making a check with advantage, roll twice and use the higher result. When making a check with disadvantage, roll twice and use the lower result.

Uncontested check difficulties

• Easy: 5+
• Standard: 6+
• Difficult: 7+
• Very difficult: 9+
• “Impossible”: 12+

Scores

When you make a player character (PC), you choose a class and a species and then assign 5 die types to your 5 core scores. Here are 2 common arrays, or sets of scores.

d12, d10, d8, d6, d6

or

d12, d10, d8, d8, d4

This means that you either have no scores so low that you cannot succeed in a normal challenge without help, or that you have 1 low score and 1 extra d8 (which succeeds unaided on a 6, 7, or 8).

Note, different games may use different arrays. We suggest that all arrays add up to 42 (if you add up the maximum values of 5 dice) for high-power games, or 38–40 for low-power games.

The scores

• COM (combat) – use when rolling to attack or grapple
• MOV (movement) – use when rolling to climb, dodge, drive/pilot/ride, flee/run, initiate, parry, or sneak
• REA (reason) – use when rolling to give aid/heal, investigate, know, make/repair, use technology (e.g., tack a stiffworks), or use a Weird power
• WIL (will) – use when rolling to empathize, perceive, resist other (resist seduction, mind control, etc.), or resist world (resist explosions, falling rocks, poison, etc.)
• CHA (charm) – use when rolling to control, intimidate, negotiate, or seduce

Your PC’s mind and body are represented by these 5 primary scores and by 2 secondary or derived sets of points (your “pool,” see below): health and grit.

Note, in different games, any of these scores may be renamed or otherwise modified. You can easily imagine games with no combat and thus no need for COM. This SRD presents rules with a non-specific science-fantasy game in mind—one that involves combat as well as many other narratively interesting situations.

Key terms Scores are written as three-letter abbreviations (COM, GRT, etc.). The phrase “dCOM” means “roll your combat die [whatever it is].” The phrase “dREA +1” or “dWIL −2” means “roll your [whatever] score and [add or subtract whichever amount].” The phrase “maxCHA” means “the highest value of the die that your CHA is.” The phrase “+your level” means “add the number that your level currently is.”

 

NPC scores The average unskilled non-player character (NPC) has straight d6s, meaning they have only a 1 in 6 chance of accomplishing a heroic task without special training, technological aid, or help from a friend. Skilled NPCs (soldiers, scientists) have straight d8s. A player character begins play with a much better chance of accomplishing many heroic tasks, even without using special powers.

Checks

In many cases, the scores alone should function as checks. They are also sometimes a matter of style: if you’re playing music to win over a crowd, roll CHA. If you’re trying to virtuosically show off your finger-picking, specifically, roll MOV.

Sometimes, rules such as powers will call for a specific check: perhaps a power gives you advantage or imposes disadvantage on this check.

Example common checks

• COM/attack
• COM/grapple
• MOV/dodge
• MOV/drive/pilot/ride
• MOV/flee/run
• MOV/initiate
• MOV/sneak
• REA/give aid/heal
• REA/investigate
• REA/know
• REA/make/repair
• REA/use tech
• WIL/perceive
• WIL/resist other
• WIL/resist world
• CHA/control
• CHA/intimidate

Pool

Starting pool

In addition to your scores, which generally do not change, you have two fluctuating sets of points that collectively are called your pool. You “burn” (spend) these points either when you take damage or use special powers. When you run out of total pool, you die.

The two halves of pool

• HEA (health) – Health represents your body’s robustness and your ability to deal with trauma. At first level, your HEA is your maxCOM +maxMOV (including any species bonuses). When you reach 0 HEA, you become seriously injured, or prone, and can no longer act. When you reach 0 HEA and 0 GRT, or if someone attacks you while you’re prone, you die.
• GRT (grit) – Grit represents your ability to perform stressful activities such as psychically reading a judge’s thoughts, inspiring a ragtag army to advance against overwhelming opposition, or forcing yourself to attack twice in a split second. At first level, your GRT is your maxREA +maxWIL. Many powers cost GRT to use. When you reach 0 GRT, you are exhausted and unable to use special powers.

Recovering pool

You have maximum and temporary HEA and GRT. Both HEA and GRT can sometimes be raised beyond their ordinary maximums through powers, but not through ordinary rest.

Gaining pool

• To regain pool, you need to rest 5+ hours: sleep if you’re a human, meditate under a sunlamp if you’re a photobiont (plant-person), put your drives into standby if you’re an informatic (a robot). If you rest, you recover dMOV +dWIL +your level pool (so, minimum 3), distributed as you like between HEA and GRT. This means, roll your MOV die and your WIL die and add these results to your level.
• You can regain pool naturally once every 24 hours; otherwise, to heal, you need help from another source, such as a biomedical or Weird healer.
• If you don’t rest for 5+ hours out of every 24, choose 1 score: this lowers by 1 die type. Every day that you don’t rest, choose another score to lower. After 5 sleepless days, you collapse into a coma and become prone.
• Each time you gain a level, you gain 6 permanent pool to be distributed as you like between HEA and GRT.

Becoming prone and dying

Your HEA and GRT represent energy, attention, and readiness to fight. Losing HEA can represent becoming fatigued during a stressful firefight. Being reduced to 0 HEA represents a serious injury or a near-death experience…

Losing pool

• When you reach 0 HEA but still have GRT remaining, you fall unconscious and become vulnerable. In game terms, you’re prone: if any character or force (lightning, shark) inflicts damage on you, that damage burns your remaining GRT instead of HEA. If they slit your throat, you die. If you reach 0 GRT as well as 0 HEA, you die. No non-Weird medicine will revive your character.
• Becoming prone means suffering from a serious injury. When you are prone but still have GRT, you can no longer be revived by the basic power give aid (GM’s discretion). You can be revived with professional biomedical healing (including certain class powers) or with rest.
• After resting for one night and regaining pool, you still feel groggy and slow: you make checks with 1 of your scores with disadvantage until the current adventure ends and you take some time off. Further, whenever you recover from having fallen to 0 HEA, your HEA permanently drops by 1.

Powers

The time of powers

Powers are narratively important abilities, including both basic (always available) and class- or species-specific abilities. Many powers in the Grit System are verbs; you do a given power. Different powers take different amounts of abstract game time to use.

Types of powers

• Standard powers take some amount of time between 1 and 10 seconds. In game terms, they use up your main action for the round when in initiative. If you use a standard power, you can’t take any other major actions that round (e.g., you can’t also attack, use the Weird, or make a check that would take more than a few seconds). But you can jog anywhere within close range (see below for ranges), grab something from your pocket, shout at a comrade, etc.
• Free powers can be used at will. You can use any number of free powers per round. These can be chained together if you like. They represent split-second reactions, instantaneous quantum outcomes, and predetermined states of being that suddenly affect the situation.
• Other active powers require 10 minutes, 1 hour, or some other amount of time.
• Yet other powers are permanent, meaning they just become part of your scores (e.g., you add a +1 next to a score), or passive, meaning they happen automatically in response to something (e.g., you make a specific check with advantage). Keep track of your passive powers!

Basic powers

Your class and species will determine what special powers your PC has. All characters, however, can use basic powers. Remember, you can always boost or convert—or use any other free power—as long as you do so before rolling a check or using a standard power.

Example basic powers

1. Attack (standard)

Roll COM/attack; your target rolls MOV/dodge: if you tie or get the higher result, you inflict damage, which reduces your opponent’s HEA. The damage you inflict is determined by your weapon. If you are attacking unarmed, you inflict d2 damage or, if you are trained in combat, dCOM damage. While attacking, you can move anywhere in close range. Grappling, pushing back, restraining without harming, and knocking out are all types of attack. Disarming an opponent is a called shot (see below).

2. Boost (free)

Burn 3, 6, or 9 GRT; you gain +3, +6, or +9 on your next roll. N.B., this is arguably the most important power in the game. At any point, on any roll, you can burn 3X to gain +3X.

3. Call shot (standard)

Describe any specific non-Weird intended effect of your attack, such as blinding or disarming your target. Burn 4 GRT and roll to attack with disadvantage. If you hit, the desired effect happens, and you inflict double damage—or, if you prefer, zero damage. You can boost neither, one, or both of your rolls to hit with disadvantage; the lower value is taken, regardless.

4. Convert (free)

You cannibalize your body for sheer willpower: burn 3 HEA; you gain +1 GRT.

5. Dodge (free)

You may dodge every time you are attacked, unless you are restrained or comatose. Dodge is a MOV check against an opponent’s COM/attack check. Note, you must get a higher result, not an equal one, to dodge an attack.

6. Flee/run (standard)

Instead of attacking or using another standard power, you can run full tilt into or away from the fray. Move up to near range and gain a +1 to all dodge checks this round.

7. Give aid (standard)

You spend the round helping someone who is wounded—bandaging cuts, e.g. This person regains 2 HEA. If this person is afflicted by an ongoing bleed or other condition that a non-healthcare professional could quickly treat, it stops. You can only give aid once per wound; i.e., after combat ends, you can’t just keep restoring 2 HEA over and over again. Note, popping a single pill takes no time: in game terms, it’s a free action.

8. Initiate (special)

Whenever you attack or are attacked, or use a Weird power or resist one, initiative begins: first, resolve any ambush attacks; then, everyone rolls MOV/initiate to determine the order in which subsequent events occur. Equal results indicate that actions happen simultaneously. Initiative can be used for non-combat situations that are time-sensitive (defusing a bomb, escaping an erupting volcano, making arguments before a court of law, e.g.).

9. Parry (standard)

Instead of attacking or running, you may choose to actively defend yourself: you can reroll all failed dodge rolls this round; every time you successfully dodge, you gain a further +1 to subsequent dodge rolls this round. These bonuses do not carry over from round to round.

10. Seek cover (standard)

If there’s anywhere in close range to shield yourself from incoming danger, you can use an action to find cover. The GM has discretion over what cover exists. In simple cover (e.g., behind a tree), you attack with disadvantage, but you make MOV/dodge checks with advantage. In deep cover (e.g., a sniper’s nest), you attack normally and make dodge checks with advantage.

Boosting In terms of game mechanics, the Grit System revolves around a core wager: how much grit are you, the player, willing to spend to overcome the challenge currently being thrown at you by the GM? Boost is the core power by which this wager is resolved. If you don’t boost a roll, you save 3, 6, or 9 grit—but you also risk failing. If you boost, you can often succeed simply by not rolling a 1 (always a failure). So boost is more than a basic power: it is a central driver of tension for the whole system!

Combat

AKA bullet time

Not all games highlight combat. For those that do, combat is a series of rounds that begins with a contest of initiative. A “round” is an abstract unit of time approximately equal to 10 seconds. “Initiative” is an abstraction that determines when things happen within a round.

Note, the distances between different initiative rolls can be thought of as seconds: a character acting on initiative 6 is about 4 seconds faster, in some way, than a character acting on initiative 2. This is just a rule of thumb! The point is to help the GM in keeping the action moving forward.

The turn order

1. Ambushes—surprises, stabs-in-the-back—happen in a special round before the first round.
2. Everyone who plans to act rolls a MOV/initiate check to join the fray. The highest result goes first; tied results happen simultaneously. All characters act in order from highest to lowest.
3. When it’s your turn, you can do whatever you want: you get 1 standard action and infinite free actions. You can jog anywhere in close range while doing whatever you’re doing unless you use a power that specifically requires you to remain still. You can also hold your action until the end of the round, choosing to act after everyone else.
4. To attack, roll COM/attack; your opponent rolls MOV/dodge. You win on a tie or if your result is higher. Damage is by weapon. Armor reduces damage by providing damage reduction, or DR. Unless otherwise specified, all damage comes out of HEA first. When you reach 0 HEA, you become prone. When you reach 0 HEA and GRT, or when someone tries to kill you while prone, you die.
5. If you are attacked, roll MOV/dodge. You must roll higher than your attacker. Dodging is a free action: roll to dodge every time you are attacked.
6. When everyone has acted, the round ends. A new round then begins. Combat ends when everyone dies, gives up, makes peace, or flees.

Deadlier damage In some Grit System games, an attack’s damage is a combination of the weapon’s damage dice plus a relevant score. This can make for faster, more lethal combat, working well in games where PCs don’t start with access to threat-removing powers (those that allow them to kill targets in one hit, teleport them to other dimensions, fly out of range of attack, etc.).

 

Deadlier damage in Blister Critters In Blister Critters, you play as small animals (Critters) exploring the real world after the disappearance of humanity (the Poof). Lucky for you, the humans left behind tons of useful Stuff, large and Critter-sized. Different Stuff has different “Bonk” ratings, or weapon damage dice, which are added to a Critter’s “dScrap” die when rolling damage. A teacup only has a Bonk of d2, but a baseball (heaved like a boulder) has a Bonk of d8!

Conditions

Certain powers, weapons, and situations inflict conditions that have ongoing mechanical consequences. These are denoted by simple one-word condition tags, often accompanied by numbers: the higher the number, the more serious the condition.

Example condition tags

• Bleed – When a weapon or power with bleed X hits, it causes X additional damage when it hits and X damage on each subsequent round until the bleeding character takes a round to treat their wounds.
• Burn – In the case of burn X, this damage is cumulative (fire spreads). So, a plasma torch that inflicts 1 damage and has the tag burn 1 causes 1+1 damage on round 1, 1+2 damage on round 2, and so on. Putting out a fire or rinsing off acid takes 1 standard action (GM’s discretion).
• Fatigue – An item, power, or environmental feature with fatigue X causes the affected character to become significantly exhausted for X hours. While a character is fatigued, they make all checks with disadvantage. (Note, fatigue may be caused by any number of sources: drunkenness, the use of hard drugs, alien environmental effects such as stronger-than-Terran gravity, etc.)
• Stun – When a weapon or power with stun X hits, roll a d6: if the result is equal to or lower than X, then the target is stunned—immobilized—for X rounds.
• Toxin (poison or venom) – When an item or power causes a character to suffer the effects of toxin X, they experience some negative effect of X magnitude. This varies by toxin.

Example toxins

• Boomslang venom (hemotoxin) – When a character is bitten by a boomslang or struck by a weapon coated with boomslang venom X, they must make a 7+ WIL/resist world check: if they succeed, they suffer X damage; if they fail, they suffer Xd6 damage.
• Quickscatter (inorganic poison) – When a character breathes in quickscatter, they must make a 5+ WIL/resist world check: if they succeed, they simply sneeze; if they fail, they lose d12 maximum GRT. This has no effect on their current GRT; it simply limits what they can recover. Treating quickscatter poisoning is difficult, requiring a ferromagnephrology specialist.
• Zanjpestle (neurotoxin) – When a character is struck by a weapon coated with zanjpestle X, they must make a 6+ WIL/resist world check every round for X rounds before they act. Each time they fail, they are stunned for the round, and their MOV score drops by 1 die type. If their MOV score drops from a d4, it becomes a d3. If it drops from a d3, they die. An impaired MOV score heals by 1 die type per hour until back to normal.

Conditions in Danse Macabre In the low-fantasy, historically inspired setting of Danse Macabre: Medieval Horror Roleplaying, alcohol is a medicine that can restore pool… while getting you drunk. In Danse Macabre, you have to make a check when you imbibe something with the tag drunk X or else suffer disadvantage on all checks for X hours!

Ranges

Different Grit System games use different units for measuring distance: an ex-space marine and a talking rat may have different ideas about what “near” and “far” mean. Every game, however, can use the system’s common range bands to communicate the relative ranges of powers and attacks with different weapons.

This makes it easy for the GM to quickly describe distances, e.g.: “the pyrates are behind the house, in far range and in cover—but the troll-hen with the injured wing is in near range, off to the left.” You can still use more exact measurements if you want.

The ranges

• Close – Melee range. You can move around within close range as a free action.
• Near – Within sprinting range in 1 round for most characters. You must use your whole round to run to near range.
• Far – Within range of most missile weapons. To get to somewhere far from you within 1 round, you need to use a vehicle or power that lets you move faster than a sprinting human.
• Beyond – Within sight, but more than 1 round away. Generally, you can’t get to somewhere beyond within 1 round (~10 seconds) without using a Weird power.

Mobs

Trying to fight a large group of enemies—a mob or horde—is inherently dangerous for a small team. A mob can consist of any type of entity (angry farmers, professional soldiers, deadly androids, rabid vulture-headed cave-monkeys wielding enerjawn-saws, etc.). The members of the mob may hold a variety of weapons and be variously welltrained. For game purposes, however, the mob acts as a single threat with many bodies who share a single, averaged set of scores.

Fighting a mob works like fighting a single opponent: it rolls initiative; on its turn, it rolls to hit; when attacked, it rolls to dodge; when struck by weapons, it loses health. Mobs do not need to have DR, GRT, or powers. If anyone in the mob is particularly interesting—say, a leader hopped up on quantum-psychedelic drugs, or a specialist with a superior weapon—then keep track of them separately.

Types of mob by size (d6)

1. Group of 2–5 (fire team) – COM d6, MOV d8, HEA 24, d4 automatic damage per PC per round (DR has no effect)
2. Group of 6–11 (squad) – COM d8, MOV d8, HEA 48, d6 automatic damage per PC per round (DR has no effect)
3. Group of 12–23 (patrol) – COM d10, MOV d6, HEA 72, d8 automatic damage per PC per round (DR has no effect)
4. Group of 24–47 (platoon) – COM d12, MOV d6, HEA 96, d10 automatic damage per PC per round (DR has no effect)
5. Group of 48–99 (echelon) – COM d20, MOV d4, HEA 120, d12 automatic damage per PC per round (DR has no effect)
6. Group of 100+ (company) – COM d30, MOV d4, HEA 144, d20 automatic damage per PC per round (DR has no effect)

Mob damage by training level (d4)

1. Nonprofessional – dCOM damage
2. Grunt – 2dCOM damage
3. Elite – 3dCOM damage
4. Assassin – 4dCOM damage

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