Anatomy of an Action

An action’s result is the number you roll on the die. The higher the number, the better your character does. But what this result actually means in the game depends on the action’s resolution structure:

• Beat a threshold. You succeed or fail; the outcome resolves instantly.

• Focus. You generate a reserve of potential that you can spend on various effects, like defending or casting spells. 

• Group effort. You contribute to a goal or task together with your allies. 

Most basic actions are structured as thresholds to beat, while a few are focus actions. Improvised actions lend themselves toward group efforts. Actions may also have advantages, disadvantages, bonuses, or penalties. 

Focus

Some actions build up a reserve of potential called focus. The action result usually equals the amount of focus you generate. This focus can then be “spent” on a variety of effects, including the casting of magic spells. But there are many mundane uses and types of focus too. 

Your Hero Sheet has two slots to track focus. Keep these rules in mind:

• Different types of focus are not interchangeable. 

• You can only focus on two things at a time. 

If an action generates focus, it says what you roll to generate it, how you spend it, and how long it lasts. For example, Stand Fast is a Brace action that generates defense-focus, which can be spent to reduce incoming damage, protect an ally, or counterattack a foe. But it only lasts until your next turn.

Group Efforts

In a group effort, all heroes act toward a shared goal. For example:  

• Landing or disembarking from a conveyance on dangerous terrain

• Making a good first impression with a wary community

• Smashing or toppling a big statue

• Vying for the weather-gage in an encounter at Skysea. 

The 12 basic actions describe specific things individual characters do in the moment. Group efforts, in contrast, are meant to encourage teamwork and improvisation, and they can be stretched out over longer time periods. 

The Rush basic action, for example, resolves a single character’s attempt to climb a short distance in a few moments. But when heroes together ascend 300 cubits up an island’s forested cliffside, supporting one another on the way up, that’s best resolved as a group effort. 

The Guide decides which action die each hero rolls based on how they describe their intended action. Each roll generates effort equal to the result, which one hero tracks for the group. 

The Guide also determines the threshold that the heroes’ sum total must beat to succeed. As a baseline, the Guide might set the threshold based on the same difficulty scale as individual actions, multiplied by the number of heroes involved: 

• Average difficulty: 3 x number of heroes

• Hard difficulty: 5 x number of heroes

• Very hard difficulty: 7 x number of heroes

For example, if three heroes attempt a hard goal, their total effort must beat 15 to succeed (5 x 3 heroes). 

Heroes only. If friendly Guide-controlled characters would contribute to a group effort in some way, the Guide can adjust the difficulty threshold to account for their assistance. Only heroes should roll for group efforts. 

Consequences. Likewise, a hero can’t “opt out” of a group effort, since all heroes share the effort’s consequences, which are also determined by the Guide. Those consequences might be a simple failure to achieve the goal (a cursed statue remains standing for a round), a narrative consequence (the town ends up mistrusting the heroes), or damage. 

For example, the Guide might say that failing to land a balloon safely results in all the heroes suffering fall damage, plus an additional point of damage for the margin of failure. 

Diversify your effort. In most cases, two heroes can’t both contribute to a group effort by performing the same action in the same space. For example, if two heroes wish to Maneuver themselves to perform lookout duty on a balloon, the Guide can determine that only the highest of their two results would apply to the overall effort.

There are exceptions. For example, on a skyship, multiple heroes can Brace themselves to row oars and add all their results to the group effort. 

Advantage & Disadvantage

Some abilities or effects grant advantage on an action. When you have advantage, you roll a second action die—the advantage die—along with your action die, and use the higher result. Disadvantage works the same way, but you take the lower of the two results. 

Never roll the same action die twice. You can’t gain Brace advantage, or Brace disadvantage, on a Brace roll, for example. Nor can you gain more than one instance of Brace advantage on a Move action. If you have both advantage and disadvantage of the same die type, they cancel each other out. 

Advantage and disadvantage of different kinds, however, do stack. You can have both Brace advantage and Compel advantage on a Move action— you’d roll all three dice and take the highest. You can also have Brace advantage and Compel disadvantage on the Move action, in which case you’d roll all three dice and take the middle result. 

Other advantage dice also come into play, beyond your four action dice. Such dice are defined by your abilities, enabled by magic items, or awarded by the Guide when you invoke your ideals. 

Bonuses & Penalties

A bonus is a number that’s added to an action roll, and a penalty is a number that’s subtracted. 

Bonuses are rare in this game. You usually have to “earn” a bonus by doing something risky. For example, you can gain a +3 bonus to an Attack against a foe by first Outflanking them, a risky Maneuver.

Penalties are more common than bonuses. All Jump-Attacks and Ranged-Attacks, for example, have a -2 penalty, as does Persuading the many non-friendly characters you’ll encounter throughout the Skysea. 

Keep it real. The Guide can inflict a -2 or worse penalty on actions if they don’t seem to make physical or logical sense—for example, if you Deceive someone by telling them something they just witnessed was just their imagination.