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10acity Tactics is a robust version of the 10acity system designed for narrators and groups who like to have a lot of mechanical options in their gameplay.

Details on character creation can be found here.

Taking actions in 10acity is as simple as stating what you would like to do and using the appropriate skill against a challenge rating rolled or assigned by the narrator.

There are two different types of challenge resolution that a narrator may ask for: Pass/Fail or Impact Action

Pass/Fail

Pass/Fail resolution is the simplest challenge resolution option. It means you compare your skill roll against the challenge rating, and if your final result is higher than the challenge, you succeed. If your final result does not beat the challenge rating, then you fail. These checks are used for resolution of quick tasks such as climbing up a cliff, hiding in the shadows, spotting an ambush, etc. When the story calls for an action where the possibility of failure would impact the story, but it's not an action that requires the group to spend a lot of time on resolving.

Impact Actions

Impact actions are used when the scenario is more involved with multiple variables. When using impact actions, you still roll your skill against the challenge to determine success or failure, but it does not end there. If you roll a success, then you get another roll to determine the impact of your success. Each skill has an impact number located beside it on the character sheet which is determined by the rank of your skill (you roll a number of impact d4's equal to half of your skill rank), when you succeed at a skill roll, then you roll the impact dice to determine how much impact your action had on the current scene. Once the level of impact is determined, the scene continues on with others also rolling their skill in order to try and make an impact on the scene. Impact actions are used in cases when the actions are the focus of the scene such as combat to cause stress damage, complex social encounters to infuence or sway opinions, crafting to create or repair items, etc.

How the Rolls Work

In 10acity there are three (3) types of dice that will be used during gameplay:

Hero Dice: 10-sided dice (d10). These are the dice used by the heroes of the story to perform actions. The character will roll the number of d10 dice displayed on the attribute and take the highest rolled number. You will then add your skill rank to that number.

Impact Dice: 4-sided dice (d4). These are the dice used to resolve the outcome of actions and determine how much impact the action has (damage, skill check results, crafting completeness, levels of social interaction, etc.). Roll the number of d4 dice displayed on the Skill Impact and add them all together. You will then add equipment or special ability bonuses to that number.

Challenge Dice: 6-sided dice (d6). These are the dice used by the Narrator to determine challenges that the characters will face. When a character attempts to perform an action, the narrator will determine the difficulty of the action by either assigning a number or rolling the challenge dice from the following scale (or referencing the NPC card). this establishes the challenge rating that the characters will need to overcome.

+ If a challenge rating would fall somewhere between the established d6 dice levels, the NPC card or narrator might add anywhere from a +1 and a +3 to the challenge roll to increase the difficulty without going up an entire rank. This is to represent slightly more difficult challenges or any additional experience or equipment opponenets may possess.

As a player, you will only need to use Hero Dice and Impact Dice, which are determined upon character creation. You have 6 attributes which represents your hero dice and each attribute has 4 skills which gives you a bonus to the highest hero die rolled for that skill and establishes the amount of dice you roll for impact (impact dice is half your skill rank rounded down).

When you created your character, you would have assigned attribute dice and ranks of skill. These are your primary tools for performing an action. Choose a skill, look at how many dice the attribute of that skill will give you and then roll that number of 10 sided dice (d10), then take the highest number of all the dice that you rolled. Once you’ve established your die roll, you add your skill rank to that number to create your final value. If you succeed, then you roll your impact dice to determine how much impact your action has.

Your impact dice determines how successful you are in your skill check. You can gain additional impact dice or bonuses to impact die rolls through special abilities and higher skill ranks. You roll your total number of impact dice and add any bonuses to establish your impact pool to spend on your results.

For example, if the above character was going to make an investigation check to find a trap, they would roll 2d10 dice as shown on the Awareness Dice Attribute in which the Investigation skill is under. Then they would take the highest die value. So if they rolled a 3 and a 6, they would take the 6 and then add the rank of the Investigation skill (2) to that number to give a total value of 8.

The objective is to beat the challenge (in the case of character’s opposing each other, ties always go to the defender). So if the challenge roll was 7 or less, then the character would succeed and roll their impact dice. If the challenge roll was 8 or greater, then the character would fail the check at this point unless they look into other options.

Skill Ratings: As characters level up their skills, those skills will fall into rating categories which correspond to the challenge ratings listed above and are used as guidelines by the narrator when estimating challenges that the characters can face.

Rolling a Natural 10

When you roll a natural 10 on any of your hero dice, it qualifies as a critical roll and you gain an additional die of your choice between rolling an additional Hero die (1d10) and adding it to your skill check in case your natural 10 was not high enough to succeed on its own, or you can roll an additional impact die (1d4) and add that to the results of your success.

Rolling Doubles

When you roll more than one die, you have opened up the opportunity to roll doubles. Anytime you roll a double, it represents your ability to find tactical advantage during your action and you gain a point of Spin.

Rolling a Natural 1 (fumble)

If your highest die value on your hero dice is a 1, this represents your action having accidentally put you at a disadvantage and results in giving you a point of negative spin. You can still succeed at a task if your total result is higher than the challenge rating, but you cannot accrue spin on any action which results in a fumble.

What are my Options if I Fail?

If you fail a roll, the action does not have to end there. If you would like to accept the failure, then no problem, let the narrator know that you are going to stick with your result. But if you would like to try to push a failure into a success, there are options.

Special Abilities: Sometimes you have a special ability like a Talent that could be activated to give a bonus to your result. If so, you can spend a 10acity Point or Spin in order to activate that ability and add that bonus to the result.

Raw 10acity Points or Spin: If you don’t have a special ability that would apply, you can still spend 10acity Points or Spin to gain a +1 to your result. You can do this for as many 10acity Points or Spin that you have.

Push to Succeed at a Cost: If you do not have enough 10acity Points or Spin, or you do not want to spend 10acity in order to boost your value to a success, you can choose to succeed at a cost. You may take as much Negative Spin as necessary to increase your result to a success. Every point of Negative Spin gives a +1 to your result. This is one of the few times you can actually accrue Negative Spin and you can never have more than 10 points of negative spin.

This negative spin represents a tactical disadvantage for the future. Narratively, it can be something along the lines of a strained muscle for something physical or distracted thoughts for something mental. Either way, you cannot benefit from Spin until your negative Spin is removed, usually by gaining positive spin.

There is another way to remove negative spin though. At this point, the Narrator can step in and offer to trade some of the negative spin for a change in the scene. Often this happens at the time the character decides to push and take the negative spin, but it can happen any time. The narrator can offer a different cost than negative spin, such as a change the narrative and make the story more interesting. The GM and player can make suggestions that allows the character to succeed, but at what cost. An example would be allowing the character to unlock a door, but it causes an alarm to sound giving the party a time limit to accomplish what they came to do before the place is crawling with guards, and in return the GM would remove 3 negative spin from the character. Or if it was for an attack, the strike hits, but your weapon’s handle comes undone and has a hindering condition subtracting 1d4 from every future attack with the weapon until the handle is rewrapped. The player and the narrator go back and forth bargaining for results and the amount of negative spin it is worth and once they come to an agreement the scene continues with the new narrative as agreed.

*Negative Spin does not automatically go away at the end of a scene or encounter like standard Spin. It stays with you until you gain enough Spin to bring the value up to 0 again.

What Happens When I Succeed?

When you succeed at a pass/fail action, the narrator will then explain what happens and you move on with the scene. When you succeed at an Impact action, you then make an impact against that challenge. What does that mean? It all depends on what you were trying to do. Each of your skills have an impact die rank listed next to it, this is how many impact die you will roll when determining the results of your action. For example, if your action was to cause damage to an opponent, you would roll your skill's d4 impact dice impact die and add the bonus damage from your weapon to that number to determine the amount of stress you would cause to your opponent. In a social situation, your impact would determine how much you improve your standing on the social scale with that character, in a crafting scenario it would determine how much progress you make in crafting the new item, etc.

The sky is the limit when taking actions—this is not a video game, you are not restricted to just pushing buttons to take preset actions. Just describe what you would like to do and together with the Narrator you will determine what skill to roll. Then narrator will determine the challenge that you will need to roll against. However, here are some common actions that can take place during the game for reference.

Use a Skill

Use a skill: If you need to climb a wall, jump a gap, pick a lock, etc. You might need to make a skill roll to determine if you succeed. In these cases, the character will roll their appropriate skill using their attribute dice and adding their skill rank to the highest number rolled, and then compare that result to the challenge roll of the Narrator to find out how they did.

If the action is a quick pass/fail action, that roll alone determines the result. But in some cases the narrator may need to know know the level of your success, and that requires an impact roll.

Quick Pass/Fail Actions: Sometimes, you just need to use a skill as a part of the story and do not need to make it a full encounter or use the impact roll at all. In these cases, the narrator can just call for a quick pass/fail check against the challenge rating in order to keep the story moving. For example, if someone just wants to try and punch the bartender out cold—there’s no real reason to need to turn that into a full combat encounter unless it would be beneficial to the narrative flow of the game. Just have the character roll one quick pass/fail unarmed combat check against the bartender’s appropriate challenge rating as determined by the narrator, and if it succeeds then the bartender goes out cold. If not, then the scene unfolds as the bartender fends off the character. Same idea if someone needs to quick talk their way past a guard, or create an improved set of lockpicks out of a paperclip and stick of chewing gum… a single pass/fail roll would do just fine in those situations. There is no need to turn it into an actual encounter unless it benefits the story. Keep the story moving! The beauty of the 10acity system is that it’s flexible, you can make the encounters and challenges as complex or as simple as you like.

Impact Actions: When the action is complex and needs to be completed on a timeframe, then it is important to know how much time passes while performing the action. In those cases, the narrator can assign an amount of impact needed to accomplish the task and assign an amount of rounds required to accrue that impact before the deadline. Activities like defusing a bomb, escaping a crashing starship, and outrunning your opponents in a chase are all time sensitive activities. For example, if your group is attempting to climb up a cliffside before a troop of rabid dire monkeys catches up to you, then every second counts. The narrator might set an impact requirement of five (5) and inform you that you have three (3) rounds before the monkeys get there. Any character that can't generate the 5 points of athletic movement impact within the required 3 rounds would then be caught by the monkeys before they can make it up the cliff.

Explore a Scene

Explore a scene: Often you will need to interact with a scene instead of another character or object, such as using perception to detect an ambush, investigate a crime scene, use occult knowledge to identify a ritual, using your understanding of nature to find out information on a cave system, etc. In these cases you roll your skill against the challenge rank assigned my the narrator and on a success you will then roll your impact dice. This becomes your pool of impact points that you can use to explore the scene with that skill. Other characters can also roll their skill too in an attempt to help expand the impact pool. For every character aiding in the action for the scene that succeeds their check, they too roll their impact dice and add that total to the pool of impact points that can be used to explore the scene. The scene may have more than one option that can be explored, each one with various ranks of difficulty. Once all of the characters involved roll and establish their pool of impact points, the narrator will then tell them how many options there are in the scene and the impact value of each option. The characters then decide how to spend their impact pool on the options presented.

For example, Missa rolls her investigation with a success and gets 3 impact points. The rest of her team also rolls and one other also succeeds rolling a 2 on their impact die. Now the team has 5 impact points to spend on investigating the scene. The narrator tells Missa’s player that there are 4 options, two of them require 1 impact, one requires 2 impact, and one requires 4 impact. Missa (and team) can then decide which options they want to learn about in their investigation. They could spend 4 impact on the 4 point option since that one is of higher value it may be a little more useful than the others, and then they can spend their last remaining point from their pool to learn about one of the 1 point options. Or they could decide that they would prefer to have more options to choose from and learn about both 1 point options and the 2 point option.

Dealing Damage

Dealing damage: When attempting to deal damage to an opponent, roll the attribute dice of the skill that you are using for the attack and add the appropriate skill rank to the highest rolled number. The defender will roll either their hero dice or the NPC’s challenge dice to try and defend against the attack. If the attack result is higher than the defense result, then the attack is successful. The amount of damage dealt will be equal to the total combined roll of the skill’s impact dice plus any additional damage bonus granted from equipment or special abilities. Once the final number is established, that is the amount of stress applied to the opponent. If the total amount of stress accrued is over the amount of maximum stress that the opponent can take, then the opponent must either mark off a point of wound or fall unconscious, either way, the amount of stress on that character then resets back to 0.

Create an Advantage

Create an advantage (Spin): When attempting to create an advantage, roll your appropriate skill against either an opposing challenge dice or against challenge dice as assigned by the narrator. If your skill result is higher than the opposing roll, then the attempt is successful and you can assign 1 spin to an ally or yourself for every 2 points of impact generated (minimum 1).

Create a Condition

Create a condition: When attempting to create a condition, the character will announce what they are attempting to do then roll their appropriate skill using their attribute dice and adding their skill rank to the highest number. The defender will roll either their hero dice or the NPC’s challenge dice to try and defend against the attempt (defenders win all ties). If the skill result is higher than the defense result, then the attempt is successful and you apply the appropriate condition to the opponent.

Craft An Item

Craft/Repair/Modify an item: To craft an item, you first need to have the appropriate components and the formula (simple formulas can be memorized but more complex formulas must be recorded in some way so that it can be referenced during the crafting). The formula will detail the skill and components necessary to create the item. It will also determine the challenge rating, the impact requirement, and time period for crafting the item in minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, or possibly years. To craft the item, you roll the appropriate skill using the attribute dice and adding the appropriate skill rank to the highest rolled number plus any modifiers and compare that to the Narrator’s rolled challenge rating. If successful, the skill’s impact dice are rolled and that is how much progress is made in the amount of time spent. Once that time has passed, the character can roll again to continue working on their crafting project. Once the total amount of impact is over the impact requirement of the item, the item is complete.

Change Social Standing

Change social standing: When in a social situation, your attempt is to increase your social standing in the eyes of the target character(s) by entertaining, persuading, intimidating, or invoking whatever other reaction of your choice. You will start on a scale (usually 1-10) assigned by the Narrator or the NPC card. Usually you start in a neutral position such as 5 unless the target character(s) already have strong opinion of you one way or another. Your objective is to reach the top of the scale (usually 10) in order to succeed in swaying the social challenge in your favor. If you reach 0, then you have lost all credibility with the character(s), which is difficult to come back from. Often you will want to quite before you reach that level. The challenge takes place when you decide what skill you are using and roll against the challenge rating or opposing character. If you succeed, then you can roll your impact die to increase your social standing. Meanwhile, you will be up against an opponent or the scrutiny of the other character(s) attempting to lower you social standing and you will be required to roll against their attempts. If they succeed, their impact dice will decrease your standing.

Withdraw from Combat

Withdraw from Combat: When you are in melee combat range with an opponent and move out of that opponent’s melee range, that character can take a parting strike on you as a reaction. To avoid this, you can spend your action to withdraw and prevent any parting strikes from anyone in which you started in melee range at the beginning of your turn.

Sprint

Sprint: When you want to move faster than your standard movement speed, you may spend your action to sprint. By sprinting, you roll your athletic skill check and add the total amount of the check to your movement spaces for that round.

Stealth

Stealth: When you wish to be unseen or unheard, roll a stealth skill check. That roll establishes the difficulty number of anyone attempting to perceive you. The narrator decides on whether a stealth check is possible based on the narrative of the scene. For example, if your character is standing out in the open and surrounded by spotlights, then chances are that you would not be able to make a stealth check in that situation without some sort of special ability. When stealth is an option, you roll your stealth skill check (modified by any equipment or special abilities activated for the action) and that would become the challenge rating for anyone else attempting to discover your location.

Healing

Healing: Stress is recovered automatically at the end of a scene or can be recovered instantly during a scene via healing items or special abilities. Wound is more serious. Wounds can only be healed through time and care. When under the care of a healer, the healer rolls their skill impact die each day and adds that number to the character’s current recovery value. It requires five (5) times a character’s current amount of wound in recovery to heal one point of wound. So if a character has 3 points of wound, it would require 15 recovery to heal the first point of wound. Then 10 recovery to heal the second point of wound, and 5 recovery to heal the last point of wound for a grand total of 30 recovery.

Recover 10acity

Recover 10acity: At any point if your character has no 10acity left, they can take a short rest (10 minutes) to recover one (1) 10acity point. No more than one (1) 10acity point can be recovered in this way and only when the character has no 10acity.

Generate Spin

Generate Spin: At any point if your character has no spin (including negative spin), they can take their action to concentrate and observe their surroundings to give them one (1) point of positive spin. No more than one (1) spin can be generated in this way and only when the character has no spin which includes negative spin.

Riding, Driving, and Piloting

Riding, driving, and piloting: The pilot skill is used when controlling a mount or vehicle’s movement. Every mount or vehicle has its own speed and has it’s own maneuverability rank. When rolling movement actions or reaction for the mount/vehicle, roll your dexterity dice then add either the pilot skill rank or rank of the mount/vehicle, whichever is the lower value. If your pilot skill is higher than the rank of the mount/vehicle, then you can add a +1 to the skill roll for every two ranks of skill over the rank of the vehicle. If your skill is lower than the mount/vehicle rank then you can add a +1 for every two ranks the mount/vehicle’s rank is above the pilot skill.

For example, Missa has a pilot rank of 1, but she is flying a ship that has a maneuverability rank of 3. She would roll her dexterity ability die and add her +1 pilot skill to the result. However, since the ship she is flying is 2 ranks higher than Missa’s skill, she would then gain another +1 from the maneuverability of the ship. So she would roll her dexterity ability die and add a total of +2. If Missa’s skill level was 3 and the ship’s maneuverability was 1, the she would add the 1 rank from the ship then another +1 from her skill being 2 levels higher than the rank of the ship. So take the lowest value between the rank of the mount/vehicle and then add an additional +1 for every 2 ranks of the higher value.

Help

Help: You can take your action to help another character on a quick pass/fail skill roll as long as you both have ranks in the skill. The character with the highest skill rank rolls their ability dice with one additional advantage die, then adds their skill rank to the highest rolled die as usual. You cannot benefit from more than one creature helping you at a time for a quick pass/fail action check. In checks that require impact, helping is called Cooperating, and you would roll your skill check as per usual in an attempt to add additional impact to the completion of an action.

Cooperate

Cooperate: Characters cooperating to accomplish a goal will each roll their own skill roll in order to produce more impact upon success. For example, if 4 characters are investigating a crime scene, they can cooperate by each rolling their investigation check and for each one that succeeds their check, they can add their impact roll to the full pool of impact used to spend on acquiring information from the scene.

Hold Action

Hold action: During your turn in initiative, you can hold your action or movement to be triggered by another action that happens later in the scene. For example, Missa wants to prevent her friend from being chased by a space pirate. So she will hold her action to use her telekinesis to grapple the first pirate that chases after her friend.

Action Economy

Action Economy: Every turn you can take one action, one interaction, and one movement. Actions are the primary focus objective of any turn and include things such as attacking, using a skill, influencing someone, etc. An interaction are a small component of your turn such as opening a door, drawing or sheathing a weapon, basic communication with others, etc. Movement allows the character to move a number of spaces up to their movement speed or use a special movement ability.

Reactions: Are free responses to any action that would affect you. The most common reaction is defending or resisting. Anytime an action would affect your character, you may react in an attempt to prevent the result. The most common physical reaction is the reaction skill which is a combination of a character’s reflexes and coordination allowing them to move out of the way of a physical attack or become difficult to target visually. Other skills such as melee combat could also be used to defend depending on the conditions of the attack. The most common mental reaction is the concentration skill, allowing you to focus through mental manipulations. The most common social reaction is the insight skill, allowing you to identify social manipulation and deal with it appropriately. However at any point you can attempt to make a case to your narrator that another skill could be used.

Initiative

Initiative in 10acity plays in what we call spotlight or camera focus progression. This means that the initiative follows the action of a scene similar to how you would see it in a movie, on a stage, or read it in a book. In those cases, action doesn't play out by hopping around to different people and areas at random, it narratively follows the characters as they make their actions and reactions. In a movie, the action follows where the camera focuses, on a stage it would be in the spotlight, in a book the scene would play out following the characters as they take their actions and show the reactions of their opponents. This is focus or spotlight initiative order. Once you establish the initiative of who acts first, the order then follows the spotlight of their action. If that character's action is directly against another character, then that character has entered the spotlight and gets to act next. When that character acts, anyone who they bring the focus or spotlight to gets to act next. If that character has already acted, they pass the spotlight to another character of their choice.

Establishing initiative: To find out who goes first, the characters involved roll the skill that makes the most sense, usually this is the Reaction or Perception skill showing that the character’s are using their reaction speed or their awareness in order to act quickly. On occasion, other skills could be utilized such as a Stealth skill if a character was staying hidden or a Deception skill if the character was faking that they didn’t see the danger. The character can suggest other skills for initiative and the narrator makes the call on whether or not it makes sense.

The character that rolls highest can act first or can pass the initiative to another character of their choice. If there is a tie, then choose the one that makes the most sense for the story. Otherwise ties usually go to the heroes of our story over an NPC. If the tie is between two player characters or NPCs then they may choose which one goes first. Alternatively, the one with the highest reaction skill could go first or even rerolling the skill check as a tie breaker.

Initiative Order: Once initiative is established, that character can take their turn which can involve up to one action, one interaction, and one movement. If that character’s turn brings another character into the spotlight, then that character goes next. In the case of multiple affected characters, an opposing character goes next or if there is no opposing character any of the affected characters can go next.

If a character’s actions does not bring anyone else into the spotlight, then any opposing character goes next.

If a character that has already taken their turn this round is the only other one in the spotlight, then they get to choose who goes next.

Once everyone has taken a turn and the spotlight would not be able to activate anyone else, then everyone resets their turns and begins again.

At any point a character is brought back into the spotlight who has already taken their turn, then they can spend a 10acity/Spin point to respond with a standard action at that time. (Often, solo opponents may have a reaction ability which allows them to perform this response for free to keep up with the multiple attacks they receive in a single round.)

Alternative initiative option (Group Initiative): In the Group initiative option, all of the player characters would go in one group in any order they choose, and all of the opposing characters would get to go in another group in any order they choose. The character that rolls the highest initiative gets to choose which group goes first. However, the group that goes second receives an advantage die on the first action that each character takes. There is a clear advantage for going first in a round, however there is also an advantage for going second as the secondary group gets the advantage of seeing how the first group established themselves and reacting accordingly.

10acity: Call it luck, karma, inner strength, chi, perseverance, maximum effort… whatever you call it, 10acity is a character’s energy that they can tap into to for additional effects.

Spin: Spin is temporary 10acity points that you gain during encounters. After an encounter is over, you lose all points of Spin UNLESS you have negative Spin. Negative spin stays with you until you gain enough positive Spin to bring you back to zero or above.

Gaining Spin: You gain a point of Spin during your action if you fail your action or if you roll doubles during your action roll. (This applies only when taking your action, not when rolling reactions or interactions.) Your spin drops back to 0 at the end of a scene unless you have negative spin, negative spin remains until enough spin is earned to bring it back to 0 or greater.

Spending 10acity / Spin

Generating 10acity / Spin

Conditions can be applied to characters, objects, or environments as makes sense to the narrative. When you roll to apply a condition, describe what you are doing and together with the narrator choose one of the condition options that best fits the condition and what skill to use. Placing a condition on a creature is opposed by the character’s skill or NPC challenge rating, while placing a condition on an object or environment is opposed by a challenge rank determined by the narrator.

Once a condition is applied, place a token or note stating that condition. On that creature's turn, the condition applies to their action. If a creature has one or more conditions at the end of their turn, they can attempt to remove one of the conditions as a free reaction using their appropriate skill against either the skill of the one applying the condition or a challenge rating as assigned by the narrator if it is not directly being applied by another creature. If a creature has more than one condition, they choose the one they wish to try and remove. A creature can also take their action to attempt to remove a condition if they so choose so that they can remove an additional condition or have multiple opportunities to remove a single condition. conditions placed on objects and environments remain unless a character takes their action to try and remove that action.

The ability to remove a condition should make narrative sense. For example, if a character without enhanced strength is attempting to break out of a pair of handcuffs by physically snapping the chain, the narrator can make the call that the hand cuffs are too solid for someone without enhanced strength to be able to break them. Or if someone is trying to put out a forest fire with a blanket, the narrator can announce that it's just not possible.

Hinder Condition: A hindering condition is any condition that would apply a penalty to the character’s ability to perform an action. When you succeed at applying a hindering condition, roll your impact dice to see how much penalty the character will suffer going forward when taking specific actions where the condition would affect them. Penalties applied by hindering conditions do not stack, however anyone can attempt to apply another hinder condition to other actions or to the same actions in hopes that they roll higher impact to create a larger penalty going forward from that point, if not then the original penalty remains. Some conditions can be removed just by moving out of the area that is causing the condition such as moving out of the area of entangling plants to stop a slow condition. Other conditions such as a poison have to be overcome by the character. For a condition that needs to be overcome, you may attempt to overcome the condition at the end of your turn for free by rolling the appropriate skill against the challenge rating of the condition as set by the narrator. If you succeed, then the condition is removed. If you fail, then the condition remains.

Hinder conditions should make sense narratively and apply to a specific part of the character or skill. For example, if your legs are being hindered from being entangled in a lasso, then you would take the hinder penalty to anything you would try to do with your legs (movement, jumping, kicking, etc.) until you can untangle your legs. If your hearing is hindered by an explosive sound, or if your eyes are hindered by a bright flash of light, then you would take the penalty when trying to see or hear anything accordingly.

When attempting to hinder a character, you need to describe the part or skill that you are trying to hinder and how you are going to do it, then the narrator will either agree that it makes sense, or discuss it with you until it does make sense, then you roll your skill against either the skill of the opponent or against a challenge rating assigned by the narrator.

Stop Condition: A stop condition works similarly to a hindering condition, except instead of providing a penalty to taking specific actions, it prevents you from taking those actions at all. For example: being lifted into the air with telekinesis would prevent you from being able to move at all unless you can fly. Having your arms bound behind your back by manacles would prevent you from using your arms and hands at all rather than just giving you a penalty to using them, etc. The narrative drives whether a condition is a stop condition or merely a hindering condition.

Damage Condition: A damaging condition is any condition that would continuously apply damage to a character, object, or environment such as crushing, burning, freezing, electrocution, suffocation, toxins, necrosis, etc. Characters within an environment with a condition may also take damage as if they themselves had the condition until they move from the environment. The character suffering from the condition will take damage of the appropriate element type at the beginning of each of their turns for as long as the condition persists. Some conditions can be removed just by moving out of the area that is causing the condition such as moving off of the electrified floor. Other conditions such as being set on fire have to be overcome by the character. For a condition that needs to be overcome, you may attempt to overcome the condition at the end of your turn for free by rolling the appropriate skill against the challenge rating of the condition as set by the narrator. If you succeed, then the condition is removed. If you fail, then the condition remains.

Grapple: A grapple is a special martial hinder condition. In order to grapple, you must have an empty hand or be wielding equipment with a grappling property. You choose how many of your limbs or equipment that you are using in the grapple action and may grapple an equal amount of limbs on your opponent (this still counts as a single grapple condition). Roll your armed or unarmed attack normally against the opponent's defense, if you succeed, then instead of dealing damage, you roll your impact and apply that as the hindering number of grappled condition. If you are being grappled, then the limb that is being grappled is hindered by the value of the impact roll for any action for as long as the grapple remains. If more than one limb is being grappled by either the same opponenet or multiple opponents, then everything becomes harder to do and the hinder condition applies to all physical actions except attempting to escape the grapple condition. While grappling, you cannot use your grappling limb or weapon for anything other than maintaining the grapple or turning the grapple into a lock. If a grappled opponent attempts to move while grappled, it is an opposed athletics check. The grappled opponent can move an amount of spaces equal to the number in which they exceed the grappler’s opposed check up to their maximum normal movement value. A grappled opponent can spend their action to attempt to break a grapple condition, but otherwise can use their free condtion reaction to attempt to break the grapple at the end of their turn by rolling against the grappler’s skill roll, if they succeed, then the grapple ends. If they fail, the grapple remains.

Lock: If you have an opponent grappled, then you can take an action to turn the grapple into a lock. The lock has the same rules as a grapple except: While the opponent is locked, they cannot use their movement at all and the grappler can apply their unarmed combat or locking property weapon's damage against the locked opponent as an action without any rolls required, this includes the first time that a lock is applied on the grappler's turn. A locked opponent may attempt to break the lock with an action by rolling against the grappler’s skill roll, if they succeed, then the lock reverts back to a grapple. In either case, the character can still take a standard action but with one disadvantage die.

Unconscious: When you take more stress than your maximum stress number, then you have the choice to either fall unconscious, or you can stay conscious by taking a point of wound (if you have one available). Unconscious characters cannot act except to roll their strength or concentration in order to try and recover from the unconscious state. The challenge rating for recovering from unconsciousness without help is 2d6 + 1d6 for every point of wound that the character currently has.

Death: Characters are hard to perish in a standard game of 10acity. The intent of the game is to be narratively driven and that requires characters to be able to progress and grow in their stories. Having those stories cut off prematurely does not benefit the narrative. Your characters can be heavily wounded and knocked out as they progress through the story, but there is a certain amount of plot armor that keeps their stories moving. That is not to say that it can't happen, but killing a character requires a coup de grâce. A coup de grâce requires two full actions to perform. Once someone begins a coup de grâce action, they cannot do anything else until the end of their next turn in which that action must be spent to complete the coup de grâce. If they are forced to do anything other than performing the coup de grâce between the time they start and end the coup de grâce, then the coup de grâce fails. This includes taking a reaction to defend themselves. If a coup de grâce is successful, then the character receiving the coup de grâce perishes at the end of that turn.

A player can opt for their character to die at any time that narratively makes sense in the story, this is a narrative prerogative of the player of that character, but it is important to discuss this with your narrator so that the story plays out appropriately.

OPTIONAL Hardcore mode: Narrators can make the game a little more deadly by invoking an optional rule that characters do not fall unconscious when they exceed their maximum stress, and instead they must take a point of wound. Then at any point if a character does not have enough wound left after taking their maximum amount of stress, they perish.

Flanking: When two characters are working together by flanking an opponent (attacking from opposite directions), then the first attacker can give the second attacker a point of spin upon a successful attack.

Parting Action: When a character leaves the melee range of another character, that character can take a parting action as an immediate reaction (unless you avoid the parting action by using the withdraw action). You have the following options:

• Parting Atrike: Perform a basic attack.
• Follow: You may "stick to" the leaving character and follow them as far as your basic movement allows. Once you are out of movement, your follow reaction ends.
• Gain a point of Spin: You can allow the character to leave your melee range without taking a direct action and instead you gain a point of spin.

Withdraw: When you leave the melee range of another character and do not wish to give them a parting strike, then you can spend your action to withdraw in order to avoid any parting shots from any character in which you started your turn within melee range.

Cover: Cover can be hard or soft cover. Hard cover is strong enough to prevent attacks from going through it, while soft cover is too weak to block the attack, but it does prevent visual targeting making the character harder to hit.

Hard Cover: Cover is considered hard cover when the attack is not strong enough to make it through the cover with enough force to still be dangerous. When completely behind hard cover, you cannot be directly attacked. If partially behind the cover, it makes you a smaller target, giving you a bonus as if you were a creature one step smaller than your current size, which is an additional advantage die and a +1 to skill rolls to defend.

Soft Cover: Cover is considered soft cover when the attack is strong enough to make it through the cover with enough force to still be dangerous. When completely behind soft cover, you can’t be directly targeted, but if an opponent can discern your approximate location in some way, they can still attack through the soft cover blindly in hopes of getting a lucky shot. The opponent rolls 1d10 and on a six (6) or higher they managed to find you and you roll the attack and defense normally from there. The narrator can rule to make a blind check easier or more difficult based on the cover’s size or if the opponent would find it particularly easy or difficult to assess where you are behind the cover.

Elevation: It’s over! I have the high ground! Well… not exactly… When conducting melee combat against an opponent of substantially different elevation, it presents issues for both combatants. The combatant on higher ground would need to swing downwards and crouch to defend their legs while the low ground melee fighter would need to swing upwards and keep their weapon high to defend their head. Neither position is one that is commonly trained in melee fighting styles and honestly neither one would have an easier time than the other. And as long as either target was not out of range or behind some sort of cover, elevation would not much affect range attacks either. The benefit of elevation actually comes from perception. You can see further for one because you can see past most objects that could block your vision. And when you are higher up, it is more difficult for opponents to gain cover in trenches or behind small objects because you can see over the objects or into the trenches. Being in an elevated position gives an advantage die to perception checks and helps prevent opponents from taking cover.

Prone: Going prone is a good thing when someone is firing at you from range because you are a smaller target and you can place more obstacles in your way, but less of an advantage if your opponent is standing directly over you because you will have a more difficult time dodging or maneuvering your weapon for a defense while lying on the ground. So a prone character receives an advantage die when defending against attacks from a distance, but the attacker would receive the advantage die when attacking a prone character directly next to them.

Full Defensive: By spending your action to defend, you receive an advantage die to all of your defense rolls until your next turn.

Multi-wielding: You can carry as many items, tools, or weapons for which you have enough appendages and strength. However, only one item, tool, or weapon can be used in an action unless you have a special ability that allows you to do otherwise.

Resistances: Any resistance to a type of damage or condition will be followed by a number. That number is how much damage they ignore before they take any stress from attacks or the bonus they receive to their rolls to avoid conditions from a source of that type.

Size Categories: Sizes go by steps. If a creature or object is twice the size of a space, (if you are 1×1 and they are 2×2, or if you are 2x2 and they are 4x4) then they are one step larger. If a creature or object is half your size then it is one step smaller. For every time a size doubles or halves, then the size category changes one step (1×1, 2×2, 4×4, 8×8, 16×16, etc.).

When physically attacking a size category larger than yourself, you gain 1 advantage die and a +1 to your attack for every step larger they are, but your damage is halved and halved again for every additional step.

When physically attacking a size category smaller than yourself, they gain 1 advantage die and a +1 to their defense for every step smaller they are, but your damage is doubled and doubled again for every additional step.

Splitting up larger opponents: Most times when an opponent is more than one step above the player characters, the opponent will be split out into multiple smaller tokens, each one with it's own set of hitpoints and attacking ability. You would have to take out multiple or key tokens to eliminate that opponent. For example, a dragon would likely have one token for it's head, a couple of tokens for its body, a token for its tail, and a couple of tokens for its arms. When the tokens move, they all move together as a single creature, but each one would have it's own standard actions: the head would bite or breathe fire, the claws would scratch, the tail would whip, etc. Taking out different parts of the dragon eliminates those tokens making it to where the head can no longer bite or the claws can no longer scratch. Eventually, when enough tokens are taken out, the creature would be eliminated.