Part 1: Character Statistics
Pregenerated Characters
Introduction
As a player stepping into the world of Roshar, you start by choosing the character you'll embody in the game. From one perspective, your character is merely a collection of statistics and abilities that outline what you can do in the rules of this game. But more importantly, your character is a concept, a story waiting to be told -- and your decisions will define their place on Roshar.
Pregenerated Characters
This condensed rulebook does not contain rules for creating or advancing characters. It assumes that you're playing with pregenerated characters or with characters created using online tools. (Visit CosmereRPG.com for more information on character creation tools.)
For the full character creation experience, pick up the Stormlight Handbook. It contains everything you need to create a custom character and advance them as you gain levels over the course of a campaign.
Your Statistics
Part 1 details the statistics you'll find on your character sheet and how they affect various aspects of the game. Your statistics include the following:
Attributes. Your six attributes determine your innate characteristics, and they influence many elements of your other statistics; for example, your Speed affects your movement rate.
Defenses. When another character makes a test against you, your defenses determine whether their test succeeds. Likewise, your abilities target your foe's defenses-the higher their defense, the harder the test.
Deflect. Your deflect value represents your resilience to damage. It allows you to reduce energy, impact, and keen damage.
Expertises. Your skills reflect things you do, but your expertises reflect things you know. This specialized knowledge can benefit you in navigating cultures, recalling information, crafting fabrials, and more.
Health, Focus, and Investiture. Your health protects you from injury or death, while your focus and Investiture power your talents and other abilities.
Skills. Your skills represent your learned and practiced abilities, and they determine how likely your tests are to succeed.
Physical, Cognitive, and Spiritual
Throughout the cosmere, reality is composed of three facets: the Physical Realm, the Cognitive Realm, and the Spiritual Realm. Many of your statistics are categorized into one of these facets, as seen in the three columns of your character sheet.
The skills affected by Strength or Speed are physical skills, the skills affected by Intellect or Willpower are cognitive skills, and the skills affected by Awareness or Presence are spiritual skills.
Attributes
Every character has six attributes that determine their innate characteristics: Strength, Speed, Intellect, Willpower, Awareness, and Presence.
Each attribute is a number, the higher the better. These determine the physical, mental, and spiritual limits of your character. On Roshar, most humans and singers don't have attributes above 2. However, player characters are extraordinary (even at 1st level), and as you gain levels, you can increase your attribute scores as high as 5. This range can increase even further for some singer forms, Invested characters, massive beasts, and other powerful creatures.
Each skill is associated with an attribute (listed in parentheses on your character sheet). As described in the later "Skills" section, that attribute score influences your skill modifier, and thus how likely you are to succeed with that skill.
Attributes also determine other elements of your character, from how much you can carry to how many expertises you have. The following sections detail the attributes and how they affect the game.
Strength
Strength is your physical power, toughness, and athleticism. It represents the raw strength and force you can exert, along with your constitution and physical resilience. Your Strength also determines how much weight you can lift and carry.
Lifting Capacity
Lifting capacity represents the maximum weight you can lift by yourself in one attempt. You can't sustain this much weight for long, but if needed, you can safely lift it over your head.
Carrying Capacity
You aren't expected to track exactly how much you're carrying at all times. Just be reasonable -- if you want to bring an entire library of books on your adventures, your GM will likely ask how you're transporting that wealth of knowledge! When it becomes important to track how much you're carrying, use the following guidelines.
Your carrying capacity represents how much weight you can comfortably carry while walking. While you can temporarily exceed this weight (to a maximum of your lifting capacity), it'll slow you down and eventually exhaust you.
If you move while exceeding your carrying capacity (including everything you're wearing and carrying), you become Slowed.
Additionally, each time you exceed your carrying capacity for a cumulative period of 60 minutes, you become Exhausted [-1]. This cumulative time resets to zero after a long rest.
See "Conditions" in part 2 for details on the Slowed and Exhausted conditions.
Speed
Speed is your quickness and dexterity. It represents your finesse and overall alacrity.
Movement Rate
Your Speed determines how quickly you can move in combat and other tense situations, as follows:
Moving Inside Combat. When you use the Move action (described in part 3), you can move up to your movement rate. When other abilities allow you to move, they specify what rate you can use to move.
Moving Outside Combat. If you need to determine your movement rate when you're not in combat, you can complete around three actions every 10 seconds. Similarly, to determine how far you can run in 10 seconds, multiply your movement rate by 3.
By default, you move by walking or similarly propelling across the surface of the ground (see "Movement and Positioning" in part 3).
Intellect
Intellect is your applied intelligence and wit. It represents your ability to store and recall knowledge and to deduce facts.
Willpower
Willpower is your determination and mental fortitude. It represents your cognitive resilience, ability to enact your will on others, and resistance to outside influences.
Recovery Die
Your Willpower determines your recovery die, which determines how efficiently you recover health and focus when you take a break (see the “Resting” section of part 2).
Awareness
Awareness is your wisdom and connection to the world around you. It represents your ability to sense your surroundings and relate to others around you.
Senses Range
Your Awareness determines your senses range (see the upcoming "Senses" section).
Presence
Presence is your charisma and bearing. It represents your ability to influence others, build rapport, and reach the masses.
Defenses
Your attributes combine to form your defenses, which protect you from unwanted effects. You have three defense values: Physical defense (affected by Strength and Speed), Cognitive defense (affected by Intellect and Willpower), and Spiritual defense (affected by Awareness and Presence).
Defenses and Difficulty Class
Your Physical, Cognitive, and Spiritual defense values equal:
10 + both attributes in that category + any bonuses or penalties
When a character makes a test against you, they're usually testing against your defense from the same category as their skill. Your corresponding defense sets that test's DC. In general, your Physical defense protects against physical tests, your Cognitive defense protects against cognitive tests, and your Spiritual defense protects against spiritual tests. (See "Physical, Cognitive, and Spiritual" at the beginning of part 1.)
Deflect
When an enemy succeeds on an attack test against you or when you take damage from another source, this generally reduces your health, as described later in part 1. However, armor (or other effects) can grant you a deflect value that reduces impact, keen, and energy damage by that amount. For example, if your deflect value is 2 and you take 5 energy damage, you deflect 2 damage, then reduce your health by 3.
Your deflect value also offers some protection from serious injuries, as described in "Injuries" in part 2.
Expertise
Expertises
Each character has unique areas of knowledge acquired through their upbringing, training, interests, and other life experience. When your character specializes in a particular area, you gain an expertise in that topic. This represents your unique knowledge and ability in a particular niche, which can’t be matched by characters who don’t have that expertise.
Expertise Benefits
An expertise doesn't directly add any abilities to your character sheet, but it can assist you during the game in several ways.
Assumed Knowledge
It's assumed you automatically know all basic facts about your area of expertise. You don't need a test to recall basic information about that topic.
Advanced Thinking
Your depth in a particular subject allows you to make tests that would be impossible for other characters. For example, if your party wants to figure out how the enemy's intricate new fabrial works, only characters with the Fabrial Crafting expertise can make a Deduction test to learn that information.
When you make other tests related to your expertise, a success might grant you more information than an inexperienced character would learn with the same result.
Item Expert Traits
Most weapons and armor, along with a few other items, have expert traits (see part 6). These traits grant additional benefits to characters with the specified expertise.
Known Languages
If you have a cultural expertise for a specific nation or culture, you can communicate with those who share its language or languages. It's up to you how well you know those languages.
For other expertises, you might know special jargon or codewords connected with that subject. For example, the Underworld expertise could allow you to communicate covertly with local thieves' guilds.
Regardless of what languages you know, it's assumed that all PCs can communicate well enough with each other to easily share information and create plans together.
Creative Uses of Expertises
It's impossible to define all the knowledge and capabilities that an expertise grants. Instead, your expertises are merely a guide. It's up to you and your GM to decide what you know based on where and when in the cosmere you find yourself.
If you believe one of your expertises should allow you to make a test, to automatically know something, or to gain a situational benefit, ask your GM! Expertises are tools to help creatively tell your story -- it's okay to stretch and come up with cool new uses for them.
Health, Focus, and Investiture
Many of your abilities are powered or affected by three expendable pools of resources: health, focus, and Investiture. These are primarily calculated using your attributes, but they can also be affected by bonuses or penalties from talents and other effects.
Health
Your health is a physical resource representing your stamina and resistance to minor wounds. When you create your character, your maximum health equals:
10 + Strength + any bonuses or penalties
When you lose health, you might stagger under the weight of a blow, notice blood on your clothes from a minor wound, or cry out from exertion. See "Damage, Injury, and Death" in part 2 for more details.
If your health is reduced to 0, that represents suffering a severe blow that knocks you out of the fight. When reduced to 0 health, you suffer an injury and become Unconscious (see "Injuries" and "Conditions" in part 2).
You can recover health by resting (see "Resting" in part 2). Some talents and other effects provide other ways to recover your health; for example, a character with a rank in Medicine can tend to your wounds in combat (see "Medicine" later in part 1).
Focus
Your focus is a cognitive resource representing your mental resolve and ability to resist influence and distraction, as well as to execute complex or precise maneuvers. Your maximum focus equals:
2 + Willpower + any bonuses or penalties
Focus can be spent to fuel talents and other abilities, or to withstand manipulation (see "Focus in Conversations" in part 4).
When you have no focus left, your attention might waver, you might stare intently while working through a problem, or you might be overcome with frustration.
You can recover focus by resting (see "Resting" in part 2).
Investiture
Investiture is a spiritual resource representing your ability to hold and channel Investiture -- an energy that suffuses the cosmere. On Roshar, this represents your ability to breathe in and hold Stormlight.
To harness the power of Stormlight, your character will need to choose a Radiant path and bond a spren. When you do, you'll gain an Investiture pool that works much like your focus does.
See "Investiture and Stormlight" in chapter 5 of the Stormlight Handbook for more information on Investiture.
Senses
In any scene, your senses and what you're aware of are key. This can be straightforward in an open field on a sunny day, but senses are more complicated when darkness, fog, or illusions get involved.
Your senses encapsulate not just your vision, but your hearing, smell, touch, and even your intuition. Someone with excellent hearing might navigate pitch darkness by their practiced ear. This game doesn't have separate rules for sight versus other senses; instead, it's up to you and the GM to decide what primary sense you most heavily rely on to navigate the world.
Senses Range
Under most conditions, it's assumed all characters can sense things from a reasonable distance, at the GM's discretion. However, when your primary sense is entirely obscured, this limits how far away you can detect things. Depending on your primary sense, it could be obscured by the roaring cacophony of a highstorm, by the pitch black during the "hateful hour" of night when no moons are visible, and so on.
Your senses range determines how far away you can easily sense when your primary sense is obscured. Your Awareness score determines this range.
Within this range, you don't have any trouble detecting things with the help of your other senses. But outside of this range, you can't detect objects and characters, and must move closer or try to target them without senses (if you're aware of them).
Targeting Without Senses
If you can't sense something, it's hard to affect it with many abilities. For example, to target "a character you can sense" while your senses are obscured, the character must be within your senses range.
If an ability doesn't require senses, you'll still gain a disadvantage on many tests against a target you can't sense (see "Targeting and Range" in part 3).
Sensing Hidden Characters and Objects
No matter how good your senses are, you can't automatically see through any kind of deception, nor can you spot hidden characters or objects. If an illusion designed to trick you is obscuring an object, or if an object is purposefully hidden from your ability to sense it (such as with the Stealth skill), you must succeed on a skill test to spot it.
Skills
Your character starts the game with eighteen skills, each representing your general competency in various pursuits. This section presents general rules for skills and tests, followed by descriptions of each individual skill.
Using Skills
When your character attempts a task that has a chance of failure-a daring attack, a rousing speech, a subtle theft-the GM will probably ask you to make a skill test. The same also applies to NPCs and the GM; whether an NPC is attempting to attack you or scale an imposing cliff, the GM will make a test to determine that attempt's outcome.
You usually don't need any ranks in a skill to test it, but your chance of success increases with your inherent aptitude (represented by that skill's corresponding attribute) and your relevant training (represented by your rank in that skill).
Your character's approach to a task may reflect their personality, experiences, and goals. Don't just pick a test and roll it; you're telling a collaborative story, so describe how you go about your attempt! Depending on your approach, the environment, and other circumstances, the GM will let you know which skill test you should roll.
Skill Ranks and Modifiers
Each skill is associated with one of your attributes, as stated in parentheses in that skill's title. Additionally, you have anywhere from 0 to 5 ranks in each skill. Narratively, ranks indicate your education and lived experience.
Your skill modifier equals your score in that skill's associated attribute + your number of ranks in that skill. You'll add this modifier to each test you make with that skill, and you'll also use it for a few other calculations; for example, when you hit with an attack, you add your skill modifier to the damage dealt (see "Attacking" in part 3).
Difficulty Class
When you make a test, you roll a d20, add the modifier for the chosen skill, and apply any bonuses or penalties. Then compare that result to the test's difficulty class (DC)-this is the target number you're trying to reach. If the total equals or exceeds the DC, you succeed; this means you accomplish your task and the GM narrates the results. If the total is less than the DC, you fail; this means you make little to no progress on what you were attempting.
Sometimes, a DC is specified in an ability itself, but more often, DCs are determined by the target's defenses, by the GM, or by both characters making an opposed test against each other.
Defenses
When you make a skill test targeting another character, the DC of that test is usually determined by one of that character's defenses. This is typically the defense in the same category as the skill being used; for example, if you're threatening someone, you'll usually test Intimidation against their Cognitive defense. However, the GM or certain rules may occasionally have you use different defenses; for example, the Feinting Strike talent lets you make an attack against a target's Cognitive defense instead of their Physical defense.
Adjusting DCs. The relevant defense's value sets the base DC for that skill test, but the GM might further modify the DC based on other circumstances, using the upcoming Difficulty Class Examples table as guidance. For example, if a character is particularly friendly to you, the GM might lower the DC for persuading them; perhaps they have a Spiritual defense of 14, but the GM lowers that DC to 11 for you. Unlike granting you advantages and disadvantages, the GM doesn't necessarily have to tell you when something is modifying a character's defense, so use caution!
GM Discretion
In many cases, the GM sets the DC based on their judgment of the difficulty of the task and the normal range of DCs. The Difficulty Class Examples table provides some guidance, but the GM can choose any number that feels like a good fit. The task's difficulty should be gauged by the abilities of an average humanoid, not a PC.
Difficulty Class Examples
| Difficulty | DC |
|---|---|
| Easy | 10 |
| Medium | 15 |
| Hard | 20 |
| Very Hard | 25 |
| Nearly Impossible | 30 |
Opposed Tests
Occasionally, two characters actively want to make tests against each other (such as when wrestling), or similarly, one character's actions would reasonably set the DC for a later attempt to subvert that action. Opposed tests can also resolve conflicts there aren't specific rules for.
When such a conflict happens, the GM might have both characters make an opposed test using relevant skills. The DC is determined not by a set number or by GM discretion, but by the result of your opponent's test. To meet the DC and succeed (or to prevent the other person from succeeding), your test result must exceed your opponent's. Determine the outcome as follows:
If you roll higher than your opponent, you meet the DC and accomplish your goal (even if that goal was simply to resist your opponent).
If you roll lower than your opponent, this means they rolled higher than you, thereby meeting their DC.
If you tie with your opponent, nobody meets their DC! In this case, both of you might fail to achieve your contested objective -- or, in the case of an aggressive contest, the result favors the defender who's trying to keep things the same.
Automatic Successes
Some effects grant you an automatic success on a test. When you automatically succeed, you don't roll, and you gain the benefits of a success with no Opportunities or Complications. (Rarely, you might automatically fail a test; handle this the same way, without rolling.)
Advantages and Disadvantages
Sometimes, tests are modified by positive or negative circumstances. In these cases, you'll be instructed to test with one or more advantages or disadvantages. These could be from a rule of the game, or from the GM granting it to you based on circumstances in the narrative.
Testing With Advantages
For each advantage affecting the test, choose one die you're about to roll for your test; you can pick the d20, the plot die, or any other die (like one of the damage dice from an attack). Roll two of each chosen die, then choose one of the two results to keep, discarding the other with no effect.
You can choose each die only once during a test. If you have two advantages, you'll have to roll copies of two different dice, instead of rolling three of the same die.
Testing With Disadvantages
Conversely, for each disadvantage affecting the test, the GM chooses one die you're about to roll for your test. Roll two of the GM's chosen die, then allow the GM to choose one of the two results you keep, discarding the other with no effect. As with advantages, the same die can't be chosen twice.
Testing With Both
If a test is affected by both advantages and disadvantages, they cancel each other out; each disadvantage cancels one advantage and vice versa.
Affecting Multiple Targets
Some abilities instruct you to make a single test against multiple targets. However, you might have advantages or disadvantages against only some of those targets. In that case, first roll the test without those extra dice, then roll the dice for your advantages or disadvantages separately, applying them only to the results for the affected targets and ignoring them for the other targets. (For more information, see "Attacks With Multiple Targets" in chapter 10 of the Stormlight Handbook.)
Enemy NPC Tests
If an enemy NPC is making a test with advantages or disadvantages, the roles of the GM and players are reversed. For advantages, the GM gets to pick which die to keep, and for disadvantages, a player gets to pick (typically the player whose character is most affected by the roll).
Working Together
When you attempt a task with the help of others, you typically don't all make separate tests. Instead, use the following rules to work together on a test.
Helping in Combat. If you want to help in combat, you must use the Aid reaction (see "Actions and Reactions" in part 3).
Helping Outside Combat. Outside of combat, whoever is leading the group effort makes one test, and they gain an advantage for each character helping them.
Anatomy of a Skill
The upcoming sections describe the eighteen basic skills available to all characters in this game. Each section includes the following details:
Title and Attribute. Each entry's title states the name of that skill, followed by the associated attribute. You'll use this attribute to calculate your skill modifier, as described earlier in "Skill Ranks and Modifiers."
Relevant Tasks. Each entry lists some tasks that use that skill. This isn't a comprehensive list-it's up to you and your GM to decide what skill best applies for anything you might attempt.
Special Situations. Some entries provide guidance for using that skill in special ways.
Skills List
