Threadrune

Threadrune is a solo tabletop adventure with an AI Game Master. You write what your character does in the Story chat, in plain words: "I ask the innkeeper about the missing caravan", "I climb the wall", "I attack the nearest goblin". The Game Master narrates the world and its people; the game itself rolls every die, keeps every number and decides every outcome — the narrator never fudges a roll.

Ask the Game Master. Stuck, or not sure where to begin? Say so, as you would at a table: "I search for mithril and adamantine for my quest", "how do I get to the Deepdelve?", "any advice on the Thane's Blade?". The Game Master checks your quests, explains how that part of the game works and what your next step is, and tells you how to find out the rest: where any crafting material is found, for instance, the Gnome Depot will tell you (its Ask tab, in every town's Services). It helps you find the way; it won't solve the quest for you.

The four tabs: Story is where everything happens, fights included. Combat Log is the plain record of every roll. Quests lists what you have taken on, by status and by place. Journal keeps the story so far and the Chronicle — the lasting facts the world remembers about you.

Whenever the outcome of something you try is genuinely uncertain, the Game Master asks the dice: a skill check against a difficulty set by the situation (5 trivial, 10 easy, 15 medium, 20 hard, 25 very hard, 30 nearly impossible). A natural 20 always succeeds; a natural 1 always fails.

Six abilities — Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, Charisma — each with a score (8–20) and a modifier (score − 10, halved, rounded down). The modifier is what you add to rolls. Every class has a key ability and needs 13 in it, at creation and for any class you add later.

Skills are grouped under the ability they use; each shows its total bonus. Hover any skill on the sheet for what it does and how the number is built. Saving throws resist a foe's tricks — poison, fear, a dragon's breath.

Health (HP) is your life. At 0 you fall, and everything you carry in gold is lost — the bank's vault is not. You recover half your Constitution modifier (rounded down) in HP each round of a fight, and your whole Constitution modifier each day on the road; regeneration from gear, feats and rings adds its full amount to both. Mana Points fuel spells and class powers and come back with rest and, for casters, a little every round. Every hero with a Mana bar sets out with three common Potions of Arcana. How much Mana you hold, and how hard your spells are to resist (your spell DC), both come from your casting ability: Intelligence for wizards, necromancers, dread knights and artificers; Wisdom for clerics, druids, rangers and monks (their Ki); Charisma for sorcerers, warlocks and paladins. Raise it and both rise at once. Defense is what an attack roll must beat: 10 + Dexterity + armor + shield. Initiative decides who strikes first.

Experience comes from fights and quests. Each level brings more HP, and at set levels a subclass path, feats, new spells or class features — the level-up window walks you through the choices. When you qualify for a second class you may be offered it; your Settings decide whether that offer appears. A Trainer in any great city can rebuild you from scratch, for a price that grows with your level.

Lineage gives ability bonuses, two skills, one combat trait and a background of its own. Your background adds two more skills. None of these can be changed except through a Trainer.

Class Compendium (Help → Class Compendium) lays every class out level by level, 1 to 30: proficiency, attacks, Mana Points, spell tiers, the class's own numbers, every feature and choice, its paths, feats, Epic Boons and capstone — the same tables the game levels you with.

The world is Tessara, and every land you can walk to is its one known continent, Selvane: Hearthland at its heart, eight lands round it, and the isles of the Shattered Reach off its western shore. The Selvane button on your sheet opens the whole of it on one map. Ask any Weaver what the name means.

The compass on your sheet is the map: north is up, and every place you know the road to is a pin. You know the road to the places you have been, to the places one road on from them, to each land's great city once you have set foot in that land, to the border posts of the lands next to yours, and to anywhere a quest, a rumour or a bought chart has told you of (any traveling merchant sells a chart of the land you stand in). Everything else is still under cloud: every journey shows you more. The small medallions on the rim switch between the lands; a grey one is a land you can see across a border but have not walked yet. Click a pin and then Travel, or simply say where you are going, by name ("I head to Moonfern Hollow"): any place in the mortal lands, on your map or not. If you don't know the road yet, you ask the way as you go, and the place joins your map. The exceptions are the Planes (their seams open only in the Epic levels), the lairs of legends you have not yet heard of, and Perdition's wards before your level opens them. Each journey takes days — the calendar in your header keeps count — and a hardy body mends on the road.

Roads you have not cleared are dangerous: every day on one has four chances of meeting something, a quarter each (two chances, mounted), so most days bring something and a journey of several days almost always does. Win the fight and that road stays clear for good: far fewer chances after. Some ways are never safe without a map of them. A rogue may take the shadowed way: slower, but far harder to notice.

The sea. Down the western sea lies the Shattered Reach, a long chain of isles in three lands: the Fogbound Reach in the north, the Crown Reach in the middle and the Sunward Reach in the south, each harder than the last. The only way there, back, or from one of its lands to another, is a ship. Ships sail from Hearthland's great city, Brinehaven, Gravewatch and Hrimgard, and from every town and waystation in the Reach: tap Book passage on a harbour's card, choose a port and pay the fare, and you are there in two to seven days. Ask for any place across the water and you are taken to the nearest harbour first, with the right port already picked. The sea is never cleared like a road: every voyage runs its chances, from a sea beast over the rail to a storm, a ghost ship or a castaway with a tale to tell.

Teleport. A wizard or sorcerer who knows Teleport (tier 7) can cast it from the Spellbook outside a fight and step at once to any Mage Tower city they have already stood in (the towers stand in Cinderhold, Kragmoor, Brinehaven, Sahrakesh and Hearthland's great city), for the spell's Mana Points: no road, no days. Not with something in front of you, and never to a city you have not yet visited. In a fight it is a door to any square on the Battle Map your body fits, or out of the fight altogether.

Rests. A short rest (twice a day) rolls your hit dice to heal. A long rest eats a day's rations and restores everything; without rations you wake hungry and less healed. Your own tavern, your own keep, an order's hospitality or a faction's welcome can make a bed free. Nothing rests with a foe in front of you.

Places. Great cities have every service and the finest wares; towns fewer; waystations and camps whatever came by. The city map shows the buildings of the place you are in. Landmarks in the wild are where quests send you. Lairs are where legends live — and legends do not stay dead.

The isle chain across the western sea is three lands, each its own chart and each harder than the last. The Fogbound Reach (north, levels 1-7) is cold fog and fishing isles, haunted by Grisela the Fogweaver, a sea-witch who spins the fog on a loom from drowned men's last breaths — her lair is the Loom of Mists. The Crown Reach (middle, 8-14) is green isles and an open war: the Sea-Queen Carissa's Crown Armada against the Free Captains and Varrok Saltjaw, the Pirate King, whose crew hauls him back to his feet once a fight — his lair, the Black Galleon, is where his chain ends in a choice that is yours: hang him for the Crown, take his hat and become the Pirate King yourself, or sell him to the Umbral Syndicate. The Sunward Reach (south, 15-20) is sun-baked ruins and drowned temples, watched over by Reefback, an island-sized dragon turtle whose shell mends itself in a fight and who has sunk three navies already.

Whose side you take echoes: standing with the Armada opens a Letter of Marque and lets you sail as a lawful privateer; favour with the Free Captains or the Syndicate opens their own contracts and prices instead. Nothing forces the choice, but the Reach remembers it.

Deeper water hides worse than any lair: a Great Sea Wyrm and a Great Kraken, both Colossal, prowl the open sea and rise against a ship under sail rather than in any fixed place — rare, and never an easy fight.

The coasts of Selvane are its edge, and eight old pegs of star-iron, the Tenterhooks, hold that edge taut. The Selvage Wardens, an old order of lamp-keepers and coast-walkers, keep them. Their work begins with an old Warden in Hearthland's great city and runs from level 2 through the Epic Levels, one part after another; when a part is done, you are told where the Warden who has the next one waits. Many towns along the edge have troubles of their own too: a festival's boundary stones, a lost verse, a chart of the whole coast. Listen for them.

Wardens earn ranks, and ranks bring the Wardens' due: half fare on any hired ship from Edge-Warden, free passage from Warden of the Selvage, and at Warden-Captain a mantle of your own and the Weavers' finest pattern, Selvane-silk: a Master Weaver's work, +4 to its skills, woven with Selvage Thread, which is never sold and only the Wardens give. The Weaver's Threads & Fate window lists the eight hooks and which of them your hand has driven home.

When something is ahead, a card appears and the dice first decide who notices whom: your Perception against their passive Stealth, and theirs against yours. If they spot you unseen, they have the drop and the fight is on. If you spot them unseen, the moment is yours: Ambush them (you act first, from hiding, your opening strike with advantage, a rogue's Sneak Attack), open with a spell, or Slip away (Stealth or Acrobatics, with advantage). If you see each other, it is a fight by initiative, or a try at slipping away; if you stumble into each other, there is no slipping away. Recall what you know rolls the right lore skill to reveal a creature's real numbers and tricks — knowledge that stays with you. Some creatures can be talked to, if you are unseen.

Opening distance. On the Battle Map, the bigger the foe, the farther off it starts. On top of the usual few squares between you, a Medium foe starts an extra 10 ft away, a Large one 15 ft, a Huge one 20 ft, and a Gargantuan or bigger one 25 ft (Tiny and Small creatures, nothing extra); in a cramped place, as far as the ground allows. Ambushers and lurkers are set back from you by the same amount; a legend's own hall keeps its places. Use the gap: ready a spell, find cover, or make them cross open ground to reach you.

Initiative is one d20 per side. Each round you have a main action (attack, cast, shoot, use an item, hide, flee) and a bonus action (a quick cantrip, a bonus-action spell like Misty Step, an off-hand blow, a class trick, or — with a shield in your off hand and Strength 13 or more — a Shield Bash that can knock a foe prone). Every creature has its own strengths and weaknesses: some are immune to a kind of damage or to a condition (a swarm can't be knocked down, the undead don't feel poison, a fire drake laughs at flame), some take double from another. Recall what you know on the encounter card, hover a foe's badges, read its page in the Bestiary, and hit them where it hurts. Every weapon type also carries a weapon mastery you can switch on or off for each weapon in a fight (a tick box above the Attack button): Sap (the foe's next attack is at disadvantage), Vex (your next attack on it has advantage), Graze (a miss still hurts), Topple (a Constitution save or prone), Slow, Push (shoved back), Cleave (a second foe beside the first) and Nick (your off-hand blow comes with the Attack action). You get a weapon's mastery when you are trained in it, and a class whose signature weapons include it is attuned: a harder save, and a stronger effect from level 5. Items below Uncommon (green) are mundane and nonmagical: wraiths, devils, gargoyles, golems and other creatures shrug off mundane weapons (halved, or nothing at all); every item from Uncommon up through artifacts is magical and bites in full. And every battlefield has things to use: barrels, braziers, a chandelier on a frayed rope, a boulder over the slope, holy water where the dead walk. Some are plain to see; the best are hidden until you notice them (a Survey, which takes your main action, helps, and so does reading the narration). Press an object on the combat bar, click it on the Battle Map, or just say what you do — "I cut the rope". Write it in the chat — "I cast Fire Bolt at the archer", "I drink a potion", "I attack" — or use the buttons; every button's hover shows the live numbers. Creative moves ("I kick the brazier into them") become a skill roll with a real effect.

Rogues and hiding. Hiding is what a rogue does best. Cunning Action: Hide is a bonus action, best taken before the attack: a rogue rolls Stealth with advantage, and once hidden no foe knows where they are. No foe comes at a hidden rogue: each holds its ground and must beat the rogue's Stealth total with its Perception to find them, or it spends its turn searching the shadows; one that spots them comes straight at them. Hiding behind cover (a wall, a crate, a statue) adds +5 to the roll, for anyone. The next attack from hiding has advantage and lands a Sneak Attack, if it is made with a finesse weapon (dagger, darts, rapier, scimitar, shortsword, whip, the Wood-Elves' Elven Blade) or a ranged one (bow, crossbow, sling); attacking, or being found, ends the hiding. Foes struggle to hit you for the rest of that round — except a legend, which tracks the blow back to its source the moment you strike. On the Battle Map a hidden hero fades to a ghostly shimmer. There, a rogue's Cunning Action: Disengage slips them out of the fight altogether: foes lose their hold on them, and one must see them and win a Perception roll to close in again. Reach the edge of the map unseen and the fight ends as an escape, worth experience for the evasion.

Attack: d20 + your bonus against their Defense; a 20 is a critical for double dice. Spells with a save let the target roll against your Spell Save DC (8 + proficiency + casting modifier). Status badges on the cards mean what their hover says — burning, chilled, stunned, warded, and so on. Leaders rally their allies; wounded brutes hit harder; a boss's lair itself may strike at you. Flee if you must: you keep your life and lose only the chance at the spoils.

Victory brings experience, gold and often gear, which goes straight to your pack. Defeat costs the gold you carry — bank it.

Conditions. A creature can be blinded, charmed, deafened, frightened, grappled, restrained, prone, invisible, paralyzed, petrified or incapacitated; each shows as a badge on its card, and the badge's hover says exactly what it does. Exhaustion builds in levels: each one is −2 to every d20 roll and 5 feet off your speed, six is death, and each long rest sheds one level (a drowning's levels go the moment you surface). Some creatures regenerate every round; trolls and their kind stop for a turn when fire or acid burns them (radiant, for the undead), and the Regeneration trait on the creature's card names its weakness.

Darkness. A fight is dark at night, underground (mines, the Deep Halls, the Lightless Deep, a lair) and in the Gloaming. In the dark you see only as far as your darkvision, a torch's light (40 feet) or 30 feet, whichever is most; the Battle Map darkens everything beyond it, and attacks and aimed spells at a foe you cannot see are made at disadvantage. A Torch (any merchant, one gold; every hero starts with one) is held in your off hand: no shield, no second weapon and no two-handed weapon while it burns, and hiding with a flame in your hand is hard. Goggles of Night (uncommon, any vendor) take your head slot and give darkvision to 60 feet, or 60 feet more if you already have it.

Water. Sharks and their kind live only in water and are met only where there is some: at sea, on the coasts, at a harbour's docks (slips of deep water between the piers and moored boats; pirates and bandits on the isles fight there too). A badly wounded swimmer often turns tail and swims for open water; let it go and you earn half its experience. At the drowned sites of the Shattered Reach (the Sunken Temple, the Coral Maze, the Hulks) a fight may happen underwater: you arrive with a third of your breath left after the dive (a Constitution matter), and once it runs out every turn costs a level of Exhaustion until you surface at the fight's end, when the water's Exhaustion goes. Down there fire is resisted, and bows, crossbows and blades that don't pierce strike at disadvantage (spears, daggers and tridents don't). Water Breathing ends the worry: the spell (wizard, sorcerer, druid and ranger, tier 3; it lasts until the end of the next day), the Potion of Water Breathing (alchemists and harbour merchants; drunk before a dive it lasts the whole dive), or the rare Cap of Water Breathing, found in the sea's own loot.

Bodies and reach. On the Battle Map every creature fills the squares its size gives it (a Large ogre four, a Huge giant nine) and goes only where its whole body fits; nothing walks into a wall or a cart. Large creatures step over small clutter like a crate or a boulder, Huge ones over a cart too. Every creature also has a reach, usually 5 feet past its own squares (a polearm or a whip gives you 10): a melee blow lands only within it, for you and for them. Anything farther needs a ranged attack or a spell. Sidearms. Thinking foes know it too: a bandit, a sellsword, a guard, a marine, a cultist, an assassin or a hunter carries a sidearm (a light crossbow, a shortbow, javelins, throwing knives or a sling, by what it is), and one left out of reach of its blade with you in sight shoots instead of standing idle: one shot, about two-thirds of its usual blow, at disadvantage if loosed from within 5 feet of you. A foe with no shot to make Dashes to close the gap. Only the peoples carry one: beasts, oozes, plants, the dead, fiends, fey, dragons and other monsters, constructs, casters, giants, anything Tiny and anything Large or bigger carry none.

Difficult ground. On the Battle Map, water, mud, ice, snow, thick undergrowth, rubble and the like are difficult terrain (underground too: fallen rock in caves and mines, masonry and bones in crypts, drifts in frozen vaults, spilled coin in a hoard, marked once you have seen the square), lightly marked on the ground: every square of movement there costs two, for you and for every foe, until no square of your body touches it. Anyone can wade or swim, at that half speed. A creature with a swim speed (anything of the sea, the Ring or Potion of Swimming) crosses water at full speed. Flyers hover five feet up and pass over all of it: every winged or floating creature does, and so do you with the Fly spell, a Potion of Flying, Winged Boots, or a druid's winged Wild Shape (from druid level 8). Land's Stride (druids from level 1, rangers from level 6) ignores ordinary difficult ground, though not ground made by magic. Freedom of Movement (the spell, the Potion of Free Movement, the Ring of Free Action) ignores all of it, lets you swim at full speed, and nothing can Grapple, Restrain or Paralyze you while it lasts. A spell or a draught lasts the fight it is used in; taken outside a fight, it lasts the next one.

Chasms and falling. Some Battle Maps are split by a chasm, crossed by a rope bridge. Only a flyer on the wing can be over the open air. A body that ends up over it (shoved there, brought down while flying, turned into something that walks) makes a Dexterity save to catch the edge: DC 13 in the first square past the edge, and 1 harder for every 5 feet of open air beyond that. Caught, it hauls itself onto the nearest solid ground, prone. Failed, it falls to a ledge 60 feet down (65 if it was flying) and takes 1d6 damage for every 10 feet it falls (at most 20d6), landing prone. Down there it is out of the fight: it climbs back at half its speed each turn (its whole speed if it can fly; getting up takes half the first turn's), and the turn it reaches the top goes on the climb. Foes fall too, and a foe that dies in the fall leaves no body behind.

Roofs. In a town, the rooftops are part of the fight. Flying over: a flyer passes over a house only if it is clear of the ridge (a 5-foot hover can't go through a roof), and descending over a roof lands it on top; stepping off, it takes to the air again. Jumping up: you can try for an eave only if it is within your reach: your high jump (3 + your Strength modifier with a 10-foot run-up, half that standing) plus one and a half times your height. Short of the run-up, you can step back for one, at twice the missing feet in movement. Then roll Athletics: DC 12 for an eave about 10 feet up, 3 harder for every 5 feet above that (15 at 15 feet, 18 at 20). Fail and you stay at the foot of the wall, your movement spent; fail by 5 or more and you land prone. Up there: a steep roof is difficult ground, and anyone knocked prone on one makes a Dexterity save (DC 10) or slides off the edge. Coming down: a drop is a fall, 1d6 for every 10 feet (under 10 feet is safe), prone if it hurts. Reach: a blade reaches only as high as its wielder's reach above their head, so a foe on a roof can't cut you in the street, and you can't cut it either; bows, thrown weapons and spells still reach. Monsters climb, jump and fall by the same rules.

Indoors is cover. Walls and a roof are total cover. A creature inside a house and one outside it can't strike, shoot or cast at each other, and that includes a flyer hovering over the roof; the one way in is a line through the open door at ground level. An area spell reaches inside a house only when its centre is inside that house. A Medium or smaller creature can walk or fly in at the door. A Large one must squeeze its body into the doorway: Athletics, DC 13. While squeezing it has disadvantage on its attacks and saving throws, and attacks against it have advantage; fail the check and it is stuck fast (speed 0) until it works itself loose, heaving at the start of each of its turns. Anything Huge or bigger can't get in at all.

Your speed. 30 feet a turn for most folk, 25 for dwarves and the small races (gnomes, halflings, goblins), 35 for wood elves. Class features add to it (a barbarian's Fast Movement, a monk's Unarmored Movement), as can rings and gear; exhaustion takes it away, and a Wild Shape or Polymorph form moves at its own speed.

Dash. Your whole current speed again, for your main action (or your bonus action, for a class that can): on the Battle Map the Dash button beside your remaining movement adds it at once.

Climbing. A wall too high to jump can be climbed instead. On the Battle Map that is a house wall whose eave is out of your jump's reach: you go up it onto the roof (walls, trees and cliffs met in the story are the Game Master's to call for, with the same roll). Athletics, DC 10 for a climb of up to 10 feet and 2 harder for every 5 feet above that, and every foot climbed costs two of movement. Fail and you find no holds; fail by 5 or more and you lose your grip halfway, falling from there (1d6 for every 10 feet) and landing prone.

Swiftstride. An Enchanter can lay Swiftstride into boots: +5 ft movement speed. From level 6 the first Enchanter you visit knows a better working, the Windwalker's Stitch: three quests, and then the Windwalker's Stride (+10 ft), woven new or re-woven from Swiftstride boots. Only the best boots count; they never stack.

Your hotbar. On a Battle Map your spells and abilities sit in two strips at the bottom of the screen, each slot with its key printed in the corner: spells on 1 to 0 (hold Shift for a second page), abilities on Q W E R T and A S D F G, items on Z X C V, and Space ends your turn. The slots fill themselves from everything you can do. To put them in the order you want, drag one slot onto another and the two swap places. The best place to do it is the practice yard (Prepare for battle, on your sheet or in the Spellbook): a quiet spot outside town with a straw dummy, where nothing is spent and no turn is taken, so you can arrange your hotbar and your boxes at leisure. Whatever you set there is kept with your hero, on every Battle Map from then on, until you change it.

Try anything. In a fight you aren't limited to the buttons: say what you do. Aim a blow, threaten, bargain, use the room. The game resolves what it has rules for and the narrator answers the rest with a fitting check.

Called shots. Say where you aim: "I shoot it in the eye", "I go for its legs". The first attack of your round takes -5 to hit; if it lands, it deals its damage and the foe makes a Constitution save (DC 8 + your proficiency + the attack's ability modifier) or suffers the effect. Eyes: blinded until the end of its next turn. Legs: half speed for 2 rounds (a wing: a flyer drops out of the air, grounded for 2 rounds). Weapon arm: its weapon falls to the ground and it fights at disadvantage until it gets it back (it spends a turn picking it up, if it's still there). Head: no reactions until its next turn ends. A creature without that part (an ooze, an elemental) can't be aimed at that way. Clever foes do it too: now and then one takes aim at your legs, your eyes or your weapon arm, and you make the save.

Shove, trip, grapple, disarm. Each takes your main action and is a contest: your Athletics against the foe's Athletics or Acrobatics (a disarm uses your attack roll instead). Nothing more than one size larger than you can be shoved or grappled. Shove ("I shove it back") drives it 5 feet, into whatever is behind it; trip ("I trip it") knocks it prone. Grapple ("I grab it", "I tackle it") holds it fast: its speed is 0 and it goes where you drag it, at half your speed, until it breaks free (it may spend its turn trying) or you let go ("I let go"). Disarm ("I knock its sword away") drops its weapon on the ground.

Things on the ground. A knocked-away weapon, or a fallen fighter's, lies where it fell. Snatch it up as a bonus action ("I grab the sword"): its owner can't get it back while you hold it. Throw it as your main action ("I hurl it at the bandit"): an improvised throw, your Strength without proficiency, 1d6 for a weapon or 1d4 for anything else, and a torch sets its target alight. It lands where it hit, so a foe may grab it again. "I drop it" lets go of it.

Ready and Help. Ready ("I ready an attack for when it comes close", "...when it casts", "...when it attacks") spends your main action holding one attack for that moment; if it never comes before your next turn, the readied attack lapses. Help ("I set up my wolf's attack") spends your main action drawing a foe's eye: your companion's next attack has advantage.

Knock out, don't kill. Turn on Knock out in the fight bar, or say "knock it out" / "take it alive". A melee blow that drops a foe then leaves it unconscious instead of dead. The undead, constructs, oozes, elementals, plants and swarms can't be knocked senseless. A foe knocked out, or one that yields, is bound and goes with you as a captive: question it (just ask), let it go ("I let them go": a little goodwill), or hand it to a town's watch for a bounty ("I hand them over to the watch": 6 gold a level for anyone who can talk).

Talk them down. Mid-fight, you can demand surrender, scare a foe off, or buy it off: "Surrender or die!", "Spare yourself, walk away", "I'll pay you to leave". It takes your main action. A threat rolls Intimidation, a plea Persuasion, a bribe Persuasion with advantage (about 10 gold a level, paid only if it works). The DC is the foe's resolve: 10 + half its level, harder while it's hardly hurt and while its side still stands, much easier once it's bloodied or its friends are down. A thinking foe that gives in yields (a captive); a beast runs. Fail badly and it won't hear another word this fight. Legends, bosses and the mindless can't be talked down. (The Parley button still offers to end the whole fight at once.)

The road and mounts. Every day on the road has four chances of meeting something on a road you have not cleared (a quarter each), and far fewer on one you have; they come one after another, with a moment between to drink a potion or take a short rest before you Press on, and you arrive after the last. A long rest on the road is a night in camp (rations), not a town bed. A mount changes all of that: it halves the day's chances, shortens every journey, and gives advantage when you slip away. A city's livery stable sells them: a Riding Horse (400 gold; journeys a third shorter), a Swift Courser (1,500 gold, level 8; half as long) and a Warhorse (2,500 gold, level 12; a third shorter, and a foe whose eyes only just match your Stealth does not notice you). A mount is a luxury: it eats gold every day on the road (3, 6 or 8) and is boarded every night you spend in a town, at its livery or its inn's yard (about 6, 10 or 12). Three days unpaid and it is gone. Ships carry it for a 15-gold stall; no seam into a plane takes it, and it waits, boarded, at the seam's door (or send for it from any livery). A paladin who knows Find Steed rides their Radiant Steed: free, never hungry, everywhere. A mount is for the road only: when a fight starts you dismount and fight on foot, and the horse waits out of harm's way (a paladin can still call the steed into the fight as a summon, with Find Steed).

Taming a mount. A lone beast that could carry a rider, met on the road or in the wilds, need not be fought: choose Try to tame it (or say so) and win it over instead. It takes three Animal Handling successes in a row; a failure breaks the run, and a bad one (by 5 or more, or a natural 1) and it attacks. A ration held out gives advantage once, and your own idea (a song, a show of strength, a spell) is judged by the Game Master and can count as one of the three. Some beasts are kin to a people or a calling and come easier (advantage, an easier DC): wolves to orcs and goblins, the great cats to elves, bears and mammoths to dwarves and goliaths, the griffon to paladins and fighters, the wyvern to dragonborn, the Nightmare to Dread Knights, Necromancers, Warlocks and tieflings. Rangers and druids handle every beast well; anyone else may still try, only harder, and a fiend much harder. Halflings, gnomes and goblins can ride wolves and boars. A tamed beast is your mount, like a bought horse: it eats on the road and needs a stable in town, and a flyer is the fastest of all. One mount at a time; no giants, nothing that walks like a person, and nothing made of fire (the Nightmare, the one burning steed, is the exception).

The apothecary. Every city, and about a third of the towns, keeps an apothecary: potions of healing and mana, remedies (an Antidote for poison in a fight, an Elixir of Restoration for Exhaustion, the travel draughts), and battle draughts. A battle draught lasts one fight: drink it in a fight for that fight, or before one and it takes hold when the next begins. Ironbark raises your Defense, Heroism gives temporary HP that is spent before your own, the Hawk sharpens your weapon attacks, Giant's Might adds damage to every weapon hit, Warding turns aside the first two blows, and Stoneskin halves every weapon blow. One of each kind at a time. The shelf changes every week and differs from place to place: a city keeps the full range and now and then something very rare, a town the everyday bottles and seldom anything stronger, and the rarer a bottle the fewer there are. Nothing is sold above the rarities your level has opened.

Finds out in the world. Nobody leaves a chest of gold by the road. What you come across on a journey or in the wilds fits the place: a hidden drop box behind a loose stone near a town, a broken-down cart with a strongbox under its seat, the crates of a ruined caravan, stashed stolen goods, a courier's dropped satchel, a cache under stones, a hollow log, a dead traveller's pack, or the litter of an old den. After a fight on a Battle Map, it is your foes' own stash: what bandits carried, what a beast dragged home. Things with a lock (the drop box, the strongbox, a nailed crate) are opened like a chest, below. Things with no lock are only glimpsed at first: Look closer (Perception) to notice what caught your eye (miss it, and you simply go on by, having lost nothing), then Search it (Investigation) to find what is hidden: the bundle wedged deep in the log, the coin sewn into a pack's lining, the loose stone at a cairn's foot. You can search three times, and Try another way is always there. None of these is ever trapped, and none is ever a mimic.

Treasure chests. Real treasure chests stand where treasure is kept: in the treasure rooms of the Deep Halls and its mines. Search one for traps first (Investigation): a found needle can be disarmed with Sleight of Hand, and one you miss stabs you when you open the lid (a Constitution save halves it). A locked chest is picked with Sleight of Hand or forced with Athletics (a little harder). Failed those? Try another way: describe your own plan (blast the lock from afar with a spell, set a charge, take the hinges off), and the Game Master judges whether it can work, which skill it rests on and how hard it is. A rough method may cost you: fragile things inside can break, or the blast can catch you. Only that approach is spent when it fails, never the chest, and the same goes for any door, puzzle or problem in the story: a new idea always gets its chance. The harder a find was to reach (the wilds over a quiet road, a dungeon over the wilds, the planes or depths beyond you over all of them, or a hard fight that stood guard over it), the harder its locks, traps and searches, and the richer and finer what it holds; all of it grows with your level too. On a Battle Map, walk up beside it and click it: opening a chest is your turn's one free handling of a thing; looking closer, searching, disarming, picking or forcing takes your main action. And beware, down in the dungeons: some chests are mimics. They live only there, never out in the world. Nothing gives one away, not its look, not a search, not a closer look. It wakes the moment a hand goes to its lid, and so does every other mimic in the room. A mimic is matched to your level when you find it, a little stronger deeper down; beaten, it gives up what it swallowed.

The Grand Arena and the Fighting Pit. Every great city keeps an Arena and a Pit; many more towns, and some waystations, keep a Pit too. Each keeps a ladder: five rungs of named fighters (the city's own, real peoples and callings: a dwarf fighter, an elf rogue), each a little better trained than the last, then the champion, a level above you. Name a wager, win, and climb; every rung lets you stake more. Now and then the Arena opens its beast gate instead (a Large or Huge beast). A win pays your stake back with a purse on top (about 1.6 times at the Arena, 2.2 at the Pit); losing, or running, costs only the stake. Arena wins make the city know you (its standing rises); Pit wins make its underworld know you (the Syndicate takes notice). Every arena and pit has its own champion, found nowhere else, who wears a prize piece of their own. The Champion's Bands: your first arena title earns the Sunsteel Band and your first pit title the Blackiron Band, rings found no other way. Each is a Bloodband (HP every round of a fight), a Wellband (Mana every round) or a Twinband (some of both), your choice; a hero with no Mana is given the Bloodband. More titles of the same kind reforge it: the 3rd makes it Very Rare, the 6th Legendary, and you may change what it restores at each reforge. Bloodband +3/+6/+10 HP; Wellband +3/+5/+8 Mana; Twinband +2/+4/+6 HP and +2/+3/+5 Mana. At Legendary each gains a trait: the Bloodband's mending doubles below a third of your HP, the Wellband's below a quarter of your Mana, and the Twinband pours both halves into whichever bar is lower. Wear both bands and they are a set: +2 more to everything they restore, and they keep mending on the road, every day you travel. Beat the champion and the title is yours: the champion's purse, a trophy (the Champion's Belt, or the Pit King's Knuckles), the champion's own prize piece (Legendary, one step stronger than any shop's, and +2 to an ability while worn: an arena champion's raises Strength, Dexterity or Constitution, a pit champion's Intelligence, Wisdom or Charisma, each fitting its champion; these bonuses stack), and a free bed in that city while you hold the title; then challengers come for your crown, about one a week.

The Bestiary (Help → Bestiary) keeps every creature you come across, land by land, with what you have learned of it (a successful Recall, or research) and how many of each land's creatures you have met. Complete a land's page — every creature and legend on it met and beaten — for experience, gold and Slayer's Lore: bonus damage against every kind of creature you have beaten before, growing with each page; the whole book makes you a Master of the Bestiary. A creature you outgrew before you ever met it can still be found: stand in its land, outside a settlement, and use Track a beast on that land's page (a day's hunt; it never finds what is still far above you).

Work comes from people: arrive somewhere, ask around, follow a rumour, and the Game Master brings the giver to you in conversation. Agree and the quest appears in your Quest Log; hesitate and it can be offered again later. Every city, town and waystation also keeps a Contract Board (in Services) with a few posted jobs anyone may take. Bigger tasks come at higher levels, and some only from particular people or places.

Each quest is a chain of steps — go somewhere, find something, defeat something, prove something with a skill — revealed one at a time. Your current step shows where it waits; walk there and the fight or the check is set up in the Story. Returning to the giver completes the quest at once and hands over the reward, stated in the log with the exact item (hover it for its numbers). Finishing a quest raises your standing in the giver's town.

Kinds you will meet: a local's chain of favours, a town's troubles, paid contracts from an allegiance, a region's great legend, and a longer tale that finds you as you grow. The Quest Log also indexes everything by region and town, so you can see what is owed where. Each quest's colour is its difficulty: green a normal quest, amber Difficult, red Epic. The coloured buttons at the top of the log show only the difficulties you pick (one or several; All clears them), and the log remembers your choice.

A tale of your own. Once any hero on this device has finished the main story, The Unweaving, every new hero (and any who has not begun it yet) is offered a choice: play the Unweaving again, or follow a tale the Game Master writes for that hero alone. A tale has its own villain, allies, rivals and secrets, tied to the hero's people, class and past, and it unfolds in seven acts as you reach levels 3, 6, 9, 12, 15, 18 and 20. Each act is written when it comes due, so it answers what you have actually done. In that hero's world the Unweaving is an old legend, told of the hero who ended it. Finishing the tale opens the Epic Levels just as the main story does, and the Game Master then writes a second part, out among the Planes.

The Services bar shows who is here. Merchant: rations, arrows, potions (and a standing order to keep your rations stocked). Blacksmith: arms and armor for your level and the town's size; one Reinforcement per item, ever; and a Commission tab for a piece made to your own design. Enchanter: one Enchantment per item, ever (legendary gear alone takes both a reinforcement and an enchantment), and spell tutoring for casters. Healer: 10 gold to full health, a little more as you rise in level. Church: full restoration and cleansing, and a caster's blessing for your next fight. Banker: a vault shared by every branch — gold without limit, items by the stack, safe from thieves and from death, with a standing order to bank your surplus on arrival. Trainer: rebuilds your character. Hermit: a coin for a cryptic hint. Locals with names sell their trade's wares and have work for you. Other merchants: a city holds far more trades than these. Ask in the Story for a bowyer, a tailor, a jeweller, an herbalist, a cartographer (charts of this land and the lands next door), an arch mage selling charms — whoever the Game Master brings in gets a tile of their own here, with a shop stocked to their trade. The tiles work like a "recent" list: each place shows the merchants you deal with most, and keeps the rest for when you ask for them again.

Show me your wares. Talking with a shopkeeper in the Story, ask to see or buy their goods ("Isolde, may I see your wares?", "what do you have for sale?", "I'd like to browse the smith's blades") and their shop opens at once, at the top of the screen, with the talk going on below it. You can name them, or simply ask the one you are speaking with.

Every town keeps a standing with you, from Hated to Honored: good work raises it, harm lowers it, and it sets shop prices and the tone of every scene there. The Chronicle in your Journal is the world's memory — deeds, bargains, betrayals — and the Game Master keeps every scene consistent with it.

Talk to people as people. Ask, haggle, threaten, flatter; the Game Master names who speaks and shows their face beside the Story.

Rarity is colour: grey common, green uncommon, blue rare, purple very rare, orange legendary. Better rarities unlock as you level (rare at 4, very rare at 8, legendary at 16) and the biggest cities stock the best. Open Inventory to equip: main hand, off hand, ranged, chest, head, neck, shoulder, waist, gloves, wrist, boots, left ring, right ring. Heavy armor and a wizard's spellcasting do not mix; only one item may boost your Spell Save DC at a time.

Common gear takes no improvement. Everything else takes exactly one: a Reinforcement (+1) or an Enchantment. Legendary gear takes both — that is the ceiling. Vendors buy spare gear for about a third of its price, and every vendor's Buyback tab holds the last dozen things you sold, anywhere, for exactly what you were paid. Anything marked Quest item (the artifacts, legacy weapons, the things the story needs) can't be sold or dropped, and stays with you even if you fall. Some foes resist weapons (mundane ones, or one kind: piercing, bludgeoning, slashing) or an energy (fire, cold…), and take half from it — hover a foe to see; an enchanted blade bites a golem in full, a mundane one does not — but nothing ever turns an artifact's damage aside. Class signature pieces grow with you; rare legacy weapons can be raised through the Blacksmith and Enchanter with materials found in the world.

Armor. Defense comes from your chest piece and a shield, and every armor has a base by its weight: light armor (leather or cloth) 1, medium 2, heavy 4; a shield 2, or 3 for a masterwork shield (very rare and up). Whatever is worked into it adds on top, and a +1 is a +1 on any of them: Heavy Armor +2 is 4 + 2 = +6 Defense, Light Armor +2 is 1 + 2 = +3, a legendary Shield +4 is 3 + 4 = +7. Your Dexterity adds to Defense in full in light armor or none, up to +2 in medium armor, and not at all in heavy armor (the weight that stops the blow also slows the dodge). Hover any armor to see the two parts.

Armor training. The fighter and the paladin wear any armor and carry a shield; the barbarian and the ranger, light or medium armor and a shield (a raging barbarian keeps to light); the cleric, any armor and a shield; the druid, light or medium armor and a shield of wood and hide; the artificer, light or medium armor and a shield (Heavily Armored brings heavy); the dread knight, any armor and a shield. Everyone wears light armor. The wizard, sorcerer, necromancer, warlock and rogue start in light armor with no shield (the Moderately Armored feat brings medium armor and shields, Heavily Armored then heavy); the monk fights unarmored or in light armor. A class taken up later adds its own training on top of what you have (the SRD's multiclassing): the fighter, paladin, ranger, cleric, druid, artificer and dread knight bring medium armor and shields, the barbarian shields. Heavy armor only ever comes from the class you started as, or the feats; the monk's discipline, the druid's vow and the Rage's light armor still hold.

Regalia. Every class has a set of gear of its own: its signature pieces, and a piece for every other armor slot (Help → Class Compendium lists yours at the bottom). Quests hand it out a piece at a time, whichever your paper doll lacks most, and never the same piece twice at the same grade: it comes again only as a step up (rare, very rare, legendary, and the one-of-a-kind pieces of the epic quests). Hover a piece to see how much of the set you are wearing. The pieces of a set are cut and coloured to match, so a hero who wears it looks the part, and wearing six or more of them shows the set's own mark (the Dread Knight's rime, the sorcerer's ember). The druid, the sorcerer and the artificer each have a weapon in their set as well.

Grade gems. The small gems along the top of a piece's tile are its grade: one for uncommon, up to four for legendary, five for a one-of-a-kind piece and six for an artifact. A legacy weapon shows its stage instead, in gold: one Dormant, two Awakened, three Ascendant.

The callings' roads. Every class has a quest of its own at level 7, a crowning weapon to forge from level 12, and an artifact on the planes. The fighting classes and the artificer also find a legacy weapon from level 5 that grows through three quests (the artificer's is the Boltwright, a hand crossbow that mends its Construct); the full spellcasters take the Mage Towers' bonds instead.

Dyes. Every Weaver keeps a dye-house (the Dyes tab): any piece you are wearing, cloth, leather or armor, can be dyed a main and a second colour from the old dyes (woad, madder, walnut, oak-gall...). It changes the look only. The trim stays the piece's own, and the Weaver will take the dye out again for nothing.

Weapons are the classic list, from daggers and maces to staffs, greatswords, halberds and crossbows, each with its own die and properties. Staffs are a family of their own, neither simple nor martial, and every class is trained with them: the warriors with every weapon, the classes trained with simple weapons, and the druids, wizards, sorcerers and necromancers, whose staff is their weapon and their focus. Finesse weapons strike with Dexterity; light weapons are the only ones an off hand can hold; two-handed weapons fill both hands (no shield, no off-hand blade); versatile weapons hit harder held in both hands (an empty off hand). Every class is trained in certain weapons (warriors in all of them, wizards in a few): you can fight with anything, but only a weapon you are trained in adds your proficiency bonus to hit. Hover a weapon to see its properties and whether you are trained. A bow (and a light or heavy crossbow) takes both hands: while you shoot it, your blade and shield are put away, and on the Battle Map the weapon you are not using stays on you, a bow strapped across your back and a blade sheathed at your hip (Settings → Show carried weapons can put it out of sight instead).

Foes often carry healing and mana potions of a strength to match their own level, and a legend always does. Your pack holds 100 stacks at Strength 10, and 10 more for every point of Strength above that (10 fewer for each point below), so Strength 20 carries 200. The count shows in the Backpack's title. Like items stack; worn gear, quest items and bags take no space. A bigger pack (Traveler's, Explorer's, Rucksack: merchants, leatherworkers and weavers) adds 100, 200 or 300 more; a Bag of Holding adds 400, a Greater Bag of Holding 1,200, and the Bottomless Dark 2,800 (600, 1,400 or 3,000 spaces in all), and those are only ever found: in delves, in a legend's hoard, as a reward. Only your biggest bag counts. Loot that doesn't fit waits in a pile at the bottom of the Backpack window until you make room or leave it. A piece you are wearing is never sold by accident: the shop asks first. Hover a piece in your pack to see it beside what you wear in that slot; click it, and its Equip button says what it swaps out. Gear sets: under Equipped, Save keeps what you wear now as Set 1 to 4, and one press of the set puts it all back on. Pieces of a set you are not wearing carry its badge and sit at the bottom of your pack; dropping or selling one asks first.

Casters keep a Spellbook (the button on the sheet): spells by tier, each with its cost, dice, save and effect written plainly. New tiers open as your caster level grows; missed spells can be bought from an Enchanter or researched in a library. Cantrips cost nothing. One that strikes or makes a foe save (Spark, Chill Touch, Word of Radiance, Eldritch Blast) takes your main action; the quick ones (the primers that charge your next spell, the little wards, boons and mendings) take your bonus action, before or after your main action. A bonus-action spell such as Misty Step takes only your bonus action: once that is spent, it waits for your next turn. Mana Points return with rest and trickle back every round for casters. Some casters can overcharge a spell for more; some call summons that fight beside you. Every full caster — wizard, sorcerer, warlock, necromancer, cleric and druid — learns its own Bulwark at level 5: a tank companion with twice the usual HP whose taunt even a legend must answer, and that takes the brunt of a breath or blast meant for you (you take half while it stands). A half-caster's beast, steed or Construct draws blows too, but a legend mostly sees through them.

Ray and bolt spells follow the SRD. Eldritch Blast fires one beam, two at level 5, three at 11 and four at 17; Scorching Ray fires three rays of 2d6 fire (no ability bonus), and an Overcharge adds a fourth ray instead of a die. The rays leave your hand in quick succession and every one makes its own spell attack roll: each that hits deals its damage, and a natural 20 (or your crit range) is a critical hit for that ray alone, doubling its dice but not its bonuses. Split them as you like: if your target falls, the rays still to come turn on another foe. A Hex adds its dice to every ray that hits, and Unerring Beam lets a beam that misses (on anything but a 1) still land for half. Eldritch Blast deals 1d10 force a beam, plus your Charisma modifier once the warlock has the Agonizing Blast invocation (level 2); a Hex adds its dice, and a curse (Bestow Curse and its kin) 1d8 necrotic, to every beam that hits. Other beams fire once: Guiding Light, Searing Light and Annihilating Beam with one attack roll, and Disintegrate Beam as the SRD has it, a DEX save: 10d6+40 force on a failure, nothing at all on a success, never a critical, and what it kills is turned to fine grey dust. Lightning Bolt (a third-tier spell for every arcane caster: wizard, sorcerer, warlock, artificer and necromancer) is a line 100 feet long from your hand: everyone in its path makes a DEX save, taking 8d6 lightning on a failure and half on a success; it grows by 1d6 for every two caster levels past 5 (14d6 at 17), the pace at which a caster gains a higher slot. The spell's tooltip shows your rays and dice now. Touch spells (Vampiric Touch, Chill Touch) are melee spell attacks, never saving throws: you must stand within reach of the foe (5 ft), and you roll against its touch defense, 10 plus its Dexterity, because armour does nothing against a touch. A quick skirmisher is still hard to lay a hand on; a plated knight, a tank of a beast or a lumbering giant is easy. On a paralyzed foe, a touch that lands is a critical hit. Fear (a warlock spell of the fourth tier) is a 30-foot cone of terror from your hand: every foe in it makes a WIS save or is frightened. The undead and constructs are immune to fear, from this spell or anything else that frightens: they feel nothing of it.

Area spells hit everything inside them, friend or foe: every foe, your companion, and you yourself if you place one where you stand. Each one caught makes its own saving throw and takes its own result (half or nothing on a success, and the spell's hold on a failure). A burst around you, a line or a cone starts at you and never catches you, though it can catch your companion. A radius is a circle measured from the burst's centre; only spells that call for a square (Entangle, Tangler Mine) cover a square. Clouds (Cloudkill, Corpse Cloud, Creeping Pox, Hunger of Hadar, Maddening Darkness, Darkness, and the whiteout of Endless Winter) settle where they land and stay, round after round, and nothing sees well through them: any attack roll is made with disadvantage when the attacker or the target stands in a cloud, or the line between them passes through one. Concentration: every spell that lingers over rounds is held by your concentration, and you can hold only one at a time (casting another, or a Polymorph, ends the first, and its effect dissipates). Held this way too: Haste (10 rounds), Banishment, Banishing Word, Soul Prison, Wall of Force, Forcecage, Web Snare, Hunter's Snare, Magnetic Snare, Suggestion, Slow Curse, Bestow Curse, Wasting Curse and Draining Curse. A concentration spell is a little stronger than most, since it lasts up to 10 rounds: a foe it holds (restrained, charmed, slowed, paralyzed) saves again at the end of each of its turns, while a banishing, a cage of force or a curse simply lasts. Holding it costs no action in the rounds after you cast it. Foes that cast spells hold theirs the same way: hurt the caster and it must pass a CON save or lose its hold on you, and you save again at the start of each of your turns. Whenever you take damage while concentrating, make a CON save, DC 10 or half the damage taken, whichever is higher; on a failure the spell ends. It ends too if you fall, or are stunned, paralyzed, petrified or incapacitated. You can let it go whenever you like: say "drop concentration", or use the Battle Map's button. Monsters' signature moves work the same way: a dragon's breath is a cone, a fog or a fall of stars a circle, a broadside a wall of fire, and everything standing in it saves on its own, your companion and the monster's own allies too (a grab, a curse or a name meant for you takes only you). A breath or a line that cannot reach you yet is held while its maker closes in. Many leave something behind for a few rounds: burning ground, ice, rubble, fog, smoke, darkness, silence or chains; whatever ends a turn in it saves again. A spell-like one is held by the monster's concentration, so hurting it can break it. A wounded legend's lair turns on you once a round in its own way (falling stones, a downdraft, a river of fire): its sting is small and does not miss, but its effect (knocked flat, blinded, deafened, held) can be saved against. Difficult ground from spells (the SRD's own): Web Snare, Entangle, the Tangler Mine, Ice Storm and Hailstorm, Endless Winter, Swarm of Stingers, Storm of Vengeance, Blade Barrier and the Earthquake's fissures make their area difficult terrain while they last (each square costs double), and a wall of thorns (Blight of Thorns, Thorn Hedge) costs four feet for every foot; a flyer passes over ground that is only on the ground (ice, vines, fissures), but not through a web, a swarm, a storm, blades or thorns. Freedom of Movement ignores it all. Slowed is not the ground but the creature (a Slow Curse, the cold's bite): its speed is halved wherever it goes, and difficult ground halves it again; Spirit Guardians halve the speed of every foe inside them the same way. Web Snare is the SRD's Web: a 20-foot square of sticky webbing placed within 60 feet and held by concentration (up to 10 rounds). Everything in it makes a DEX save or is restrained; at each round's end whatever is still in it and free saves again, and whatever is stuck tries a STR save to tear free; when the web goes, everything it held is free. Darkness (tier 2: warlock, sorcerer, wizard) is a 15-foot sphere of magical darkness placed within 60 feet and held by concentration (up to 10 rounds): no save and no damage, but it is a cloud no darkvision sees through. A warlock's Devil's Sight (from level 2) sees normally in any darkness to 120 feet, through Darkness, Hunger of Hadar and Maddening Darkness too: attacking into, out of or through one, the warlock strikes unseen, with advantage. A spell never harms its own caster when it emanates from them (Death and Decay, Spirit Guardians, a burst around you) or when it is so large it fills most of the field wherever it is placed (40 ft or more in radius: Pestilence, Maddening Darkness, Storm of Vengeance and the like), and such a field-wide spell spares the caster's companion too; such a field-wide cloud does not veil the caster's own blows either. The feat Sculpt Spells (every caster can take it) keeps you and your companion out of your own instant area spells, a fireball, a burst, a line or a cone; a lingering area, a cloud or a wall that stays, still catches everyone in it.

Thorns. The druid's plant companions, the Oakheart Guardian and the Ancient Treant, are covered in thorns. Any foe whose melee blow lands on one is pierced back for a little damage, more as the druid grows (about 3 at level 5, 6 at level 20). Ranged shots and spells don't touch the thorns, and a foe that resists piercing takes less.

Summons are bodies too. A summon or companion can be knocked prone, stunned, frightened, charmed, poisoned and the rest, as long as it makes sense for what it is: the dead and constructs cannot be poisoned or charmed, an elemental of air, fire, water or storm cannot be knocked down or held, a shade slips every grip. It makes its own saving throw against a foe's hold (its save grows with your level; a Bulwark's is better). Prone, it drops to the ground in its square (a flyer lands), foes beside it strike it with advantage, and it spends the start of its next turn getting up. Stunned, paralyzed or otherwise held, it loses its turn; poisoned, frightened, blinded or restrained, it attacks at disadvantage; charmed, it will not strike the one who charmed it. A foe's breath or blast catches it only if it stands in the area (within 10 ft of you on the Battle Map), and it saves for half like anyone else. Your own area spells catch it too if it stands in them (see Area spells). It has one reaction a round: an opportunity attack on a foe that walks out of its reach, and it draws one from a foe if it walks out of theirs. The chasm's rule holds for it too.

Your Construct. An artificer's Construct is a companion like any other, at your side in every fight, but it is a machine: healing never mends it, not a potion, not a prayer, not a healing spell. Only repairs do. Your repair gadgets come by themselves as your tiers open, and never cost a pick: Patch Job (a bonus action), Rivet Gun (it repairs a little each round for three rounds), Reinforced Plating (temporary HP, a bonus action), Rebuild the Construct (a fallen one rejoins at half its HP) and Full Overhaul (a large repair that clears its conditions). The Field Repair Kit mends you and repairs it, and Iron Aegis repairs it fully. If it falls mid-fight, Emergency Repair (from level 2, a bonus action, once a fight) stands it back up at 40%, or Rebuild the Construct brings it back. After a fight, cast the repairs from your Spellbook; a short rest repairs half, a long rest all of it, even if it fell.

Spells outside a fight. Magic is not only for battle. At a skill check you can Use a spell instead: d20 + your spell attack bonus, with advantage when the spell suits the task, for its Mana Points. Quiet spells that charm, frighten or hold can be cast from the Spellbook in the middle of a scene: the target rolls its save, and the Game Master keeps the spell to its rules (range, and what it can't affect: no charming the mindless dead). And when a fight is coming, the encounter card offers Open with a spell as your first move.

Spells with a shape. Some spells strike an area rather than one foe: a burst around you, a sphere around your target, a cone or a line from you toward your target, a wall across your target's square. On the Battle Map the shape is measured on the squares, and everything in it is caught; elsewhere it takes your target and up to two others (a line one more; a wall every foe). The damage is rolled once, and each foe makes its own save for half. A wall or a lingering sphere stays a few rounds, and at each round's end whatever stands in it saves again; some leave it blinded while inside. Other spells work on a foe's mind or place rather than its body: they hold it, turn it against its allies, banish it for a few rounds, cage it, or (at the highest circles) kill it outright with a word. Readied spells such as Hellish Rebuke and Counterspell wait for the right moment in the fight and spend themselves when it comes. Mirror Image puts three illusory copies of you into the fight: when a foe's attack would hit you, an image may take it instead (with three images, on a 6 or better on a d20; with two, on an 8; with one, on an 11), and a struck image bursts. A paladin's smites are bonus actions that ride on the next weapon hit. Healing comes in more than one kind: a plain mending, a slow one that heals you at the end of each of the next few rounds, a cleansing that ends conditions and poisons, and one that mends your companion along with you. Each spell's card says exactly what it does.

Polymorph (wizards and sorcerers, tier 4). On yourself: become any creature in your Bestiary whose level is no higher than yours (or a Wombat). Its body takes the blows first and you fight with its attacks and its own trick, but you cannot cast; when that body falls, you are yourself again. On a foe: a Wisdom save, or it becomes a harmless Wombat until its new body falls. One Polymorph at a time; a long rest ends it. Wild Shape works the same way for druids, with a woodland beast that grows mightier as the druid does, and from druid level 8 a winged shape (a Giant Owl, then a Giant Eagle at 12) that flies.

Two great organisations stand on opposite sides of the world's balance. One of them may seek you out as you grow; joining one closes the other for good, and each rank brings a boon. Contracts between ranks are paid work.

The six guilds — craft, trade, knowledge, empire, banking, church — are about interest, not sides. Hold as many cards as you like; their trades and their work raise your reputation, a rival's falls a little, and their boons are prices, days, access and titles. Never a sharper sword. Open Holdings → Guilds where a guild keeps a house.

Agents' leads. An agent among your followers is your spy. Now and then (about one report in four, one in three from a top agent) their word is a lead instead of a rumour: a hidden find near a real place, with something guarding it, which comes into your Quest Log as a quest "from your agent" and pays out the moment you win it (rare metal, gems, an old formula, very rare or legendary gear, the better the agent the better the find). If a legend you are forging still lacks something, they dig up where it is. A top agent may turn up the trail of an artifact: who holds it and where, by the road that already leads to it. Set them a task yourself: "have my agent look for adamantine", and their next report answers it.

From level 3, a long rest may bring the Sandman: a spirit of dreams who belongs to neither fey court and plays both. He asks riddles and wagers for the rest of your night (win: experience and a Pinch of Dreamsand; lose: he keeps half the night's rest), and now and then asks a favour that becomes a quest.

He also carries offers from the Hollow Court, the winter court of the fey. Every bargain shows its gift in full and its price only as a riddle. The price comes due later, by itself — a town that hears your secrets, a day you forget, an errand or the gold back with interest, a keepsake taken, a hunt on your trail. None of it can kill you, and anything taken can be won back. The Journal keeps every bargain: the riddle until the clause bites, then the clause itself. Turning the offers down always costs nothing.

How hard a clause bites depends on who you are: the Syndicate's people and the cunning (rogues, warlocks, sorcerers) get gentle clauses and more offers; the Dawnwatch and friends of the summer court get harsh ones. Help one fey court and the other cools; go far enough toward either and it gives you a gift of its own — but only one court ever will.

From level 8 the Sandman also brings contracts: the Hollow Court's business in the mortal world, four of them, one after another (the Syndicate has a share, and pays its people a quarter more). The Dawnwatch is never offered one. Instead, the court sends the Hollow Hunt after the heroes it dislikes — the Dawnwatch, and friends of the summer court — now and then on the road.

Past level 21, for one the court knows, a door of frost in the Silverwood's Weeping Boughs opens into the Hollow Winter, the court's own realm, where it is always the longest night of the year: the frost bites in every fight there (never your last hit point), fire burns brighter, and a short rest only half mends. Its creatures shrug off cold. Its lord, the Erlking, rules his hall by law: each round he names one — no steel, no sorcery, or no mending — and breaking it costs you. The court's four Arch-Fey — the Pale Countess, Lord Thornwhisper, the Frostbound Knight and Old Mother Wick — each keep a chain of tasks where they live, and each chain ends in a gift of the court. And the Sandman's long game, played out a favour at a time from level 5, ends around level 28 with the truth about what he is, and a choice that is yours alone.

Every settlement and waystation that has a station — a forge (a blacksmith, or any great city), a workbench (any settlement), an alchemist's lab (an alchemist, or any great city) or a kitchen (anywhere you can sleep) — has a Workshop tile in Services. You may learn two trades there, for a Novice's tuition of 25 gold: Smith (metal weapons, medium and heavy armor, shields), Leatherworker (leather armor, tanning), Bowyer (bows, crossbows, slings, javelins, staves, clubs), Alchemist (potions of healing and arcana) and Cook (rations by the batch, hot meals). A first lesson, Hands and Hearth, walks you through it in your Quest Log.

Every recipe needs a rank, materials (buy them in the Workshop's Supplies tab; beasts you kill leave hides, sinew and meat), a working fee (about 30% of the shop price) and days (they pass with travel and rest, or wait at the bench). The work is one roll: d20 + 2 per rank + the trade's ability modifier against the recipe's DC (tick Take your time for +2 and twice the days). A miss spoils half the materials. A hit makes a plain, mundane piece; beat the DC by 8 (or roll a natural 20) and it is masterwork: still mundane and nonmagical, but +1 to hit or +1 Defense, and the only crafted piece an Enchanter will take — a plainly made one is "too plain to hold a spell." Finished work waits at the station until you collect it. Ranks come from finished work and tuition (Expert and above only in great cities). Plain, unenchanted gear can be salvaged at a forge back into materials.

Mines and rare metals. At eight named places (Miller's Ruin, Hollowvein, Icewatch, the Deepdelve, Shardholm, Glimmerhaven, the Smoldering Rift and the Singing Vein) a The Mine tile in Services leads down into a delve like the Deep Halls: floors of veins to work with a pick (an Athletics or Survival check; a good roll brings out more ore), fights, traps and chests, and on the last floor a warden and a motherlode. A mine gives up only a little ore a day, counted over the whole mine: four for every floor it has (twelve in a shallow digging, twenty-four in a deep one). Take ore to a Smith to smelt it into ingots, then choose the metal in a recipe: silver (weapons; silvered blades bite foes that resist mundane steel, though not those immune to it), mithril (armor is +1 Defense and one weight lighter to carry; blades are +1 to hit) and adamantine (weapons ignore a foe's resistance to weapon damage and add +1 damage; armor is +2 Defense). Each needs a higher rank (Journeyman, Expert, Master), and all of it stays mundane until an Enchanter works on a masterwork piece.

The Bench: reagents, blueprints and legends. Beyond the basic recipes the Workshop has a Bench where you combine things. Reagents are the ingredients: essences that creatures leave behind (grave dust from the dead, drake scales from dragons, venom sacs and spider silk from spiders, ember cores, frost shards, golem cores...), botanicals gathered above ground where they grow (patches of herbs and mushrooms on the battlefield, or by searching wild ground: the Narrator decides what a place gives, and something may guard it), gems and rare metals that are never left lying about (they are dug in mines, or held in a delve's chest, a legend's hoard or a hard quest's pay), and the Essence of every legend, left when it falls. Gather nodes on the Battle Map take a bonus action and a Survival, Investigation or Athletics check. A blueprint is a pack item: study it (Workshop → Blueprints) to learn its formula for good. A master sells a few common ones; the rest are dropped by legends, found in delves and mines, or given for quests. A formula may coat a weapon in an oil for five fights (fire, frost or silver), brew a phial or elixir of a rarity nothing sold can match, work an enchantment into a masterwork or magical piece from reagents (the trade of the Enchanter), or forge a named piece of gear. Pick the formula, see what you hold and what you lack, choose the base item, and press Combine: no roll, the right ingredients simply work.

A class's crowning weapon is forged, not found. From level 12 the master of your calling's order tells of a rite: a long quest (revealed one step at a time) that takes you to two legends for their essences, to the mines for adamantine, silver and mithril, and across the world for gems and essences; then, at a Workshop, you choose any weapon type you are trained in and the legend takes that shape: a Holy Avenger longbow is as real as a Holy Avenger sword. It grows with you, and its own effects are its own. Every class has one: the martial classes forge theirs at a forge; the wizard, sorcerer, warlock and necromancer bind theirs at an alchemist's lab (the Enchanter's trade); the druid brews Wildheart at the lab; the artificer and monk forge theirs. Rings. You have a ring slot for each hand (Left Ring and Right Ring on the paper doll). Rings are among the strongest loot in the game: each is a named piece with its own ability (extra fire or frost on a weapon hit, drinking life, a last stand once a fight, a caster's spell power, a rogue's Sneak Attack dice, a druid's beasts, and more), and a few belong only to one calling. Two different rings stack; you cannot wear two of a kind. A ring holds all the magic it can, so it cannot be enchanted further. Curio dealers stock one, and bosses and deep chests drop them. Trade shops. A hero who practises a trade may found a Trade shop for it (Followers → Holdings, in any town): each trade has three wares (ordinary goods such as nails, belts, arrows, salves, loaves, ribbons or charms), made in crates at the Workshop from plain supplies, then stocked on the shop's shelves. A steward sells them every day up to what the shop's size allows, at a fair profit; the crates are worth little to a vendor. The shop appears under Followers, with its shelves and takings. The Weavers are the oldest craft-tradition in the world, and every settlement keeps a loom with a Weaver at it (Services → the Weaver). They hold that a life is a thread on the Loom the first Weavers left: fate is the warp, choice the weft, every roll of the dice a throw of the shuttle, and a knot no failure but the thing that holds the cloth. A Weaver sells woven gear (robes, mantles, cowls, stoles, sashes, gloves, wraps, slippers: skills, and a light-armor robe), teaches the Weaver's trade (plain cloth, silk, fey-silk, starwoven) so a caster can make their own gear, and will tell the old stories if asked. A masterwork piece takes an enchantment like any other. Gnome Depot, the gnome reagent-monger, has a stall in every settlement (Services → Gnome Depot). His shelves carry common herbs and essences (weekly stock); the scarcer essences wait under the counter for customers he trusts; he never sells gems, metals, ores or the legends' hearts: those have to be found. Ask him where anything is found, or how a trade or the Bench works, and run his errands (orders, a guarded glade, a prospecting trip) to earn a discount and deeper shelves. A caster's legend is also a +3 Spell Save DC focus and carries its class's signature power (a Wizard's Starweaver an Arcane Ward and stronger summons, a Sorcerer's Bloodheart bonus spell damage, a Warlock's Voidpact truer spell attacks, a Necromancer's Soulrender stronger undead, a Druid's Wildheart stronger Wild Shape, an Artificer's Wondermaker a stronger Construct and devices, a Monk's Ascendant Vow bonus Martial Arts damage and Ki).

Anything you can pay for in gold and days, you may do — in a town or city. Found or buy a business of any kind and hire a steward to run it; it earns while you adventure, and your people never travel with you, never fight, and never speak on the road. Put agents on research: a rumour, a creature's weaknesses, who truly runs a town, a spell. Commission gear at a smith. Make a tavern your home; raise a keep, then a castle, when you have the gold, the days and the right friends. The Ledger lends against your ventures — carefully. Every price is shown before you pay, and nothing here changes your combat numbers.

Ships, bought and built at Saltcrown or Rogues' Dock, are their own kind of holding: hire a captain and crew and send her out to trade or, with a Letter of Marque or the Free Captains' favour, to privateer for a richer cut and a raider's risk. A docked ship is also yours to sail yourself, free, faster and safer than any hired berth — offered automatically whenever you book passage across the Shattered Reach's water.

Every town has its law, and its watch. Get caught stealing, brawling, breaking in or cheating, and you may be taken to the town's jail: the old cities each have their own (the Rock Cells of Kragmoor, the Harbour Brig of Brinehaven, the House Dungeon of Gloamhold...). You are never held for long. Pay the fine, plead your case the way that town hears cases, bribe the jailer where bribes are taken, tell a good story, call on your allegiance if you have one, or simply serve a day or three. Or break out, with Sleight of Hand, Athletics, Stealth or a quiet spell: that works too, but the town will not forget it (a further loss of standing, and five days wanted there).

How a town judges follows its government: a temple wants penance, the Thing hears you before the assembled folk, the Ember Throne's tribunal writes everything down. In Gloamhold, the Matriarchy of the dark elves, a woman judges: a woman may demand a Matron's hearing, but a man may not plead his own case, only win a woman's voice to speak for him.

Under every old city of the mortal world (Kragmoor, Sindaris, Gravewatch, Cinderhold, Sahrakesh, Hrimgard, Brinehaven, Aurelith, Gloamhold, and Hearthland's capital) a stair leads down into the Deep Halls: one endless dungeon running beneath them all, each city's stretch built in that city's own stone. You will find its door on the city map.

A floor is a chain of rooms (fights, chests that may be locked, trapped or worse, traps, and now and then a shrine) ending at the stairs down; every fifth floor's stair is held by a Warden. The foes on floor N are level N, and past floor 30 they keep growing. Treasure gets richer the deeper you go: rare from floor 3, very rare from 7, legendary from 14 (never artifacts, which are only ever earned in quests).

The deepest floor you reach is kept, and it counts at every city: start again at floor 1 or at any waypoint you have reached (every fifth floor). Down there you can take short rests, drink potions and cast from your book, but a long rest needs a bed, so climb out. Leaving loses the rest of that floor, never your depth. A death in the halls is an ordinary death.

The mortal cap is level 21. Finish the main story and the cap lifts to 30: every even level brings an Epic Boon (a list of powers no feat gives), every odd one a feat or ability increase, and full casters open the Tenth Circle at 23, 26 and 29. Half-casters (paladin, ranger, dread knight, artificer, monk) climb their spell tiers at half pace (tier 1 at 2, 2 at 5, 3 at 9, 4 at 13, 5 at 17) and never match a pure caster of their level: past the mortal levels they open the epic tiers 6, 7 and 8 at 21, 25 and 29, a strong heal, a shaped spell and a single great strike, with no ninth circle and no Tenth. Experience earned at the cap before the story is done is banked, and counts the moment the gate opens. The mortal world has few creatures left that can test an epic hero: the Epic Levels are fought out in the planes.

Seams. Where the Loom tore, the planes show through. Each has one door in the mortal world, one day across, and some need a key: a legend dealt with, a court's favour, a Mage Tower's bond, a contract burned. Inside, the compass shows the plane's own map, and the plane's rule runs in every fight there — the game tells you the rule as each fight begins, and the Recall roll on a lair's screen tells you how its master fights under it. In one plane only half of what should mend you does, unless you carry the Lamplighter's Oil its people sell, and each foe's shadow takes half of the first blow to land on it each round, though a Sneak Attack's share passes straight through; in another every foe carries a weak point that the right blow strikes double; in another burning never goes out on its own. Read the rule, then choose your gear and your potions for it.

Lords and bargains. Every plane has a court and a lord. Some are allies who set tasks and give favours; the genie courts bargain in wishes (three tasks earn one: a fortune, a legendary piece, or an extra Boon); the last plane's wardens are fight, quest-giver and merchant at once, and everything there is written down and owed — tolls on every crossing, a tithe on every mending, and choices bought back at a price. Ask to bargain, in the Story or from the map of Selvane.

The Queen's Bower. The Everbloom is a refuge. Its Queen welcomes you the first time you come, and her Bower keeps a bed for you for nothing. She and her four daughters know the planes: ask any of them how a seam opens, what its rule does, what trouble waits there and who is asking for help, and they will tell you what they know, though they will not choose your road. The Queen's Commissions are her table of asks, twelve in all, opening at levels 22, 25 and 28, to take in any order or not at all. Each ends one plane's trouble by any road you like (a fight, a bargain, a word, a theft), then plants the Queen's seed where the trouble was. Every one done adds to the Queen's Favour: at 3 the Moonfern Ring opens, a door from the Bower to every plane where your seed has taken and home again (one crossing each way a day); at 6 the Queen's Grace (once a long rest, a failed save against a foe's spell, breath or lair succeeds); at 9 the Bloomcrown; at 12 you are named Friend of the Everbloom. To use the Ring, press its door on the place card, or say "step through the Moonfern Ring to the Furnace".

The last act finds you as you grow, one chapter every two levels, and each chapter leaves a strand in your keeping. What you choose along the way is remembered at the end: the final fight is a pace as much as a battle, with a timer that your strands and your bargains lengthen.

Potions and artifacts. At these levels the great fights expect you to carry and drink potions well; dry, they are risky by design. Above legendary is a rarity that is never sold and never rolled: the artifacts, in pink, placed by the planar lords, the wards and the story, each carrying a rider a stat cannot give. One is meant for each class; others suit anyone. They are the reason to quest: normal gear prepares you, and an artifact tips the last fights toward you. A Master of the Guild of Hammers can reforge one artifact's rider into another piece of the same slot at the Blacksmith's commission counter.

The coven. Hags do not die of a beating. The three sisters beaten at the croft at level 20 turn up again across the seams, one to a plane and each with a new trick beside her old one, and the chain ends where it began: all three at once at the croft, under a rule that shares every wound between them, and a cauldron whose last names are their own. Each of those quests is offered where the sister is: the Vine Court, Lanternfall, the Auditorium, and at last the Queen's Bower.

On the size-capped claude.ai edition the planes' portraits, banners and maps show as plain plaques; the full edition carries every picture.

Progress saves itself, all the time, to this browser. Up to eight heroes live on one device (Characters shows them). Save file writes a hero to a small file or a pasteable save code you can load anywhere. Settings holds sound, the light and dark look, whether new-class offers appear, and the guided tutorial. If the Game Master ever says something it should not, Help → Report a message flags it. Admin tools are for testing and can spoil surprises; the game is meant to be played without them. About & Legal (the About button at the top, beside Help and Settings) is where AI narration is turned off again if you change your mind (the game asked your leave for it on the first day), and where Delete all saved characters wipes every hero and story from this device, for good.

The narrator's voice (Settings): turn it on and the story is read aloud by a narrator you choose (George, Isabella or Emma), with every speaking character in a voice of their own that stays theirs. It is off at first. It downloads about 160 MB once and needs a browser that can run it on your graphics card (Chrome or Edge on a computer, or a recent phone browser); where it can't, Settings says so and the narrator stays quiet. Read every reply as it arrives, or press the small speaker on any reply. With Premium voices on (the default) Theodore narrates and every voice is made on the game's server instead, with nothing to download; your device's own voice is the fallback. Bosses speak in fights in their own recorded voices: as they enter, as they unleash their great moves, when they are badly hurt and as they fall (a switch of its own beside the narrator's, and it works with the narrator off). Music, sounds and the voice each have their own volume.

Prepare for battle (on your character sheet, and in the Spellbook) takes you out of town to a quiet spot that suits the land around you (a forest glade, a waterfall, a mountain crevasse, a deserted cove) where you set up a straw training dummy. It opens the real Battle Map, so you can drag your spells, skills and items into the order you want on the hotbar, and use Arrange to place its boxes where you like them; that layout is saved with your hero and follows you to any device. Nothing is spent there and no time passes. Leave practice brings you back exactly as you were.

Your look on the Battle Map (the Your look button on the encounter card): choose the body your hero wears there, recolour it, and set its height and build. It is remembered with your character.