I just realized that, while I made some changes to how characters work here on Substack, I never actually covered the core rules here. Not only that, the core rules were never updated on the website to reflect changes on Substack. Whoops!1
Going forward, the Substack will be the primary source of truth about mechanics.
Character Statblocks
A basic player character statblock looks like this:
Health: (3)9
Move Speed: 4
STR: 0
AGI: 0
WIL: 0
PER: 0
SOC: 0
Health
Character health is tracked as (X)Y where Y is standard health and X is critical or “crit” health. When a character runs out of standard health all subsequent damage reduces crit health. Resting, healing, and dying are covered in this post.
This health score of (3)9 is higher than what most people have! a very old or frail person might be (1)1, a normal adult might be (2)6. The default character block with (3)9 health and 0s for all attributes represents a healthy, able person with no deficiencies.2
Attacks are checks against Defense. Defense is just passive AGI unless something else, for example a skill or the Defense value of some set of armor, replaces it.
Movement Speed
How many spaces your character moves in initiative when you spend 1 AP to move.
Attributes
STR = Strength, AGI = Agility, WIL = Will, PER = Perception, SOC = Social.
Attribute scores are not mandatory descriptions of qualities.3 They represent abilities or tools that the character has. The attribute score is the same as the modifier on a check using that attribute. The “passive” score, the score that other characters roll against, is 6+SCORE. If you do not have an attribute score, it is not a narrative tool that you use to solve problems. You can have attribute scores not listed here.
This set of scores is listed because they are the “defensive” attributes. That means these are the only attributes that other characters are allowed to roll checks against. If you do not have an attribute score, any checks made against that attribute succeed automatically. The attributes work the way you would expect, except for maybe SOC and STR. The SOC mechanics are covered here. STR has it’s usual role in addition to doing what a “Constitution” or “Vitality” score typically does in other systems. Each attribute score is described in greater detail here.
Checks and Contests
When a character wants to do something using an attribute they roll 2d6s and add the relevant SCORE. The result of the roll is determined by comparing the roll to a Difficulty Class or DC. This is a “check”. If the character’s check is the same as the DC or higher, they succeed. Often the DC for a check is the passive SCORE of another character.
If two charactes are in direct competition they are in a “contest”. They both roll 2d6 and add their scores. The higher score wins. In the case of a tie, they either tie in the game or if that does not make sense they redo the contest.
Additional Effects on Success
Sometimes, skills or weapons will have additional effects triggered “on 6”, “on at least one 6” or “on matching”. This means that if you succeed and the dice you rolled fulfill some requirement, the effect is activated.
“on 6” effects can be triggered twice if you roll two 6s, “at least one 6” effects only trigger once. “on matching” triggers on any set of matching dice rolled.
Advantage / Disadvantage
When you have “advantage”, roll an extra d6 for your check and pick two. When you have “disadvantage”, roll another d6, then pick the two lowest rolls. Advantage and disadvantage cancel each other out and are cumulative.
If you somehow have disadvantage twice and advantage four times, you have advantage twice. Roll four dice and pick two.4
Initiative and AP (Action Points)
AP is used during “initiative”. Initiative is any situation where many characters want to do things at the same time and the order in which things happen is important. Initiative is most often combat, but it can include other time sensitive events like chases or races.
Every character has 3 AP cards.5 The cards say “1 AP” and indicate what character they belong to with a name, a symbol, or both. Most actions cost 1 AP, but you can do a “reasonable amount” of simple things like talking for free.
Some terms:
Deck: This is the deck of cards that the DM (or whoever) draws from during initiative. The deck that the whole table uses.
Discard: The discard pile for the whole table.
Hand: The cards that you have been dealt and are holding on to.
“Spending” AP: Cards that have been used or removed that go to the discard and are shuffled back together for the next round’s deck.
“Losing” AP: “Lost” AP is not shuffled back into the deck at the end of the round. It must be “regained” either mechanically or automatically at the end of initiative.
“Interrupt”: Spend 1 AP, act immediately.
When initiative starts all characters pass their cards to the DM. This includes their AP and any other special cards. The DM shuffles these cards together to create the deck. The DM pulls a card from the top of the deck and either deals the card to the character/player that it belongs to or follows the rules on the card.
When a character is dealt a card they can choose to act using whatever cards they currently have in their hand. They can also just hold on to the card. When cards are spent or activated they get placed in the discard.
Any character can interrupt in order to act at any time, doing this costs 1 AP. The round ends when the table deck is empty and everyone who still has AP has had a chance to interrupt to act with their remaining AP.
At the end of a round, cards that have been discarded are shuffled together to create the deck for the next round. Cards that have been lost are not, they are set aside until they are regained, or initiative ends.
This initiative system is intended to create combat that is fast and unpredictable.6
Multiple->AP->Costs
Some types of actions have multiple AP costs. The first time you perform the action in a round it costs the first amount, the second time you do it, it costs the second, etc. These costs are connected with arrows, like this: 1->2->3. This does not limit how many times you can perform an action. If you are at the last cost, pay that amount of AP again to do the action.
Temp AP and Regaining AP
“Temp AP” must be spend in the same round it is recieved. If you do nothing for an entire round, regain 1 AP.
“Beginning of the Round”
Very rarely, the particular order things happen in the “beginning of the round” will matter. In that case, effects resolve in this order:
1. Effect Managment
Any already active effects that trigger “at the beginning of a round” happen first. It happens before anything else in the round does. Examples includes taking damage from [poison] or [bleed] or gaining health from [heal]. If you have some effect or condition that causes you to do some sort of roll or contest, do that now.
2. Status Management
Statuses are added or removed now. A point of [poison] is removed, a point of [heal] is removed, anything that would end at the “beginning” of this round ends now.
3. Skills
Some moves and skills can be used “at the beginning of the round”. These must be used after effects and statuses resolve.
Updates since publication:
Added section about Defense.
“on 6”, “on at least one 6”, and “on matching” section added.
I am perfectly happy to fill up notebooks that I will never find again with a meandering web of ideas if I don’t have some kind of structure. Having the website was a good fix for this problem initially, but finishing everything at the same time became an endless slog. Making weekly posts on Substack and focusing on one topic every week has been great! However, this means that the site is both constantly outdated, and the only source for a lot of mechanics. A post indexing the Substack will be added soon!
At some point (hopefully soon) I will consolidate all of these posts and update the rules on the website. The website can already generate PDFs of individual pages, but I’ll also make a combined book-style PDF available at that point.
This is kind of a boring person to play! In the future I’ll post more involved character creation rules and I’ll organize skills in “archetype tables”. For now, here are a couple simple character creation schemes:
Rolling:
Create a character with (1d4)1d12 health. Roll 1d4-2 down the sheet to get attribute scores. If you allow players to choose where their rolls go instead, remember that STR and AGI are relatively more valuable than the other three, consider allowing them to swap scores between STR and AGI or between the other three, but not between all 5.
Point Buy:
Give players some amount of SP to spend on skills and attributes. Every attribute has a base cost. Every increase of a negative attribute costs that attributes base cost. Above 0, the cost is equal to the base cost * the resulting attribute score. So for an attribute that costs 10 SP, advancing from 1 to 2 costs 10*2 = 20 SP. Base costs for attributes are as follows:
STR: 20 SP
AGI: 20 SP
WIL: 10 SP
PER: 10 SP
SOC: 10 SP
Here are a couple of suggested starting budgets and defaults:
All scores at -1, 50 SP. This gives players just enough SP to create a vanilla character with 0s down the sheet.
All scores at -1, 90 SP. This gives players some room to pick up a skillset.
A lot of this section rehashes what was covered in “Skill Issue”, but frankly no one read that one! If you want more detailed explanations and more of my reasoning, read the attribute score section there. If you read that whole thing you can just skip the attribute section in this post and not miss anything. This post is a lot more terse, it is intended to useful as reference material.
Because you can pick two rather than having to take the two highest rolls, you can be strategic with the effects you activate. For example, if you roll a 6, two 4s, and a 2, you may choose to lower your roll’s total from a 10 (4+6) to an 8 (4+4) in order to activate an effect triggered by matching dice if you succeed. More about various crits here.
I like the mechanic, but the name still doesn’t sit right with me. I’ve been itching to call them something besides “half-crit”, and “crit”, but “matching” is fine. Maybe effects will trigger “on a 6”, “on a matching roll”, or “on matching 6s”. A bit verbose, but possibly better.
That is, “unless otherwise noted” like every other rule. Some characters have skills or specializations that allow them to have extra AP cards.
Once the next card is dealt, your opportunity to act for free is over. It’s up to your DM and your table to decide how fast combat should move and how long players and characters should get to make their decisions.
This is meant to create tense, unpredictable combat, plans that are continuously changing, rather than long, boring, combat sessions. Not every decision made in the heat of the moment is going to be optimal.
Planning and coordination are very powerful. A group of people working well together can accomplish a great deal. Health numbers in Actlite are pretty low, combat is not meant to last very many rounds. If you manage to surprise your enemy you can do a great deal of damage as they fumble for their weapons and try to organize resistance. An otherwise superior enemy might not be able to recover from an effective ambush.