zilch

Zilch is an OGL boardgame-like dungeon-crawling fantasy RPG. See About Zilch for more.

As a homebrew almost-boardgame, Zilch uses a wide range of gaming supplies and tokens pilfered from other games. For example, PC stats are represented by laying out 4 playing cards. A rack of Scrabble tiles represents your spells known. Dice and dominos are used to resolve skill tests and combat contests. Read on for more.

GM Screen/Overview

Characters

Suits

Every character and creature is represented in terms of four Suits. In most cases, each Suit will have a value between 2 and 14 (Ace). An average human would have a 7 in each Suit.

Clubs (♣)

Clubs represent your strength, athleticism, combat training, and physical prowess. It is the basis of all physical attacks in combat, whether ranged or melee. Clubs is the suit of a Fighter.

Skill: Physical activities, such as climbing, jumping, swimming, breaking things, intimidating others, and surviving in the wild.

Chips: As a Fighter, you may spend one or more Club chips to add an equal number of pips to the Offensive side of your domino for a single Club-based attack or save.

Spades (♠)

Spades represent your dexterity, subtlety, street-smarts, speed, reflexes, and awareness. It is the basis of your defense in combat. Spades is the Suit of a Rogue.

Skill: Subterfuge activities, such as finding or disabling traps, sneaking, bluffing, feinting, lying, and noticing dangerous things in your environment.

Chips: As a Rogue, you may spend one or more Spade chips to add an equal amount to your Defensive pips while resolving a single Spade-based defense or save.

Diamonds (♦)

Diamonds represent your intelligence, logic, learning, knowledge, conscious mind, and magical potential. Diamonds is the Suit of a Spellcaster.

Skill: Applications of knowledge, such as identifying strange scripts, monsters, or dungeon features; recalling tidbits of history, geography, or culture; etc.

Chips: As a Spellcaster, you must spend your Diamond chips to cast spells. Spellcasters are either Wizards or Clerics. See Magic for more.

Hearts (♥)

Hearts represent your health, vitality, verve, wisdom, charisma, force of will, unconscious mind, tenacity, and general chutzpah. It determines how many hit points you have, and thus how much damage you can take. Hearts is not associated with any class.

Skill: Communication when you are dealing honestly and openly (that is, when not trying to hide your true nature); concentration and mental focus, especially in the face of physical discomfort or distraction.

Chips: Your Heart chips are your hit points (HP). Lose one HP for each point of damage you take. See Injury for more.

Character Generation

Option: For high-powered characters, use a 6 to J range, discarding characters of 30 points or less.

Divide a deck of cards into 4 piles according to Suit. Remove all cards except those in the 5 to 10 range from each pile. Shuffle each pile and place it face-down. Each player draws 1 card from each pile to generate a character. If your 4 cards total 25 or less, you may choose to discard your hand and draw again.

Class

Choose your class. This allows you to place Chips on the related Suit card and then spend them for special effects. (Therefore, you will only ever have chips on your class Suit card(s) and on Hearts.) You may not place more class chips on a card than that card's value. This normal chip maximum may be reduced by other factors (such as multiclassing).

You can recover spent chips by Rallying, Resting, or Sleeping. (See Recovery for more.)

Multi-classing

You may choose more than one class if you wish. If you multiclass like this, each of your class Suit cards are treated as having a value of only [1 / (the number of your classes), rounded down] when determining class effects such as chip capacity. For example, a fighter/wizard might have 10♣ and 7♦. This character would only have a max of 5 ♣ chips and 3 ♦ chips. (It may be helpful to use some negative chip tokens or else place a second playing card behind/underneath your normal Suit card to represent your max class ability.)

A character may have only a single Spellcaster class. That is, a wizard/cleric or healer/necromancer cleric is not possible under the Lite rules.

Skills

There are four broad skills, one for each Suit, as described above. Thus, in Zilch Lite, a skill test and a Suit test are the same thing.

Suit Test: Roll 3d6, treating 6s as 0. (If you prefer, 3d6-3 is equivalent.) This gives a curved distribution between 0 and 15. There is a 50% chance of rolling 7 or below, and a 50% chance of rolling 8 or higher.

To succeed in a test, roll less than or equal to your relevant skill value (as modified by any GM-assigned conditional modifiers). The lower your roll, the better your performance.

Criticals: If rolling <= (skill - 5), you score a critical success: you perform the skill with particular subtlety, speed, or flair. This may get you some small advantage or improved result for some skills. A 0 (three 6s) is always a critical success unless your (modified) skill is a 2 or lower.

If you roll > (skill + 5), you score a critical failure, which may earn you some small setback or delay due to your bungling performance. A 15 (three 5s) is always a critical failure unless your (modified) skill is 14 (Ace). Generally, a regular failure means simply no progress but a critical failure means an actual mishap.

These different Degrees of Success (DoS) are abbreviated: CS (critical success), S (success), F (failure), CF (critical failure).

An example: A character is attempting to climb a cliff. She has a 9♣. Rolling 9 or less is a Success. Rolling 4 or less is a Critical Success--perhaps allowing her to climb at double her normal speed. Rolling 14 or less is a Failure--she makes no progress up the cliff. Rolling a 15 is a Critical Failure--she falls.

Although other intermediate values may be used, the recommended skill modifiers are -5 for a very hard check, -2 for a hard check, and +2 for an easy check. (A +5 modifier suggests that the task is so easy that a roll is probably not even required.)

Contests: In a contest of (non-combat) skills, each contestant rolls a skill test. If both fail, the contest is a draw (or rather, a non-starter). If one succeeds while the other fails, the successful contestant wins. If both succeed, the contestant with the lower roll wins. If the rolls are tied, the contest is a draw, meaning the contestants continue to struggle for an advantage. In cases when a immediate victor is required, the initiator of the contest wins on a successful draw (or, if no clear initiator, the one with the higher skill/Suit value; or just roll again.)

Combat contests: In combat, dominos are used instead of dice and no roll-under is required. See Combat for more.

Equipment

You may carry two items in your hands. For example, each hand may hold 1 weapon, shield, or wand. Some weapons--such as bows or two-handed weapons--require both hands to use.

You may wear 1 suit of armor.

You may carry on your person--in a handy way, such as on your belt, in a pocket or pouch, or slung over your shoulder--up to 5 additional items. These items can be used immediately.

All other gear must go into your pack. It takes a full action to retrieve an item from your backpack.

Unless the GM or the scenario you are playing suggests otherwise, you are assumed to have sufficient standard adventuring gear: backpack, rations, waterskin, rope, a couple torches, sufficient ammo for your ranged weapons, bandages and salve, etc. Encumbrance is not tracked except in exceptional cases--such as when lugging a dragon's hoard, multiple suits of armor, or your fallen comrade back to the surface. Treat encumbrance as being Hampered. If staggering around with a load you can barely lift, you may be Defenseless too.

Weapons

Weapons deal the given amount of damage on a successful attack:

Different weapons in the same category may have different advantages or disadvantages in specific situations. For example, a club would be of no use when trying to slash a rope, a greataxe or longbow might be unusable in a cramped tunnel or from horseback, and a polearm might allow the wielder to attack an anchored foe from just out of reach of reprisals. Some weapons--such as a bow, staff, or polearm--may require two hands to use while other weapons in the same category do not.

Weapons with two ends, such as a staff, can be used as if they were two light weapons (+2 dmg each), or as a single-ended heavy weapon (+3 dmg). Either style takes two hands to use.

Although loading slings and crossbows does not take an extra action, they still take too long to load to use quickly.

Armor

Armor and shields add to your Damage Resistance, which reduces the amount of damage you take from weapons and other physical attacks (but not from spells, energy attacks, etc.):

Each class is proficient with a given category of armor and shields, as well as all lighter categories. Wearing heavier armor than a character is proficient with means the character is Hampered (encumbered). As with weapons, armor and shields may occasionally have drawbacks depending on the situation. For example, a ♣ (Athletics (Swim)) check might be at -2 for each DR due to mundane armor or shield.

Shields: When in a Guarded stance, you may add your shield's DR to your defensive pips as you duck behind it. Shields can also be used to bash for 1 dmg as if a Tiny weapon. Adding spikes makes the shield a Light (2 dmg) weapon. A buckler or heavy bracers are strapped to the forearm and so do not require a hand to wield. However, they do take up one of 5 handy slots. In addition, they do not offer a defensive bonus in a Guarded stance, nor can they be used to bash.

Magic

At the time of character creation, you must decide what sort of Spellcaster you will be. Wizards study arcane magics capable of devestating elemental energy attacks and subtle creation.

Clerics channel divine magics on the behalf of a deity. This divine energy can either be Life or Death energy, which affects both the living and the undead. Clerics that wield Life energy are called Healers; those that wield Death energy are called Necromancers.

Druids draw on the subtle powers of nature. Their powers are similar to both Wizard and Cleric combined but are less powerful than either.

A small number of possible combat spells are then available to a Spellcaster depending on his type. You may cast any E or T spells appropriate to your class. [To be expanded here; for now, see RPG:Magic]

Combat

At the start of combat, determine the order of initiative. This is in order of speed, which is your Spades (or 1/2 Spades if Slowed). (For more randomness, +1d6 to this for each character. Or roll a single +1d6 for all PCs and another +1d6 for all monsters.)

Stances

At the start of each round, each active character should announce their Stance for that round. Certain Conditions may limit your choice of stance. Draw a domino without looking at it and place it face-down so as to represent your Stance for that round.

In a surprise round, only those characters aware of that combat has started get to draw a domino and act. The others are inactive and Defenseless.

Turn your domino face-up at the start of your turn. You may turn it over earlier only if you need to see the domino's pips to make a ♣ or ♠-based save or defense.

Combat Actions

After Stances have been selected, proceed in initiative order through characters until each active character has had a Turn. This completes the round.

1 Turn = 1 Full Action and as many Free Actions as makes sense. 1 Full Action may be converted to 1 Standard Action + 1 Minor action. 1 Standard Action may be converted to 1 Minor action.

Full Actions

Two-Weapon Fighting (2WF): If you are a Fighter or Rogue, you may fight with two light weapons or one heavy & one tiny weapon. You may divide your offensive pips as you see fit (min: 1 pip) between two Attacks this turn, making one Attack with each one-handed weapon. You may see the results of your first attack before targeting the second, and you may take a step between the two attacks. (Although usually used for melee combat, these rules can also be applied to equivalent ranged attacks. For example, a fighter could use them to throw a dagger and swing a sword, or even to fire a shortbow twice in a turn. As a Heavy weapon, a longbow would be large to fire twice. Slings and crossbows take too long to reload regardless of size.)

Ready: Only possible with a Cautious stance. You may make one Standard Action at a later time, after your current turn but before your next turn. If you specify the conditions you are watching for, you may attack just before that event. Otherwise, you may chose to act after any event. (Such readying can be used to prepare riposte melee attacks on flying or invisible creatures for when they attack you.)

Retrieve: Find and pull an item from your pack. Requires a free hand.

Standard Actions

Attack: Use a physical weapon (including unarmed strike) to attempt to damage a single target. Compare your (Clubs + offensive domino pips) to your target's (Spades + defensive domino pips). If you equal or exceed your target's defense, you hit. You deal damage based on your weapon. In addition, for every 5 points that your attack exceeds your target's defense, deal +1 dmg. This base damage may then be modified if you are of a different Size than your target.

Charge: If in a Reckless stance and not Slowed, you may Charge as a Standard Action, moving up to your speed and also making a single attack at the end of the move.

Special Attack: You may choose to deal no damage on a successful Attack in order to inflict a special effect on your opponent instead. Examples include: Bullrush (force your opponent back a number of squares equal to 1 + number of pips you won by); Disarm (opponent drops a held weapon/item), Grapple (you are now Grappling your opponent ); Trip (your is opponent falls Prone or is pulled from a mount).

You must announce that you are making a Special Attack before resolving the attack. Your opponent may choose to defend against a Special Attack using (Clubs + defensive pips) if this is more advantageous than using Spades. Also, certain modifiers may apply. For example, it may be harder to Trip a quadraped or impossible to trip a giant snake.

Cast: This is essentially an Attack made with magic. See Magic for more.

Defend: Focus on protecting yourself, thereby gaining the advantage of your Guarded stance.

Use: Use a held item. For example, drink a potion, pour an oil, etc.

Minor Actions

Move: You may normally move a number of squares equal to your Spades. You may also usually swim or climb at about 1/4 that rate. If you take the Reckless stance, your may move up to 1.5x your normal Move rate (running) or up to 2x if in a straight line (sprinting).

Manipulate: Pick up an object, open a door, sheathe a weapon or store a held item in a handy body slot, guide a mount or vehicle, etc.

Shift Stance: Change your stance by one degree, such as from Bold to Reckless or from Bold to Cautious. You are still subject to any restrictions on your stance at the time of the shift, such as keeping a defensive stance if Threatened. You may not shift from a Guarded stance until after you've taken the required Defend action this turn (which means shifting from Guarded is generally useless since you would have no actions left after the Shift).

Stand: Stand up from Prone.

Free Actions

Various brief actions that take very little time or can be easily combined with other actions. Examples: Dive prone, drop an item, change grip on a weapon, draw a handy item, call out a sentence or two, move a step/square (once per turn and only if you have not otherwise Moved this turn).

Distances

Zilch measures distance in Squares. 1 Square can be 1 yard, 1 meter, 5 feet, or whatever. (You can also use hexes instead, or just inches on the table-top.) Zilch has the following general distances categories:

• Adjacent: In a neighboring square, close enough to make a melee attack.
• Very Close: Reachable in one Move, even if Impeded (2 or 3 squares away, or about 15').
• Close: Reachable in one Move (generally about 7 Squares, or about 30' ± 10'); can affect with ranged attacks without penalty.
• Medium: Reachable in two Moves or a sprint (usually about 14 Squares, or 60' ± 20'); ranged attacks suffer a -2 penalty.
• Long: Too far away to reach in one Turn (generally about 120'+) or to reach with thrown weapons; projectile ranged attacks suffer a -5 penalty.
• Far: Within view, but too far to far way to affect (including with most spells).

Playing without a grid: Specific distances are given in movement and magical rules for those that like precision in their gaming. However, Zilch assumes a dungeon environment. In the average dungeon, everything is usually Close--except perhaps in very large caverns or outside. This makes it easy to play without a battle map. Rather than tracking squares moved, simply estimate the general distance between two characters. If there is some question of whether a character has enough movement available--such as when a circuitous route is needed or the destination is on the edge of the range category--test Spades to resolve the issue.

Combat Modifiers

• Cover: If fighting from behind a corner, tree, or similar cover, you gain +2 defensive pips. If only peering around such cover, gain +5. Total cover means you cannot be seen or attacked. If your ranged target is engaged in melee combat with an ally, your ally will act as cover (+2) for the target. Similarly, two grappling characters provide cover to each other from attacks outside the grapple. Missing your target by only the cover pips or less means you hit the cover instead.
• Distance: As covered under Distances, ranged attacks suffer -2 or -5 at Medium and Long distances, respectively.
• Misc: The GM may always apply extra modifiers for various unusual situations that may arise that are not otherwise covered satisfactorily by the rules.
• Occluded: If your target is concealed by shadow, mist, foliage, etc, you are at -2 to hit (since you can see a only vague outline or part of your foe). If the target is Invisible (such as in total darkness), you must correctly guess the square/location (direction and general distance). Even if you guess correctly, your attack is still at -5.
• Size: Size categories are:

  Size	Long Dimension	Examples	Dmg Mod
  Tiny	~1' (less than 1.5')	breadbox or smaller	1/4x
  Small	~3' (1.5 to 4')	child, dog, sheep, chair	1/2x
  Medium	~6' (4 to 8')	human, donkey, door	1x
  Large	~12' (8' to 16')	single story, large horse, car	2x
  Huge	~24' (16' to 32')	trolley, bus	4x
  Tremendous	~60' (32' or more)	small apartment building	8x

  Creatures of non-Medium size should multiply their HP total by their dmg modifier (rounding normally). For example, a Small creature with 7♥ would have a max of 4 HPs (since 7 * 1/2 = 3.5, which rounds up to 4).

  Any damage dealt by a creature is also multiplied by the given dmg modifier for its size category. Apply this modifier to the total damage--after including any energy damage from a weapon or extra damage from pips or abilities--but before reducing due to armor. Round normally (meaning 0.5+ rounds up). Try to keep approximately the same proportion of different damage types in the result. For example, a Small creature wielding a flaming greatsword would deal (4 + 1) * 1/2 = 5/2 = 3 dmg. 2 points of this would by physical dmg and 1 point would be fire dmg.

  Attacking a larger or smaller creature may occasionally provide a modifier to attack, but not always. Remember that attacking a smaller creature is not always harder. For example, it seems that stomping on a cockroach is probably about as difficult punching a wary giraffe, despite the vast size difference. (Stabbing a cockroach with a dagger may be a different issue, though.) Generally, in melee, both combatants are dipping and dodging. Larger creatures do make bigger targets, but, especially in melee, you are still limited to only those vulnerable spots you can actually reach in order to successfully deal damage. Except for obvious or extreme cases, modifiers due to relative size differences can generally be ignored.

• Terrain: If the terrain is simply Poor (uneven, shifting, or narrow footing), you are Slowed. If the terrain is actually Treacherous, you are also Hampered. You may choose to make a Spades (Acrobatics) check to attempt to reduce these penalties by one degree. (CS: ignore all terrain penalties; CF: fall prone.)

Adventuring

Injury

Most damage is physical damage or energy damage. Physical damage can be reduced by armor DR; elemental forms of energy damage can be prevented only by magical protection.

Each point of dmg taken reduces your HPs by 1. If your HPs are reduced to 0, you fall unconscious. Further damage causes Hearts drain instead.

Temporary damage

Unarmed attacks and some other types of damage are dangerous in the short term, but have a much shorter recovery time. When removing a HP chip due to temporary damage, place it in your temporary damage pool. When resting, recover all temporary damage HPs from this pool.

Drain

Drain represents poison, bloodloss, illness, etc. Drain is specific to a particular Suit. For each point of drain, mark the drained Suit with a negative token. This effectively reduces your Suit value. Among other effects, this means you will lose any chips on that Suit card that are in excess of your new effective Suit value.

If your Clubs are ever drained to 0, you are paralyzed and Helpless, too weak to stand. If your Spades are ever drained to 0, you are paralyzed and Helpless, too stiff or trembling to move. If your Diamonds are ever drained to 0, you fall comatose and Unconscious. If your Hearts are ever drained to 0, you die.

Taint

Taint represents injury or drain that does not heal normally. This could be due to a septic wound, toxin, disease, or unnatural forces. Whenever you take tainted damage or tainted drain, gain an equivalent number of taint counters on the corresponding Suit card. Taint counters may exceed your Suit value.

Whenever you would normally recover a HP or a point of drain from a tainted Suit (whether from magic or natural healing), remove a taint counter instead.

Taint counters on Hearts--whether recieved from tainted dmg or tainted Hearts drain--affect only HP recovery. Hearts drain always recovers normally even when tainted.

Ongoing Damage

Burning

Instantaneous spells light only extremely flammable things, such as gunpowder or oil-soak rags. Otherwise, you must be exposed to flames for a full Turn to catch fire. At the start of each turn you are on fire, take 2 fire dmg. You may spend a full action to stop, drop, and roll or another person might use a cloak or blanket to try to smother the fire: Make a ♠(First Aid) test to put out the fire. Leaping into a body of water automatically puts out the flames.

Similar "burning" damage may come from any elemental energy type (such as acid) or even other sources of ongoing physical damage (such as a swarm of biting vermin).

Fatigue

Fatigue is usually caused by some sort of depravation: lack of sleep, thirst, starvation, suffocation, exposure to extreme whether (whether too hot or too cold), etc. Test ♥: (CS, S: no effect, F: become more fatigued by 1 level, CF: become more fatigued by 2 levels).

Fatigue progresses as follows:

1. Slowed (fatigued)
2. + Hampered (exhausted)
3. + Unconsciousness

Each additional level of fatigue taken causes 1d6 temporary dmg.

Test frequency depends on the severity of the cause. For example, lack of sleep might be tested at the start of the day; extreme weather might take its toll at the end of each encounter; and suffocation would be tested each turn.

The GM may allow a grace period before tests start. For example, with a few deep breaths, a character might be able to hold her breath for Hearts turns before starting to suffocate. On the other hand, if suddenly deprived of air during combat, the character may get only 1 turn before tests start.

Fatigue effects can only be removed by removing their cause. Again, how long this takes depends on the cause: it may take only 1 turn to catch your breath or a whole Rest period to warm up from hypothermia.

Recovery

Rallying: It takes about 2 minutes of calm to rally, so it cannot be performed during combat or any similarly stressful encounter. Upon rallying, add a rally marker to your class Suit. (If multiclassed, you may choose to rally more than one Suit at a time.) You then regain all class chips in the marked Suit(s), but at -1 chip for each rally marker. So, for example, a fighter with 8♣ can regain up to 7 chips the first time she rallies, then 6 chips the next time, 5 the next time, and so on. Also regain 1 temporary dmg HP.

Resting: Takes about an hour of uninterrupted relaxation. Remove up to one rally marker and then regain all the chips in your class Suit(s). Regain all temporary dmg HPs. With a successful Diamond (First Aid) check, regain HP (CS: +2, S: +1, F: 0, CF: -1). Only one First Aid attempt can be made on a character per rest.

Resting in a dungeon normally has a 50% chance of being interrupted by a Wandering Monster encounter. This is true even if the party is secured in a room--this protects them from harm but not from discovery. Only certain magic might hide a party from discovery. If interrupted, you gain no benefits from the rest.

Sleeping: About 8 hours once per 24 hour period. Remove all rally markers, regain all chips in your class Suit(s), heal up to 2 HP, and remove up to 2 drain from each Suit. You normally cannot sleep in a Dungeon without discovery.

Conditions

Falling

Take 1d6 dmg for every 2 Squares (about 10') fallen. Thus, falling from a third-story window (about 20' up) would deal 2d6 dmg.

Intentionally jumping down reduces the dmg by 1d6. A Spades(Acrobatics) test may reduce it further. (CS: -2d6; S: -1d6; F: no effect; CF: +1d6, thus losing the effect of intentionally jumping).

Landing on a treacherous surface--like spikes or jagged rocks--would increase the dmg, usually by +1d6. On the other hand, a particularly soft surface or sliding down an incline upon landing may also reduce it or mean one of the dice is only temporary damage.

Lighting and Vision

Light levels determine what you can see depending on your vision ability. You might be able to see normally (OK), Occluded (Occl), or Blinded (X).

If holding a torch-like light source, treat adjacent squares as Bright and all other Close squares as Lowlight. For a candle, only your square is Bright, and adjacent squares are Lowlight.

Swag

Option: In-Dungeon Swag Conversion

As GM, you might allow a player to pay 1 Swag to suddenly retrieve from her pack a small item that normally costs 1 Swag or less. The extra "cost" for doing this in the Dungeon is that the player must also add something to the story by providing a brief flashback or soliloquy prompted by the new item. This could be about that item itself and how it came to be in her pack, or it could simply be a character memory prompted by an aspect of the item, such as the smell of it or weight of it in the character's hand. This flashback should provide some small insight into character's backstory, personality, or motivation. This option provides a chance to flesh out Lite characters a little on the fly.

Alternatively, the player may convert Swag and give the item to the GM to place within the next (usually combat) encounter. With this method, the player need not make a story contribution. However, the item will be in the possession of a foe during the combat and may be used by the foe during the encounter. If this means the item is actually consumed, the player receives a Swag refund and can try again.

Swag is an abstract point-based measure of an adventuring party's success. It is an abstraction in that each specific encounter may not necessarily provide such material wealth in the game world.

Each character earns 2, 3, or 4 swag points for each easy, average, or hard encounter that he or she successfully overcomes. An encounter does not always have to be combat--it can be a trap, puzzle, social interaction, etc. The GM may also grant additional points of swag for good roleplaying or achieving important adventure objectives.

While in Town, a character may then convert Swag into magic items, according to the cost of the item. Mundane pack-sized items cost 1 Swag. This conversion assumes the character is either having found items identified by a sage or is selling found treasure and purchasing an item.

It costs 10 Swag to have a dead character resurrected in Town.