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Roshar

Cosmere RPGA world by Unknown GM

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Rules

Cosmere RPG · 201 entries

201 entries

Rule	Summary
Action	A character typically has two or three actions on their turn. An ability costs one, two, or three of them, and several actions can be combined into one longer effort.
Activation	How an ability is triggered: one, two or three actions, a free action, a reaction, a special activation, or always active.
Advantage	For each advantage, pick one die the test will roll — the d20, the plot die, or a damage die — roll two of it and keep the better result. Each die can be chosen only once per test, so two advantages must fall on two different dice.
Against the Odds	Once per Exploration, the party meets a peril beyond ordinary survival and every character tests separately against it; each one who fails suffers it. The printed perils: Dehydration DC 14, losing all but 1 focus; Drained Spheres DC 10, half your spheres going dun; Lost Energy DC 14, Exhausted [−1]; Obscured Senses DC 18, Disoriented for the rest of the scene; Ruined Clothing DC 15, disadvantage on Persuasion and Leadership until you bathe and armor losing Presentable until repaired; Tainted Food DC 12, 2d4 vital.
Agent	The heroic path of operatives who solve problems with a keen mind or deft hand — Investigator, Spy, Thief. Starting skill: Insight.
Allomancy	Allomancy is the Scadrian magic of burning ingested metals to produce a specific effect per metal.
Ancestry	The species a character descends from. Roshar has two — human and singer. Ancestry sets size and grants bonus talents at the start of each tier; it is separate from culture.
Animal Companion	An animal befriended as a goal reward, run from an ordinary stat block under the adversary rules and controlled by the GM — it acts in your interests but never against its own instincts. It resolves 0 health as a third case, neither PC nor adversary: it falls Unconscious like a character but cannot choose to wake. Only healing to at least 1 health, or a recovery die rolled on a short rest, brings it back, and one left somewhere it cannot be safely recovered may be lost for good.
Anti-Light	The inverse of a form of Light, violently destructive on contact with its opposite. It cannot fuel surges, and wielding it endangers both bearer and spren.
Armor	Only one type can be worn at a time, and none can be donned or removed mid-combat. Deflect by type: uniform 0, leather 1, chain 2, breastplate 2, half plate 3, full plate 4, Shardplate 5. Chain, breastplate, half plate and full plate are Cumbersome at Strength 3, 3, 4 and 5; Shardplate is not, until its charges run out. Armor in a non-military setting draws a disadvantage on tests to influence civilians unless it is Presentable.
Armor Expertise	Covers wearing and maintaining one type of non-Invested armor, and unlocks that armor’s expert traits.
Attack Test	A skill test made against a defence, rolled alongside the damage dice — which are never added to the test itself. The Strike action and adversary attacks default to Physical defence; other abilities name their own.
Basic Lashing	Gravitation’s basic effect: for 1 Investiture a round, a character or object within reach falls in a direction you name, at your gravitation rate — 25 feet to start with. A willing character gains that as a flying rate; an object travels that far in a straight line at the start of each of your turns. An unwilling one takes a Gravitation test against Physical defense and is Restrained until the start of your next turn. Nothing moves fast enough to hurt on impact, but anything still aloft when the surge ends falls and takes the damage for it.
Battle Phase	One objective for the party’s side, covering several scenes, after which the battle moves to whichever phase that success or failure leads to. If the party is central the phase waits on them; if they are not, it can end mid-effort and swing the battle while they are busy elsewhere. The GM keeps at least one event running throughout.
Betting on a Hunch	The out for a failed Discovery: the party pools what few clues they have and names their answer. Right, and the Discovery counts as a success. Wrong, and they carry on believing it — and meet the consequences later.
Bolster an Ally	A contribution that encourages or reassures someone, recovering them some focus. In a long conversation it is the counterweight to being worn down, which makes it far more valuable than it looks.
Boss	Built to challenge a whole party. A boss takes both a fast turn and a slow turn each round, can spend 1 focus after an enemy’s turn for an extra action or reaction, and can spend 1 focus on its turn to shed a condition.
Breathe Stormlight	The action drawing Stormlight from infused spheres within 5 feet, recovering Investiture. Usable even while Unconscious.
Broam	The largest sphere, holding a two-carat gem — 4 marks or 20 chips as a diamond, and far more in a better stone.
Change Form	A singer bonds a spren during a highstorm to take on a new form, gaining its statistic increases and abilities until they change again. Only one form at a time.
Charges	Stormlight stored in an item, spent to trigger its effect. Recharging during a short rest costs one unencased gem or 1 Investiture per charge, or a highstorm refills it outright. Shardplate and half-shards are the expensive exception, at 5 per charge.
Clue	One findable piece of a Discovery, reached by a test that suits the approach. Every clue can uncover the next in its lead line until the final piece lands.
Cognitive Defense	The number an attack against the mind must meet or beat. Equals 10 + Intellect + Willpower, plus any bonuses.
Collective Threshold	The GM tracks the party’s total successes and failures toward an objective; reaching the successes wins the endeavor, hitting the failures first loses it. By complexity: Simple 4 successes and 3 failures, Average 8 and 4, Intricate 9 and 4, Insurmountable 11 and 5. It is a pacing guide rather than a rule — something spectacular can count double, a creative solution can bypass it, and the GM can quietly ask for one more success while lowering the DCs to keep things moving. Usually kept secret.
Companion	An NPC dedicated to a character, run by the GM and statted from an ordinary profile. How many, and of what role, is set by tier: one Minion at tier 1; two Minions or a Rival at tier 2; three Minions or a Rival at tier 3; five Minions, two Rivals or a Boss at tier 4 and up. A companion below its character’s tier is topped up rather than left behind — at tier 2 a Minion gains +2 to all tests and +10 health, at tier 3 +4 and +20, at tier 4 and up +6 and +40, while a Rival gains +2 and +10 at tier 3 and +4 and +20 above it.
Companion Features	The example features a companion can carry, several choosing one option from a set: Aquatic, Climber, Furtive or Spry, so that swimming, climbing, sneaking or difficult terrain no longer imposes Slowed; Carapace or Shell for +2 deflect; Enhanced Senses for an advantage on non-attack tests using the primary sense; Evasive, Skyborn or Slippery to stop triggering Reactive Strikes while moving, flying or swimming; Fleet for +10 feet of a movement rate; Flight for a 30-foot flying rate; Hearty for +10 health; Jumper to jump twice as far untested; Nimble to pass through enemy spaces and share a willing ally’s, where it cannot be grazed and attacks against it take a disadvantage; Skilled for an extra skill rank, rising to two at tier 2 and three at tier 3; and Sleek to count one size smaller when squeezing.
Complication	A detrimental side effect that lands whether the test succeeds or fails. The GM spends it to give a player character’s next test disadvantage, cost you 1 focus, or introduce a narrative drawback. A Complication rolled on the Plot Die also grants a bonus to that d20 roll — the value shown inside the symbol.
Complication Range	The d20 results that earn a Complication. It begins and ends at 1 by default, so a natural 1 grants one. An effect that expands it raises the end — expanding by 3 makes the range 1 through 4. Unlike a Plot Die Complication, this grants no bonus to the test. Expansions stack only when they come from differently named effects.
Concluding a Goal	What happens at three milestones, at whatever later moment plays best — the player chooses when to call it. Concluding is not the same as achieving: a goal can close through success, through growth when a character outgrows or reframes it, or through outright failure. All three earn the reward.
Contribution	One meaningful push on a conversation, made in character or described in the third person. Most work toward one of five outcomes: influencing a person, helping an ally or hindering an opponent, bolstering an ally, gathering information, or simply interjecting flavor — the last of which has no rules at all.
Conversation	The social scene type: two or more characters pursuing goals through dialogue. It runs far looser than a combat, with no initiative and no concrete clock — a round is simply everyone who wanted to contribute having had the chance. Any scene can turn into one, and a conversation can turn into a combat.
Cover	An obstacle blocking an enemy’s line of effect. Within 5 feet of it you can Brace to give incoming attacks a disadvantage.
Critical Hit	Spend an Opportunity on a hit to maximize every damage die against all of that attack’s targets. Minions cannot land one.
Cultural Expertise	An expertise covering a nation or people — its geography, institutions, customs and language. Roshar’s named ones are Alethi, Azish, Herdazian, Iriali, Kharbranthian, Listener, Natan, Reshi, Shin, Thaylen, Unkalaki and Veden.
Culture	Where a character’s cultural awareness lies, chosen as expertises rather than fixed by birth. A character picks two at creation, and they need not match their ancestry.
Cumbersome [X]	Usable easily only by a character whose Strength is at least the bracketed number. Below it, a weapon gives a disadvantage on every attack with it and leaves you Slowed while wielding it; armor leaves you Slowed and gives a disadvantage on every test using Speed.
Customizing a Stat Block	Rename an existing profile and trade pieces rather than pile them on: for each skill, beneficial feature or custom action added, remove or reduce an existing one, so the result is about as strong as it started. Drop anything that no longer fits the creature. A profile borrowed from the World Guide also loses its Opportunities and Complications section, which does not apply to companions.
Damage From a Hit	A hit adds the attacker’s skill modifier for the attacking skill to the damage dealt, on top of the damage dice.
Dangerous	On a weapon, the GM can spend a Complication from an attack to graze an ally within its reach or range for the usual graze damage. On armor, the GM can spend a Complication you gain while wearing it to have your own uncontrolled motion injure an ally within 5 feet for 2d6.
Dangerous Terrain	Ground that harms you on entering it or starting a turn in it — spikes for 1d4 keen, fire for 1d8 energy, highstorm winds for 1d12 impact.
Deadly	On a hit, spend an Opportunity to make the target suffer an injury immediately.
Death	The end of an injury roll of −6 or lower. A dying character holds on long enough for a few final words before their Cognitive aspect leaves the body. Their active surges end unless those cost Investiture each round; infusions already placed on their body or gear run until that Investiture is spent.
Defeated	What an adversary becomes at 0 health. Most are assumed dead; a narratively significant one, or any felled by non-lethal intent, instead falls Unconscious with an injury and stays down until something restores at least 1 health.
Defensive	While wielding this weapon you can use the Brace action with no cover nearby.
Deflect	A flat reduction, granted mostly by armor, applied to impact, keen, and energy damage before it reaches Health. Spirit and vital damage ignore it, as does any weapon with the Pierce trait. A character in no armor — or in a uniform — has a deflect of 0. It is also added to an injury roll.
Deflect Source	The parenthetical after an adversary’s deflect value, naming where the protection comes from — "leather", "chain", "carapace". Often only flavour, but if it names an actual piece of armor, the party may be able to take it off the body once the adversary is defeated.
Difficult Terrain	Ground that must be scrambled or slogged through. You are Slowed while moving through it.
Difficulty Class	The target number a skill test must meet or beat to succeed. The reference band is Easy 10, Medium 15, Hard 20, Very Hard 25, Nearly Impossible 30, gauged against an average person rather than a player character. A test against another character usually takes its DC from the matching defense.
Disadvantage	As advantage, but the GM picks the die and keeps the worse of the two results. Advantages and disadvantages cancel one for one.
Discovery	The endeavor type for investigating a mystery. It is the one that does not use a success threshold at all — an investigative web replaces it — though the GM may still track failures. Budget ten to thirty minutes of prep, or defer the scene rather than improvise it.
Discreet	Easily concealed. Outside combat you gain an advantage on any test to disguise the weapon, hide it on your person, or talk someone out of confiscating it.
Distance Track	How a Pursuit is scored: an abstract gap, not a real one. The GM sets a starting distance and an escape distance, and every test moves the gap by 1 — closing when a pursuer succeeds or a target fails, widening when a target succeeds or a pursuer fails. At 0 the target is caught; at the escape distance it is gone. Suggested pairs: 2 and 4 through a keep’s hallways, 3 and 6 fleeing a chasmfiend, 4 and 8 across a cityscape.
Downtime	The open time between scenes, long enough for characters to pursue their own ends rather than the party’s. The GM sets how long it runs and what constrains it, then resolves each character’s plan in turn — crafting, working a profession, recuperating, researching, training, or self-reflection.
Drop	A free action letting go of any number of objects you are holding — typically used just before an Interact draws a different weapon.
Dun	A sphere or gem with no Stormlight left in it. A highstorm renews it.
Endeavor	The scene type where the opposition is the situation rather than a person — traversing, exploring, infiltrating, chasing, investigating. Rounds are informal, as in a conversation: everyone gets a turn to describe what they are doing, and how much time a round covers ebbs with the story. It runs until the objective is met or lost, or another scene swallows it.
Energy	Effects of heat and energy — fire and lightning among them. Deflect reduces it.
Enhance	Spend 1 Investiture to become Enhanced [Strength +1] and Enhanced [Speed +1] until the end of your next turn, maintainable for 1 Investiture a turn.
Envoy	The heroic path of insightful negotiators — Diplomat, Faithful, Mentor. Starting skill: Discipline.
Event	An optional GM tool: something looming that counts down to a moment which will shake up the scene — a highstorm closing in, a crowd’s outrage building, reinforcements arriving. Think of it as an Opportunity or Complication with a much larger blast radius. It runs beside the scene’s own objective rather than being it, and two or three a session is the usual dose.
Event Track	The slots an event fills before it triggers — at least two, Opportunity or Complication, the mix chosen by the GM. Whenever a plot die is rolled while the event is on the table, that result can be spent to fill a slot instead of doing what it would normally do, which is the trade the whole tool runs on: an immediate benefit now, or a step toward something far bigger. Players spend Opportunities into positive events and the GM spends Complications into negative ones; an enemy NPC’s results push the opposite way. Two tracks can run at once, racing each other.
Expert Trait	A rule on a weapon or piece of armor that applies only to someone with the matching expertise. Some grant a benefit; others strip an unwanted trait instead — expertise in Longswords drops the Two-Handed trait, and expertise in Chain Armor drops its Cumbersome trait.
Expertise	A word or phrase naming a subject a character specialises in. It can let them simply know something another character would have to test for.
Exploration	The endeavor type for crossing hostile or unknown ground, whether the objective is a destination or something to find within an area. A relevant expertise or reward — a patron with reach in the region, say — can turn a test into an automatic success at the GM’s discretion.
Fabrial	A device built around a spren trapped in a gemstone, powered by charges of Stormlight. An Interact action activates one; it spends a charge, produces its effect for the stated duration, then keeps spending until switched off or emptied. Alerters, spanreeds, heatrials, Soulcasters and half-shards are all fabrials.
Falling	A fall of 10 feet or more deals 1d6 impact damage per 10 feet on landing, and leaves you Prone if it dealt any.
Fast Turn	A turn taken early in the round for only two actions. The choice can be made any time in the round and changed the next.
Feature	An adversary rule that needs no action, free action or reaction to use — the equivalent of a character’s always-active or special abilities.
Feruchemy	Feruchemy stores an attribute in a metalmind to be drawn back out later, trading strength now for strength then.
First Ideal	The oath every order shares — "Life before death. Strength before weakness. Journey before destination." Speaking it grants a Radiant their order’s two surge skills, with a free rank in each.
Flying Rate	A separate rate used instead of your movement rate, never both in one move. Ranged attacks made while flying take a disadvantage for unstable footing, and being knocked Prone means falling.
Focus	The cognitive pool representing mental resolve and resistance to distraction and distress. A character’s maximum equals 2 + Willpower, plus any bonuses. In a conversation it does the work health does in a fight: it is what you spend to resist being influenced, and an NPC at 0 focus can no longer resist at all.
Food and Water	Tracked by the day, and only when access is genuinely in doubt. You can go without food for as many days as your Willpower score before each further day makes you Exhausted [−1]; eating a day’s worth resets the count without clearing the exhaustion. Water allows no such grace — every day without it costs a point. Reaching Exhausted [−10] kills.
Forced Movement	Being pushed or pulled. It ignores your movement rate and never triggers a Reactive Strike.
Fragile	The GM can spend a Complication from an attack with this weapon to break it once the attack resolves. Improvised weapons always carry it.
Free Action	An activity that costs neither an action nor a reaction — bantering mid-fight, for instance — and stays available after every action is spent.
Full Lashing	Adhesion’s basic effect: for 1 Investiture a round, stick together two unsecured objects within your reach and within 5 feet of each other — or one object and a surface of any size at all. It cannot touch characters, Invested objects, or anything already infused. Breaking one is an Athletics test opposed by your Adhesion, and the objects usually give way before the bond does.
Gather Information	A contribution spent scrutinizing a person or the room. The GM either hands you what you were after, or asks for a skill test against the target’s Spiritual or Cognitive defense.
Goal	A concrete objective a character is chasing, and the way the game measures their development. A character starts with one or two and gains more in play. Each carries three milestone boxes, and filling all three lets the player conclude it for a reward.
Gravitation Rate	How far a Basic Lashing moves its target, and the flying rate it grants a willing one. It begins at 25 feet, and talents raise it.
Graze	A miss bought back: after failing an attack test you may spend 1 focus per target to graze instead, dealing the damage dice alone. A hit adds your skill modifier on top; a graze does not. Some attacks state that they cannot graze.
Half-Shard	A two-handed kite shield with an augmenter fabrial that lets it turn a Shardblade. Spend its charge before taking damage to add 10 to your deflect against that attack and have deflect apply to every damage type until it resolves. A standard one holds a single charge, and restoring it costs 5 Investiture or 5 gems.
Health	The physical pool representing stamina and resistance to minor injury. At level 1 a character’s maximum equals 10 + Strength, and it grows each level thereafter. Damage comes off it, less deflect where the type allows; reaching 0 leaves a character Unconscious with an injury, and every further hit taken at 0 inflicts another.
Health Range	The band printed beside an adversary’s health, as in "60 (48-72)". It is a dial rather than a roll: run the adversary anywhere inside it to soften or sharpen a fight after the roster is set, or to vary a group of otherwise identical profiles. Lower health keeps a weak party’s momentum going; higher health lets a strong one spend its abilities.
Hemalurgy	Hemalurgy steals an ability from one person and grants it to another through a spiked metal, always at a cost.
Hit	A successful attack test. Damage equals the total rolled on the damage dice plus your modifier for the skill the attack used.
Hunter	The heroic path of sharpshooters and outdoorsfolk — Archer, Assassin, Tracker. Starting skill: Perception.
Ideal	One of the five oaths an order lives by. Each is a goal progressed by marking three milestones, then sworn aloud in a scene. Taking a path’s First Ideal key talent hands you the goal outright, and an Ideal goal cannot be set any other way. The talents gating them open at levels 2, 4, 8 and 13. Acting against a sworn Ideal repeatedly costs a Radiant their highest Ideal and can eventually kill their spren.
Immunity	An effect an adversary ignores outright, usually a condition. Immunities are GM-adjudicated, and players may find creative ways around them.
Impact	Effects that crush or bludgeon — a hammer blow, a flying boulder, a fall. Deflect reduces it.
Improvised Weapon	Any object you can pick up. The GM names the ordinary light or heavy weapon it most resembles and you attack as that, plus the Fragile trait.
Indirect	This ranged weapon arcs its shots. You can attack a target you can sense but have no line of effect to, so long as the projectile has a reasonable path, and the target cannot Brace against it.
Individual Threshold	The same success-and-failure counting, tracked per character rather than for the party, for an endeavor where everyone is working a different angle.
Influence a Person	The contribution most conversations turn on. Test a skill against the target’s Spiritual or Cognitive defense, whichever matches the skill you used; the GM can shift that DC, and your approach can earn advantage or disadvantage. Succeeding does not settle it — the target may still spend focus to resist.
Infusion	Investiture spent into an object so a surge continues without you there. It expends 1 at the start of each of your turns and ends when it runs dry, so infusing more up front simply buys more rounds. A surge on yourself needs no lump sum — it draws from your current Investiture each round until you end it, no action required — and surges continue even while you are Unconscious. At the start of your turn, before infusions expend, you can add Investiture to one within range, and several can run at once. Outside combat that round is longer: roughly a minute in a conversation, 1 to 10 minutes in an endeavor, and about 10 minutes when no scene is running at all.
Injury	A lasting wound, tracked separately from lost health. You always suffer one on being reduced to 0 health and on each hit taken at 0 health; talents, weapon traits and the GM can inflict them too. The player decides the effect — the suggestions table offers Exhausted, Slowed, Disoriented, Surprised, or the use of only one hand — and always has the final say on how it plays. A minor NPC that suffers one is defeated outright.
Injury Roll	Not a skill test: roll a d20, add your armor’s deflect value and any relevant ability modifiers, then subtract 5 for each injury you already carry — the result can go negative. −6 or lower is death; −5 to 0 is a permanent injury; 1 to 5 is a vicious injury lasting 6d6 days; 6 to 15 is a shallow injury lasting 1d6 days; 16 or more is a flesh wound that clears after a long rest.
Inquiry	The conversation type where one party wants information and another would rather withhold it — anything from casual fact-finding to a formal interrogation. If the information turns out to have a price, an Inquiry becomes a Negotiation.
Invested	What an item becomes while it holds Stormlight or is otherwise tied to the Cognitive or Spiritual Realm. Surges cannot target an Invested item — Shardblades and anything currently charged are Invested.
Investigative Web	The map of a Discovery: every clue that can be found, and the leads each one opens toward other clues, with one or more paths reaching the objective. The party starts with two to four leads and follows them in branches rather than a line. The endeavor ends when they reach the objective through the web.
Investiture	The spiritual pool that fuels Surgebinding, Allomancy and other magic — on Roshar, the ability to hold Stormlight. A character has none until they take a Radiant path, at which point the maximum is 2 + the higher of Awareness and Presence.
Keen	Effects that slice, puncture, or impale — a dagger, an arrow, a row of sharpened spikes. Deflect reduces it.
Larkin	A critically endangered winged crustacean that feeds on Investiture, draining Light from gems, fabrials, and living beings — Radiants and Fused included. Modern larkin run between a hand and a forearm in length, but one that has consumed enough Investiture can be returned to its ancestral homeland to grow into a greater larkin, possibly more than once.
Lead Line	One chain of clues in an investigative web, opened by a starting lead. Each clue found can uncover the next in its line or open a fresh line, usually on a test matching how the character went about it — though a good enough bribe can skip the test.
Leader	The heroic path of poised commanders — Champion, Officer, Politico. Starting skill: Leadership.
Lifting Capacity	The heaviest weight a character can lift in one attempt, set by Strength — 100 lb at 0, rising to 10,000 lb at 9 or more. Carrying capacity is half of it; exceeding that leaves a character Slowed, and an hour of it makes them Exhausted.
Lightweaving	Illumination’s basic effect: infuse an illusion into thin air anywhere in your spren bond range. A simple, silent object costs 1 Investiture every 10 minutes; a character or anything animated costs 1 a round. A disguise worn by yourself costs nothing beyond holding at least 1 Investiture. Simple illusions and self-disguises convince by default; a complex one may need an Illumination test against a passive viewer’s Cognitive defense, and anyone who scrutinizes it makes a Perception test opposed by your Illumination.
Line of Effect	An unobstructed straight line from any part of you to any part of the target. Most abilities need one.
Loaded [X]	Holds the bracketed number of shots, one spent per ranged attack, and reloads to full for one action. The GM can spend a Complication from an attack to leave the weapon with only one shot remaining.
Long Range	Ranged weapons list two distances as short/long. A test inside short range is normal; one beyond it and within long range gains a disadvantage; beyond that it cannot be made.
Long Rest	An uninterrupted eight hours or more of meaningful rest. Afterwards you recover all lost health and focus, and your Exhausted penalty reduces by 1.
Mass Warfare	A battle is not run as one scene. It is the setting for a whole arc, played as a chain of ordinary combats, conversations and endeavors — briefing a commander, slipping behind the lines, being caught, taking a surrender. Scope it first by troop numbers, expected duration, and how central the party is.
Milestone	One check against a goal, awarded by the GM when a character’s decisions advance it. Roughly one per goal per session, or two on a momentous occasion, with downtime as another route. Three completes the goal.
Minion	The weakest role. A minion’s attacks cannot critically hit, and it is defeated the moment it suffers an injury.
Mission	The endeavor type for urgent, tactically complex work — an infiltration, a heist, a rescue. The GM sets a primary objective, any secondary ones, and a hard in-game time limit, then raises the stakes on most rolls to keep it tense. Players are expected to weigh abandoning objectives as Complications pile up.
Momentum	If you already moved at least 10 feet in a straight line toward the target this turn, the attack gains an advantage.
Movement Rate	How far a character moves per action under pressure, set by Speed — 20 feet at 0, 25 at 1–2, 30 at 3–4, 40 at 5–6, 60 at 7–8, and 80 at 9 or more.
Natural 1	A d20 showing 1 on the die itself. It falls in the default Complication range and grants no bonus. When several d20s are rolled, only the one chosen for the test can grant a Complication.
Natural 20	A d20 showing 20 on the die itself, before any modifier. It falls in the default Opportunity range. When several d20s are rolled, only the one chosen for the test can grant an Opportunity.
Negotiation	The conversation type where each side wants something from the other at the least cost. The GM sets an opening price, whether in marks or in favours, alliances and commitments. If either side stops dealing in good faith, a Negotiation becomes a Scheme.
Non-Invested	What a character becomes when their Investiture hits 0: ongoing Invested effects can no longer be maintained past their remaining duration.
Obstacle	What persistently gets in the way of a character’s purpose — deep regret, a specific fear, spite, self-doubt, mistrust of others. Immutable like purpose, and often its other face: the thing you are best at, pushed too far.
Offhand	Striking with this weapon in your offhand costs 1 focus rather than the usual 2.
Opportunity	A beneficial side effect that lands whether the test succeeds or fails. Spend it to give an ally’s next test advantage, recover 1 focus, turn a hit into a critical hit, or bend the narrative your way with the GM’s approval.
Opportunity Range	The d20 results that earn an Opportunity. It begins and ends at 20 by default, so a natural 20 grants one regardless of the total after modifiers. An effect that expands it lowers the beginning — expanding by 2 makes the range 18 through 20.
Opposed Test	Both characters test, and each result sets the other’s DC. A tie means neither meets their DC, which favours whoever is trying to keep things as they are.
Path	Where a character’s abilities come from, in place of a class. A heroic path grants mundane talents; a Radiant path grants Stormlight and Surges. Characters can branch across several.
Patron	An NPC who backs a character with resources they could not otherwise reach, and expects results for it. A patron grants their own specific benefit plus travel and lodging amenities scaled by tier — comfortable, then wealthy, then aristocratic, then aristocratic with staff. An Alethi highprince lends their authority as advantages on social tests, widening from Persuasion alone to four skills by tier 4, at the risk of a Complication drawing their enemies’ attention. A wealthy trader instead funds an operations budget: 1,000 marks at tier 1 through 50,000 or more at tier 4, granted once per group however many characters share the patron. A Knight Radiant patron makes you their squire after a month.
Physical Defense	The number an attack against the body must meet or beat. Equals 10 + Strength + Speed, plus any bonuses.
Pierce	This weapon’s damage cannot be reduced by the target’s deflect value.
Plot Die	A six-sided die with two blank faces, two Opportunity faces, and two Complication faces. It is not rolled on every test — the GM adds it to raise the stakes on tests that matter, and it can be raised only once per test and never after the d20 is rolled. Standing in for it with an ordinary d6: 1 and 2 are Complications granting +2 and +4, 3 and 4 are blank, and 5 and 6 are Opportunities. NPC tests do not generally use it.
Presentable	The armor trait marking armor as acceptable to wear in a non-military context, exempting it from the disadvantage other armor draws on tests to influence civilians. A uniform carries it outright; leather and a breastplate gain it with expertise, and adorned crafting can add it.
Purpose	A character’s core need and driving force — saving others, seeking truth, pushing past their own limits. It is an ongoing motivation rather than an achievable objective, and it does not change short of a crisis or an epiphany. The character is usually unaware of it; the player is not.
Pursuit	The endeavor type for a chase, on land, in the air or at sea. It is the one built for opposed tests, since both sides are working directly against each other — though a target skilled at what it is tested on can run away with the scene, so the GM should be ready to fall back to static DCs. It uses a distance track rather than a collective threshold.
Quickdraw	Drawing this weapon costs a free action rather than an Interact action.
Radiant Order	One of the ten orders, each defined by the spren it bonds, the Ideals it swears, and the two surges those grant. Nine are open to player characters; the Bondsmiths never number more than three. Some Radiants keep their Ideals but no order at all.
Radiant Shardblade	A Radiant’s spren manifested as a weapon, summoned once they have sworn the Third Ideal. Wielding it lets the pair speak telepathically, though the spren cannot use abilities needing independent movement while in Blade form. It materializes the instant it is drawn rather than taking the ten heartbeats a dead-spren Blade needs, and glows with glyphs unless its Radiant wills it to look dead.
Radiant Shardplate	Armor called from a swarm of common spren, available once a Radiant has sworn the Fourth Ideal. It is weightless, drops neither the Dangerous trait’s risk on allies nor a penalty on Invested tests as ordinary Plate does, refills every charge over a long rest, and can be summoned or dismissed piece by piece. It can also be summoned around another character — granting them Plate’s benefits while leaving them Restrained.
Raising the Stakes	The GM calls for the Plot Die alongside the d20 on a test that matters — one that drives the mission, plays to a character’s purpose or goals, or carries real tension.
Reach	Anywhere in your line of effect within 5 feet of your space, unless a weapon or effect extends it. Melee attacks require it.
Reaction	A response to a specific trigger on someone else’s turn. A character can typically use one reaction between each of their turns.
Recovery Die	The die rolled to restore health and focus when a character catches their breath or is treated. Its size is set by Willpower.
Recuperating	Downtime dedicated to rest and recovery. Each such day counts as two toward healing an injury.
Regenerate	A free action: spend 1 Investiture to recover 1d6 + tier health. Usable even while Unconscious.
Resist Influence	What a character spends focus on when a social test lands on them: 2 focus against a reasonably persuasive contribution, 4 against an extremely strong one. The GM can rule that an argument is so telling, or so aligned with what an NPC wants, that they simply do not resist. At 0 focus a character can no longer resist anything, and generally concedes the point or checks out of the scene. Any effect aimed at "a character you can influence" can be shrugged off the same way, for 2 focus.
Reward	The major boon for concluding a goal, or for a story moment that plainly earns one. The categories are companions, fabrials and high-quality gems, Ideals, patrons, Shards, and titles — each banded by the character’s tier. A reward need not be the one the goal was aimed at.
Rhythm	The tones suffusing Roshar that singers attune to convey emotion. A singer can attune a false rhythm to mislead a listener.
Rival	The baseline role, carrying no extra rules and posing a standard challenge.
Role	An adversary’s weight class — Minion, Rival or Boss — printed on the details line beside tier, size and type. Role sets both how complex the adversary is to run and how much threat it adds to an encounter.
Round	About ten seconds, run in four phases: fast player turns, fast adversary turns, slow player turns, slow adversary turns. Within a phase the table picks the order, or highest Speed goes first. An effect measured in rounds notes which phase it began in and runs until the beginning of that same phase next round; one that names its own ending, such as "the end of your next turn", ends there whether that turn was fast or slow.
Scene	A stretch of story zoomed in far enough that individual actions carry consequences. Most fall into one of three shapes — a combat, a conversation, or an endeavor, the last covering travel, exploration, pursuit and stealth, where the opposition is the situation rather than a person. A scene can turn into another kind mid-flow, and statistics carry from one into the next.
Scheme	The conversation type where at least one party is duping another, and the mark believes they are in some other kind of conversation entirely. The GM asks up front for the cover story, the goal, and what groundwork was laid — testing for that groundwork. Unveiling a Scheme usually ends the scene, into a fight or an exit.
Scholar	The heroic path of thinkers who excel at planning and building — Artifabrian, Strategist, Surgeon. Starting skill: Lore.
Senses Range	How far a character can perceive by other faculties when their primary sense is obscured. Set by Awareness; beyond it, things cannot be detected at all.
Shardblade	An Invested blade that cuts non-living matter like water and passes through living bodies to sever the soul instead, leaving what is beyond the cut gray and lifeless; through spine or head it kills outright. Bonding one takes about five days, after which it summons from mist ten heartbeats after being drawn. It deals spirit damage, which deflect does not reduce.
Shardplate	Full-body Invested armor: deflect 5, four charges, and Enhanced [+2 Strength] and [+2 Speed] while worn. Spend a charge before taking damage to add 10 to your deflect against it. Invested ability tests both by and against the wearer take a disadvantage, and deflect applies to every damage type. An opponent can spend an Opportunity on a hit to knock a charge loose; at zero charges it stops working, loses both those traits, and becomes Cumbersome [6] dead weight of 1,400 pounds.
Shards	Blade and Plate, the rarest rewards on Roshar and never purchasable with currency — they change hands through marriage, debt, duel, or killing the bearer. A Shardblade is a tier 2 reward and Shardplate a tier 3 one, and a duel for one is rarely offered to anyone without a Shard of their own to wager. The Ryshadium is sometimes counted the third Shard, and is granted as a companion.
Short Rest	An uninterrupted hour or more spent relaxing, recovering and tending wounds. Afterwards you roll your recovery die and split the result between health and focus however you like.
Size	The space a character controls in combat: Small 2.5 feet, Medium 5, Large 10, Huge 15, and Gargantuan 20 or more at the GM’s discretion.
Skill Modifier	The number added to a skill’s d20 test. Equals that skill’s ranks plus its governing attribute score, plus any bonuses or penalties.
Skill Rank	Training bought into a single skill. Ranks are capped by tier of play — 2 at tier 1, rising to 5 by tier 4 — and combine with an attribute to form the skill modifier.
Skill Test	Roll one d20, add the relevant skill modifier and any bonuses or penalties, and compare the total to the difficulty class. Meeting or beating the DC succeeds.
Slow Turn	A turn taken late in the round in exchange for three actions rather than two.
Social	The conversation type spent forming bonds, impressing allies, and building connections. Earnest, though not necessarily wholly truthful — hidden agendas are welcome, and the moment anyone acts on one it becomes whichever type fits.
Soulcaster	The fabrial that mimics Transformation, though nearly all of them convert material into one Essence only and never the reverse. Its charges stand in for Investiture, it needs a hand holding it rather than a hand free, and a Complication can break one of its three gems.
Soulcasting	Transformation’s basic effect: touch a non-living object within reach and make a Transformation test. Materials fall into categories, and the DC is 10 for a shift of one category, rising by 5 for each further one — stone into metal is DC 10, metal out of clear air DC 25. On a success spend Investiture equal to the ranks that size needs: 1 for Small through 5 for Gargantuan. Living material, characters and plants alike, is out of reach until a talent opens it.
Spanreed	A paired writing fabrial that lets two bearers hold a written conversation at any distance. Both reeds must be stationary, and a pair spends 1 charge per 5 days active.
Specialist Expertise	Covers restricted knowledge — Shardblades, Shardplate, fabrial crafting, singer and Radiant history. It cannot be taken with an expertise from Intellect; only a talent, reward, or the GM grants one.
Sphere	Roshar’s currency and its light: a gemstone in a glass bead, worth more as the gem grows from chip to mark to broam and as the stone runs from diamond up through emerald. A sphere holding Stormlight is infused and keeps it about five days; an empty one is dun. The game prices everything in diamond marks, abbreviated mk.
Spirit	Effects that damage the physical and spiritual self at once, dealt mostly by Shardblades and by a few surges. Deflect does not reduce it.
Spiritual Defense	The number an attack against the soul or Connection must meet or beat. Equals 10 + Awareness + Presence, plus any bonuses.
Spiritual Injury	The injury a Shardblade inflicts. Its roll uses a separate, far harsher table and adds no deflect: 16 or more is a flesh wound lasting the rest of the day, 1 through 15 is a permanent injury that non-Invested healing cannot mend, and 0 or lower is death.
Spren Bond	The Nahel bond — the symbiosis that lets a spren manifest in the Physical Realm and grants their Radiant Surgebinding and the ability to breathe Stormlight. A bonded spren has no stat block and takes no turns of its own.
Spren Bond Range	How far a newly bonded spren can stray before temporarily losing its sapience. It starts at 30 feet, and a deepened bond raises it to 100.
Squeeze	Moving into a space one size smaller than yours. You are Slowed and attacks against you gain an advantage.
Squire	A trusted ally granted a portion of a Radiant’s power without bonding a spren. Within 50 miles of their Radiant they hold Investiture up to a maximum of 2 and can use the Stormlight actions. A Radiant may keep as many squires as the number of the Ideal they have sworn.
Stoneshaping	Cohesion’s basic effect: infuse unattended stone within reach for 1 Investiture a round and it softens like clay, resolidifying in its new shape when the infusion ends. A rough shape comes free with the activation; moderate work costs an Interact, and intricate work a Use a Skill and a Cohesion test. Anything still caught in the stone when it hardens is Immobilized, and possibly Restrained.
Stormlight	Roshar’s form of Investiture, stored in infused spheres and drawn from the highstorm. A character usually starts a scene with full Investiture — but only 1 if they begin it Surprised.
Surge Attack	Resolved by the ordinary attacking rules, with three things worth remembering: a test to hit something you cannot sense gains a disadvantage, a hit adds your surge skill modifier to the damage, and a miss can still be bought back as a graze for 1 focus per target.
Surge Ranks	An Invested adversary lists both numbers for each surge — "Abrasion +7 (3 ranks)" — because the two do different jobs. The modifier resolves the test; the ranks set the power and size of the surge itself. A stat block’s features and actions are simplified versions with the ranks already folded in, so running them as printed needs no reference to the ranks at all. They matter when a GM reaches past the simplified version for the full surge rules.
Surge Scaling	Ranks in a surge set both its dice and its reach: 1 rank rolls d4 and affects Small, 2 rolls d6 and Medium, 3 rolls d8 and Large, 4 rolls d10 and Huge, 5 rolls d12 and Gargantuan.
Surge Size	The largest thing a surge can affect, or the largest area it can cover, set by ranks in that surge. An object cannot be infused if its width, length, or height exceeds it.
Surge Skill	A skill unlocked by a Radiant path, tested exactly as a basic skill and drawing ranks from the same pool. The ten are Adhesion, Gravitation, Division, Abrasion, Progression, Illumination, Transformation, Transportation, Cohesion and Tension, and each is wielded by exactly two orders. A surge is unusable until something grants a first rank in it — for most Radiants that is the First Ideal, which grants their order’s two.
Surgebinding	Surgebinding is the Rosharan magic granted by a bond with a spren, letting a Radiant wield two of the ten Surges.
Talent	An ability chosen from a path’s tree on gaining a level. Each requires the talent before it, and a path’s first is its key talent. Two abilities of the same name never stack, whichever paths they came from.
Threat Value	What an adversary contributes to an encounter’s difficulty. At the party’s own tier a Minion is 0.5, a Rival 1 and a Boss 4. Each tier the adversary sits above the party doubles its value; each tier below halves it, rounded to the nearest quarter. Add the values up and match a target: half the party size for an easy scene, the party size for an average one, and one and a half times it for a hard one — which a party can rarely take more than once between long rests.
Thrown [X/Y]	Can be thrown as a ranged attack at the bracketed short and long ranges, taking a disadvantage beyond short range. Once thrown it is gone until recovered from the target.
Ticking Clock	A Mission’s time limit. Each completed round advances it, and the GM can spend a Complication to advance it further by however much they judge. Past the limit, every additional round triggers trouble of increasing severity rather than ending the scene outright.
Tier of Play	The five bands a character advances through — levels 1–5, 6–10, 11–15, 16–20, and 21 and up. Tier sets the scope of the story and caps skill ranks.
Title	A rank or nobility granted for deeds, carrying privileges, responsibilities, holdings and sometimes a fitting expertise. By tier: a lieutenant or cell leader with a small estate, then a captain or branch leader with a camp, archive network or large estate, then a highmarshal or spymaster with a palatial one, then a general or member of the Five with a warcamp or palace.
Total Threat	The collective danger of every adversary in a combat scene, summed from their individual threat values and measured against the party to set the encounter’s difficulty.
Two-Handed	Must be wielded in both hands, and an attack with it uses both. A character can wield two weapons or one Two-Handed weapon, never more.
Unarmed Attack	A melee attack made with Athletics, always available and never disarmable, dealing impact damage set by Strength: a flat 1 at 0–2, then 1d4, 1d8, 2d6, and 2d10 at 9 or more. It still uses a hand, so a Strike with it blocks a Strike with whatever that hand holds.
Unencased Gem	A gem with no glass around it. It leaks Stormlight within days, but that permeability is what lets it recharge fabrials and Shardplate, and lets a Radiant breathe from it as though from a sphere.
Utility Expertise	An expertise covering a practical craft or body of knowledge rather than a culture.
Venomous Attack	An example modification for a companion’s attack: on a hit it can spend 1 focus to leave the target Afflicted [1d4 vital] until they regain at least 1 health. Its counterpart, Powerful Attack, simply steps the damage die up a size.
Vital	Effects that put your constitution to the test — poison, suffocation, extreme cold. Deflect does not reduce it.
Voidbinding	Voidbinding is the Odium-touched counterpart to Surgebinding, wielded by the Fused and their kin.
Voidlight	Odium’s form of Investiture, as Stormlight is Honor’s. Lifelight and the hybrid Towerlight are others.
Warrior	The heroic path of fighters relying on skill, strength, or indomitable will — Duelist, Shardbearer, Soldier. Starting skill: Athletics.
Weapon Expertise	Covers wielding and maintaining one type of weapon, and unlocks that weapon’s expert traits.

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Rules

Cosmere RPG · 201 entries

201 entries

Rule	Summary
Action	A character typically has two or three actions on their turn. An ability costs one, two, or three of them, and several actions can be combined into one longer effort.
Activation	How an ability is triggered: one, two or three actions, a free action, a reaction, a special activation, or always active.
Advantage	For each advantage, pick one die the test will roll — the d20, the plot die, or a damage die — roll two of it and keep the better result. Each die can be chosen only once per test, so two advantages must fall on two different dice.
Against the Odds	Once per Exploration, the party meets a peril beyond ordinary survival and every character tests separately against it; each one who fails suffers it. The printed perils: Dehydration DC 14, losing all but 1 focus; Drained Spheres DC 10, half your spheres going dun; Lost Energy DC 14, Exhausted [−1]; Obscured Senses DC 18, Disoriented for the rest of the scene; Ruined Clothing DC 15, disadvantage on Persuasion and Leadership until you bathe and armor losing Presentable until repaired; Tainted Food DC 12, 2d4 vital.
Agent	The heroic path of operatives who solve problems with a keen mind or deft hand — Investigator, Spy, Thief. Starting skill: Insight.
Allomancy	Allomancy is the Scadrian magic of burning ingested metals to produce a specific effect per metal.
Ancestry	The species a character descends from. Roshar has two — human and singer. Ancestry sets size and grants bonus talents at the start of each tier; it is separate from culture.
Animal Companion	An animal befriended as a goal reward, run from an ordinary stat block under the adversary rules and controlled by the GM — it acts in your interests but never against its own instincts. It resolves 0 health as a third case, neither PC nor adversary: it falls Unconscious like a character but cannot choose to wake. Only healing to at least 1 health, or a recovery die rolled on a short rest, brings it back, and one left somewhere it cannot be safely recovered may be lost for good.
Anti-Light	The inverse of a form of Light, violently destructive on contact with its opposite. It cannot fuel surges, and wielding it endangers both bearer and spren.
Armor	Only one type can be worn at a time, and none can be donned or removed mid-combat. Deflect by type: uniform 0, leather 1, chain 2, breastplate 2, half plate 3, full plate 4, Shardplate 5. Chain, breastplate, half plate and full plate are Cumbersome at Strength 3, 3, 4 and 5; Shardplate is not, until its charges run out. Armor in a non-military setting draws a disadvantage on tests to influence civilians unless it is Presentable.
Armor Expertise	Covers wearing and maintaining one type of non-Invested armor, and unlocks that armor’s expert traits.
Attack Test	A skill test made against a defence, rolled alongside the damage dice — which are never added to the test itself. The Strike action and adversary attacks default to Physical defence; other abilities name their own.
Basic Lashing	Gravitation’s basic effect: for 1 Investiture a round, a character or object within reach falls in a direction you name, at your gravitation rate — 25 feet to start with. A willing character gains that as a flying rate; an object travels that far in a straight line at the start of each of your turns. An unwilling one takes a Gravitation test against Physical defense and is Restrained until the start of your next turn. Nothing moves fast enough to hurt on impact, but anything still aloft when the surge ends falls and takes the damage for it.
Battle Phase	One objective for the party’s side, covering several scenes, after which the battle moves to whichever phase that success or failure leads to. If the party is central the phase waits on them; if they are not, it can end mid-effort and swing the battle while they are busy elsewhere. The GM keeps at least one event running throughout.
Betting on a Hunch	The out for a failed Discovery: the party pools what few clues they have and names their answer. Right, and the Discovery counts as a success. Wrong, and they carry on believing it — and meet the consequences later.
Bolster an Ally	A contribution that encourages or reassures someone, recovering them some focus. In a long conversation it is the counterweight to being worn down, which makes it far more valuable than it looks.
Boss	Built to challenge a whole party. A boss takes both a fast turn and a slow turn each round, can spend 1 focus after an enemy’s turn for an extra action or reaction, and can spend 1 focus on its turn to shed a condition.
Breathe Stormlight	The action drawing Stormlight from infused spheres within 5 feet, recovering Investiture. Usable even while Unconscious.
Broam	The largest sphere, holding a two-carat gem — 4 marks or 20 chips as a diamond, and far more in a better stone.
Change Form	A singer bonds a spren during a highstorm to take on a new form, gaining its statistic increases and abilities until they change again. Only one form at a time.
Charges	Stormlight stored in an item, spent to trigger its effect. Recharging during a short rest costs one unencased gem or 1 Investiture per charge, or a highstorm refills it outright. Shardplate and half-shards are the expensive exception, at 5 per charge.
Clue	One findable piece of a Discovery, reached by a test that suits the approach. Every clue can uncover the next in its lead line until the final piece lands.
Cognitive Defense	The number an attack against the mind must meet or beat. Equals 10 + Intellect + Willpower, plus any bonuses.
Collective Threshold	The GM tracks the party’s total successes and failures toward an objective; reaching the successes wins the endeavor, hitting the failures first loses it. By complexity: Simple 4 successes and 3 failures, Average 8 and 4, Intricate 9 and 4, Insurmountable 11 and 5. It is a pacing guide rather than a rule — something spectacular can count double, a creative solution can bypass it, and the GM can quietly ask for one more success while lowering the DCs to keep things moving. Usually kept secret.
Companion	An NPC dedicated to a character, run by the GM and statted from an ordinary profile. How many, and of what role, is set by tier: one Minion at tier 1; two Minions or a Rival at tier 2; three Minions or a Rival at tier 3; five Minions, two Rivals or a Boss at tier 4 and up. A companion below its character’s tier is topped up rather than left behind — at tier 2 a Minion gains +2 to all tests and +10 health, at tier 3 +4 and +20, at tier 4 and up +6 and +40, while a Rival gains +2 and +10 at tier 3 and +4 and +20 above it.
Companion Features	The example features a companion can carry, several choosing one option from a set: Aquatic, Climber, Furtive or Spry, so that swimming, climbing, sneaking or difficult terrain no longer imposes Slowed; Carapace or Shell for +2 deflect; Enhanced Senses for an advantage on non-attack tests using the primary sense; Evasive, Skyborn or Slippery to stop triggering Reactive Strikes while moving, flying or swimming; Fleet for +10 feet of a movement rate; Flight for a 30-foot flying rate; Hearty for +10 health; Jumper to jump twice as far untested; Nimble to pass through enemy spaces and share a willing ally’s, where it cannot be grazed and attacks against it take a disadvantage; Skilled for an extra skill rank, rising to two at tier 2 and three at tier 3; and Sleek to count one size smaller when squeezing.
Complication	A detrimental side effect that lands whether the test succeeds or fails. The GM spends it to give a player character’s next test disadvantage, cost you 1 focus, or introduce a narrative drawback. A Complication rolled on the Plot Die also grants a bonus to that d20 roll — the value shown inside the symbol.
Complication Range	The d20 results that earn a Complication. It begins and ends at 1 by default, so a natural 1 grants one. An effect that expands it raises the end — expanding by 3 makes the range 1 through 4. Unlike a Plot Die Complication, this grants no bonus to the test. Expansions stack only when they come from differently named effects.
Concluding a Goal	What happens at three milestones, at whatever later moment plays best — the player chooses when to call it. Concluding is not the same as achieving: a goal can close through success, through growth when a character outgrows or reframes it, or through outright failure. All three earn the reward.
Contribution	One meaningful push on a conversation, made in character or described in the third person. Most work toward one of five outcomes: influencing a person, helping an ally or hindering an opponent, bolstering an ally, gathering information, or simply interjecting flavor — the last of which has no rules at all.
Conversation	The social scene type: two or more characters pursuing goals through dialogue. It runs far looser than a combat, with no initiative and no concrete clock — a round is simply everyone who wanted to contribute having had the chance. Any scene can turn into one, and a conversation can turn into a combat.
Cover	An obstacle blocking an enemy’s line of effect. Within 5 feet of it you can Brace to give incoming attacks a disadvantage.
Critical Hit	Spend an Opportunity on a hit to maximize every damage die against all of that attack’s targets. Minions cannot land one.
Cultural Expertise	An expertise covering a nation or people — its geography, institutions, customs and language. Roshar’s named ones are Alethi, Azish, Herdazian, Iriali, Kharbranthian, Listener, Natan, Reshi, Shin, Thaylen, Unkalaki and Veden.
Culture	Where a character’s cultural awareness lies, chosen as expertises rather than fixed by birth. A character picks two at creation, and they need not match their ancestry.
Cumbersome [X]	Usable easily only by a character whose Strength is at least the bracketed number. Below it, a weapon gives a disadvantage on every attack with it and leaves you Slowed while wielding it; armor leaves you Slowed and gives a disadvantage on every test using Speed.
Customizing a Stat Block	Rename an existing profile and trade pieces rather than pile them on: for each skill, beneficial feature or custom action added, remove or reduce an existing one, so the result is about as strong as it started. Drop anything that no longer fits the creature. A profile borrowed from the World Guide also loses its Opportunities and Complications section, which does not apply to companions.
Damage From a Hit	A hit adds the attacker’s skill modifier for the attacking skill to the damage dealt, on top of the damage dice.
Dangerous	On a weapon, the GM can spend a Complication from an attack to graze an ally within its reach or range for the usual graze damage. On armor, the GM can spend a Complication you gain while wearing it to have your own uncontrolled motion injure an ally within 5 feet for 2d6.
Dangerous Terrain	Ground that harms you on entering it or starting a turn in it — spikes for 1d4 keen, fire for 1d8 energy, highstorm winds for 1d12 impact.
Deadly	On a hit, spend an Opportunity to make the target suffer an injury immediately.
Death	The end of an injury roll of −6 or lower. A dying character holds on long enough for a few final words before their Cognitive aspect leaves the body. Their active surges end unless those cost Investiture each round; infusions already placed on their body or gear run until that Investiture is spent.
Defeated	What an adversary becomes at 0 health. Most are assumed dead; a narratively significant one, or any felled by non-lethal intent, instead falls Unconscious with an injury and stays down until something restores at least 1 health.
Defensive	While wielding this weapon you can use the Brace action with no cover nearby.
Deflect	A flat reduction, granted mostly by armor, applied to impact, keen, and energy damage before it reaches Health. Spirit and vital damage ignore it, as does any weapon with the Pierce trait. A character in no armor — or in a uniform — has a deflect of 0. It is also added to an injury roll.
Deflect Source	The parenthetical after an adversary’s deflect value, naming where the protection comes from — "leather", "chain", "carapace". Often only flavour, but if it names an actual piece of armor, the party may be able to take it off the body once the adversary is defeated.
Difficult Terrain	Ground that must be scrambled or slogged through. You are Slowed while moving through it.
Difficulty Class	The target number a skill test must meet or beat to succeed. The reference band is Easy 10, Medium 15, Hard 20, Very Hard 25, Nearly Impossible 30, gauged against an average person rather than a player character. A test against another character usually takes its DC from the matching defense.
Disadvantage	As advantage, but the GM picks the die and keeps the worse of the two results. Advantages and disadvantages cancel one for one.
Discovery	The endeavor type for investigating a mystery. It is the one that does not use a success threshold at all — an investigative web replaces it — though the GM may still track failures. Budget ten to thirty minutes of prep, or defer the scene rather than improvise it.
Discreet	Easily concealed. Outside combat you gain an advantage on any test to disguise the weapon, hide it on your person, or talk someone out of confiscating it.
Distance Track	How a Pursuit is scored: an abstract gap, not a real one. The GM sets a starting distance and an escape distance, and every test moves the gap by 1 — closing when a pursuer succeeds or a target fails, widening when a target succeeds or a pursuer fails. At 0 the target is caught; at the escape distance it is gone. Suggested pairs: 2 and 4 through a keep’s hallways, 3 and 6 fleeing a chasmfiend, 4 and 8 across a cityscape.
Downtime	The open time between scenes, long enough for characters to pursue their own ends rather than the party’s. The GM sets how long it runs and what constrains it, then resolves each character’s plan in turn — crafting, working a profession, recuperating, researching, training, or self-reflection.
Drop	A free action letting go of any number of objects you are holding — typically used just before an Interact draws a different weapon.
Dun	A sphere or gem with no Stormlight left in it. A highstorm renews it.
Endeavor	The scene type where the opposition is the situation rather than a person — traversing, exploring, infiltrating, chasing, investigating. Rounds are informal, as in a conversation: everyone gets a turn to describe what they are doing, and how much time a round covers ebbs with the story. It runs until the objective is met or lost, or another scene swallows it.
Energy	Effects of heat and energy — fire and lightning among them. Deflect reduces it.
Enhance	Spend 1 Investiture to become Enhanced [Strength +1] and Enhanced [Speed +1] until the end of your next turn, maintainable for 1 Investiture a turn.
Envoy	The heroic path of insightful negotiators — Diplomat, Faithful, Mentor. Starting skill: Discipline.
Event	An optional GM tool: something looming that counts down to a moment which will shake up the scene — a highstorm closing in, a crowd’s outrage building, reinforcements arriving. Think of it as an Opportunity or Complication with a much larger blast radius. It runs beside the scene’s own objective rather than being it, and two or three a session is the usual dose.
Event Track	The slots an event fills before it triggers — at least two, Opportunity or Complication, the mix chosen by the GM. Whenever a plot die is rolled while the event is on the table, that result can be spent to fill a slot instead of doing what it would normally do, which is the trade the whole tool runs on: an immediate benefit now, or a step toward something far bigger. Players spend Opportunities into positive events and the GM spends Complications into negative ones; an enemy NPC’s results push the opposite way. Two tracks can run at once, racing each other.
Expert Trait	A rule on a weapon or piece of armor that applies only to someone with the matching expertise. Some grant a benefit; others strip an unwanted trait instead — expertise in Longswords drops the Two-Handed trait, and expertise in Chain Armor drops its Cumbersome trait.
Expertise	A word or phrase naming a subject a character specialises in. It can let them simply know something another character would have to test for.
Exploration	The endeavor type for crossing hostile or unknown ground, whether the objective is a destination or something to find within an area. A relevant expertise or reward — a patron with reach in the region, say — can turn a test into an automatic success at the GM’s discretion.
Fabrial	A device built around a spren trapped in a gemstone, powered by charges of Stormlight. An Interact action activates one; it spends a charge, produces its effect for the stated duration, then keeps spending until switched off or emptied. Alerters, spanreeds, heatrials, Soulcasters and half-shards are all fabrials.
Falling	A fall of 10 feet or more deals 1d6 impact damage per 10 feet on landing, and leaves you Prone if it dealt any.
Fast Turn	A turn taken early in the round for only two actions. The choice can be made any time in the round and changed the next.
Feature	An adversary rule that needs no action, free action or reaction to use — the equivalent of a character’s always-active or special abilities.
Feruchemy	Feruchemy stores an attribute in a metalmind to be drawn back out later, trading strength now for strength then.
First Ideal	The oath every order shares — "Life before death. Strength before weakness. Journey before destination." Speaking it grants a Radiant their order’s two surge skills, with a free rank in each.
Flying Rate	A separate rate used instead of your movement rate, never both in one move. Ranged attacks made while flying take a disadvantage for unstable footing, and being knocked Prone means falling.
Focus	The cognitive pool representing mental resolve and resistance to distraction and distress. A character’s maximum equals 2 + Willpower, plus any bonuses. In a conversation it does the work health does in a fight: it is what you spend to resist being influenced, and an NPC at 0 focus can no longer resist at all.
Food and Water	Tracked by the day, and only when access is genuinely in doubt. You can go without food for as many days as your Willpower score before each further day makes you Exhausted [−1]; eating a day’s worth resets the count without clearing the exhaustion. Water allows no such grace — every day without it costs a point. Reaching Exhausted [−10] kills.
Forced Movement	Being pushed or pulled. It ignores your movement rate and never triggers a Reactive Strike.
Fragile	The GM can spend a Complication from an attack with this weapon to break it once the attack resolves. Improvised weapons always carry it.
Free Action	An activity that costs neither an action nor a reaction — bantering mid-fight, for instance — and stays available after every action is spent.
Full Lashing	Adhesion’s basic effect: for 1 Investiture a round, stick together two unsecured objects within your reach and within 5 feet of each other — or one object and a surface of any size at all. It cannot touch characters, Invested objects, or anything already infused. Breaking one is an Athletics test opposed by your Adhesion, and the objects usually give way before the bond does.
Gather Information	A contribution spent scrutinizing a person or the room. The GM either hands you what you were after, or asks for a skill test against the target’s Spiritual or Cognitive defense.
Goal	A concrete objective a character is chasing, and the way the game measures their development. A character starts with one or two and gains more in play. Each carries three milestone boxes, and filling all three lets the player conclude it for a reward.
Gravitation Rate	How far a Basic Lashing moves its target, and the flying rate it grants a willing one. It begins at 25 feet, and talents raise it.
Graze	A miss bought back: after failing an attack test you may spend 1 focus per target to graze instead, dealing the damage dice alone. A hit adds your skill modifier on top; a graze does not. Some attacks state that they cannot graze.
Half-Shard	A two-handed kite shield with an augmenter fabrial that lets it turn a Shardblade. Spend its charge before taking damage to add 10 to your deflect against that attack and have deflect apply to every damage type until it resolves. A standard one holds a single charge, and restoring it costs 5 Investiture or 5 gems.
Health	The physical pool representing stamina and resistance to minor injury. At level 1 a character’s maximum equals 10 + Strength, and it grows each level thereafter. Damage comes off it, less deflect where the type allows; reaching 0 leaves a character Unconscious with an injury, and every further hit taken at 0 inflicts another.
Health Range	The band printed beside an adversary’s health, as in "60 (48-72)". It is a dial rather than a roll: run the adversary anywhere inside it to soften or sharpen a fight after the roster is set, or to vary a group of otherwise identical profiles. Lower health keeps a weak party’s momentum going; higher health lets a strong one spend its abilities.
Hemalurgy	Hemalurgy steals an ability from one person and grants it to another through a spiked metal, always at a cost.
Hit	A successful attack test. Damage equals the total rolled on the damage dice plus your modifier for the skill the attack used.
Hunter	The heroic path of sharpshooters and outdoorsfolk — Archer, Assassin, Tracker. Starting skill: Perception.
Ideal	One of the five oaths an order lives by. Each is a goal progressed by marking three milestones, then sworn aloud in a scene. Taking a path’s First Ideal key talent hands you the goal outright, and an Ideal goal cannot be set any other way. The talents gating them open at levels 2, 4, 8 and 13. Acting against a sworn Ideal repeatedly costs a Radiant their highest Ideal and can eventually kill their spren.
Immunity	An effect an adversary ignores outright, usually a condition. Immunities are GM-adjudicated, and players may find creative ways around them.
Impact	Effects that crush or bludgeon — a hammer blow, a flying boulder, a fall. Deflect reduces it.
Improvised Weapon	Any object you can pick up. The GM names the ordinary light or heavy weapon it most resembles and you attack as that, plus the Fragile trait.
Indirect	This ranged weapon arcs its shots. You can attack a target you can sense but have no line of effect to, so long as the projectile has a reasonable path, and the target cannot Brace against it.
Individual Threshold	The same success-and-failure counting, tracked per character rather than for the party, for an endeavor where everyone is working a different angle.
Influence a Person	The contribution most conversations turn on. Test a skill against the target’s Spiritual or Cognitive defense, whichever matches the skill you used; the GM can shift that DC, and your approach can earn advantage or disadvantage. Succeeding does not settle it — the target may still spend focus to resist.
Infusion	Investiture spent into an object so a surge continues without you there. It expends 1 at the start of each of your turns and ends when it runs dry, so infusing more up front simply buys more rounds. A surge on yourself needs no lump sum — it draws from your current Investiture each round until you end it, no action required — and surges continue even while you are Unconscious. At the start of your turn, before infusions expend, you can add Investiture to one within range, and several can run at once. Outside combat that round is longer: roughly a minute in a conversation, 1 to 10 minutes in an endeavor, and about 10 minutes when no scene is running at all.
Injury	A lasting wound, tracked separately from lost health. You always suffer one on being reduced to 0 health and on each hit taken at 0 health; talents, weapon traits and the GM can inflict them too. The player decides the effect — the suggestions table offers Exhausted, Slowed, Disoriented, Surprised, or the use of only one hand — and always has the final say on how it plays. A minor NPC that suffers one is defeated outright.
Injury Roll	Not a skill test: roll a d20, add your armor’s deflect value and any relevant ability modifiers, then subtract 5 for each injury you already carry — the result can go negative. −6 or lower is death; −5 to 0 is a permanent injury; 1 to 5 is a vicious injury lasting 6d6 days; 6 to 15 is a shallow injury lasting 1d6 days; 16 or more is a flesh wound that clears after a long rest.
Inquiry	The conversation type where one party wants information and another would rather withhold it — anything from casual fact-finding to a formal interrogation. If the information turns out to have a price, an Inquiry becomes a Negotiation.
Invested	What an item becomes while it holds Stormlight or is otherwise tied to the Cognitive or Spiritual Realm. Surges cannot target an Invested item — Shardblades and anything currently charged are Invested.
Investigative Web	The map of a Discovery: every clue that can be found, and the leads each one opens toward other clues, with one or more paths reaching the objective. The party starts with two to four leads and follows them in branches rather than a line. The endeavor ends when they reach the objective through the web.
Investiture	The spiritual pool that fuels Surgebinding, Allomancy and other magic — on Roshar, the ability to hold Stormlight. A character has none until they take a Radiant path, at which point the maximum is 2 + the higher of Awareness and Presence.
Keen	Effects that slice, puncture, or impale — a dagger, an arrow, a row of sharpened spikes. Deflect reduces it.
Larkin	A critically endangered winged crustacean that feeds on Investiture, draining Light from gems, fabrials, and living beings — Radiants and Fused included. Modern larkin run between a hand and a forearm in length, but one that has consumed enough Investiture can be returned to its ancestral homeland to grow into a greater larkin, possibly more than once.
Lead Line	One chain of clues in an investigative web, opened by a starting lead. Each clue found can uncover the next in its line or open a fresh line, usually on a test matching how the character went about it — though a good enough bribe can skip the test.
Leader	The heroic path of poised commanders — Champion, Officer, Politico. Starting skill: Leadership.
Lifting Capacity	The heaviest weight a character can lift in one attempt, set by Strength — 100 lb at 0, rising to 10,000 lb at 9 or more. Carrying capacity is half of it; exceeding that leaves a character Slowed, and an hour of it makes them Exhausted.
Lightweaving	Illumination’s basic effect: infuse an illusion into thin air anywhere in your spren bond range. A simple, silent object costs 1 Investiture every 10 minutes; a character or anything animated costs 1 a round. A disguise worn by yourself costs nothing beyond holding at least 1 Investiture. Simple illusions and self-disguises convince by default; a complex one may need an Illumination test against a passive viewer’s Cognitive defense, and anyone who scrutinizes it makes a Perception test opposed by your Illumination.
Line of Effect	An unobstructed straight line from any part of you to any part of the target. Most abilities need one.
Loaded [X]	Holds the bracketed number of shots, one spent per ranged attack, and reloads to full for one action. The GM can spend a Complication from an attack to leave the weapon with only one shot remaining.
Long Range	Ranged weapons list two distances as short/long. A test inside short range is normal; one beyond it and within long range gains a disadvantage; beyond that it cannot be made.
Long Rest	An uninterrupted eight hours or more of meaningful rest. Afterwards you recover all lost health and focus, and your Exhausted penalty reduces by 1.
Mass Warfare	A battle is not run as one scene. It is the setting for a whole arc, played as a chain of ordinary combats, conversations and endeavors — briefing a commander, slipping behind the lines, being caught, taking a surrender. Scope it first by troop numbers, expected duration, and how central the party is.
Milestone	One check against a goal, awarded by the GM when a character’s decisions advance it. Roughly one per goal per session, or two on a momentous occasion, with downtime as another route. Three completes the goal.
Minion	The weakest role. A minion’s attacks cannot critically hit, and it is defeated the moment it suffers an injury.
Mission	The endeavor type for urgent, tactically complex work — an infiltration, a heist, a rescue. The GM sets a primary objective, any secondary ones, and a hard in-game time limit, then raises the stakes on most rolls to keep it tense. Players are expected to weigh abandoning objectives as Complications pile up.
Momentum	If you already moved at least 10 feet in a straight line toward the target this turn, the attack gains an advantage.
Movement Rate	How far a character moves per action under pressure, set by Speed — 20 feet at 0, 25 at 1–2, 30 at 3–4, 40 at 5–6, 60 at 7–8, and 80 at 9 or more.
Natural 1	A d20 showing 1 on the die itself. It falls in the default Complication range and grants no bonus. When several d20s are rolled, only the one chosen for the test can grant a Complication.
Natural 20	A d20 showing 20 on the die itself, before any modifier. It falls in the default Opportunity range. When several d20s are rolled, only the one chosen for the test can grant an Opportunity.
Negotiation	The conversation type where each side wants something from the other at the least cost. The GM sets an opening price, whether in marks or in favours, alliances and commitments. If either side stops dealing in good faith, a Negotiation becomes a Scheme.
Non-Invested	What a character becomes when their Investiture hits 0: ongoing Invested effects can no longer be maintained past their remaining duration.
Obstacle	What persistently gets in the way of a character’s purpose — deep regret, a specific fear, spite, self-doubt, mistrust of others. Immutable like purpose, and often its other face: the thing you are best at, pushed too far.
Offhand	Striking with this weapon in your offhand costs 1 focus rather than the usual 2.
Opportunity	A beneficial side effect that lands whether the test succeeds or fails. Spend it to give an ally’s next test advantage, recover 1 focus, turn a hit into a critical hit, or bend the narrative your way with the GM’s approval.
Opportunity Range	The d20 results that earn an Opportunity. It begins and ends at 20 by default, so a natural 20 grants one regardless of the total after modifiers. An effect that expands it lowers the beginning — expanding by 2 makes the range 18 through 20.
Opposed Test	Both characters test, and each result sets the other’s DC. A tie means neither meets their DC, which favours whoever is trying to keep things as they are.
Path	Where a character’s abilities come from, in place of a class. A heroic path grants mundane talents; a Radiant path grants Stormlight and Surges. Characters can branch across several.
Patron	An NPC who backs a character with resources they could not otherwise reach, and expects results for it. A patron grants their own specific benefit plus travel and lodging amenities scaled by tier — comfortable, then wealthy, then aristocratic, then aristocratic with staff. An Alethi highprince lends their authority as advantages on social tests, widening from Persuasion alone to four skills by tier 4, at the risk of a Complication drawing their enemies’ attention. A wealthy trader instead funds an operations budget: 1,000 marks at tier 1 through 50,000 or more at tier 4, granted once per group however many characters share the patron. A Knight Radiant patron makes you their squire after a month.
Physical Defense	The number an attack against the body must meet or beat. Equals 10 + Strength + Speed, plus any bonuses.
Pierce	This weapon’s damage cannot be reduced by the target’s deflect value.
Plot Die	A six-sided die with two blank faces, two Opportunity faces, and two Complication faces. It is not rolled on every test — the GM adds it to raise the stakes on tests that matter, and it can be raised only once per test and never after the d20 is rolled. Standing in for it with an ordinary d6: 1 and 2 are Complications granting +2 and +4, 3 and 4 are blank, and 5 and 6 are Opportunities. NPC tests do not generally use it.
Presentable	The armor trait marking armor as acceptable to wear in a non-military context, exempting it from the disadvantage other armor draws on tests to influence civilians. A uniform carries it outright; leather and a breastplate gain it with expertise, and adorned crafting can add it.
Purpose	A character’s core need and driving force — saving others, seeking truth, pushing past their own limits. It is an ongoing motivation rather than an achievable objective, and it does not change short of a crisis or an epiphany. The character is usually unaware of it; the player is not.
Pursuit	The endeavor type for a chase, on land, in the air or at sea. It is the one built for opposed tests, since both sides are working directly against each other — though a target skilled at what it is tested on can run away with the scene, so the GM should be ready to fall back to static DCs. It uses a distance track rather than a collective threshold.
Quickdraw	Drawing this weapon costs a free action rather than an Interact action.
Radiant Order	One of the ten orders, each defined by the spren it bonds, the Ideals it swears, and the two surges those grant. Nine are open to player characters; the Bondsmiths never number more than three. Some Radiants keep their Ideals but no order at all.
Radiant Shardblade	A Radiant’s spren manifested as a weapon, summoned once they have sworn the Third Ideal. Wielding it lets the pair speak telepathically, though the spren cannot use abilities needing independent movement while in Blade form. It materializes the instant it is drawn rather than taking the ten heartbeats a dead-spren Blade needs, and glows with glyphs unless its Radiant wills it to look dead.
Radiant Shardplate	Armor called from a swarm of common spren, available once a Radiant has sworn the Fourth Ideal. It is weightless, drops neither the Dangerous trait’s risk on allies nor a penalty on Invested tests as ordinary Plate does, refills every charge over a long rest, and can be summoned or dismissed piece by piece. It can also be summoned around another character — granting them Plate’s benefits while leaving them Restrained.
Raising the Stakes	The GM calls for the Plot Die alongside the d20 on a test that matters — one that drives the mission, plays to a character’s purpose or goals, or carries real tension.
Reach	Anywhere in your line of effect within 5 feet of your space, unless a weapon or effect extends it. Melee attacks require it.
Reaction	A response to a specific trigger on someone else’s turn. A character can typically use one reaction between each of their turns.
Recovery Die	The die rolled to restore health and focus when a character catches their breath or is treated. Its size is set by Willpower.
Recuperating	Downtime dedicated to rest and recovery. Each such day counts as two toward healing an injury.
Regenerate	A free action: spend 1 Investiture to recover 1d6 + tier health. Usable even while Unconscious.
Resist Influence	What a character spends focus on when a social test lands on them: 2 focus against a reasonably persuasive contribution, 4 against an extremely strong one. The GM can rule that an argument is so telling, or so aligned with what an NPC wants, that they simply do not resist. At 0 focus a character can no longer resist anything, and generally concedes the point or checks out of the scene. Any effect aimed at "a character you can influence" can be shrugged off the same way, for 2 focus.
Reward	The major boon for concluding a goal, or for a story moment that plainly earns one. The categories are companions, fabrials and high-quality gems, Ideals, patrons, Shards, and titles — each banded by the character’s tier. A reward need not be the one the goal was aimed at.
Rhythm	The tones suffusing Roshar that singers attune to convey emotion. A singer can attune a false rhythm to mislead a listener.
Rival	The baseline role, carrying no extra rules and posing a standard challenge.
Role	An adversary’s weight class — Minion, Rival or Boss — printed on the details line beside tier, size and type. Role sets both how complex the adversary is to run and how much threat it adds to an encounter.
Round	About ten seconds, run in four phases: fast player turns, fast adversary turns, slow player turns, slow adversary turns. Within a phase the table picks the order, or highest Speed goes first. An effect measured in rounds notes which phase it began in and runs until the beginning of that same phase next round; one that names its own ending, such as "the end of your next turn", ends there whether that turn was fast or slow.
Scene	A stretch of story zoomed in far enough that individual actions carry consequences. Most fall into one of three shapes — a combat, a conversation, or an endeavor, the last covering travel, exploration, pursuit and stealth, where the opposition is the situation rather than a person. A scene can turn into another kind mid-flow, and statistics carry from one into the next.
Scheme	The conversation type where at least one party is duping another, and the mark believes they are in some other kind of conversation entirely. The GM asks up front for the cover story, the goal, and what groundwork was laid — testing for that groundwork. Unveiling a Scheme usually ends the scene, into a fight or an exit.
Scholar	The heroic path of thinkers who excel at planning and building — Artifabrian, Strategist, Surgeon. Starting skill: Lore.
Senses Range	How far a character can perceive by other faculties when their primary sense is obscured. Set by Awareness; beyond it, things cannot be detected at all.
Shardblade	An Invested blade that cuts non-living matter like water and passes through living bodies to sever the soul instead, leaving what is beyond the cut gray and lifeless; through spine or head it kills outright. Bonding one takes about five days, after which it summons from mist ten heartbeats after being drawn. It deals spirit damage, which deflect does not reduce.
Shardplate	Full-body Invested armor: deflect 5, four charges, and Enhanced [+2 Strength] and [+2 Speed] while worn. Spend a charge before taking damage to add 10 to your deflect against it. Invested ability tests both by and against the wearer take a disadvantage, and deflect applies to every damage type. An opponent can spend an Opportunity on a hit to knock a charge loose; at zero charges it stops working, loses both those traits, and becomes Cumbersome [6] dead weight of 1,400 pounds.
Shards	Blade and Plate, the rarest rewards on Roshar and never purchasable with currency — they change hands through marriage, debt, duel, or killing the bearer. A Shardblade is a tier 2 reward and Shardplate a tier 3 one, and a duel for one is rarely offered to anyone without a Shard of their own to wager. The Ryshadium is sometimes counted the third Shard, and is granted as a companion.
Short Rest	An uninterrupted hour or more spent relaxing, recovering and tending wounds. Afterwards you roll your recovery die and split the result between health and focus however you like.
Size	The space a character controls in combat: Small 2.5 feet, Medium 5, Large 10, Huge 15, and Gargantuan 20 or more at the GM’s discretion.
Skill Modifier	The number added to a skill’s d20 test. Equals that skill’s ranks plus its governing attribute score, plus any bonuses or penalties.
Skill Rank	Training bought into a single skill. Ranks are capped by tier of play — 2 at tier 1, rising to 5 by tier 4 — and combine with an attribute to form the skill modifier.
Skill Test	Roll one d20, add the relevant skill modifier and any bonuses or penalties, and compare the total to the difficulty class. Meeting or beating the DC succeeds.
Slow Turn	A turn taken late in the round in exchange for three actions rather than two.
Social	The conversation type spent forming bonds, impressing allies, and building connections. Earnest, though not necessarily wholly truthful — hidden agendas are welcome, and the moment anyone acts on one it becomes whichever type fits.
Soulcaster	The fabrial that mimics Transformation, though nearly all of them convert material into one Essence only and never the reverse. Its charges stand in for Investiture, it needs a hand holding it rather than a hand free, and a Complication can break one of its three gems.
Soulcasting	Transformation’s basic effect: touch a non-living object within reach and make a Transformation test. Materials fall into categories, and the DC is 10 for a shift of one category, rising by 5 for each further one — stone into metal is DC 10, metal out of clear air DC 25. On a success spend Investiture equal to the ranks that size needs: 1 for Small through 5 for Gargantuan. Living material, characters and plants alike, is out of reach until a talent opens it.
Spanreed	A paired writing fabrial that lets two bearers hold a written conversation at any distance. Both reeds must be stationary, and a pair spends 1 charge per 5 days active.
Specialist Expertise	Covers restricted knowledge — Shardblades, Shardplate, fabrial crafting, singer and Radiant history. It cannot be taken with an expertise from Intellect; only a talent, reward, or the GM grants one.
Sphere	Roshar’s currency and its light: a gemstone in a glass bead, worth more as the gem grows from chip to mark to broam and as the stone runs from diamond up through emerald. A sphere holding Stormlight is infused and keeps it about five days; an empty one is dun. The game prices everything in diamond marks, abbreviated mk.
Spirit	Effects that damage the physical and spiritual self at once, dealt mostly by Shardblades and by a few surges. Deflect does not reduce it.
Spiritual Defense	The number an attack against the soul or Connection must meet or beat. Equals 10 + Awareness + Presence, plus any bonuses.
Spiritual Injury	The injury a Shardblade inflicts. Its roll uses a separate, far harsher table and adds no deflect: 16 or more is a flesh wound lasting the rest of the day, 1 through 15 is a permanent injury that non-Invested healing cannot mend, and 0 or lower is death.
Spren Bond	The Nahel bond — the symbiosis that lets a spren manifest in the Physical Realm and grants their Radiant Surgebinding and the ability to breathe Stormlight. A bonded spren has no stat block and takes no turns of its own.
Spren Bond Range	How far a newly bonded spren can stray before temporarily losing its sapience. It starts at 30 feet, and a deepened bond raises it to 100.
Squeeze	Moving into a space one size smaller than yours. You are Slowed and attacks against you gain an advantage.
Squire	A trusted ally granted a portion of a Radiant’s power without bonding a spren. Within 50 miles of their Radiant they hold Investiture up to a maximum of 2 and can use the Stormlight actions. A Radiant may keep as many squires as the number of the Ideal they have sworn.
Stoneshaping	Cohesion’s basic effect: infuse unattended stone within reach for 1 Investiture a round and it softens like clay, resolidifying in its new shape when the infusion ends. A rough shape comes free with the activation; moderate work costs an Interact, and intricate work a Use a Skill and a Cohesion test. Anything still caught in the stone when it hardens is Immobilized, and possibly Restrained.
Stormlight	Roshar’s form of Investiture, stored in infused spheres and drawn from the highstorm. A character usually starts a scene with full Investiture — but only 1 if they begin it Surprised.
Surge Attack	Resolved by the ordinary attacking rules, with three things worth remembering: a test to hit something you cannot sense gains a disadvantage, a hit adds your surge skill modifier to the damage, and a miss can still be bought back as a graze for 1 focus per target.
Surge Ranks	An Invested adversary lists both numbers for each surge — "Abrasion +7 (3 ranks)" — because the two do different jobs. The modifier resolves the test; the ranks set the power and size of the surge itself. A stat block’s features and actions are simplified versions with the ranks already folded in, so running them as printed needs no reference to the ranks at all. They matter when a GM reaches past the simplified version for the full surge rules.
Surge Scaling	Ranks in a surge set both its dice and its reach: 1 rank rolls d4 and affects Small, 2 rolls d6 and Medium, 3 rolls d8 and Large, 4 rolls d10 and Huge, 5 rolls d12 and Gargantuan.
Surge Size	The largest thing a surge can affect, or the largest area it can cover, set by ranks in that surge. An object cannot be infused if its width, length, or height exceeds it.
Surge Skill	A skill unlocked by a Radiant path, tested exactly as a basic skill and drawing ranks from the same pool. The ten are Adhesion, Gravitation, Division, Abrasion, Progression, Illumination, Transformation, Transportation, Cohesion and Tension, and each is wielded by exactly two orders. A surge is unusable until something grants a first rank in it — for most Radiants that is the First Ideal, which grants their order’s two.
Surgebinding	Surgebinding is the Rosharan magic granted by a bond with a spren, letting a Radiant wield two of the ten Surges.
Talent	An ability chosen from a path’s tree on gaining a level. Each requires the talent before it, and a path’s first is its key talent. Two abilities of the same name never stack, whichever paths they came from.
Threat Value	What an adversary contributes to an encounter’s difficulty. At the party’s own tier a Minion is 0.5, a Rival 1 and a Boss 4. Each tier the adversary sits above the party doubles its value; each tier below halves it, rounded to the nearest quarter. Add the values up and match a target: half the party size for an easy scene, the party size for an average one, and one and a half times it for a hard one — which a party can rarely take more than once between long rests.
Thrown [X/Y]	Can be thrown as a ranged attack at the bracketed short and long ranges, taking a disadvantage beyond short range. Once thrown it is gone until recovered from the target.
Ticking Clock	A Mission’s time limit. Each completed round advances it, and the GM can spend a Complication to advance it further by however much they judge. Past the limit, every additional round triggers trouble of increasing severity rather than ending the scene outright.
Tier of Play	The five bands a character advances through — levels 1–5, 6–10, 11–15, 16–20, and 21 and up. Tier sets the scope of the story and caps skill ranks.
Title	A rank or nobility granted for deeds, carrying privileges, responsibilities, holdings and sometimes a fitting expertise. By tier: a lieutenant or cell leader with a small estate, then a captain or branch leader with a camp, archive network or large estate, then a highmarshal or spymaster with a palatial one, then a general or member of the Five with a warcamp or palace.
Total Threat	The collective danger of every adversary in a combat scene, summed from their individual threat values and measured against the party to set the encounter’s difficulty.
Two-Handed	Must be wielded in both hands, and an attack with it uses both. A character can wield two weapons or one Two-Handed weapon, never more.
Unarmed Attack	A melee attack made with Athletics, always available and never disarmable, dealing impact damage set by Strength: a flat 1 at 0–2, then 1d4, 1d8, 2d6, and 2d10 at 9 or more. It still uses a hand, so a Strike with it blocks a Strike with whatever that hand holds.
Unencased Gem	A gem with no glass around it. It leaks Stormlight within days, but that permeability is what lets it recharge fabrials and Shardplate, and lets a Radiant breathe from it as though from a sphere.
Utility Expertise	An expertise covering a practical craft or body of knowledge rather than a culture.
Venomous Attack	An example modification for a companion’s attack: on a hit it can spend 1 focus to leave the target Afflicted [1d4 vital] until they regain at least 1 health. Its counterpart, Powerful Attack, simply steps the damage die up a size.
Vital	Effects that put your constitution to the test — poison, suffocation, extreme cold. Deflect does not reduce it.
Voidbinding	Voidbinding is the Odium-touched counterpart to Surgebinding, wielded by the Fused and their kin.
Voidlight	Odium’s form of Investiture, as Stormlight is Honor’s. Lifelight and the hybrid Towerlight are others.
Warrior	The heroic path of fighters relying on skill, strength, or indomitable will — Duelist, Shardbearer, Soldier. Starting skill: Athletics.
Weapon Expertise	Covers wielding and maintaining one type of weapon, and unlocks that weapon’s expert traits.