Glossary

Action Bracket

Each combat round is broken into one of three categories - Fast, Normal, and Slow. Players declare their Action Bracket at the beginning (the top) of each round. Each Action Bracket acts in order of Initiative. Fast Actions happen first, Normal Actions follow and Slow Actions happen last.

Adder

An Adder is a permanent, but optional, upgrade to a Gift. These upgrades customize your Gifts and make them more powerful.

Advantage/Disadvantage

When Fate smiles (or frowns) on you - you roll an extra die. Advantage rolls 3d10 and keeps the lowest two. Disadvantage rolls 3d10 and keeps the highest two.

Air

One of the five Elements that defines the essence of a character - breath and weather, never in one place long. Air is the Attribute that covers agility, adaptability, intelligence, sharpness of mind, how fast you react, and how well you handle it when things change around you. It is further divided into Initiative and Psyche.

Atropos

One of Moira’s two sub-stats, named for the Fate who cuts the thread and can’t be turned aside. It sets your Defense - how hard you are to touch by a blade, a word, or a mind alike - at 10 minus your Atropos. Sample descriptors: Fated, Untouchable, Uncanny, Unsevered, Passed-Over, and so on.

Attack

Any deliberate attempt to hurt someone, in any of the three ways the game recognizes - Physical, Social, or Mental. All three run on the same two steps. First you have to connect: roll your Attribute against their Defense, no Skill involved. Only if that lands do you roll the attack’s dice, and those go against the matching Wall - Soak, Presence, or Psyche. A Physical die that gets through costs a Health Level, a Social die costs Poise, a Mental die costs Sanity.

Attribute

One of the five universal forces that shape your character - Earth, Air, Fire, Water and Moira. Each Element is a broad measure of your natural (or supernatural) capabilities that are pulled from the classical elements themselves. These are assigned at character creation. Each Attribute governs two sub-stats.

Boon

A small, permanent perk that isn’t a Skill and isn’t a Gift. Boons don’t add to your dice - they let you do or claim something you otherwise couldn’t. Most are a flat yes-or-no; a handful come in tiers.

Bump Action Bracket

Spend 1 Ki to move a declared action up a step - Slow to Normal, or Normal to Fast. Two Ki jumps two steps. No roll, no check; you’re just buying speed with Ki.

Called Shot

Picking out something specific to hit instead of just hitting them - a hand, a knee, the strap holding their pack on, the camera housing on a drone, the weapon they’re pointing at you. A Called Shot is one of the empowered actions a Slow Action buys, and it doesn’t come with Advantage - that’s Aim. What landing it does depends on what you aimed at, and that’s the GM’s call.

Carrying Capacity

How much you can lift, carry, or drag without straining: your Potence squared, times ten, in kilograms. Squared rather than flat, so a strong character pulls dramatically ahead of an ordinary one.

Condition

The catch-all for a temporary bad state you can be put into - Distracted, Surprised, Flustered, Exhausted, Overwhelmed, and the rest. Each has its own trigger and its own way out, under its own entry. A Fate Token can shrug any of them off for a moment. Dying isn’t one: it’s where your Health Levels are, and a Token gets you up from it instead.

Core Roll

The basic move of the whole system. Roll 2d10, add them up, and check the total against your target number (your Attribute plus the Difficulty). Land on or under it and you succeed; go over and you don’t.

Critical Hit

A critical success on a to-hit roll. Half the attack’s dice, rounded up, connect automatically - no roll, no wall. The rest roll and each adds your Klotho, with Ki Infusion still available on top. It is amplification rather than an attack, which is why Moira can touch it at all. Crossing zero still applies, so a critical can drop a target to 0 but never past it.

Critical Success / Catastrophic Failure

Roll a 2 - both dice showing 1 - and it’s a critical success, the best possible result. Roll a 20 - both showing 10 - and it’s a catastrophic failure. A few Skill tiers widen the good end or cushion the bad one. On an attack, a critical success sends half the damage dice through untouched and puts Klotho behind the rest - see Critical Hit.

Defense

How hard you are to touch: 10 minus your Atropos. Fate doesn’t distinguish the shape of the blow, so the same number answers a blade, a word meant to wound, and a mind reaching where it isn’t welcome. When someone attacks you, your Defense is the number they have to beat.

Descriptor

A one- or two-word adjective - Brutal, Brawny, Indefatigable, Headstrong - that pins down the flavor of a sub-stat you’ve invested in. You get one free with the point that earns it, and it’s the hook you point at when you want a Skill to run off a different Element than usual.

Dice Notation

“XdY” means “roll X dice with Y sides and add them up.” 20 Below runs on ten-sided dice, so 2d10 is two of them totaled (a 2 to 20), 1d10 is one, and 3d10 is three - that’s Advantage and Disadvantage.

Difficulty

A 0-to-10 dial the GM sets for each roll - 0 is nearly impossible, 10 is trivial. It gets added to your Attribute to form the target number. In a fight, the target’s Defense takes Difficulty’s place.

Discretionary Points

A loose pool - 10 to start, plus whatever your Flaws hand you - that you can spend at creation on almost anything: Resources, Skills, Fate Tokens, Boons, Gifts, or Attributes.

Distracted

What happens when you take a hit, or catch a Kotodama effect, part-way through a Slow Action. Roll Atropos + Difficulty to keep your focus; miss it and the action drops to a Normal one, losing whatever its empowered action gave - the thing that made going Slow worth it.

Dying

Where you are below 0 Health Levels: unconscious and out of the fight. It doesn’t get worse on its own - only more damage moves you toward death. A Fate Token puts you back up at 1 Health Level, even while you’re out cold, and stabilizing you brings you to 0. The row runs the same distance below zero as above, so a character with 7 Health Levels is Dying from −1 and dead at −7 - whatever it took to put them down, it takes that much again to finish them.

Earth

One of the five Elements that defines the essence of a character - flesh and stone, the solid ground under everything else. Earth is the Attribute that covers raw physical force, endurance and mass, how strong you are, how hard you hit, and how much you can take before you stop being able to take it. It is further divided into Soak and Potence.

Empowered Action

What a Slow Action buys: one action, done properly. Aim for Advantage, line up a Called Shot, Study a Target, work carefully, Brace, or Bulldoze. One per round, with a one-meter step before or after it.

Everyman Skills

A short list, set by the GM, of things everyone can just do - the competence any working adult picks up by living in the world. Every character gets them free, at Trained.

Exhausted

Wear from pushing a hard effort past what your Stamina covers. It stacks in levels, 1 through 5, each one worse than the last. A Short Rest clears one level; a full night’s sleep clears the lot.

Fast Action

The Fast bracket. You go before everyone in Normal or Slow, but you only get the one action - a move, an attack, or a single Skill use. You’re trading how much you do for going first.

Fate Token

The currency you earn and spend. You pick them up from your Nature, from taking Disadvantage on purpose, from your Flaws, from a daily top-up, from story Milestones, or whenever the GM hands one over. You spend them on Kotodama or the Fate Triggers. You can hold three times your Stamina, plus one, and no more - anything earned at that cap is lost rather than banked.

Fate Triggers

The things a Fate Token buys: a Kotodama, shrugging off one of your Flaws for a Scene, an automatic success, shrugging off a condition, a full Ki refill, or getting back up from Dying. Spending the Token is the whole cost - nothing else is rolled. A Kotodama counts against the per-Scene cap, and so does burning off Corruption; the flat ones don’t.

Ferocity

One of Fire’s two sub-stats, will burned down to an ember. When you spend Ki to put more behind a physical strike - that’s Ki Infusion - Ferocity is what you’re adding. Sample descriptors: Brutal, Savage, Relentless, Merciless, Feral, and so on.

Figured Characteristics

The stats you don’t buy - they fall out of choices you already made. Health Levels, Poise, Sanity, Defense, Movement Rate, Carrying Capacity, and Ki. You work them out at step 14 of character creation.

Fire

One of the five Elements that defines the essence of a character - drive and hunger. Fire is the Attribute that covers push and force of personality, appetite and intensity, how hard you lean on a situation, how much of yourself you put into a confrontation, and whether anyone in the room can ignore you while you’re doing it. It is further divided into Ferocity and Presence.

Flaw

An optional problem you take on at creation - the mirror of a Boon. Each one is worth a set number of points that feed your Discretionary pool. If a Flaw never actually costs you anything in play, it’s worth nothing.

Flustered

Where you land at 0 Poise. Every Social roll - and anything else that needs composure - is at Disadvantage until the Scene ends. You can spend an action and a Presence + Difficulty roll to shake it off early.

The Fray

The spirit realm, where the dead go.

Game Master (GM)

The person running the game. They set the scenes, play everyone who isn’t a player character, decide when to roll and how hard, and have the final call on the rules. Everyone else runs a single character.

Gift

A genuinely supernatural ability - magic, psionics, a mutation, a blessing, whatever suits the setting. Each one is a single, specific, named thing rather than a broad category, and each has five levels that stack, the effect getting bigger or stronger as you climb.

Gift Check

The risk some Gifts carry when you use them. Roll 2d10 against your current Ki, under to pass. Pass and it’s free; fail and it costs you a point of Ki.

Hardness

How hard an item or a piece of armor is to get through, on the same 0-10 scale as Soak. Living bodies have Soak; things have Hardness. Hitting an item costs it a Health Level for each die over its Hardness; armor shielding someone loses at most one per attack. See Materials.

Health

One of Water’s two sub-stats, the depth of the well you draw endurance from. It sets your Health Levels - 5 plus your Health - which is how many hits you can take before you drop. How far past 0 you can be carried before you die mirrors that same number, so a character with 8 Levels is out at 0 and dead at −8. Sample descriptors: Hale, Resilient, Stalwart, Unbreakable, Hard-to-Kill, and so on.

Health Levels

How many hits you can take, as a row of boxes rather than a pool of points. You have 5 plus your Health. Each solid hit checks one off; at zero, you’re out, and below zero you’re Dying. The row runs the same distance again below zero, and the far end of it is where you die.

Humiliated

One step past Flustered, where you go if Poise drops below 0. You can’t take the lead, negotiate, or speak for the group - you defer and go along. You’re still acting under your own power; it’s your standing that’s broken, not your body. It clears when Poise climbs back to 0.

Initiative

One of Air’s two sub-stats, the flick of readiness that decides who moves first. You roll it once at the start of a fight - 1d10 plus your Initiative - and that order holds for the whole thing. Sample descriptors: Alert, Reflexive, Vigilant, Sharp-Eyed, Quick, and so on.

Ki

The pool that powers everything supernatural. It’s your strongest Element plus 8, so every character has one worth spending - 13 at the least, 18 at the most. Ordinary people without a Gift have 1, for the one moment they need it. You spend it to save a Health, Poise or Sanity Level, to put more behind an attack, to move up an Action Bracket, and to use most Gifts. Below 0 it brings Poise or Sanity back to 1 without waiting for a rest. A Short Rest brings back Klotho points of it; a full night brings it all back.

Ki Infusion

Paying 1 Ki per die to add a sub-stat - Ferocity, Presence, or Psyche, whichever matches the attack - to that die. You roll the damage dice first and then choose which to boost, so nothing is spent on a die that already got through. It’s how you push a hit through a wall that would otherwise stop it cold.

Klotho

One of Moira’s two sub-stats, the thread still being spun. It sets how much Ki a Short Rest brings back and fixes your Lucky Number. Sample descriptors: Charmed, Star-Touched, Quickening, Replenishing, Ever-Spinning, and so on.

Kotodama

(言霊, “word spirit.”) Spending Fate Tokens to state something true about the world instead of touching a die roll. You say it, you pay for it - the cost is built from how big it is, how far it reaches, how believable it is, and whether it has to last - and the story rearranges to fit. Several players can pool tokens for something none of them could afford alone.

Level

A step on a ladder. Several different things in the game use them, and they don’t otherwise have much to do with each other. Gifts have five Levels, each stacking on the last. Resources run 1 to 5. Your Vitals - Health, Poise, and Sanity - are counted in Levels, boxes you check off as you take hits. Exhausted stacks in levels of its own, 1 through 5. When a rule just says “Level,” the thing it’s attached to tells you which ladder it means.

Limiter

A permanent catch you accept on one specific Gift at creation. Each one you take knocks a point off the cost of every Level of that Gift. Stack them as deep as you like, but never below 1 point per Level.

Lucky Number

Your Klotho rating, doing double duty. Any time one of your own core rolls comes up exactly equal to it - the 2d10 total, or the kept pair on an Advantage or Disadvantage roll - you get a Fate Token, free, no more than one per roll. It’s the total that has to match, not a single die, and big handfuls of damage dice don’t count.

Milestone Award

A Fate Token for every player when the group clears a real hurdle - the fight a session was building toward, a turning point in the story. Figure about one a session.

Moira

One of the five Elements that defines the essence of a character - fate, and the threads nobody living gets to see. Moira is the Attribute that covers luck, destiny, and the supernatural itself, how the world bends around you, and whether it bends your way. It is further divided into Atropos and Klotho.

Movement Rate

How far you can move in a step, in meters: 5 plus your Air. That’s the move on a Fast Action, or the move half of a Normal one. On a map it’s hexes. A Dash is twice it and a Sprint five times.

Named

A player character, or an NPC the GM has given a name. Named characters go Dying below 0 Health Levels, recover, and carry scars. An unnamed NPC who reaches 0 is out of the fight and out of the story, dead or down at the GM’s call.

Nature

A short label for what drives your character, or how they meet the world - picked from a list or written yourself. Lean into it at the right dramatic moment and you earn a Fate Token.

Normal Action

The Normal bracket - the middle option. Two actions this round, usually a move and something else, resolved after the Fast crowd and before the Slow one.

NPC

Anyone the GM plays instead of a player - short for non-player character. Most are built the same way as a player character, at whatever power level the GM chooses. A Gifted NPC has Ki the way a player character does, an ordinary one has 1, and only a special NPC has Fate Tokens of their own.

Overwhelmed

Where you land at 0 Sanity. You pick up a temporary Mental scar effect and roll everything at Disadvantage, but you’re still yourself and still acting. It lifts once you’re away from whatever caused it and get to rest - or you spend 1 Ki, which brings Sanity back to 1.

PC

The one character at the table that’s yours - short for player character.

Poise

Your composure when someone comes at you socially, tracked as boxes like Health. You have 5 plus your Presence. Hit 0 and you’re Flustered; drop below and you’re Humiliated. The row runs the same distance again below zero, and the far end of it costs you a point of Sanity and puts your Poise back to 0. Poise can’t kill you - there’s no bottom that ends the character.

Potence

One of Earth’s two sub-stats, stone poured into muscle. Straight strength - what you can carry, what you can break, who wins when two people push against each other. Sample descriptors: Brawny, Mighty, Herculean, Hulking, Iron-Armed, and so on.

Presence

One of Fire’s two sub-stats, the heat that turns every head in the room. It’s your wall against Social attacks, and it sets how many dice you throw when you make one. Sample descriptors: Magnetic, Commanding, Radiant, Imposing, Regal, and so on.

Psyche

One of Air’s two sub-stats, the steady current that carries a clear head through a storm. It’s your wall against Mental attacks, and it sets how many dice you throw when you make one. Sample descriptors: Steadfast, Composed, Unshaken, Iron-Willed, Clear-Headed, and so on.

Resource

Stuff and support you can buy - money, gear, a place to work out of. Not a personal knack (that’s a Boon) and not supernatural (that’s a Gift), just backing.

Resource Check

A roll to lean on a Resource harder than its Level covers for free. Roll 2d10 against the Resource’s Level plus Difficulty, under to pass. Pass and it costs nothing. Fail and you still get what you were after, but the Resource drops a Level (never below 1) until a Month goes by.

Rests

Two ways to recover. A Short Rest is about an hour of real downtime, and you only get the benefit of one between full nights. A Full Night’s Rest is a proper night’s sleep. Above 0 a Short Rest gives back half the governing sub-stat, rounded up, and a full night gives everything back. Below 0 the rates stop: Health gets nothing from a Short Rest and exactly one Level from a full night, while Poise and Sanity come back to 1 on either, or for 1 Ki.

Sanity

Your grip on your own mind under a Mental attack, tracked as boxes like Health. You have 5 plus your Psyche. At 0 you’re Overwhelmed; below 0, Shattered. The row runs the same distance again below zero, and the far end of it saddles you with a temporary Mental scar effect and puts your Sanity back to 0.

Scar

What going below 0 on a Vital leaves behind: one narrow, lasting effect - Physical from Health, Social from Poise, Mental from Sanity. One per crossing, the GM’s pick or agreed with the player. It’s permanent until healed, and a Social scar can’t be healed at all - a reputation has to be rebuilt.

Scene

One unbroken stretch of the story in roughly one place - a fight, a conversation, a chase. It’s a rung on the Time Bands ladder, and a few limits reset when a new one starts (your Fate Token cap for the Scene, Flustered).

Shattered

Below 0 Sanity. You’re panicking and can’t act on your own - someone has to lead you clear. A point of Ki or a rest only brings Sanity back to 1, and going below 0 always leaves a Mental scar.

Skill

Something you’ve learned and practiced. Every Skill has a home Element it normally rolls off, but you can argue for a different one in the moment - as long as you can point to a Descriptor that backs the pairing and sell it to the GM.

Skill Training Tier

How good you are at a Skill, on a five-step ladder: Untrained, Trained, Adept, Expert, Master. Each step changes how you build the roll - from no Attribute at all, up to rolling with Advantage and a wider critical range. It also sets your damage dice on a Social attack: one at Untrained, rising to six at Master.

Slow Action

The Slow bracket. One action, and you go last - but it’s a better action. It’s an empowered action - Aim for Advantage, a Called Shot, Study a Target and the rest - plus a one-meter step. You’re trading speed for one concentrated, harder-hitting move. (All spellcasting is Slow.)

Soak

One of Earth’s two sub-stats, the hide the world’s hits don’t quite get through. It’s your wall against physical damage - the number an attacker’s dice have to clear to actually hurt you. Sample descriptors: Hardy, Rugged, Unyielding, Thick-Skinned, Battle-Worn, and so on.

Stamina

One of Water’s two sub-stats, the reserve that keeps you going past the point most people stop. It caps how many Fate Tokens you can hold - three times your Stamina, plus one - and how many counted spends you can make in a single Scene - your Stamina, plus one - and it’s what you lean on against exhaustion outside a fight. Sample descriptors: Tireless, Enduring, Dogged, Unflagging, Relentless, and so on.

Sub-stat

The two halves each Attribute splits into - Earth into Soak and Potence, Air into Initiative and Psyche, and so on down the line. Sub-stats are where your creation points actually go, where Descriptors attach, and what most of the figured stats are built from.

Surprised

Getting caught before a fight starts with no idea it’s coming. Until the round ends, you roll everything at Disadvantage.

Target Number (TN)

The number a core roll has to hit or come under: your Attribute plus the Difficulty. Creature cards shorten it to TN. See Core Roll.

Time Bands

The standard ladder the rules use whenever something needs a duration: Round, Minute, Hour, Scene, Day, Week, Month, Year, Decade, Century. A Round is about 6 seconds, so a Minute is exactly ten of them. The Round is the base - if a rule doesn’t name a bigger band, it means Rounds.

Untrained Roll

A roll for something you have no Skill in. Your Attribute doesn’t help here - the target number is just the Difficulty.

Vitals

Health, Poise and Sanity: the three things an attack can take from you. Each is 5 plus a sub-stat, counted in Levels rather than points, and each runs the same distance below zero as it does above. A connecting Physical die costs Health, a Social die costs Poise, a Mental die costs Sanity, and a point of Ki preserves a Level on any of them. Ki itself is not a Vital - it’s the pool you spend, not a row you lose. See Wall for the other side of the same exchange.

Wall

The number an attack’s dice have to beat to do anything to you. You have three, one for each kind of attack - Soak against Physical, Presence against Social, Psyche against Mental. Once an attack has connected, its dice are checked one at a time: any die over your Wall gets through and costs you a Level, and any die at or under it is absorbed completely. A Wall of 10 can’t be beaten by an ordinary die at all - the only way through is Ki Infusion.

Water

One of the five Elements that defines the essence of a character - tide and undertow. Water is the Attribute that covers perception and empathy, patience and staying power, how tuned in you are to the world and the people in it, and how much you can weather before it wears you down. It is further divided into Stamina and Health.