Game Mechanics
Game Mechanics
"When Lead Flies and Dice Roll: The Rules of Survival"
Dice Rolling Basics
The Weird West is an unpredictable place where fate, skill, and blind luck collide like a runaway locomotive. When your character attempts something dangerous, uncertain, or just plain difficult, you'll need to roll dice to see what happens. Deadlands uses a unique system that's easy to learn but offers plenty of room for spectacular successes—and catastrophic failures.
The Marshal calls for dice rolls when the outcome of an action is uncertain or when failure has meaningful consequences. Walking across the street? No roll needed. Trying to bluff your way past a suspicious sheriff? Time to roll. Attempting to ride your horse through a collapsing mine tunnel while dodging falling timber? You'd better pray your dice are hot.
Understanding Traits and Aptitudes
Before we roll any dice, you need to understand what you're rolling. Your character has two types of statistics that determine how many dice you roll and what kind:
Traits are your character's basic physical and mental capabilities—things like Strength, Deftness, Quickness, and Smarts. Traits are always written in Capitalized Italics and are expressed as a die type: d4, d6, d8, d10, or d12. A gunslinger with Deftness 4d10 has nimble fingers and steady hands.
Aptitudes are learned skills, talents, and trades—things like shootin', horse ridin', academia, and bluff. Aptitudes are always written in lowercase italics and are rated from 1 to 5. This number tells you how many of your Trait dice to roll when using that skill.
Example: Ronan Lynch has Deftness 4d10 and shootin': pistol 3. When he shoots his Peacemaker, he rolls 3d10 (three ten-sided dice) because his Aptitude tells him to use 3 of his Deftness dice.
The Golden Rule of Rolling
When you roll multiple dice, your result is the highest single die you rolled—you don't add them together. If you roll 3d8 and get results of 2, 5, and 7, your final result is 7.
Any modifiers (bonuses or penalties) are applied after you determine your highest die. If you had a +2 bonus in the example above, your final result would be 9.
If you only keep the highest die, why roll more than one? Simple: more dice give you better odds of rolling high numbers. Rolling 1d10 gives you a 10% chance of getting a 10. Rolling 4d10 means you have four chances to roll that 10. More skill means more consistent results and better opportunities for spectacular success.
Aces: Exploding Dice
Here's where Deadlands gets exciting. Whenever you roll the maximum number on any die, that die "explodes"—you get to roll it again and add the new result to that die's total. The maximum number on a die is called an "Ace."
Which numbers are Aces?
- d4: The "4" is an Ace
- d6: The "6" is an Ace
- d8: The "8" is an Ace
- d10: The "10" (or "0" on some dice) is an Ace
- d12: The "12" is an Ace
- d20: The "20" is an Ace
You can keep rolling that die and adding to its total as long as you keep getting Aces. This means there's theoretically no limit to how high a single die can go.
Important: If you get Aces on multiple dice, track each one separately. When you're done exploding all your dice, you still only keep the highest single die's total as your result.
Example: Sarah "Dead-Eye" McGraw is trying to quick-draw her pistol. She has Deftness 3d10 and quick draw 2. She rolls 2d10 and gets lucky—both dice show 10s! Both are Aces.
She rolls both d10s again. The first die shows a 7 (total now 10+7=17). The second die shows another 10—another Ace! She rolls that second d10 one more time and gets a 4 (total now 10+10+4=24). Her two final die totals are 17 and 24. She keeps the 24 as her result. That's one fast draw!
The exploding dice mechanic means anyone—even a greenhorn with low skills—has a chance at pulling off something miraculous. That's how legends are born in the Weird West. Of course, it also means that overconfident gunslingers sometimes get shown up by lucky amateurs. Fortune favors the bold... and sometimes the foolish.
Target Numbers
Once you've rolled your dice and determined your result, you need to know if you succeeded. That's where Target Numbers (TNs) come in. The Marshal sets a TN based on how difficult the task is, and you need to meet or beat that number to succeed.
| Difficulty | Target Number | What It Means |
|---|---|---|
| Foolproof | 3 | So easy a child could do it under pressure |
| Fair | 5 | Average difficulty for a trained person |
| Onerous | 7 | Challenging even for a skilled professional |
| Hard | 9 | Very difficult, requires expertise and luck |
| Incredible | 11 | Near-impossible, the stuff of legends |
The Marshal may add modifiers to the base TN based on circumstances. Shooting at someone in cover? Add +2 or more. Trying to pick a lock while bullets are flying past your head? Expect penalties. Got a telescopic sight on your rifle? That might give you a bonus.
Example: Marshal: "The bridge ahead is half-collapsed and swaying in the wind. I need a horse ridin' roll to get across safely. That's going to be an Onerous (7) difficulty, but the bridge is in bad shape, so add +2. You need a 9 to make it across."
Raises: Exceptional Success
Meeting the Target Number means you succeed, but what if you do even better? Every time you beat the TN by a full 5 points, you get a raise. Raises represent exceptional success and can have dramatic effects depending on the situation.
How Raises Work:
- Beat TN by 5-9 points: 1 raise
- Beat TN by 10-14 points: 2 raises
- Beat TN by 15-19 points: 3 raises
- And so on...
What do raises do? That depends on the situation:
- Combat: Hit a more specific location, do extra damage, or look really cool doing it
- Social encounters: Convince someone more thoroughly, get extra information, or gain their trust
- Investigation: Find additional clues, notice hidden details, or make connections faster
- Skill checks: Complete the task faster, better, or with style
Example: You're trying to bluff your way past a suspicious deputy. The Marshal sets the TN at Fair (5). You roll a total of 16. That's 11 points over the TN, which means you got 2 raises! Not only does the deputy believe your story, but he also apologizes for bothering you and tips you off that the sheriff's been asking questions about strangers in town.
When you're competing directly against another character (like an arm-wrestling match or a test of wills), raises are calculated from your opponent's result, not from the base TN. If your opponent rolls a 12 and you roll a 17, you got 1 raise (5 points higher). This matters a lot in certain situations—particularly in combat and social duels.
Going Bust: Catastrophic Failure
Aces represent Lady Luck smiling on you. But she's a fickle mistress, and sometimes she'll kick you square in the teeth. When the majority of your dice show "1s", you've gone bust—you didn't just fail, you failed spectacularly.
What does going bust mean?
You automatically fail the task, and something goes wrong beyond simple failure. The Marshal determines the consequences based on the situation:
- Combat: Your gun jams, you drop your weapon, or you leave yourself wide open
- Social situations: You insult the person you're trying to convince, or reveal something you shouldn't have
- Riding: Your horse throws you, or you drop something important
- Sneaking: You knock over something loud, step on someone's cat, or alert every guard in the building
Example: You're trying to defuse a stick of dynamite with a lit fuse. You have demolition 2, so you roll 2 dice. Both come up 1s. You've gone bust! The Marshal rules that you accidentally jostle the dynamite, causing the fuse to burn faster. What was a tense situation just became a desperate race against time.
A bust is bad luck, but it's not an automatic death sentence. The Marshal should make the failure dramatic and consequential, but also appropriate to the situation. Going bust on a social roll might embarrass you; going bust while defusing dynamite might cost you a hand. Context matters.
Opposed Rolls
Sometimes your character isn't just trying to succeed at a task—they're competing directly against another character. This is called an opposed roll. Both sides roll dice, and whoever gets the higher result wins.
How opposed rolls work:
- Both characters roll against a Fair (5) difficulty
- The character with the higher total wins
- Raises are counted from the opponent's total, not from 5
- If both characters fail to meet TN 5, neither succeeds (or both fumble—Marshal's choice)
Common opposed rolls include:
- Overawe vs. Guts: Trying to intimidate someone
- Bluff vs. Scrutinize: Lying convincingly
- Sneak vs. Cognition: Moving without being noticed
- Fightin': Wraslin' vs. Fightin': Wraslin': Wrestling or grappling
- Test of Wills: Spirit vs. Spirit contests of mental fortitude
Example: You're playing poker against a card sharp who you suspect is cheating. It's your scrutinize vs. his bluff. You both roll.
You roll a 13. The card sharp rolls a 9. You win! Not only did you beat him (1 success), but you got 4 points over his total—just shy of a raise. You catch him palming cards, but you can't quite prove it without causing a scene. If you'd gotten a full raise (14 or higher), you might have caught him red-handed.
Raises in Opposed Rolls
The table below shows what different levels of success mean in opposed contests:
| Result | Effect |
|---|---|
| Success (no raise) | You barely win. In an ongoing contest, your opponent continues to resist and you'll roll again next round. |
| One Raise | You accomplish your goal with room to spare. Your opponent loses or surrenders, at least until the situation changes significantly. |
| Two Raises | You dominate. Your opponent surrenders and won't try to resist again without a major shift in circumstances. |
Unskilled Checks
What happens when the Marshal calls for a roll and you don't have that Aptitude? In the Weird West, desperation and grit can sometimes make up for a lack of training—barely.
When you don't have an Aptitude:
- Roll 1 die of the appropriate Trait type
- Subtract –4 from your result
- Pray to whatever deity will listen
Example: A merchant is sinking in quicksand and needs someone to throw him a rope. You don't have the throwin' Aptitude, but your Deftness is 3d8. You roll 1d8 (just one die), get a 6, then subtract 4 for the unskilled penalty. Your final result is 2. The rope falls short, and the merchant sinks deeper. Maybe you should have invested in more practical skills...
Trait Rolls (Straight Trait Tests)
Sometimes the Marshal will call for a Trait roll instead of an Aptitude check. These test your character's raw natural abilities without any learned skill involved.
When making a Trait roll, use your Trait Level (the number in front of the die type) to determine how many dice to roll. A character with Strength 4d8 would roll 4d8 for a Strength test.
Common Trait rolls:
- Strength: Raw lifting, breaking things, resisting poison
- Quickness: Reflexes, reaction time, initiative
- Vigor: Resisting disease, enduring harsh conditions
- Cognition: Noticing things, passive awareness
- Knowledge: Remembering facts, education
- Smarts: Solving puzzles, tactical thinking
- Spirit: Resisting fear, supernatural effects, force of will
Example: You're trying to hold a saloon door shut while your companions escape out the back. The Marshal calls for a Strength test to see if you can keep the angry mob from breaking through. Your Strength is 3d10, so you roll 3d10 and keep the highest die (plus any Aces, of course).
Mixing Traits and Aptitudes
Here's a subtle but important rule: Aptitudes aren't locked to one Trait. While your character sheet lists each Aptitude under a particular Trait (for convenience), the Marshal can call for different combinations based on the situation.
Examples of creative Trait/Aptitude combinations:
- Climbin'/Strength: Actually climbing a cliff (the normal use)
- Climbin'/Knowledge: Recalling techniques or recognizing whether a surface can be climbed
- Shootin'/Cognition: Noticing details about a firearm or recognizing a weapon by sound
- Academia: History/Smarts: Making deductions based on historical knowledge
Don't overthink this—most rolls use the "standard" Trait listed on your character sheet. But when the Marshal asks for an unusual combination, roll with it. It adds depth and rewards characters for having both high Traits and diverse skills.
The Big Round Down
One final rule that applies everywhere in Deadlands:
Whenever you're dividing, halving, or calculating fractions, always round down. If you take 13 points of damage and your Size is 6, you take 2 wounds (13 ÷ 6 = 2.16, rounded down to 2). This universal rule keeps the math simple and consistent throughout the game.
Putting It All Together
Let's walk through a complete example from start to finish:
The Situation: Sarah "Dead-Eye" McGraw is tracking a wanted outlaw through rough terrain at night. The Marshal calls for a trackin' roll.
Step 1: Determine Dice Pool
Sarah's Cognition is 3d8, and she has trackin' 2. She rolls 2d8.
Step 2: Roll the Dice
She rolls a 6 and an 8. The 8 is an Ace!
Step 3: Roll Aces
She rolls the d8 again and gets a 3. The total for that die is now 11 (8+3). Her other die was a 6.
Step 4: Determine Result
She keeps the highest die: 11. The Marshal had set this as a Hard (9) difficulty because of the darkness and rough terrain. Not only did Sarah succeed, but she beat the TN by 2 points—not quite enough for a raise, but solid.
The Outcome:
The Marshal rules that Sarah successfully follows the trail despite the difficult conditions. If she'd gotten a raise (14+), she might have also noticed something extra—like how fresh the tracks are or that the outlaw is favoring one leg.