This is a slimmed down version on races, skills, and items to get a beginning player going. The specific rules will have more information on larger and smaller races and a wider variety of skills and items to choose from.

Character Sheet

The first thing you’ll want to do is pick out a race. A race can be anything you want to play from a pixie to a giant or from a werewolf to a regular old human. Does it even need to be humanoid? Of course not. You’re obviously limited by the genre of the campaign and what your GM will allow, but Dice Mob rules really doesn’t limit you. So what kinds of things should you think about when picking out a race. Race generally isn’t much more than an aesthetic thing, but it does affect you in four important ways.

• Movement: How fast and in what manner? Do you have wings or flippers? Are you a biped or a quadruped?
• Size: Size directly affects hit points and starting defenses. Larger races have more hit points. Smaller races have fewer hit points, but more defensive bonuses.
• Skill Restrictions: Body shape and types of limbs could directly affect what types of skills, clothing, weapons, armor, or items. Having horse legs or no opposable thumbs might hinder you in accomplishing certain things like climbing walls or disarming intricate mechanisms.
• Special Abilities and Weaknesses: Your race could suggest special abilities and weaknesses. Can you regenerate hit points? Is your bane sunlight, silver, cold iron, peanuts, or gluten?

But other than that, the sky’s the limit. Dice Mob hasn’t created pre-made races. Part of the fun of a versatile system is trying to play something no other system even allows you to play.

A profession is what your character did growing up and what they do now (just prior to adventuring). Usually a character will have a childhood profession (like street urchin) and an adult profession (like banker). Like races, professions increase dice on skills, but they also give intangibles that can be used throughout a character's adventures. Listing out and learning every possible skill would be far too time-consuming. Professions provide a shortcut to allow a GM to decide if they would be able to know something or do something because of their background.

Now that you have a race and professions for your character, you’ll want to pick out a name that matches that race and profession. Or doesn’t, if you prefer to be contrary. The name won’t really affect anything in the game, but it’ll be hard for your GM and other players to get into character if the name of your character is just Frank’s elf.

Normally a character starts at level one. If a player is joining a campaign already in progress, the GM may advance a character to a level higher than one, but do so with caution. The advancing of the levels and the spending of skill points after each campaign is part of the fun.

There are five types of actions: combat actions, non-combat actions, passive actions, defense actions, and free actions. Each player gets one of each and unlimited free actions.

There’s a tier-system to actions that looks like the following:

1. Combat Actions
2. Non-Combat Actions
3. Defensive Actions
4. Passive Actions
5. Free Actions

A higher tiered action can be substituted for a lower tiered action, if so desired, but unless a skill allows it, a lower tiered may not be substituted for a higher tier (i.e. a combat action may be traded for an additional defensive action instead, but not vice versa). Also characters may defer any of their actions until later in the round if they so choose, although the GM is generally encouraged not to defer any NPC or monster actions unless deferring those actions is part of the narrative. Be warned, though… if a character defers an action and is knocked unconscious, they can’t “quickly spend their action before they’re hit”.

Initiative is just the determination of the order in which characters and monsters attack in a combat situation. Generally both characters and monsters are allotted three dice which, unlike all other dice rolls, are added together to determine the order of attacks. Some skills can increase the number of dice.

Hit points are how much damage a character can take before falling unconscious. When you picked a race, you also picked a number of hit points. Hit points are determined by the size of your character with smaller races having fewer hit points and larger races more. Generally a character is going to either be small, medium (man-sized), or large, which allots a character seven hit points, ten hit points, or fifteen hit points respectively. (For the heights and weights associated with these sizes and the other four possible sizes, see the section on Hit Points.)

Your damage taken is going to start at zero. As you take damage from combat, traps, or other encounters, it is written here. When it reaches the listed number of hit points, a character falls unconscious. Damage can be decreased with rest or by the use of healing skills or items. (See the section on Hit Points for more information.)

Mana is the amount of internal strength a character has. This is used to limit how often a characters skills can be used. Mana starts off at ten and increases at a rate of two per level. Because a character is considered to by fully rested at the beginning of a campaign, the mana used begins at zero.

Movement is divided into running, swimming, and flying and generic values of slow, average, fast, and very fast. Bipedal races generally run at slow or average based on size. Quadrupedal races generally run at average or fast. Swimming is generally fast if they have flippers or slow without. Flying is generally slow to average for insects and fast for birds.

Note: Slow fliers are relative to other slow fliers, not to slow or even average runners. Swimming is generally slower than running and running slower than flying. (For more information, see the Races - Movement.)

It's now time to pick skills. A character generally starts off with ten skill points and gains three points per experience level.

Skills come in five flavors: Offensive Skills, Defensive Skills, Attributes, Knowledge, and Special Abilities.

The first three types of Skills are tiered using a system called Degrees where the number of Dice on that skill determines which degree that character is at that skill. Each skill point used on any of those skills increases the number of dice rolled for attacks, defense, and skill checks and potentially adds additional abilities at higher degrees.

The second two types of Skills are either you have it or you don't. Knowledge and Special Abilities are very similar to each other and are just listed in the appropriate sections of a character's sheet. Knowledge generally involves actual knowledge a character might have, such as cooking, locks, or snares. Special abilities, on the other hand, usually changes something significant about the character, such as regeneration, dodging, and berserking. Generally knowledge costs one skill point per piece of knowledge and doesn't have any prerequisites. Special abilities vary in their cost and often require a prerequisite number of dice on one or more Attributes to “learn”.

A character is generally assumed to be wearing clothing including shoes if they are humanoid. In addition to that, they may pick up to ten other items including warm clothing, armor, weapons, shields, and other items that might be helpful on a journey, often with the purpose of either improving the ten defensive categories, providing an attack method to fight opponents, or improving attributes that might aid in defeating opponents or keeping the character alive. Remember that monsters and characters alike often have different defensive capabilities, so having more than one way of attacking is often advantageous in defeating enemies.

Here is a suggested list of items a beginning character might carry, wear, or wield:

• Clothing: Most clothing doesn't count again the encumbrance limit unless it has magical qualities or it provides additional elemental protection of some sort, like a parka against freezing.
• Body Armor: To make things simple, body armor is divided into heavy, medium, and light and either iron or leather. Leather is generally better against blunt weapons. Iron armor is generally better against slashing and piercing. Heavy armors reduce the ability to use skills and must be worn by characters with a high enough strength attribute.
• Shield: Shields can be large, small, or bucklers. Buckers allow for two-handed combat by the wielder, but they don't defend as well. Shields can either be made of wood or metal, but there is generally no difference between the two when it comes to protection. Heavy shields can only be used by characters with a high enough strength attribute.
• Helmet: A helmet may reduce visibility but provides additional protection.
• Melee Weapons: Battle Axe, Great Sword, Knife, Longsword, Scimitar, Flail, Mace, Morningstar, Warhammer, Lance, Shortsword, Spear, Trident
• Ranged Weapons: Throwing Axe, Slingshot, Throwing Dagger, Throwing Knife, Sling, Light Crossbow, Shortbow, Shotgun, Heavy Crossbow, Longbow, Pistol, Rifle
• Miscellaneous Items: Rope and Grappling Hook, Backpack, Waterskin, Healing Potion, Mana Potion

There are ten types of defenses. All races have a base defense of two dice with additional dice added for racial size and skills.

• Force Defense: Piercing, bludgeoning, and slashing represent physical damage one might take from weapons, traps, or falling down a pit. Armor or natural defenses like exoskeletons are often the best way of increasing these defenses. Small races get additional dice because their size and speed make them more difficult to hit. Add the dice of all relevant skills and armor defenses together to get a single dice value for each of these three defenses. For information on how many additional dice each skill or armor protects, see the appropriate pages.
• Elemental Defense: The second four defenses are for resisting the elements. Heavy clothing and skills are often the best way to increase these defenses. Add the dice of all relevant skills, clothing, and armor defenses together to get a single dice value for each of these individual elemental defenses. For information on how many additional dice each skill or article of clothing protects, see the appropriate pages.
• Mental Defense: The next two defenses are for resisting mental attacks. Skills are the best way for increasing these defenses. Add the dice of all relevant skills together to get your cognitive and mental defenses. For information on how each skill protects, see the appropriate pages.
• **Personal Defense: **Personal Defense involves a strong sense of who and what a character is and protects against attacks against physical appearance, personal space, race, and other harder to define aspects of a character’s makeup. Skills are the best way of increasing this defense. Add the dice of relevant skills together to get your Personal Defense. For information on how each skill protects, see the appropriate pages.

That’s it. There’s nothing else you need to write down. You probably have some idea of gender (if your race has a gender). You also probably have in mind whether you’re going to play as a good guy or a bad guy, but unlike many RPGs, this one allows for you to have some sort of character arc, if you want one. There’s no detect good or detect evil spells. Hags aren’t all evil. Brownies aren’t all good. It’s all in how they were raised and how they’ve made up their minds as they’ve reached adulthood. Yeah, weird, huh?

And as far as ability scores and classes go, you’ve covered that with your skills. And in a much more versatile way.

So there’s nothing else. It’s time to play!