Resolving Actions

When your trainer or your partner does something risky, uncertain, and worth the trouble, the GM calls for a roll. Everything else — talking, planning, bluffing, walking through town — just happens in the fiction. The dice exist to keep the world honest when something could actually go wrong.

When you roll

The GM asks for a roll when three things are true: the action is risky (failure would cost you), the outcome is uncertain (it could genuinely go either way), and the moment matters (nobody cares about a roll that doesn't change anything). If you are safe, certain, or it doesn't matter, no roll — you just do it.

The roll

Roll 2d6 and add the most relevant trait from your sheet. The GM sets the stakes before you roll, so you always know what's on the line.

• 10+ — Full success. You get what you wanted, clean. No catch.
• 7–9 — Success with a cost. You get what you wanted, but it costs you: a complication, a hard choice, something left behind, a thread ticking faster. The GM tells you the price, or offers you a choice.
• 6 or less — The world pushes back. You don't get what you wanted, and the GM makes a move: danger appears, someone acts against you, a Pokémon is hurt, a thread escalates, you lose something. This is not a punishment — it is the story getting more interesting.

Your traits in action

Reach for the trait that fits what you're actually doing:

• Brawn — wrench open a jammed gate, lift a fallen Golem's weight off someone, throw a ball across a gorge.
• Grace — dodge a tackle, sprint through traffic, catch a falling egg, keep your balance on a frozen lake.
• Charm — talk the door steward into an early slot, talk your way out of a fight, make the shopkeeper remember you fondly, negotiate a price.
• Grit — hold the line while your partner retreats, push through a night with no sleep, keep your promise when it hurts.
• Wits — notice the tell, figure out the pattern, remember the old legend, read the room before it reads you.
• Cool — bluff with a straight face, stay calm while the Houndoom circles, stare down a Dragonite without flinching.

When in doubt, the GM names the trait and you can argue for a different one if you can say why — the fiction decides.

Help

If another player or a partner Pokémon helps in a way that genuinely matters, you get +1 (maximum one bonus, no matter how many people help). Helping has its own risks — the helper is exposed to whatever goes wrong.

What rolls never do

There are no hit points and no experience points in this game. Rolls resolve moments; consequences live in the fiction — on the condition ladder, in your money, in your bonds, in the threads that move whether you act or not. You grow by what happens to you, not by what you count.