1. Roll your infancy

Your infancy will provide a base for your attributes and for your formation.

2. Roll your previous career

What you did before coming to the Blacksalt Isle.

3. Roll your tragedy

No one chooses to raid tombs and the unholy places you delve by choice. Tragedy is what forced you into the horrible path of a tomb raider.

4. Roll your burden

No one comes to the Blacksalt Isle unburdened. Your burden guides your character actions, usually causing problems and complications.

Once per session, you may use your burden to make your character's life harder. Taking a decision that will impact you negatively or when making a test at a crucial point, you can choose to make that test with disadvantage and no proficiency, explaining why your burden made it harder for you. If you do any of these, you earn an insight point. Read more about insight in the character progression chapter in the playing the game book.

5. Roll your features

This is a strong aspect that your character has. Besides the advantages and disadvantages that these characteristics will give you, this will help you to roleplay and imagine how your character acts and looks. These are not the only features of you character - you are encouraged to create more. If you and the GM agree, you can choose this instead of rolling.

You may write this down in the notes section of your character sheet.

6. Choose your class

Classes will give special skills to your character. Choose one and follow the instructions for each class. After that, your character is done!

There are 4 main classes. Each class has a specific background that you must also choose. They are all in the Blacksalt book.

Check the skills and traits section to understand what each of your traits and skills do. Make sure to also check how your equipment works on the equipment and items section. You may also spend your gold on equipment and items before the mission starts, but you may not sell items before the first mission.

Game Structure

A game of Dead Weight runs a bit differently than most tabletop RPGs. It follows a strong structure, with two main states.

• Expedition
• Interlude

The game usually starts in the Expedition phase, with the adventurers raiding a dungeon or some other terrible place in the Blacksalt Isle.

Dice Notation

Like many tabletop RPGs, Dead Weight uses dice notation to specify when and how you should roll your dice. Most die rolls are common six-sided dice, unless specified otherwise.

When you see d4, d6, d8, d10, d12 and d20, this is referring to a die of that size; d4 is a four-sided die and d20 is a twenty-sided die. Let's review all styles of dice notations we will use in this book:

Attribute Tests and Checks

Rolling dice in Dead Weight is a dangerous and strategic activity. In general, players want to get away with actions that do not involve testing. Testing is usually exhausting for the characters, and in the dungeons, fatigue is deadlier than most blades. The GM may ask you to perform a test when your character tries to do something difficult, uncertain and has consequences.

Rolling dice also involves decision making: carefully choosing which dice to reroll is an important part of the game and helps your character to take difficult actions with different approaches.

Testing is always done in relation to a character's attribute. For example, trying to break down a door would require a test of strength. To do so, players must roll the same amount of dice as the score of the tested attribute. A character with a strength of 3 would have 3 available dice for a strength test. Players may always choose to roll fewer dice, or to not roll at all, failing the test.

The player needs to roll a 4, 5 or 6 on at least one die to complete the task successfully. If the player rolls more than one 6 on the dice, that's an great success and things go exceptionally well for that character. On the other side, if the player fails and rolls one or more 1 on the dice, that's a critical failure and things go exceptionally poorly for that character. 6s override 1s.

A successful roll example.

A failed roll example.

Beware that if any of the rolled dice is 4 or 1, the player will receive one fatigue point to that attribute, and only one, even if the test succeeded.

A success, but with a fatigue cost.

Another success, also with a fatigue cost.

A fail roll that also has a fatigue cost.

Rerolling dice is a common thing in Dead Weight. Many things, like character skills and dangerous situations will allow the players and the GM to reroll certain dice. The order of rerolls is always dynamic: players may choose to use their rerolls one by one, react to the GM rerolls and vice-versa. The test is only evaluated when both sides can't, or agree not to, reroll any more dice.

Here is an example of an attribute test:

Amber wants to climb down a rope, so the GM says that she will require a dexterity test. She has a dexterity score of 4, and she decides to roll all 4 dice.

She rolls

Since she rolled a 6, the test is a success. She manages to climb down the rope safely. Unfortunately for Amber, she also rolled a 1 and a 4; since that happened, she should receive one fatigue point to her dexterity.

If you are really into statistics, you can check the chance of critical failure, failure, success and great success here and the chance of fatigue here.

Receiving Wounds

Characters will often receive wounds from various sources. Most wounds can be reduced, usually by armor or some character traits. Wounds received by fatigue cannot be reduced.

Fainting

When a character would receive a fatigue or would point but it is impossible to place it, they immediately faint. Then, the character cannot move or take any actions. Wounds continue to be placed as normal.

Keep track of how many wounds were discarded when you fainted. You stay fainted for at least that amount of turns (combat or exploration turns). Discard all stun tokens while in this state. After waiting you may roll 1D! to try waking up by yourself.

Outside of combat other characters can stabilize you with a first aid kit, medical supply or healing spell and wake you up.

Mortal Wounds

When a player character is mortally wounded, that player must roll from the mortally wounded table.

• Add 1 to the dice result for each time the character was mortally wounded during this Expedition.
• Other game effects can also add or subtract from that value.

A mortally wounded character is unable to move or perform any actions. That character must be stabilized with a first aid kit, medical supply or healing spell to wake up. If your character already has the trauma you would receive, ignore it.

Attributes

Character attributes in Dead Weight specify how good your character is at something.

Attributes have two numbers, the score, which measures your character endurance and natural talent with that attribute, and the proficiency, measuring how well trained your character is at that attribute. Every character has 4 attributes.

• Strength (STR) is physical strength and constitution of a character. It also influences how many items a character can carry.
• Dexterity (DEX) is how fast and precise a character is. It is used mostly in ranged attacks, initiative, dodging and in a variety of tests.
• Intelligence (INT) is how intelligent and wise a character is. It also influences how many spells a character can memorize.
• Presence (PRE) is how persuasive and strong-willed a character is. It also influences how many prayers a character can memorize.

Attributes can also have fatigue and wounds. A good way to write those down in your sheet is to make a single line for fatigue and an "X" for a wound. During combats your character will probably receive and recover fatigue often, so using small markers like coins, beans or a dice might be easier; you can write down your fatigue after the conflict is resolved.

Skills

Skills mainly give your character extra abilities to use during the expedition and interlude. But they can also be extremely valuable for gathering information and interacting with the world. With the loremaster skill, for example, the GM may give you extra information on the dungeon history, or, with the ritualist skill, the GM might tell you how to remove a curse you received. Skills are a good opportunity for the GM and players to exercise their creativity while coming up with stories.

Some skills can be upgraded: remove the previous skill before learning the advanced one so it only occupies one slot. They are the indented ones below, for clarity. You must always learn the basic skill before the advanced one.

• Animal Affinity: You have advantage when testing for anything that involves taming, understanding or tracking wild animals.
  • Beastmaster:(advanced) You have advantage for anything that involves fighting, taming, understanding or tracking animals. You have a pet that follows you around (medium ally).

• Ward the dead: May perform a ritual using 1 exploration turn to ward the dead vigil within a circle of radius 1 meter. Does not affect anything that the dead vigil has already set, only prevents it from happening the first time.
• Cooking: Each ration can feed an extra adventurer in the camp phase. You get 1 free ration at the start of the interlude.
  • Master Chef:(advanced) Each ration can feed two extra adventurers in the camp phase. You get 3 free ration at the start of the interlude.
• Crafting: You have advantage when testing for crafting things. During the camp phase, you can repair 2 points of armor automatically.
• Duelist: You may perform a feint action in combat (1 action). Discard all shield and dodge tokens from your enemy.
  • Swashbuckler:(advanced) If your feint removes a shield token, your opponent may not attack next turn.
• Fearless: Once per combat, you may heal one presence wound.
• Haggle: During the interlude you can reroll the price of an item once. You must use the new result.
  • Trade network: During the interlude, you can reroll the price of an item once. You may choose to use the new or the old result. You may also reroll the item availability once.

• Holy Rites: You have an extensive knowledge about the new gods, prayers and the saints. You may make holy water using clean water and 1 exploration turn.
• Infiltration: Allows the search for traps action without proper tools during expeditions and an advantage when sneaking.
• Intimidate: You may perform an intimidate action in combat (2 actions), attacking with PRE 1N against all nearby enemies. Only one intimidate action can be used per combat.
• Loremaster: You have an extensive knowledge about the world history, languages and different cultures.
• Pilfer: You earn 1d6 silver coins at the start of the interlude.
• Occult Studies: You have an extensive knowledge about old gods, magic and the occult.
• Ritualist: During camp phase, you can spend 1 action to remove one point from the omens tracker or doom tracker.
• Shield Expert: Add 1 extra shield token when defending.
  • Shield Master: (advanced) Add 1 extra shield token when defending. Moving does not remove shield tokens.
• Stalker: Before combat, if undetected by an enemy, you have a free critical hit.
• Street Wise: You cannot get robbed in the interlude, and you have one extra daily action. You may reduce the price of common items by 1 silver (to a minimum of 1).
• Surgeon: During the camp phase, you may perform an Intelligence test to heal one wound from each character in your group.
• Survivalist: Gain 1 extra proficiency point for anything that involves surviving in the wilderness. Adds 1 extra camp action.
• Slippery: You may spend dodge tokens during the enemy turn to move one tile.
• Veteran: (1 explorer action) Test presence: on a success, you will know how much doom this location currently has, and how much doom is required to trigger the next step.

Special Traits

Special traits are similar to skills, but usually add or break a rule for your character.

• Berserker: During combat, ignore strength fatigue and wounds when rolling tests. You still take wounds and fatigue normally, and so your character will collapse in exhaustion if your available dice go lower than zero.
• Bad omens: Every time you have a critical fail on a test, advance the omens tracker.
• Battle trance: Every time you kill an enemy, you get an extra action.

• Cold blood: You may back-stab enemies that are engaged in combat with another character or distracted, for which you may use Dexterity to hit with weapons that would require Strength. Enemies can't use resistance to reduce your damage, and you cause one extra wound.
• Divine mandate: You may cast prayers. You require a holy symbol, and must have previously memorized them. Check the prayers section for more information.
• Hardened: When receiving wounds from an attack, you may test strength: on a success, resist 1 wound. On a great success resist 2 wounds.
• Magic user: You may invoke spells. You require a magic conductor, and must have previously memorized them. Check the spells section for more information.
• Rejected by death: If your character would get mortally wounded, roll 2d!: if triggered, ignore the mortal wound.
• Dauntless: When you get a success on a test, you may roll 2 extra dice and add them to this test. This increases your great success and fatigue chance.
• Third eye: You can see the omens tracker.

Traumas

Traumas work similarly to special traits, except that they are always very bad for the adventurers. Traumas are usually received when the character gets mortally wounded. Most traumas can be recovered or at least downgraded to a more manageable one.

Receiving the same trauma again has no effect.

• Broken arm: Can't use one arm for attacking or carrying items.
• Broken leg: Movement reduced to 1 tile and costs 2 actions in combat. Moving during expedition must be done with help or some sort of cane.
• Chronic pain: You just can't seem to focus. Reduce one point on one attribute score that is not already zero.
• Brain damage: Reduce one proficiency point on one attribute that is not already zero.
• Paranoid: Can't receive help from allies, and can't share items other than rations in the camp phase. -1 ambush dice in the camp phase.
• Fearful: During combat, if you are attacked, you move one tile back. If you are attacked more than once, you get 1 (and only 1) stun token.
• Visions: When someone casts a spell nearby, you receive a stun token.

Inventory

Characters can carry 7 items + 3 items for each strength score. Items should be placed on your character sheet in the appropriate slots in the Trappings section. While carrying more items is possible, the character will become encumbered, and all movement is reduced by half. You must perform a strength test every turn, and failing means some item was dropped, chosen randomly.

At the trappings table, on top of each list, there's a label, something like "Belt/Small pouch". Circle any items your character has; if your character doesn't have any of the listed items, cross out the whole list.

Here's a breakdown of how the adventurers can carry their items:

• A bag carried on the back can carry 4 items; a backpack can carry 7 items.
• A belt can carry 1 item; a small pouch can carry 2 items.
• A canteen can carry 1 liquid item; a skin can carry 2 liquid items.
• Each small bag can carry 3 items.

Unless stated otherwise, all characters start with a belt, a canteen and a bag.

When items have a characteristic that makes them awkward or hard to carry, write it below the item, with the characteristic occupying one extra slot. Examples of characteristics are oversized, fragile and unstable.

Very small items, like chalk, keys or a dice do not occupy any slots, and should be written down in the notes section of the character sheet.

Characters may also carry items in their torso and hands slots.

• The torso has 4 slots.
• Each hand has 2 slots.

Equipped armor and helmet go on the torso slots; wielded items, including torches, go on the hands. Unless the player has a really good explanation, a character can only wield one item in each hand, even with 2 slots. For simply carrying stuff, carrying 2 items in each hand is fine.

The character's clothes that are not considered armor do not occupy a slot. You can write them down in the notes section.

Distance

Most weapons, skills, spells and items will have a maximum or minimum range to work. To simplify things, we will use some abbreviations, instead of listing the numbers every time. There are 4 range types for measuring distance in Dead Weight:

Close, Nearby, Far and Distant.

When using a grid map, here's how you can convert distances:

Trackers

Also known as a progress clock in other systems, a tracker is just one or more circles divided into segments that the GM uses to track the progression of something. Every time a tracker is advanced, one segment must be filled. When the circle is completely filled, the tracker is triggered and something happens. There are 3 main trackers that are always in play:

• Decay tracker: Represents the toll that dungeon delving takes on the adventurers. Causes hunger, exhaustion and other bad things to the players. Advances every turn.
• Doom tracker: There's one for each dungeon, representing the dungeon "waking up" to the adventurers' presence and reacting.
• Bad Omens tracker: There's one for the whole campaign. Represents the adventurers' terrible luck and their inevitable doom in Blacksalt island. Every time it gets completed, something really bad happens.

The Playing the Game book explains in more detail how each of these trackers work, so don't worry about them for now.

The GM can also create more trackers at any moment, to represent long challenges, the tide rising, a strong enemy slowly waking up and so on. Trackers can be hidden from the players or fully visible.