Field Reference 06
Written for a GM who has run other systems. Part one is what SWADE does differently; part two is table reference; part three is campaign design. Page numbers are the SWADE core rulebook.
If you've run d20-family games, GUMSHOE, Fate, PbtA or similar, these are the assumptions that won't transfer.
No CR, no XP thresholds, no monster maths. The system doesn't provide one and doesn't want one. Balance comes from your judgement about the fiction, and from the fact that both sides break quickly. See Building opposition for the closest thing to guidance.
Every non-Wild-Card enemy is removed by a single Wound. That means the mook fight you budgeted three rounds for resolves in one — and it means numbers, not durability, are how you make ordinary enemies dangerous. Gang Up is the lever: +1 per additional adjacent attacker to a maximum of +4.p101
You get one per player character as a common pool, plus two of their own for each Wild Card villain, and you're expected to spend them — Soak rolls for your villains, rerolls on important attacks. A GM who forgets their own pool makes named enemies far more fragile than intended.
A hero facing four Wounds can spend a Benny, roll Vigor, and cancel several of them. Damage totals that look lethal on paper frequently aren't. Conversely, a party out of Bennies is in genuine danger — track that, because it's your real difficulty dial.
Wound penalties are −1 each to everything, so an injured character misses more, Soaks worse and fails the Spirit rolls to shed Shaken. The book's advice to be generous with Bennies isn't flavour — it's load-bearing. Under-award and the game turns punishing quickly.
Worth knowing when you build NPCs: an NPC's Smarts d12 does nothing for their Hacking. Attributes buy cheap skills, unlock Edges and set derived stats. Nothing else.
No fixed order to plan around. A character can act last then first — effectively a double turn. Jokers grant +2 to everything and let the holder act whenever they like, including interrupting.
A d6 skill misses a flat TN 4 about a third of the time. Design around expected failure: don't gate plot on a single roll, and prefer Dramatic Tasks or Quick Encounters where partial success is meaningful.
Table reference — the subsystems and calls you'll reach for mid-session.
Everything is TN 4. Difficulty lives in the modifier, never the target.p87
| +2 | Easy — favourable circumstances, right tools, no time pressure |
| — | Ordinary |
| −2 | Difficult |
| −4 | Very difficult |
Opposed rolls: the acting character rolls first and must clear a 4 regardless; the defender must then meet or beat. Ties go to the defender.p88
Unskilled is d4−2, and you may rule some tasks can't be attempted untrained at all.p89
Cooperative rolls use Support: +1 per success, +2 per raise, maximum +4 combined — except Strength checks, which have no cap.p106
Skill caps by another skill. Several skills use the lower of two: Repair is capped by Electronics on electronic devices, Thievery likewise; social skills are capped by Language when working in a foreign tongue; a technical argument in Social Conflict uses the lower of Persuasion and the relevant knowledge skill.
Roll when failure is interesting and the outcome is in doubt. A competent character working unhurried, unopposed and unobserved simply succeeds. Given the failure rates above, calling for rolls on routine tasks makes characters look incompetent.
| Players | Three each at the start of every session |
| You | One per player character in a common pool, usable for any of your characters including Extras. Each of your Wild Cards additionally has two of their own. |
| Joker's Wild | When a player character draws a Joker in combat, every player character gets a Benny.p89 |
A Benny buys: a Trait reroll (best result stands), instant Shaken recovery at any time, a Soak roll, a new Action Card, a damage reroll, 5 Power Points, or a story nudge at your discretion.p90
Not rerollable: Critical Failures — a 1 on both the Trait die and the Wild Die — unless Dumb Luck is in play.
Award for: playing a Hindrance to the character's detriment, a genuinely clever solution, a good line, and anything that makes the table lean forward. Under-awarding is the more common failure and it compounds with the death spiral.
Skill rolls against a clock. Players accumulate Task Tokens: one per success, two per raise. Failure means no progress; a Critical Failure removes a token if any have been earned.
| Challenging | 4 tokens in 3 rounds |
| Difficult | 6 tokens in 4 rounds |
| Complex | 8 tokens in 5 rounds |
No fixed table — you set it. The book's guideline: assume each participant averages one success per turn, pick three to five rounds, and multiply. Five players over three rounds is 15 tokens for an even-odds task; move the number up or down to harden or soften it.p123
Complications are the mechanism that gives this teeth. If a participant's Action Card is a Club, that round's rolls take an extra −2 — and a failed roll during a Complication fails the entire task outright. A character may decline to roll during a Complication, losing the time instead. Supporters suffer the Complication penalty too, and a further −2 if their own card is a Club; their Critical Failure only subtracts from the lead's roll rather than sinking the task.p123
Multiple skills make a task harder, because raises don't carry across skill types. Requiring two Repair successes then three Electronics successes means surplus successes from the first stage are wasted.
Think hard before writing a Dramatic Task that kills the party on failure. The threat should be real, but consider consequences short of total disaster — they escape but the building goes up, they wake in a hospital, they're captured into a different adventure.p123
Resolve a whole scene in one round of rolls. Use when you're short on time, the group isn't in a tactical mood, or they've gone somewhere you haven't prepared.
Suggested skills by type — heist: Hacking, Notice, Stealth, Thievery. Trek: Common Knowledge, Notice, Survival. Crisis: Athletics, Persuasion, Repair. Chase: Common Knowledge, Driving, Repair, Shooting. Mission: Battle, Boating, Fighting, Persuasion, Piloting, Shooting. Combat: Fighting, Shooting, arcane skill.
This is the improvisation tool. Anything the party attempts that you haven't statted can be resolved here with real stakes rather than hand-waved.
If the only question is whether they catch the runner, use a Quick Encounter. Use the full rules when the pursuit is the scene.
Participants use Chase Cards to track relative position and make a maneuvering roll each round with the skill matching their mode of travel:
| Athletics | On foot or bike |
| Driving | Ground vehicle |
| Piloting | Aircraft or spacecraft |
| Boating | Watercraft |
| Riding | Mount or wagon |
Critical Failures on a maneuvering roll have mode-specific consequences — mounted characters roll a d6 for lost turn, mount Fatigue or a fall. Substitute anything appropriately disastrous.
A Spirit roll as a free action, made when characters first encounter something with the Fear ability. Success means they carry on.
| Nausea | Grotesque or horrific — Shaken and Fatigued. Critical Failure also means a roll on the Fear Table. |
| Terror | Monstrous or unknowable — Extras are Panicked; Wild Cards roll on the Fear Table, at +2 if they Critically Failed. |
How often you call for Fear checks does more to set genre than almost any other choice. The book treats it as constant in realistic, horror and dark games, and as an occasional creature ability in high fantasy or supers. Decide before session one and tell the players.
Downtime storytelling. Players who want in draw from the Action Deck; the suit sets the story type. Everyone who takes part earns a Benny. A Joker means an extra Benny for everyone and the player chooses their own category.
| Downtime | What the character does alone |
| Backstory | A tale from their past, in their voice |
| Trek | An obstacle the party met on the journey |
The cheapest way to get quiet players talking, and the natural use for travel time.
Abstracts hours of asking around into one roll. The social counterpart to Research, and the right tool for "we spend the evening working our contacts."
| Persuasion | Hobnobbing, drinks, gifts, bribes, meetings. Success gets most of what they want, though it may take time, cost money, or incur a favour owed. Raise: more, or cheaper. Failure: wasted effort. Critical Failure: cut off from that circle for about a week. |
| Intimidation | Threats and general unpleasantness. Success gets most of it, but the victims may want payback later. Raise: more, faster, or they're too scared to retaliate. Critical Failure: they end the night with a fat lip — and the contacts will be ready next time. |
| Money talks | +2 for spending on bribes, gifts or entertaining. Rule of thumb for the amount: the setting's starting funds, adjusted for the contact. |
Most hazards are a periodic attribute check, and failure means Fatigue. Fatigue is −1 at Fatigued, −2 at Exhausted, and a third level Incapacitates — so hazards are a slow squeeze rather than a burst of damage, and they stack with Wound penalties.
| Cold | Vigor every 4 hours below freezing; −2 per 20°F below, max −4. −2 for light clothing, +2 modern gear, +4 advanced. Incapacitated victims die in 2d6 hours. Recovery needs warmth and shelter. |
| Heat | Over about 90°F. The real mechanism is dehydration, so water supply is the mitigator. |
| Thirst | Two quarts a day, doubled in desert or humid jungle. A day after running short, Vigor every eight hours. |
| Hunger | About 1,500 calories a day. After 24 hours short, Vigor; −1 on half rations, −2 with nothing. |
| Sleep | Six hours in 24. Without it, Vigor every 24 hours at a cumulative −2, max −4. Stimulants give +2. |
| Radiation | Vigor hourly in low radiation, per minute in high. Incapacitation means radiation sickness — treat as a Chronic Disease. |
| Falling | 1d6+1 per 2″ (four yards), max 10d6+10. Deep snow reduces damage 1 per foot. Athletics halves damage into deep water from 20 yards or less; a raise negates it. |
| Fire | Roll 1d6 when a flammable target is hit: catches on a 6, a 4–6 if very flammable, 2–6 if volatile (soaked in fuel). Damage: 1d6 spot contact or steam, 2d6 bonfire or burning room, 3d6 flamethrower, 5d6 lava. Continues each turn. |
| Electricity | Vigor at −2: success is Distracted, failure is Stunned. If they gripped the source, muscles lock — Vigor at −4 as a free action each turn to let go, Fatigue on each failure, released on Incapacitation. |
| Drowning | Hold breath for 2 + Vigor die in rounds, half if caught unprepared. Incapacitated characters die in a number of rounds equal to their Vigor die; a Healing roll at −2 can resuscitate before then. Life vest +2. |
| Bumps & Bruises | Athletics when moving through injurious terrain; failure is a Fatigue level. Recovers one level per 24 hours, not per hour. A Healing roll relieves one level, two with a raise — once per healer. |
| Climbing | Athletics under stress: failure is no progress, Critical Failure is a fall. +2 for good holds or gear, −1 to −4 for smooth surfaces or bad conditions. Break long ascents into three sections, or run it as a Dramatic Task. |
Contracted by air, ingestion, or the touch or bite of a creature that causes Shaken or a Wound. The victim rolls Vigor immediately to avoid infection. Three categories:
| Chronic | Vigor at the start of every session. Failure means Exhausted for the session; success means Fatigued; a raise means no effect. Critical Failure means they die before the session ends — the book suggests letting them go out well. |
| Debilitating | Fatigued for 2d6 days. |
| Lethal | Fatigued on contraction, then escalating. Rare in the real world; the province of alien worlds and deep dungeons. |
Treatment versus cure. Diseases run their course or need specific medication. A Healing roll lets a physician prescribe or make a treatment once per day; each application reduces Fatigue by one level for four hours. That's symptom management, not a cure — a useful distinction if a disease is the plot.
On contact — or a Shaken result or better if delivered by attack — Vigor minus the poison's Strength. Failure means Distracted plus the specific effect. Types include Knockout (Incapacitated and unconscious), Paralysis, Lethal and others.
Skip all this if the duration doesn't matter — narrate it, maybe run an Interlude, move on. Use it when you need the time or want events en route.
| 24 miles | On foot, per 8-hour day |
| 30 miles | Horse; also a sailing ship (20 against wind or current, 60 with) |
| 40 / 60 | Steam ship / steam train |
| 200 / 400 | Early car / modern car or passenger train |
| 1,000 / 4,000 | Prop plane / commercial jet |
Encounters: in dangerous or lawless country, draw an Action Card once a day — two or three times in especially bad areas. A face card or higher means an encounter, and the suit tells you what kind. A Joker means drawing twice more and combining the results.
An alternative to counting currency. Everyone has a Wealth die, d6 for middle-class. It isn't a Trait but behaves like one — Bennies apply, the Wild Die applies, allies can Support it.
Mundane purchases just happen. Anything over roughly $10 × the Wealth die needs a roll. Success buys it but drops the Wealth die a step until finances recover. Raise buys it with no reduction. Failure means forgo it, or buy it and go broke. Critical Failure means they can't raise the funds and must wait a week or find a reward. Below d4 is dead broke: food, water and shelter only.
Two tables you'll need the book open for. Both are short, both are on pages you'll want bookmarked.
| Injury Tablep95 | Rolled when a Wild Card is Incapacitated, and on every Wound if the Gritty Damage Setting Rule is in play (once per incident, not per Wound). Results are located — head, guts, arm, leg — and translate into Hindrances or attribute reductions. Injuries from Gritty Damage clear when the Wound heals; those from Incapacitation may be permanent. |
| Fear Tablep124 | Rolled by a Wild Card who fails a Fear check against a terrifying source, or Critically Fails against a grotesque one. Add +2 if the Fear check was a Critical Failure. Results range from momentary panic to lasting phobias. |
A Shaken character Shaken again takes a Wound as normal but does not roll on the Injury Table, even under Gritty Damage.
Designing the campaign — opposition, tone, and pace.
There is no encounter formula. What follows is the structural knowledge that substitutes for one.
An Extra rolls one die, has no Wild Die, and drops on one Wound. A Wild Card rolls an extra d6 and takes three Wounds. That gap is enormous — a Wild Card is worth many Extras, and converting one enemy to Wild Card status is the single biggest dial you have.
| Filler | Extras with d6 Fighting or Shooting and Toughness 5–6. Dangerous only in numbers. |
| Real threat | Extras with d8 skills, Toughness 7–8 and armour, or a weapon that outranges the party. |
| Named foe | A Wild Card with d8–d10 in its speciality, Toughness 8+, two Bennies, and one or two Edges that change the tactical picture. |
| Boss | A Wild Card with d10–d12, an Edge suite, Extras providing Gang Up, and terrain that favours it. |
Size adds directly to Toughness and suggests a Strength range. Note that Size and Scale are different: everything from a child to a bull is Normal Scale and gets no attack modifier — the Scale bonus only starts at Size 4.
| Size | Toughness | Typical Strength | Scale | Examples |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| −2 | −2 | d4−1 | Small −2 | Coyote, bobcat |
| −1 | −1 | d4–d6 | Normal | Child, wolf, half-folk, goblin |
| 0 | — | d6–d12 | Normal | Human, dire wolf |
| +1 | +1 | d8–d12+1 | Normal | Large human, gorilla, lion, orc |
| +2 | +2 | d10–d12+2 | Normal | Grizzly, horse, ogre |
| +3 | +3 | d12–d12+3 | Normal | Bull, war horse |
| +4 to +7 | +4 to +7 | d12+1 upward | Large +2 | Hippo, elephant, T-Rex |
| +8 to +11 | +8 to +11 | d12+5 upward | Huge +4 | Dragon, sperm whale |
| +12 and up | +12 and up | d12+9 upward | Gargantuan +6 | Kaiju, giant monsters |
Large creatures also take an extra Wound before Incapacitation, Huge two and Gargantuan three, and usually have Reach equal to those extra Wounds.p178
Damage on a typical human-scale weapon runs 2d6 to 2d8 — averaging about 7 and 9 respectively, a little higher once Aces are counted. A Toughness of 5 is soft, 7 is average for an armed human, 9+ needs a real weapon. Compare intended damage against Toughness and count how many raises are plausible — that's your Wound rate.
Track party Bennies. Three each at session start is a large buffer; by the third fight of a session it may be gone, and the same encounter is then twice as dangerous. Escalate early, ease late — or hand out more Bennies.
The book is explicit that NPCs and monsters aren't built like player characters. Give them the abilities you want them to have and spend your effort on the plot instead. They should nominally meet the prerequisites of any Edges you give them, for tidiness — nothing more.
A block reads: Attributes, then Skills, then Pace / Parry / Toughness, then Edges, then Special Abilities.
| Toughness 9 (2) | The figure in brackets is Armour, already included in the total. AP cancels the bracketed part only. |
| Wild Card | Marked explicitly. If it isn't marked, it's an Extra: one die, no Wild Die, down on one Wound. |
| Size / Scale | Drives Toughness and the attack modifier between different-sized combatants. Large creatures take one extra Wound, Huge two, Gargantuan three — and their Reach usually equals those extra Wounds. |
| Natural Weapons | Bite, Claws, Horns and so on. Notably, an unarmed defender gets no penalty against them and the two-weapon bonus doesn't apply. |
| Armor | Thick hide is usually 2. A stegosaurus-grade creature 4+. Supernatural things can run to 8 or more. |
Special Abilities are where the interesting design lives — Fear, Burrow, Breath Weapon, Regeneration, Resilient, Undead, Construct. Two worth knowing because they change fight length: Resilient gives an Extra an extra Wound (Very Resilient two), and Hardy means a second Shaken result doesn't cause a Wound, which makes a creature dramatically more durable against chip damage.
Building a competent human opponent takes about a minute: pick the two or three skills that matter at d6 or d8, set Toughness from Vigor plus whatever they're wearing, give them one Edge if they're meant to be memorable, and mark them Wild Card only if they need to survive more than one hit.
Abstracted large-scale conflict that still gives the party a role in the outcome. Worth knowing it exists even if you never use it.
Battle Results — the winner of each opposed Battle roll consults:
| Tie | Draw — both sides lose one Force Token |
| Success | Marginal victory — the victor loses one Token, the defeated two |
| Raise | Victory — the defeated army loses two Tokens |
A standard battle round is two hours of hard fighting; stretch it to four or eight hours, or a day for a siege.p131
Each side gets Force Tokens proportional to strength — the larger army gets 10, the other a proportional number (10,000 against 7,000 is 10 against 7). Adjust for elite troops or better equipment. Commanders roll Battle each turn; the winner reduces the loser's tokens. The heroes' own actions during the battle feed back into the result, so what they do matters to the outcome rather than running alongside it.
Seventeen optional modules. Pick before characters are built — several change what's legal at creation. The full checklist is on p142.
| Born a Hero | Ignore Rank requirements on Edges at creation. Other requirements still apply. Opens Seasoned+ Edges to starting characters. |
| More Skill Points | 15 instead of 12. Recommended for modern and futuristic settings. |
| Multiple Languages | Everyone gets Linguist free, requirements ignored. |
| Skill Specialization | Skills need a chosen specialisation; −2 for other uses. Adds granularity at the cost of breadth. |
| Gritty Damage | Every Wound on a Wild Card triggers an Injury Table roll (once per incident). Very lethal. |
| Wound Cap | Never more than four Wounds from one hit, so no Soak of more than four. Keeps combat dangerous while making single-blow deaths rare. |
| Heroes Never Die | Incapacitated Wild Cards treat Critical Failures as failures and ignore Bleeding Out. Cinematic. |
| Fast Healing | Natural healing daily rather than every five days; Fatigue recovery every four hours. |
| Unarmored Hero | Wild Cards wearing no armour get +2 to Soak. Pulp. |
| Fanatics | Henchmen take hits meant for their master. Pulp villain protection. |
| Hard Choices | You start with no Bennies; you only get what the players spend. Jokers grant none to either side. Grittier and it makes your villains fragile. |
| Conviction | Tokens awarded for triumph or tragedy, adding an Acing d6 to all Trait and damage totals for a round, extendable with a Benny. Kept between sessions. |
| Dumb Luck | One Benny may be spent after a Critical Failure for another chance. The failure still happens narratively. |
| High Adventure | Spend a Benny for one-time use of a Combat Edge, ignoring Trait requirements. |
| Creative Combat | A raise on a Test allows a roll for additional effects. |
| Dynamic Backlash | Arcane Critical Failures roll on a 2d6 chaos table instead of causing Fatigue — outcomes from Overcharge (free success) to Catastrophe. |
| No Power Points | No PP tracking; instead subtract half the power's cost (round up) from the arcane skill roll. Maintaining costs −1 to further rolls. |
Gritty Damage + Hard Choices is extremely lethal — the Injury Table fires constantly while your Benny pool depends on players spending theirs. Wound Cap + Heroes Never Die is the opposite corner and makes PC death nearly a choice. Conviction raises the ceiling on what heroes can do without changing lethality, which suits a game that wants big moments but real stakes.
One Advance per session by default; every second or third session for a longer campaign.p54
| Novice | 0–3 Advances |
| Seasoned | 4–7 |
| Veteran | 8–11 |
| Heroic | 12–15 |
| Legendary | 16+ |
Each Advance buys: a new Edge; one skill at or above its linked attribute; two skills below theirs (including new ones from scratch); one attribute (once per Rank only); or removing a Hindrance.
Starting above Novice: build a Novice character and Advance it normally rather than granting a larger point pool — that keeps the creation maths intact. Starting funds roughly double per Rank above Novice.
Followers and allies who see significant action Advance alongside the party.
Rank gates Edges and powers, so Rank progression is the main tool for opening tactical options. Seasoned in particular unlocks a large tranche of Combat Edges and the second tier of powers — reaching it around session four changes the texture of play noticeably.
06Social Conflictp143
Most social exchanges are a single roll opposed by a Trait. Use this structure for extended argument — negotiation, a hearing, turning a hostile official.
Three rounds. Each round the player roleplays a distinct point and rolls Persuasion, opposed by the target's Spirit — or by a rival's Persuasion if someone argues against them. Each success and raise is an Influence Token. Rivals gain no tokens; they only deny them.
Modify freely. A technical argument uses the lower of Persuasion and the relevant knowledge skill. A genuinely good argument at the table deserves a bonus. If the argument must be won in a hurry, use a Dramatic Task instead.