Commonly Used Terms
What roleplaying game isn’t rife with acronyms? Here’s a list of terms and abbreviations used throughout the rules:
Action Roll (AR): A 20-sided die roll to determine the success or failure of an attempted action; an Action Roll succeeds if the result equals or exceeds the required Target Number.
Advancement Cost (AdCost): A value suggesting how much experience a character must accumulate before he can improve; use as the Target Number when making Advancement Rolls.
Adventuring Hazard: A condition or effect that causes damage or other difficulties for a character. A successful Resistance Roll usually reduces the effect by half (a Critical Success negates the effect completely).
Alignment (AL): A character’s tendency for loyalty, whether to all others, select others, or self.
AR Modifier: A positive or negative value added to an Action Roll, indicating temporary or circumstantial conditions that effect the outcome. Unless otherwise noted, modifiers are cumulative, so benefits and disadvantages can cancel each other out.
Blast Attack: An attack that causes damage to anyone within a certain radius of a central point of impact. For simplicity, a blast is Small (1” radius), Medium (2” radius), or Large (4” radius); everyone within the radius is affected by the blast (which could represent an explosion, gas cloud, radiation field, or the effects of a power).
Cash ($): A generic unit of currency representing a setting’s dominant medium of exchange (e.g., dollars, pounds, gold pieces, silver pennies, et al.).
Damage (Dmg): The damage caused by an attack, which is reduced by the target’s Defence.
Defence (DF): Proof against damage provided by sheer physical resilience, mental resolve, armour, and other protections; Defence is subtracted from the Damage rolled after a successful attack.
Encumbrance (Enc): The bulk and weight of items carried or worn, subtracted from your character’s Movement Rate.
Fatigue: Non-lethal damage caused by exhaustion, exposure, or unarmed attacks; when fatigued, a character suffers a penalty to all rolls and his Movement Rate.
Flaw: A fault or disadvantageous quality that imposes special limitations or penalties in specific game situations.
Game Master (GM): A Chimera player who creates and runs the campaign setting, describes what the characters see and hear, plays the part of all non-player characters, and arbitrates the outcome of actions within the game.
Initiative Modifier (IM): An adjustment applied to Initiative rolls, indicating the relative quickness of an action attempted during a combat round.
Mana: A point pool representing your character’s ability to use powers effectively.
Movement Die: A die whose result is added to your Movement Rate (MR) when running, or subtracted from your MR when creeping.
Movement Rate (MR): The number of scale inches your character can walk in a round. Adjusted for Encumbrance, this figure is also the Target Number for attacks aimed at you. Your Movement Die is added to your MR when running, or subtracted from it when creeping.
Non-player Character (NPC): A character controlled by the Game Master.
Parry: A combatant’s ability to ward off, block, or avoid blows; a target’s Parry is added to the TN of attacks aimed at him. Parry is optional—if it isn’t used, add the Parry bonus to the combatant’s Defence (DF).
Perk: An advantage or special ability that grants a bonus in specific game situations.
Player Character (PC): A character controlled by a player and through which the Game Master’s campaign setting is experienced.
Power: Any supernatural ability not generally possible under “normal” natural laws (e.g., magic spells, divine miracles, psionic talents, or super powers).
Range (Rng): The distance (in scale inches) at which an attack can hit a target.
Rate of Fire (RoF): The number of shots a weapon can discharge as a single action; also the maximum number of targets an auto-fire weapon can hit in a single round.
Resistance Roll: An Action Roll used to reduce or negate the effects of an Adventuring Hazard. When making a Resistance Roll, characters always add their experience level to the result.
Round (rd): A measure of game time spanning 10 seconds. There are six rounds in a minute, 60 rounds in a turn.
Special Perk (Sperk): Perks available only by virtue of race or class; you may select Sperks during character generation or buy them later during Character Advancement. Each Sperk chosen increases your Advancement Cost (AdCost) by +1.
Target Number (TN): The value an Action Roll has to meet or exceed to be successful. Assume an average TN 12 unless otherwise noted for easier or more difficulty actions.
Turn (tn): A measure of game time spanning 10 minutes. There are six turns in an hour, 144 turns in a day.
Wound Limit (WL): The maximum number of wounds a character can sustain before being vanquished.
Wound Penalty (WP): A penalty indicating the negative effects of suffering damage, applied to all rolls and Movement Rate; each wound imposes a cumulative penalty of –1, which lasts until the wound is healed.
Wound Severity: The intensity of a wound, equal to the Damage inflicted minus the target’s Defence. Healing applies to a wound’s severity; when severity is reduced to zero (0), the wound is healed, and its corresponding Wound Penalty is removed.
