Player's Handbook

A campaign is one Company and its saved history. An adventure is a journey undertaken by that Company; an expedition is one run at a difficulty. Oddwater is your home town in the Crooked Mile. Four heroes form the active party. The Guild lets you select an active slot and a reserve, then confirm a swap. Heroes retain their own health, resources, training, spells, equipment and attire when swapped. Reserves do not earn ordinary active-party rewards.

A new campaign starts with six available heroes, 40 gold, three provisions and four shared Healing Potions. Alaric, Markovia, Vestin and Mystere form the initial active party; Thoradin and Spargle are reserves. Recruiting can expand the Company. New Campaign starts fresh; continuing a campaign preserves its progress.

The adventure shelf shows unfinished expeditions as IN PROGRESS, most recently played first. Returning to town does not end an unfinished expedition. Completed difficulty labels have checkmarks. Only The Forsaken Woods is currently playable.

HP measures remaining life. At zero a hero falls and cannot act; ordinary healing and rest do not resurrect them. AC is the number an attack must meet. Attack adds to the attack die; damage is rolled separately after a hit. Initiative is a fixed speed score: higher values act earlier in each round. Mana fuels spells; stamina fuels martial skills. Neither automatically refills each combat round.

Combat proceeds in descending initiative order. Each living combatant normally takes one action on its turn. Select an enemy or ally with its portrait, information plaque or battlefield figure; the selected target persists until changed or invalid. A defeated enemy is replaced by a living target. Selecting a target is separate from taking an action. Spell descriptions distinguish self, one ally, one enemy and the entire party or enemy group.

A normal attack rolls d20 and adds Attack and applicable modifiers. A total at least equal to the target's current AC hits. A natural 20 automatically hits and maximizes the damage die; it does not double the damage. A natural 1 is a critical miss and can cause a brief setback. The combat result displays the roll and calculation. Automatic spell effects do not use an attack roll. Multi-target spells resolve each target separately.

Defend uses your action for +3 AC until your next turn. It also protects against effects whose description says defending reduces their damage. It is not universal damage reduction or status immunity. Temporary party armor protection uses the stronger of a normal party armor buff and Shield Wall, rather than adding them together; personal Defend adds separately.

Alaric's Power Strike costs 1 stamina for -1 attack and +4 damage. Vestin's Aimed Shot costs 1 stamina for +3 attack and +2 damage. Markovia's Mending Prayer costs 1 mana to restore d8+4 HP to a selected living ally. Thoradin's Shield Wall costs 1 stamina and grants all living allies +3 AC and defended status through every living enemy's next completed turn. Refreshing the wall does not stack it. A frozen enemy's skipped turn counts toward its expiry. Mystere and Spargle choose learned spells through their spellbooks.

An assassin’s Vanish costs 1 stamina and grants +5 AC through the next personal turn. The following Backstab automatically hits and maximizes its damage die on a natural 15–20; another action ends hiding.

Artifacts, when acquired, can replace a compatible hero's personal skill. Their descriptions state their effects and limits; equipping one does not create a second simultaneous personal skill.

The six elements are Fire, Frost, Void, Holy, Wind and Earth. Unattuned weapons deal physical damage. Weapon attunement changes weapon damage; learned spells retain their own elements. Weakness increases elemental damage by half, rounded up. Resistance halves it, rounded down, with at least one damage for a positive elemental hit. If both apply, they cancel. Elemental resistance is not general invulnerability.

Freeze causes a living target to skip its next applicable turn and then thaw. Applying Freeze again refreshes the single pending skip; it does not stack lost turns. A frozen target has an icy-blue tint, a gravestone status marker and a Frozen label. Frost resistance reduces the chance of Freeze from effects that explicitly allow this defense. Combat effect popups wrap or shrink within each combatant’s space; FROST RESIST appears on two lines. FROST RESIST means that resistance prevented the Freeze; RESIST means the effect was avoided normally. Blizzard retains its listed 40% Freeze chance even against a Frost-resistant enemy; resistance still reduces its damage. Other elemental status defenses are not implied.

Poison damages its victim at the beginning of their combat turns. It does not stack; healing, resurrection or rest cures it, including healing a poisoned living hero already at full HP. Poison can persist between battles. Entangled reduces Attack and Off Balance reduces AC through the affected combatant's next completed turn. Critical-miss setbacks can reduce AC or a next attack, expose a target to one accurate incoming attack, lose one resource, or inflict minor nonlethal self-injury. The result names the setback.

Learn spells permanently at the Temple for the selected hero's class. Starting spells are already learned. Costs below are gold to learn and mana per cast. A spell consumes an action; healing cannot exceed maximum HP and resource restoration cannot exceed capacity.

Temporary two-turn buffs/debuffs count down at the recipient's turn beginnings. Their effect ends as the second upcoming turn begins; the caster's application turn is not another duration tick. Shield Wall has its separate enemy-turn expiry described above.

The level cap is 12. Leveling adds 3 maximum HP and +1 Attack; living heroes gain the added HP, while fallen heroes stay fallen. Reaching 60 XP through an ordinary adventure reward automatically promotes a level-1 hero to level 2 without consuming that XP. Later Guild level-ups cost 60 times the current level in XP, subtracting the cost. Gold rewards belong to the Company; each surviving active hero receives the full stated XP reward.

Guild training offers Attack (+1 each rank), Health (+3 maximum HP each rank), and mana/stamina capacity (+1 each rank), each capped at five ranks. Training costs by purchase are 15, 30, 75, 150 and 255 gold. Health training also adds 3 current HP to living heroes; resource training adds one current resource.

The Blacksmith improves weapons for +1 damage per rank, up to six ranks, costing 20, 40, 100, 200, 340 and 520 gold. Armor gains +1 AC per rank, up to four ranks, costing 30, 60, 150 and 300 gold. These improvements do not change the damage die or initiative.

Weapon attunement costs 60 gold and selects one element. Armor resistance costs 45 gold per element, with up to two distinct resistances. Removing an attunement or clearing resistances gives no refund. Clearing attunement restores physical weapon damage.

The pouch is shared by the Company. Combat items cost one action.

Resting in town is free and restores living active heroes' HP and mana/stamina and cures poison. It does not buy new shared potions. Camps provide the same living-party recovery free once per campsite per expedition. A camp passed without resting may be used later. Fallen members need resurrection: the Temple charges 30 gold per hero and restores full HP, or Recall the Fallen revives in combat as described above. Resurrection does not automatically refill mana/stamina. If no unlocked Company member is alive, the Temple provides emergency mercy to the first active hero at 1 HP for free.

Flee is available on a valid hero turn and requires a provision. It consumes one provision plus 5% of current gold, rounded down, returns the Company to town with its remaining wounds and leaves the encounter undefeated. Defeat costs 10% of gold, rounded down, and brings the fallen to the Temple.

An ordinary voluntary return to Oddwater uses one provision. Without one, it costs 10% of gold, rounded up, capped at 50 gold and the gold you have. This charge is separate from fleeing; it is not charged a second time on a retreat.

Walk along each location, inspect nearby points and resolve required obstacles to reach its exit. Optional interactions can be left for later. Dialogue can be revisited; conversations may have multiple pages or questions. Reading a conversation does not automatically clear unrelated obstacles.

The toolbar map may be inspected during exploration or combat. Opening it gives no travel permission. Travel and Return to Town require a valid entrance or resolved exit, with required obstacles satisfied. Eligible unlocked revisits need not be adjacent. Arrival begins at the location entrance; closing a map preview or loading a save preserves your actual position. A branch choice can exclude its alternative for the whole expedition, even after the roads reconverge. HERE marks the last location actually visited.

Challenges offer authored approaches such as Might, Finesse, Wits, Presence, Survival or Arcana. These names are approach categories, not separately trained character attributes. Living active heroes and other stated requirements can enable choices or add modifiers. Roll d20 plus shown modifiers against the difficulty; equality succeeds. Natural 1 and 20 have no special challenge critical rule. Success or failure resolves the attempt for that expedition. Leave It Alone makes no roll, spends nothing and allows a later attempt. Nonlethal challenge damage cannot reduce a living hero below 1 HP.

Treasure and encounters award their rewards once per expedition. Some chests provide bonus supplies; a bonus that cannot fit in its stack converts to gold. Encounter chests require opening confirmation. Resolved retained challenge props remain visible as RESOLVED and cannot grant another reward.

Difficulties advance through Basic, Advanced, Expert, Master and Master Plus. Start the next difficulty from the selected adventure's introduction after completion. Stronger enemies and larger gold/XP rewards accompany higher difficulty. New expeditions reset adventure obstacles, camps and rewards while retaining the Company and its progression. Master Plus repeats at fixed difficulty indefinitely.

Company Reputation is earned on adventure completion, separately from character XP. Forsaken Woods awards 25, 50, 100, 175 and 250 reputation at the five respective difficulties. Rank derives from total reputation. Rank II's Field Pace increases exploration movement by 20% and remains active at higher ranks. No additional rank benefits are currently implemented.

Attire is cosmetic: it does not alter combat statistics. Base attire is always owned. Purchase and Equip are separate actions; buying never automatically changes an outfit. The Shop and Character Sheet show the same ownership and selection. Current purchasable outfits cost 10 gold each.

The Company Ledger records expedition outcomes and gains/losses; the Monster Manual records defeated creatures as they are encountered. Character sheets show individual progression and conditions.

Each campaign has an interruption-recovery autosave, quick save and three manual save slots. Explicit Save or Load establishes the session checkpoint. Leave Without Saving returns the resume state to that checkpoint; it does not overwrite the other manual or quick slots. Campaigns remain separate. Deleting a campaign asks for confirmation. Device preferences are shared independently of campaigns.