Getting Started
Game Basics
What this game is, what it kept from D&D, and how a session actually runs.
If you already know Dungeons & Dragons, you will recognize the bones. The rest of this manual is the part we wrote because we wanted the Wheel of Time — not a D&D campaign wearing its clothes.
What This Is
A homebrew rulebook for our table, published so we can use it mid-session.
- We love the books. The official Wizards of the Coast Wheel of Time game did not feel like them — it felt like D&D with names and shapes copied on.
- So we wrote our own. It starts from D&D 3.5 and borrows the occasional idea from 4th and 5th edition, then rebuilds classes, fighting, and the One Power around this setting.
- This site is that rulebook: classes, weaponcraft, channeling, and the combat options we actually use.
How Play Works
The loop you will use at the table.
- Out of combat: say what you try. The DM sets a DC. Roll d20 + skill ranks + the relevant attribute modifier (and anything else that applies). Meet or beat the number.
- In combat: roll initiative. On your turn, spend your actions. To hit, roll d20 + attack bonuses; if the total is higher than Defense, roll damage in the listed order (dice, then STR on melee, then multipliers, then flat bonuses).
- During the fight: spend PHYS and stacks as your abilities allow. Immediate actions and one Attack of Opportunity happen on other people’s turns.
- When you level: you gain more Talent Points and spend them down the same trees. You do not rebuild the character from scratch.
- At the table: keep tokens for physicality, and two piles of stack tokens — stacks you can spend now, and incoming stacks you have earned but cannot spend yet. See Stacks for why those two piles stay separate.
What Will Feel Familiar
If you have played 3.5, you can sit down without a new language.
- Six attributes — STR, DEX, CON, INT, WIS, CHA — with the usual modifier table (10–11 is average).
- Skill ranks, class skills, and d20 + modifiers against a Difficulty Class.
- Combat still asks: roll a d20, add attack bonuses, beat Defense, then roll damage against hit points.
- Initiative is a d20; high goes first. You still have attacks of opportunity, full attacks, and saving throws.
What We Changed
These are the pieces that make this this game.
- Talent Points, not feat lists. You spend points into a class tree, a weaponcraft (or Channeling), and the Physicality tree. How deep you go in a tree is capped by your level. Details on Talent Points.
- Stacks are the fight’s currency of influence. Earn them by playing your class and weaponcraft the way they are meant to be played; spend them on abilities and Rite of Consumption. See Stacks below.
- Physicality (PHYS) is the hard, limited currency every player manages. Stronger abilities cost it; the tree is bought in order and raises your caps. See Physicality below.
- A busier turn. You usually get two Standard actions (one movement, one attack), plus a Swift, plus Free actions — or one Full Round action and a 5-foot step. See Actions.
- Advantage is extra dice. Situational edges (flank, cover, elevation) add extra d20s; you keep the best or worst. Equal Advantage and Disadvantage cancel.
- Armor soaks; it does not raise Defense. Hits still land. Armor absorbs a set amount of damage each round and may slow you or hurt your attack. See Armor.
- Channeling is its own path. Weaves per Day and the weave list in this manual replace the official book’s Power, which we found unbalancing.
Stacks
How much you have been in the fight — and what you can cash that in for.
A stack is the mechanical expression of your influence in a battle. Names on the sheet — Command, Muscle Memory, Rage, Vex — are flavor. Every stack is the same currency. Earn one from your class or your weaponcraft, and you may spend it on a class burn, a weaponcraft burn, or a Rite of Consumption exchange. Bank them up to your Physicality cap, then dump them for a big effect when the moment matters.
- Class stacks are the same for everyone. Whenever you use a non-passive class ability, you gain one stack. Passives never pay. If you have the actions to fire more than one class ability in a round, you can earn more than one class stack that round.
- Many class abilities are situational. Building a kit — and a position — that lets you use them often is how you maximize class stacks. An Adventurer is meant to close and mix it up; stand far off and only take a basic swing, and you will fire few Adventurer abilities, so you will earn few Embolden stacks. A Noble earns Command the same way — each non-passive Noble ability, often on someone else’s turn. Direct allies, read the field, tip key moments. A noble who never spends those Immediate actions is leaving Command stacks on the table.
- Weaponcraft stacks follow that weaponcraft’s playstyle. Bowcraft grants a Muscle Memory stack every time you roll a d20 to fire the bow, hit or miss. A bowman who rarely looses an arrow is not playing the weaponcraft.
- Other weaponcrafts work the same idea with different triggers. Armscraft Rage, for example, pays when a one-handed fighter takes damage from an enemy d20 attack: a swordsman who never gets hit is starving their own stack engine.
- Playing well has two halves. First, play in a way that earns as many stacks as you can. Second, spend them where they help the table — your burns, your weaponcraft, or Rite of Consumption.
- A Fortune Seeker Blademaster who uses class and weaponcraft every chance they get will swing a fight harder than the same character who only moves once and attacks once, never touching abilities, never banking or spending stacks.
- Channeling does not use weaponcraft stacks. It has Weaves per Day and Channeling Skill Points instead.
Physicality
The hard, limited currency every player has to manage.
Physicality (PHYS) is stamina you spend to fuel stronger abilities. Everyone starts each fight with very little of it. Unlike class or weaponcraft trees, where you have some choice in which abilities you buy first, the Physicality tree must be purchased in order.
- Going deeper in the tree unlocks a few new abilities. More important, it raises how many stacks you can hold at once, how many physicality points you can hold at once, and how fast those points come back.
- Stronger abilities often cost physicality. That cost is the brake: you cannot fire your best options every turn. Spend it, and you feel the empty tank until it recovers.
- Stacks and physicality can feed each other. Anyone can spend stacks on Rite of Consumption to buy physicality back. Blademaster is a clear example of the loop: spending physicality earns stacks, and stacks can be spent for physicality — at a better rate than the Rite. See that page for the numbers.
Wheel of Time RPG · Game Basics Rules manual