What Is an Attribute?

An attribute represents a fundamental intrinsic characteristic of a Being, something about what they are. Attributes cover a wide range: physical like Strength or Dexterity, psyche like Reasoning or Eloquence, and transcendent qualities such as Aura. These serve as the foundation for skill calculations throughout the system.

An attribute is also rollable in its own right. Every attribute has a Target Level — its score × 5 — and can be tested against it exactly the way a skill is tested against its mastery level. That is what the two actions on this page do.

Where It Appears

Attributes appear on the Being sheet’s Profile tab, as a grid of small cards — one per attribute, sorted the way they are ordered on the sheet.

There is no click-to-roll cell. Unlike a skill’s EML cell on the Skills tab, neither the Score nor the TL is a button — an attribute is rolled from its ⋮ menu (or from the attribute’s own Actions tab), and there is no Shift-click shortcut past the pre-roll dialog.

Attributes are displayed prominently since they form the basis of skill base formulas — every skill derives its starting value from one or more attributes, named in the skill’s Skill Base formula by shortcode.

Attributes are typically added from compendium packs when creating a character, not created from scratch. Add Attribute above the grid creates a blank one.

An attribute turns up in one more place: when someone answers an opposed test, the Respond with dropdown lists the character’s attributes alongside their skills.

Additional Properties

Along with the Standard Item Properties, the following properties also appear in the Properties tab:

• Score: The attribute’s base value — the number the Profile card shows, and the number the Target Level is five times. This is the first of the two boxes on the tab.
• Init Dice Formula: The dice formula a new character’s score for this attribute is meant to be rolled from, such as 3d6. It is a record of the generation rule, not a control: nothing rolls it for you today — you enter the score yourself (issue #1108). Leave it blank for an attribute that is not randomly generated. This is the second box on the tab.
• Value Descriptors: A table of names for score bands — the word shown under the score on the Profile card. Each row is a Label and a Max Value, and the label used is the first band whose Max Value is at or above the score, so a list of Feeble 4 / Weak 8 / Average 12 / Forceful 16 / Mighty 999 calls a score of 10 Average. Use Add to add a band and the 🗑 to remove one. An attribute with no bands simply shows no descriptor.
• Impaired By Roles: A list of body roles whose injury impairs this attribute — vital, core, manipulator, or locomotor. An unhealed injury at a body part carrying one of these roles penalizes this attribute’s tests, and an unusable part makes them fail automatically. Use Add Role to add one and the 🗑 to remove it. Physical attributes name the roles they depend on; mental attributes normally leave this empty.

Known gap. The Score and Init Dice Formula boxes currently render with no labels at all — two bare inputs, in that order (issue #1105). Until that is fixed, go by position: the left box is the Score, the right one the Init Dice Formula.

The Attribute Actions

Every attribute also carries the shared document actions — Edit, Delete, and Output Description to Chat — described once on Base Item. The full menu on an attribute is therefore: Edit, Success Test, Delete, Output Description to Chat, Opposed Test.

To reach any of them, click the ⋮ on the attribute’s card on the Profile tab, or open the attribute and use its Actions tab.

An attribute defines no hidden actions of its own — everything it can do is in that menu. The one action you will meet elsewhere is the shared GM result edit, reached from the ✎ pencil on a posted test-result card and described on Base Item.

Success Test

What it does and when to use it

Rolls the attribute itself — a raw test of what the character is rather than what they have learned. It rolls a d100 against the attribute’s Target Level (its effective score × 5) and reports critical success, marginal success, marginal failure, or critical failure, exactly as a skill test does.

Reach for it when no skill really covers the attempt and the question is about the character’s own substance: shoving a stuck door with Strength, holding your nerve with Will, noticing something is off with Perception, sensing the uncanny with Aura. If a skill does cover the attempt, roll the skill — its mastery level reflects training the bare attribute does not.

Score × 5 is the whole of the target. An attribute of 10 tests at 50, one of 16 at 80. That is the same TL shown on the Profile card, so you always know what you are rolling under before you start.

What happens on screen

1. The standard test dialog opens. Target, the modifier breakdown, Situational Modifier, Success Level Modifier, and Roll Visibility — its fields are described once on Base Item. Cancelling it rolls nothing and posts nothing.
2. The d100 is rolled against the attribute’s Target Level.
3. A test-result card posts to chat with the modifier breakdown, the Target, the Roll, and the outcome, colored by success or failure.

The test-result card

The GM’s pencil is described on Base Item, under Editing a Posted Test Result.

Injury changes the roll for you

If the attribute names Impaired By Roles and the character has an unhealed injury at a body part carrying one of those roles, the test is penalized by −5 or −10; if the part is unusable altogether, the test fails critically without a roll. A Strength test made on a crushed arm is not a normal Strength test.

Known gap. No Fate can be spent on an attribute test. The card never offers the Fate button, even when the character holds a general Fate Point, although the Fate rules allow one on any skill or attribute test (issue #1106). Until it is fixed, spend Fate at the table by agreement, or have the GM adjust the result with the pencil.

Opposed Test

What it does and when to use it

Starts a contest using this attribute: your character pits it against another character who gets to resist. Shoving someone out of a doorway (Strength against Strength), staring down a hostile guard (Will), matching wits, out-charming a rival — anything where the other side’s own quality is what stands in your way.

Both sides roll, the system compares the two results, and reports who won and by how many degrees, instead of leaving the table to eyeball two separate rolls. The responder does not have to answer with an attribute: they choose any skill or attribute of their own that fits.

Before you start

• Your character needs a token on the current scene. Without one the action refuses, reporting that the attribute “cannot start an opposed test: its actor has no token on the canvas.”
• Target exactly one opponent with Foundry targeting (the crosshair), not selection. With nothing targeted you are told “No tokens targeted.”; with more than one, you are warned and the first is used.
• You must own the targeted token. If you do not, the contest refuses to start. In practice the GM starts contests against NPCs — see Token for what this means at the table.

What happens on screen

The attribute hands the contest to your character’s token, which runs it from there. The standard test dialog opens for your roll, your result posts, and an Opposed Action Request card invites the other side to answer with a skill or attribute of their own.

The whole flow — the targeting rules, both cards, the responder’s dialog, and how Victory Stars are read — is described once on Token, under Starting an Opposed Test. For the rules behind a contest, see the Opposed Tests rules.

Nobody rolls for anybody. The request card sits in the chat log until a user who owns the target answers it, and it can be ignored entirely if the table would rather rule the outcome by hand.

See also

• Base Item — the standard item properties, the shared Edit / Delete / Output Description actions, and the standard test dialog both rolls on this page open.
• Skill — the learned counterpart, whose Skill Base formulas are built from these attributes.
• Skill Tests — what the numbers in a test mean, and how success levels are read.
• Token — the opposed-test flow this page’s Opposed Test action hands off to.
• Opposed Tests (rules) — Victory Stars and ties.
• Fate — spending a Fate Point on a settled result.
• Safe Expressions — how an attribute is referenced from a Skill Base formula.
• Shortcodes — what a Skill Base formula is naming when it says attr.str.
• Character Creation — where a character’s attribute scores come from.
• Items — every item type at a glance.
• User Guide — back to the index.