ACTIONS
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H&S uses d6s, six-sided dice, to resolve actions with risk or consequences. You roll a pool of d6's at once, only reading the single highest result.
✦ Triumph (6): You achieve what you set out to do—clean and complete.
⬖ Struggle (5, 4): You succeed, but at a price. A complication arises, or new trouble follows. If no immediate complication is obvious, the action might simply give a mediocre result.
⊗ Fumble (1-3): Your attempt goes awry. Failure is likely—or something worse may follow.
⧉ Twist (Doubles): If two or more dice show the same number, a twist changes the story. The players propose twists, but the GM has the final say.
If you ever need to roll and have zero, or negative, dice, you roll two d6 and take the lowest result. You cannot ✦ Triumph when you have 0 dice.
All the dice systems in the game are expressions of this basic format. When you’re first learning the game, you can always “collapse” back down to a simple roll to judge how things go. Look up the exact rule later when you have time.
The action of rolling dice to determine an outcome is referred to as a check. A player could ask to make a check, but the GM always decides if it is necessary: if no risk or consequence is present for the action, no check is required; the GM simply narrates the result of the action. On the other hand, if risks are at stake, the player starts to build their dice pool. Players gain dice from two sources: ranks and edges.
When you make a check, choose an associated skill or lore. Each rank you have with your chosen skill or lore grant 1 die. The player always chooses where they get their ranks from, though the GM might offer suggestions. Only one of the two types of ranks may contribute; you can't mix ranks from lore and skills in the same die pool. You can at most have three ranks with any given skill or lore.
Sometimes, the stars align to aid you in an endeavor. If a plan is executed well, you have some narrative advantage, or you can call upon one of your virtues, you gain an edge. Add another die to your check. You can benefit from up to 3 different edges at once. This means that between your ranks and edges, the highest achievable die pool is 6d6's.
During actions with difficult circumstances or poor decisions, the GM might impose up to three cuts on your checks. For each cut you have accumulated, remove the highest result from your pool after the dice have been rolled. Cut dice that would have resulted in a ⧉ Twist are also ignored for the purposes of the twist.
As a rule of thumb, every 3 checks you make will suffer from cuts. These can be imposed due to the use of ranks that aren't quite applicable to the task or due to a particular difficult action with low chance of success.
For example, using the Break skill to harvest a monster's delicate organs is less suited than using the Hack skill. Alternatively, attempting to sneak away from a guard that's eyeing you would also impose cuts.