Bare Bones
Bare Bones is the bare bones version of SORC. It is one of the three Rule Sets (see To the Reader, pg. 1), chosen before the campaign begins and locked in for its duration.
Bare Bones is a fixed preset, not a menu. Everything on this page is omitted, and no Player or GM picks and chooses among them. A table that wants to choose is playing Modular; a table that wants all of it is playing Complex.
Modular is not this list. A Modular table begins from Complex, every rule in force, and decides what comes out, one feature per category, agreed before the campaign begins. Bare Bones is the fixed set below, taken whole.
What Bare Bones Keeps
Read this first. Bare Bones is a smaller game, not a different one, and the spine below is untouched.
- The d100 roll-over system. Roll, add your Hit bonus and your Trait, compare to PROTS.
- Hit Bonus by Rank and Weapon Damage by Rank, both charts in full.
- Critical Hits and the Critical Window by Rank.
- Protection Score (PROTS), Base Armor Score by Grade, and the six base Armor Grades.
- Initiative, Actions, Movement and the action costs.
- Race, Alignment, Class and the full Class Trees, Tiers, Paths and Branches.
- Lore and Playable Races from other planets, but not their Armaments. Players can still visit these worlds in Bare Bones Play.
- Attributes, the 24 Traits, Talents, Skills and Expertise.
- Life, Mana and Stamina, plus Apex and Spirit.
- Character Level and Rank.
- Attack Area Types, so spells still cover ground.
Alignment is never omitted, in any Rule Set. It is not a feature sitting on top of the rules, it is a gate inside them. Alignment decides which Paths a character may take and it is what the Fallen and Risen mechanics read from. Remove it and Class selection stops working.
Combat
| Omitted | What Bare Bones does instead |
|---|---|
| DMG. Mod Chart, by Weapon Type | Damage is dice plus Trait. No cross-reference of attack type against armor material or creature type. |
| Velocity phases on the ranged table | The weapon keeps its full distance, a longbow still shoots 0–300 ft. What goes is the band-by-band modifiers: no Point Blank peak, no Stabilized peak, no Velocity Drop decay, and no +10 or –10, since those belong to the phases. The whole range behaves like the Oscillation row, roll to hit at full dice with no band modifier. See the Range Chart. |
| Fumble / Fizzle | A roll of 1-5 is a Miss like any other. No stumble, no 1d10 ft. of forced movement. |
| Limb-Specific Targeting (LST) | Attacks strike the target, not a limb. No called shots, no hit penalty for damage bonus trade. |
| Mod Scaling | A Mod that triggers, triggers. No per-round trigger counts by Rank. |
| Grapple and Grab, Special Actions, Botch and Escape | GM adjudicates a grab as a contested Strength check. No Botch, no Escape roll. |
| Encounter Difficulty Score | The GM sets difficulty by judgment. |
| Resurrection, Revitalize and Rejuvenation as three tiers | One revival procedure, set by the GM. The Death Penalty itself still applies. |
Five Hit Results become three: Miss, Direct Hit, Critical Hit.
Movement
Omitted: Encumbrance; the Stamina cost of movement (1 chip per base speed plus 1 per 5 ft. beyond it); Obstacle Navigation by Size; Cooldown; Visibility & Light; Disorientation; Environmental Hazards; and the Travel & Recovery distance tables.
Characters move their speed. A character carrying an absurd load, crossing a ravine or walking blind is handled by GM ruling rather than by table.
Equipment and Armaments
| Omitted | What Bare Bones does instead |
|---|---|
| Armor Quality and Armor Condition | Armor Score = Grade + Enhanced. No percentage of Grade, no d100 rolled on acquisition. |
| Weapon Quality, Weapon Condition, Sentimental Value | A weapon deals its Rank's damage. Quality still adjusts price. |
| Armament Penalty and Weapon/Hand Proficiency | Wield your Class's weapon and wear its armor. No penalty math, no proficiency bonus to calculate. |
| Underarmor Requirements, Bound and Unbound Armaments, Donning, Doffing and Setting | Gear is worn or it is not. The 24-hour readied Armament Set still governs which Abilities are available. |
| Armor Grade Vulnerabilities and Resistances, Armor Spell Power Modifiers, Set Bonus, Cultural Price Modifiers | The six base Grades and their Base Armor Score, nothing layered on top. |
| Special Armor: TABA, Primal, Orcus, Techmat, Chthonic Armor | Not fielded. See TAW and Chthonic below. |
TAW and Chthonic Are Lore in Bare Bones
Technologically Advanced Weapons (TAW) and Chthonic Armaments are not fielded in Bare Bones play. They remain in the fiction, in the histories and in the hands of the peoples who made them. A Bare Bones character does not carry one.
This changes less than it sounds like. Both are already gated three ways in the standard rules: TAW and TABA require a race or Background from Omnè, Tredeki or Futurem; Chthonic was worked out on Ignis and spread from there; and both require an Ambivalent alignment. A Bare Bones character of any other alignment or origin never had access to begin with.
The mechanical reason is simpler still. The DMG. Mod Chart is the only place TAW and Chthonic differ from Telluric, and Bare Bones omits that chart. Without it a plasma rifle and a longbow strike plate identically. Rather than field them as flavor wearing Telluric numbers, Bare Bones leaves them in the lore where they read best.
Omitted with them: TAW Ballistic and TAW Charged, Element Vector, Biotics, TABA, Techmat, Chthonic Armor, Chthonic Ammunition, and Tech Advanced Gear (TAG).
Telluric and Magic carry Bare Bones. Telluric covers bows, crossbows, thrown weapons and black powder firearms; Magic covers every Enchanted armament and caster implement. Between them a Bare Bones party is armed for anything the setting throws at it.
The Other Worlds
Bare Bones is not restricted to Zailister. All thirteen planets remain open, and a Bare Bones party travels, quests and adventures anywhere in Essentia. Two suns and thirteen worlds is what Essentia is; a Bare Bones table sees the whole of it.
What Bare Bones omits is the machinery those worlds carry, not the worlds:
- Credits. Everything prices in Gold, on every world. Futurem, Omnè and Tredeki still run on laser-secured credit in the fiction; at a Bare Bones table the purse is Gold.
- Planetary Bonus and Penalty. No range loss for a weapon carried off the world whose sun it was tuned to.
- World equipment tables. Zailister's table is the table, whatever the character's origin.
So a Bare Bones party walks Omnè's lit streets and takes its work. They simply do not come home with a TAW sidearm. Off-world gear a GM hands out reads as flavor on Telluric stats.
Progression and Legacy
| Omitted | What Bare Bones does instead |
|---|---|
| Growth, the annual and five-year milestone schedule | Characters advance on Character Level and Rank alone. Growth's Vitality and Innate Aptitude milestones do not trigger. |
| Aura and Aura points | Not tracked. |
| Birthday and the seasonal calendar | Time passes without being counted in seasons and Eons. |
| Archetypes: Hobbyist, Hermit, Wanderer, and the eleven Hobby categories | Not chosen. The rules already state Archetypes touch no Traits or Stats, so nothing else depends on them. |
| Prestige, the entire umbrella: Affiliation, Standing, Contribution, Party and Raid Bonuses, Legacy, Politics, Witness Mechanics and Rumors, Title Mechanics, War | Reputation is roleplayed, not scored. No Journal ledger, no Standing tiers, no faction membership tracking. |
| Fallen and Risen, including the Point of No Return and Recovery and Redemption | Alignment is a fixed tag chosen at creation and held. |
| Higher Power devotion upkeep | The binding choice at LVL 4 remains, because it gates Path Abilities. The daily Endurance spend and the weekly hour-long ceremony do not. |
| Endurance as a Vitality pool | Life, Mana and Stamina are the three pools tracked. Endurance exists to drive the daily-action economy Bare Bones is not running. |
| Retirement, Legacy and the Non-Player Character life | A retired character leaves play. |
| Mission Statement, Character UID | Not recorded. |
Why all of Prestige and not part of it. Standing feeds Affiliation, Affiliation feeds Contribution, Contribution feeds Legacy, Legacy feeds Title, and Politics and Witness Mechanics read from all of them. Keeping two of the eight leaves live references to the six that are gone, and a half-tracked reputation web costs a GM more rulings than a whole one. Bare Bones cuts it at the umbrella.
Companions
Companions stay. A Bare Bones character summons one, rides one, and fights alongside one. What Bare Bones omits is the husbandry.
Omitted: Companion Mood and Mood Effects, Mood Decline Resistance, Ailments, Aging, Bond Quests, Upkeep, Caretakers, Gifting, Ruminant Resource Production, Performance Tiers, Companion Tickets, Companion Environments and the Companion Presence Bonus.
Kept: the Companion's Vitality, its Abilities, its Role, its Movement, Flight and Glide, Mounting, and Summoning. It is a creature that fights and travels with the party.
Game Features
Omitted: Home and Family, The Boneyard, Downtime, Work While Away, End-of-Day Profession Activities, and the Panic Engine.
SORC Cards are kept in full. They are what makes a crunchy game portable, and a Bare Bones table benefits from them more than anyone.
Moving Up
A campaign's Rule Set is locked at its start and holds for its duration. A table that finds Bare Bones too thin does not add pieces mid-campaign; they finish the campaign and begin the next one under Modular or Complex. This is what locked in means.
Bare Bones and Complex each have their own box set and their own downloadable PDF set. Modular is not a separate set, a Modular table runs the Complex set and decides what to leave in and what to take out. The PDF and online versions expand and collapse, so a table can show or hide each system and keep only what they chose in front of them. Aside from those sets, the Basic Rules deal with all three at once, and this page is the Bare Bones list within them.
Nothing on this page is lost work. Every omitted system is written, tested and waiting on the page it lives on, and it is all there the moment a table decides it wants it.