Ruin

Ruin is a currency that the DM can spend to make The Open Road more dangerous. The stories you tell at the table are born from drama; powerful enemies are more fun to overcome.

You can spend Ruin in much the same way players spend Wrath, representing the dark power to change reality many enemies have. Ruin should not be spent to punish anyone — we’re all at the table to have fun.

The amount of Ruin you have should be visible to the players, highlighting the malevolence and corruption that infest the world and the growing darkness that raises tension at the table.

Spending Ruin should escalate the situation, empower the dangerous creatures in the encounter and ensure the game is challenging. Remember that although you play the villains of the story, you aren’t the players’ enemy.

Spending Ruin

You can spend Ruin to activate any of the following effects:

Reroll Failures

You can spend 1 Ruin to reroll failures (but no Critical Failures (Nat 1's)) on any Test for a creature.

Seize The Initiative

You can spend 2 Ruin to Seize the Initiative. You can’t Seize the Initiative more than once per round.

Dread Vitality

You can spend 3 Ruin to restore the hit points of a creature. The creature has to make a DC15 Corruption Test. It regains a number of hit points equal to its Challenge Rating.

Dark Evasion

You can spend 1 Ruin to make a creature succeed on a saving throw.

Activate Ruin Actions

Some powerful enemies possess special Abilities that activate or improve when you spends Ruin.

Ruin Actions

Creatures now have access to special actions beyond the normal scope of Ruin’s effects. These are Ruin Actions and cost a certain number of Ruin to use. Ruin Actions operate outside the normal Initiative order and may be used at any point in the round. The same Ruin Action can’t be taken twice in the same round unless otherwise stated.

Sample Ruin Action (to give a bit of an idea to what a Ruin Action could look like)

Cult Leader

Ruinous Chant(1 Ruin). The Cult Leader start a chant in a fiendish language, invoking dark energies to damn their enemy. On the start of the Cult Leaders next turn, the DM gains 2 Ruin.

Acquiring Ruin

You start every session with a number of Ruin equal to the number of players. You can have a maximum Ruin of twice the number of players. Ruin doesn’t carry across sessions, and you discard any Ruin gained when the pool is at its maximum — just like Glory, Ruin is use-or-lose!

You gain 1 Ruin whenever the following events occur:

• A player rolls a Critical Failure (Natural 1).
• A player fails a Corruption Test.
• A player fails a saving throw against the Charmed or Frightened conditions.
• You roll a Critical Hit or Success (Natural 20).