# Sword, Sorcery & 2d6 *Created:* 2024-12-04, *Modified:* 2026-10-14 ![[Sword, Sorcery & 2d6 (v4.1) (cover).jpg|600]] **Sword, Sorcery & 2d6** is Incerto's free, pay-what-you-want sword-and-sorcery RPG — a slim one-booklet curio out of Brazil that keeps its promise exactly as its title makes it: you supply the blades, the wizardry, and the two six-sided dice. A cheerful hybrid of [[Powered by the Apocalypse|PbtA]] and [[OSR]] currents that refuses to be quite either, it's built to be grabbed, houseruled into whatever you please, and played until somebody dies — which, at six hit points, won't take long. The current edition, **v4.1**, is the latest stop on the game's long, loving update treadmill since its 2024 debut. ## Setting The book ships no fixed world, and it's fine with that. **Sword, Sorcery & 2d6** is the genre-machinery for the pulp register: a competent adventurer (or a small band of them, up to five plus a gamemaster) chasing a goal through a world that is dangerous, magical, and largely content to stay hand-waved. The character sheet asks for a name, a class/race, a goal or motivation, a bond with another character, a specialty, a weakness, an appearance, and a three-line background — everything the genre needs and nothing it doesn't. There are four archetypes and no more: the **Warrior** (melee, the only class trained for two-handed weapons and heavy armor), the **Archer** (ranged, sole wielder of the longbow and heavy crossbow), the **Sorcerer** (offensive sorcery), and the **Healer** (supportive sorcery — the only class that heals). Adventurers start competent but very mortal; the game is frank that it sits somewhere between modern editions and old-school hardcore on the lethality dial. You are not a hero the world owes anything to; you are a person with a reason to go where the monsters are. ## Mechanics ### Resolution The engine is the **PbtA** trio, plainly stated: roll **2d6 + attribute** and read **6 or less** as a failure, **7–9** as a partial success, and **10+** as a complete success, with a natural 2 a critical failure and a natural 12 a critical success — criticals and failures both feed the XP economy. Checks are bounded: no modifier ever exceeds **+3/−3**, and when circumstances call for more you roll advantage (3d6, keep the two best) or disadvantage (3d6, keep the two worst). If you ever just need a yes or no, treat 8+ as a success. The gamemaster almost never rolls; the players answer for every check, and a bad one hands them consequences and momentum rather than a passive "no." ### Character creation Five attributes — **Strength, Agility, Resistance, Intelligence, Charisma** — start as **[+2, +1, 0, 0, −1]**, allocated freely. Everyone begins with **6 HP**, **10 + Resistance** inventory slots, 1d6 starting gold, and the starting items their class rolls. You pick a class, a specialty (a profession or knack, capped at five before you finish), and one weakness — then you're pointed at the door. Rerolling after a death is meant to be the work of minutes, not an evening. ### Combat and damage Weapons deal **fixed damage** — a sword isn't a dice roll, it's a number — and armor and shields supply defense that subtracts from incoming hits, until defense hits 0 and the armor is **broken and needs repairs**. Damage is banded from minor (1) to lethal (8+), and certain types ignore defense outright. Injuries, temporary and permanent, accumulate on bad rolls and at zero HP, and each one makes the death saving check harder. Drop to 0 HP and you roll **2d6 at −1 per injury**: a natural 2 is instant death, 6− inevitable death, 7–9 heavily injured and still dying, 10+ unconscious but stable, natural 12 fighting through the pain. **v4.1's** sharpest change is that heavy armor now weighs on the quick — chainmail −1 AGI, half-armor −2, full armor −3, heavy shield −1 — a small nudge that quietly restores the "armor is heavy, movement matters" feel of the genre. ### Sorcery and corruption Sorcery is deliberately **free-form**: no spell lists, no slots, no limits beyond what you and the gamemaster agree a casting can do. Each check is **2d6 + INTELLIGENCE**, and power always costs something: a failure goes wrong for everyone involved (+1 corruption), a partial success is your call between paying **+1 corruption** to make it work or settling for reduced effect and a complication, a complete success costs nothing, a natural 2 is a catastrophe (still +1 corruption), and a natural 12 empowers the effect. **Corruption** belongs only to Sorcerers and Healers, and it is the creeping price of wielding power — a lifetime ceiling of **10 points** and a cap of **3 per long rest in a safe place**. In v4.1, resting no longer scrubs it away; cross the thresholds and the character is lost for good, remade as madness, an elemental, or a future villain. Magic power is *level/2 + INT + 1 per 3 corruption*, so the deeper you're willing to rot, the bigger the blast — a brutally honest bargain. ### Advancement You earn XP for failures, critical successes, and for dragging your weaknesses, injuries, and conditions into play at the least convenient moment, with party XP on top for objectives, encounters, and treasure. Levels come at 20 XP and every 10 after that, resetting to zero, each one handing out **advancement points (AP)** to spend on more HP (up to a hard cap of 12), raising attributes, learning specialties and sorcery types, or slowly burning off injuries and corruption. ## Editions **Sword, Sorcery & 2D6** has been fast-iterating freeware since its January 2024 debut (v1.0.4), and the devlog is essentially a changelog of dozens of incremental releases — small clarifications, retooled starting tables, replacement art, the occasional renamed class. The library holds seven snapshots of the ride, all *In the library.*: - **v4.1** (Oct 2026) — current; armor gains AGILITY penalties and corruption clarifies that rest no longer removes it. *In the library.* - **v4.0.1 → v4.0.5** (Jan–May 2026) — the 4.0.x polish run of small fixes, page-order tweaks, and table improvements. *In the library.* - **v4.0** (Jan 2026) — the unifying release that folded the separate rulebook, GM guide, player guide, and solo guide into a single PDF. - **v3.x** (2024–2025) — the split-format era, when the rulebook stood apart from the HOW TO RUN and solo guides; the library's pre-4.0 standalone **RULEBOOK** (April 2025) is from here. *In the library.* - **v1.x → v2.x** (2024) — the original releases, mostly superseded; not held. Not to be confused with THW's [[2d6 (Two Hour Wargames)|2D6 Sword & Sorcery]], Ed Teixeira's two-page reaction-engine skirmish game, which shares only a genre and a dice count. ## Supplements - **Character Sheet (print)** — the one-page standard sheet for the four classes: attributes, HP, slots, starting items, and a corruption track for the Sorcerer and Healer. *In the library.* - **HOW TO RUN THIS GAME (v3.1)** — the GM-advice booklet that stood apart during the split-format era: run the player-faced philosophy, convert gold and monsters in from other systems, and build monsters by damage band rather than spreadsheets. Its material was folded into the unified core at v4.0. *In the library.* - **GUIDE TO SOLO PLAY** — a solo primer and oracle: the 1d6 yes/no "and/but" oracle, running a party with morale and shared XP, and the sensible advice to skip the boring parts. Also absorbed into the unified core at v4.0. *In the library.* - **Character sheet (PbtA style)** — an alternate quick-fill sheet that lays out the same character alongside the 2d6 success bands. - **ESPADA, FEITIÇARIA & 2D6** — the game's full Portuguese-language edition, title and all. ## References - [Sword, Sorcery & 2D6 by Incerto — itch.io (free, pay-what-you-want)](https://incerto.itch.io/sword-sorcery-2d6) - [Sword, Sorcery & 2D6 — Development Log (version history)](https://incerto.itch.io/sword-sorcery-2d6/devlog)