Cypher v2 differences — for players

Wounds replace the damage track

There is no hale/impaired/debilitated track. Your sheet shows three wound rows — minor, moderate and major — with capacities of 3/3/3 plus whatever your type adds. Filling the moderate row hinders everything you do; each major wound hinders you one more step; a full major row means death. Pools no longer kill you, but special attacks (poison, psychic) still drain them — and once a Pool hits zero, the rest converts to wounds. The sheet's "take damage" control does that conversion for you.

Defending: block or dodge

Every attack against you names the incoming wound (and whether it's an area attack), and the defense card asks you to choose: block (a Might defense — success steps the wound down one severity, or dumps the whole wound onto your shield if you carry one) or dodge (a Speed defense — success avoids it entirely, but dodging area attacks is hindered). Armor now modifies defenses instead of soaking damage: its weight eases your blocks and hinders your dodges, and armor your character can't freely use hinders all Speed tasks. Shields have their own wound boxes (3 minor / 2 moderate / 1 major); a major wound breaks the shield, and the boxes stay filled until you repair it.

First and Last actions

Heavy weapons resolve Last — at the end of the round, and you do nothing else that round. Light weapons may declare First and jump ahead of the order. The action composer preselects Last when you wield a heavy weapon (so does /sheetwright attack on Discord); the app records your declared timing rather than policing it.

Recovery, rally and treatment

• The four recovery slots also heal wounds: 10 minutes clears all minor wounds; 1 hour clears one moderate or all minor (your choice); 10 hours clears all moderate, plus one major when the difficulty-6 Might task succeeds. The recovery dialog offers these choices.
• The one-action recovery taken as a Last action is worth +2 points.
• Rally: spend an action and Might (2 minor / 5 moderate, no Edge) to shake off a wound — a sheet button, or /sheetwright encounter rally on Discord. Treatment lets someone with a healing skill remove a wound with an Intellect task (difficulty 0/3/6 by severity).
• Non-rest recovery: burn an unused slot to re-attempt the defense roll against an ongoing effect — nothing is restored, and the spend lands in your house-rule journal.

Items

Cyphers carry a kind: standard (an instant effect, using it isn't an action, always level 4), nonstandard (an ongoing effect with an assigned duration, always level 4), manifest (physical, takes an action, level 6, with a power grade), or power boost (superhero games). Equipment uses five abstract price categories instead of currency, and weapons, armor and shields are items with a class (light/medium/heavy) and an Equip toggle — the encounter engine reads what you have equipped for damage defaults, defense modifiers and the shield rider.

Advancement and resource points

The four 4-XP steps are familiar, but once per tier you may swap one for something else (extra recoveries, an extra focus ability, free armor or weapon use, or a genre ability at tier 3+). Tier-up grants a focus ability picked through your focus's flowchart, and tiers 3, 6 and 9 add a free genre ability. You also earn resource points at every tier-up — the sheet's resource point card journals what you spend them on (crafting, contacts, research, repairs and the rest of the downtime catalog).

Player intrusions

The mirror image of a GM intrusion: spend 1 XP to propose a favorable complication entering the scene. You narrate the suggestion, the GM decides whether (or how) it happens, and the XP is spent either way. The rulebook's twelve ideas:

• Advantageous Malfunction: A dangerous device malfunctions before it can affect you. It might harm the user or one of their allies for a round, or activate a dramatic and distracting side effect for a few rounds.
• Convenient Idea: A flash of insight provides you with a clear answer or suggests a course of action with regard to an urgent question, problem, or obstacle you're facing.
• Friendly NPC: An NPC you don't know, someone you don't know that well, or someone you know but who hasn't been particularly friendly in the past chooses to help you, though they don't necessarily explain why. Maybe they'll ask you for a favor in return afterward, depending on how much trouble they go to.
• Inexplicably Unbroken: An inactive, ruined, or presumed-destroyed device temporarily activates and performs a useful function relevant to the situation. This is enough to buy you some time for a better solution, alleviate a complication that was interfering with your abilities, or just get you one more use out of a depleted cypher or artifact.
• Old Friend: A comrade in arms from your past shows up unexpectedly and provides aid in whatever you're doing. They are on a mission of their own and can't stay longer than it takes to help out, chat for a while after, and perhaps share a quick meal.
• Perfect Setup: You're fighting at least three foes and each one is standing in exactly the right spot for you to use a move you trained in long ago, allowing you to attack all three as an action. Make a separate attack roll for each foe.
• Perfect Suggestion: A follower or other already-friendly NPC suggests a course of action with regard to an urgent question, problem, or obstacle you're facing.
• React to a GM Intrusion: After a GM intrusion, you could decide to use your next turn to react to the GM intrusion in a way that changes the story complication that the GM just introduced into something that improves your situation.
• Serendipitous Landmark: Just when it seems like you've lost the path, something suggests to you the best path forward from this point, such as a trail marker, a landmark, or simply the way the terrain or corridor changes.
• Unexpected Gift: An NPC hands you a physical gift you were not expecting, one that helps put the situation at ease if things seem strained, or provides you with a new insight for understanding the context of the situation if there's something you're failing to understand or grasp.
• Weak Strain: The poison or disease turns out not to be as debilitating or deadly as it first seemed, and the wounds it inflicts are reduced by one severity.
• Weapon Break: Your foe's weapon has a weak spot. In the course of the combat, it quickly becomes damaged and loses 1 to 3 levels.

Everything is guidance

Sheetwright stays a companion, not a referee: over-capacity wounds, short-Might rallies, off-chart picks and over-limit cyphers are warned about and recorded as house rules on your sheet — never blocked. Only true impossibilities (healing a wound you don't have, a shield you don't carry) are refused.