It's a little annoying how there's no dice pool summary page, so I just want to make sure I'm getting things right.

1. Get blue dice based on the characteristic of the check and white dice based on stats fortune, replace as many blue dice with stance dice based on how deep you are in your stance. (Mandatory)

2. Get Yellow Dice for how many ranks you have in the given skill, gain one white dice if any specialty applies.

3. (Attack only) add black dice based on the enemies defence, add one purple die, add any dice listed on your attack card.

4. (Otherwise) add purple dice as GM feels appropriate.

5. Add black and white dice as GM feels appropriate.

6. Spend fortune, Use talents, or class ability's (such as Mercenary's +1 yellow to attack roll) to further influence pool, Target of attack now chooses any

abilities like dodge or parry.

Is that about right.

Looks pretty good to me. Down there in step 6 where you've got the target choosing abilities like parry and dodge is a good place for the GM to remember whether he wants to use any of the A/C/E budget on the roll as well.

Looks spot on.

I also use purple dice for NPCs expertise dice, allowing them to use advanced parry.

Summarizing and grouping things, and just stating all the possible sources of dice that come to mind.

Active Player:

1. Add Characteristic dice (blue) equal to the rating of the characteristic governing the skill that's being tested.
2. Convert Characteristic (blue) dice with Reckless (red) or Conservative (green) dice, depending on the current stance. If in neutral stance no dice are converted.
3. Add any Fortune (white) dice associated with the characteristic. Characteristic Fortune dice from previous career advances are cumulative.
4. Add Expertise (yellow) dice for each time the tested skill was trained (max 3)
5. Add Fortune (white) dice for all applicable specialties.
6. Add any difficulty modifiers listed on the action card. (Top left corner, below the action type symbol).
7. Add any dice from talents or class abilities.
8. Spend fortune points to add Fortune (white) dice to the pool.
9. If the characteristic being tested is distressed (mental) or fatigued (physical) add a Misfortune (black) dice for each stress or fatigue above the limit.
10. If the character has an active critical wound, add any applicable dice.
11. If the character has an active insanity, add any applicable dice.
12. If the character has an active condition, add any applicable dice.

GM:

1. Add Challenge (purple) dice based on the action's difficulty. (Melee & Ranged attacks are 1 Challenge dice. All other actions start at 0 Challenge dice.)
2. Add Fortune (white) dice for any favorable conditions as dictated by the situation, environment or other factors.
3. Add Misfortune (black) dice for all unfavorable conditions as dictated by the situation, environment or other factors.

Target of Action:

1. Add Misfortune (black) dice based on target's defense, one Misfortune die per defense rating.
2. Choose any applicable Active Defense / Reaction cards to use and if applicable add the appropriate dice.
3. Add any dice from any applicable talent or condition.

In the first three combats I GM'ed I though it was add agility to defence for black dice, but that ended up being hilariously difficult for every one.

reidchapman said:

I forgot to add the Toughness rating to the Armor's soak value to determine the total Soak value. So characters had pretty low soak ratings 1-3, and combat was quite brutal!