Information regarding the Tephra System

Dice
To begin, you’ll need a single die: a unique one with 12 sides. This is the foundation for the Clockwork System, a die that can randomly give you any number from 1 to 12. With this special die, occasionally called the D12, you’ll be able to determine how successful you are on any given task.You’ll have skills, attributes, and various other traits that all have numbers assigned to them. When you need to determine how well you succeed at something, you’ll roll your die and add on the appropriate number.
Rolling your Dexterity? Roll your D12, add the number in your Dexterity attribute, and you've got your result.


Tiered Results
The game revolves around tiers – four tiers, to be exact. Once you’ve received the result of your die roll, you’ll be able to determine what tier it is.
T1 (Tier 1): Result of 1 through 9 – Barely Passing.
T2 (Tier 2): Result of 10 through 19 – A Solid Success.
T3 (Tier 3): Result of 20 through 29 – Phenomenal!
T4 (Tier 4): Result of 30 or more – Beyond Human.

Tier 1 is the most minimal of a success. If you’re trying to jump, all you can say is that you successfully jumped. Nobody takes notice until you get to tier 2. A tier 3 is the utmost of human ability. If you’re hitting a tier 3, that means you've just leapt a chasm.


Skills
When you build your character you’ll first distribute some points in your skills. Skills are those areas that you've trained in. Swashbuckling, Brawl, Gadgetry, Marksmanship – these are all skills. Once you've chosen your skills, you add up all the points under the skill to determine how good you are at the attribute. You can see all of the attributes (bold) and their skills below.

Brute
Brawls
Frenzy
Overpower
Resilience

Dexterity
Ace
Agility
Marksmanship
Swashbuckling

Sciences
Alchemy
Armsmith
Automata
Bio-Flux
Engineer
Gadgetry

Cunning
Espionage
Expertise
Showmanship
Tactical

Spirit
Faith
Grace
Luck
Shamanism


Attributes
Attributes are the baseline pieces of your character. Your attributes*determine how fast you react, how well you push back, how*long you survive poisons, how quickly you process information,*and a whole plethora of actions that anybody can do.There are five attributes: brute, cunning, dexterity, spirit,*and sciences. You will start with a zero in each of these attributes,*but as you gain experience in your skills, your attributes will increase*as well.*Each attribute has a set of skills that fall underneath it.*As you gain points in your skills, add up all of the skills under the*attribute to figure out what your attribute score is. 
Using Attributes
Each attribute will include a variety of different options you can*use that attribute for. Dexterity, for example, is used when tripping*people, disarming them, trying to be stealthy, attempting to*squeeze into a tight spot, or anytime that your hand-eye coordination*is going to prove valuable.



Specialties
Specialties are character-defining abilities that allow you to do amazing things. Specialties are found under skills. If you want an Agility specialty, for example, you flip to the Agility page and peruse those specialties.And the more points you have in a skill, the better you’re going to be at using your specialties that come from that skill.
Specialty Bonuses: Each specialty has a couple bonuses, or “combat statistics,” that it grants the adventurer. These include accuracy, strike, speed, and many more. These specialty bonuses help flesh out the character and lead to a very easy character creation process.


Social Tells
Just because I rolled a high cunning doesn't mean that you have to do what I say. With the social tells system, my good attributes can help me weave my way through social situations, noticing people’s social tells, their non-verbal queues, and give me insights into what they’re thinking. You might notice that the duchess is chewing on her lip nervously, or that the industry boss keeps glancing at the clock. Rather than give away the story and simply tell you that the duchess is nervous or the boss is anxious to get home, we've introduced a system for noticing these small habits and ticks, giving you – the adventurer – a chance to play off them.
And, on occasion, come to wrong conclusions