Four Against Darkness

Help & Rules

Everything you need to play — the basics, every ruleset's tables, and contextual rules at your fingertips.

Start with the basics

By topic

Basics

  • New Player Basics — A first-time player's tour of how a game of Four Against Darkness flows.

Character

  • Character Creation — How to roll up a level-1 hero — class, life, equipment, starting wealth.
  • Classes Overview — Quick guide to each class — strengths, weaknesses, and party role.
  • Druid — Nature priest who channels wilderness magic. Druid spell list, animal companion, and wilderness strengths.
  • Martial Mystic — Unarmed fighter who channels inner Chi for magical combat effects, healing, and defence without armor.
  • Gnome — Small gadgeteer who combines illusion magic with mechanical contraptions. Gadget points, trap-busting, and grenades.
  • Wood Elf — Master of forests who gets full-level bonuses in woodland terrain and with a bow. Lives off the land and crafts leafsteel armor.
  • Green Troll — Massive regenerating brute with +L melee, thick-skin armor, and projectile vomit — but must roll the Stupidity Table every combat.
  • Necromancer — Death-speaker spellcaster who reanimates corpses, raises undead armies, and is immune to Madness. Restricted to necromantic spells only.
  • Devouring Dead — Other Classes — Atrocity (shapeshifter), Death Leper (doomed front-liner), Mutant (chaos-spell blaster), and Sentient Golem — all from Digressions of the Devouring Dead.
  • Paladin — Holy warrior defined in Against the Netherworld — prayer points heal allies, re-roll saves, or summon a steed. Bound by a strict code and heavy tithes.
  • Demonologist — Specialist in hellspawn control — possesses killed demons, immune to Madness (heals from it), starts with an Abominable Gift, but cannot be blessed or resurrected.
  • Cambion — Half-fiend melee fighter who casts Netherworld spells, resists Madness, and can acquire Abominable Gifts. Social penalties worsen with level.

Equipment

Exploration

  • Dungeon Exploration — Opening doors, generating rooms, retracing your steps, time tracking.
  • Searching & Clues — How to search an empty room for clues, secret doors, or hidden gold.
  • Room Content Flow — How the 2d6 Room Contents roll resolves into monsters, traps, or treasure.
  • Traps & Saves — How traps trigger, who saves, and how rogues disarm.
  • Overland Travel — How the hex-crawl overland layer works — rolling for hex contents, shelters, features, dungeons, NPCs, trouble, and combat.
  • Netherworld — Exploration — How to navigate the Netherworld — planar gates, hex travel, terrain types, terrain challenges, and the return home.

Combat

  • Combat Procedure — Attack rolls, defense rolls, who gets attacked, and how to resolve a fight turn-by-turn.
  • Combat — Special Rules — Hatred, surprise, immunities, breath weapons, ranged combat, special attacks.
  • Marching Order — How positions 1–4 affect who can fight, who gets attacked, and surprise.
  • Withdrawal & Flight — Two ways to escape a losing fight — slam the door, or run.
  • Morale Checks — When a minion group drops below half strength, they may break and run.
  • Conditions — Status effects monsters and traps inflict — and how to clear them.

Spells

  • Spells — How spell slots, casting, and scrolls work.

Progression

  • Tier Progression — Earning XP, training between adventures, and graduating to Expert / Heroic / Legendary tier.

Ruleset

  • Fiendish Foes — Drop-in replacement tables for 4AD's Vermin, Minions, Bosses, Weird Monsters, Treasure, and Magic Items — tougher encounters for level 3+ parties.
  • Crucible of Classic Critters — Woodlands-themed thematic dungeons for level 4+ parties — flying monsters, clearings instead of rooms, animal companions, subduing, and the Beastmaster class.

App

  • App Tour — Where everything lives in the app — parties, characters, shop, classic delve, map delve.

General

Rules

  • Neurosis — The Neurosis mechanic — trading 3 Madness points for a permanent derangement that hampers the character instead.
  • Undead Allies — How necromancers and clerics raise and command undead allies — Children of the Damned spell, Lesser Necromancy skill, and the Ghoulish Familiar.
  • Death Cults and Dark Gods — The three new gods in Devouring Dead — Ter Za Necht (necromancer god), Akerbeltz (witchcraft), and Darim (smiths) — and the special Blessing powers their clerics gain.
  • Netherworld — Soul Trade and Economy — The Netherworld's flesh-and-soul economy — necros currency, captives, soul furnaces, food scarcity, and what strongholds sell.
  • Netherworld — Demon Reactions — The seven new reactions unique to the Netherworld — how demons negotiate, capture, convert, demand tribute, and make pacts.
  • Blasphemous Ones and Netherworld Spells — The alien gods of the Netherworld — their three names, Abominable Gifts, and the six Netherworld spells available to wizards and cambions.

By ruleset

Tables, monsters, treasure, and ruleset-specific mechanics for each campaign.

  • Four Against Darkness (Base) Levels 1-4

    Standard dungeon delve for novice to experienced parties. Six basic spells, classic monster tables, d6-driven content tables.

  • Four Against the Abyss (Expert) Levels 5-9

    Expert tier for level 5+ parties. Tougher monsters, save-or-die mechanics, Madness, Vampirism, Lycanthropy, Dark Plague. Uses d66 room generation from base game with own content tables. Treasure rolls on d8.

  • Caverns of Chaos (Levels 3–6) Levels 3-6

    Thematic dungeon vs chaos cultists of Xichtul. Uses base room shapes with replacement chaos content tables. New Touched by Chaos mechanic, Madness points, and Unluck. Vermin count as Minions for XP; XP rolls use d6+1.

  • The Crucible of Classic Critters (Levels 4+) Levels 4+

    Woodlands supplement for level 4+ parties. Replaces base monster/treasure tables with woodland encounters: harpies, owlfolk, centaurs, sphinxes, unicorns, dark hags. Area Content table has flavour-only results (Hunted, Bountiful Game, Trail) and a War Party combo at 12. Pairs naturally with the Woodlands theme.

  • Four Against the Forsaken Depths (Heroic/Legendary) Levels 10-19

    Heroic (d10) and Legendary (d12) tier delve beneath the Abyss. Monster levels scale with the party's Highest Character Level (HCL). Its own 2d6 Room Content Table adds Complex Machinery, Hallucinations, Citadel-Weird monsters and Hordes; Treasure and Events roll on d10. Map-mode only — the server roller implements its distinct content layout.