Pentaquest Rulebook

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

• Play Area
• Solo Play
• Multiplayer
• Tips

Play Area

• Deck — the draw pile of quest cards.
• Discard pile.
• Army area — your beaten cards; discard them from here to alter your dice roll.
• Quest area — the cards you are trying to beat.

Solo Play

Shuffle the deck, then play the following phases:

[1] Draw cards and place them face up in the quest area until there are 5 cards.

[2] Roll 5d6. If you get a combination matching the dice shown in one of the lower parts of a card, you can declare that you beat it: put it in your army area. If you can beat more than one card, choose which one you beat. Examples:

• two dice showing 2 is beaten by a roll of 1, 4, 2, 3, 2, since it contains the needed numbers;
• three of a kind is beaten by any 3 matching dice: 1-1-1, 2-2-2, 3-3-3, 6-6-6, etc;
• two pair is beaten by any two pairs of matching dice: 1-1-3-3, 6-6-2-2, 4-4-4-4, etc.

[3] Free reroll. You can try to get better dice results by rerolling any number of dice at once, keeping the new results. Every very first roll of a game gets 2 free rerolls.

[4] Modify roll. You can use any number of cards from your army to modify your rolled dice, so as to beat a card in the quest area. Discard each army card after you use it. The effect of an army card depends on the symbol in its upper right corner:

• plus sign — add 1 to a die (max is 6);
• minus sign — subtract 1 from a die (min is 1);
• plus-minus sign — add or subtract 1 to a die (as above);
• spiral — reroll any number of dice; keep results;
• double-headed diagonal arrow — mirror a die to its opposite face: 1 to 6, 2 to 5, 4 to 3, 3 to 4, etc.

[5] Check. If you managed to beat a card, start over from phase [1]. If you didn't, you lose. If the deck and the quest area have no cards left, you won: your SCORE is the number of cards left in your army.

Multiplayer

Players take turns clockwise, using the same rules of solo play, with a quest area shared by all the players, while discard piles are personal. Whether or not a player manages to beat a card during his turn, the game continues with the turn of the player to his left. When there are no cards left in the deck and quest area, compare the sum of army and discarded cards of each player: the highest score wins.

Tips

Score. The maximum attainable score is 42, although it's unlikely to beat all the cards without using any of them. A score over 20 is good, and reaching 30 is great.

Cooperative play. You can use solo play rules, alternating turns, to play co-op.

Pentaquest in roleplaying games. Pentaquest works very well when adopted during a tavern session in any roleplaying game. It can even become the most popular card game in a setting. Who said drinking game?

Coloring book. Before you laminate the cards, you can color them as if they were a coloring book.

Accessibility. Pentaquest is black and white, has simple rules and doesn't generate stress. Color-blind people, children, irritable people, and autistic persons can serenely play with it.