1–2
Lich
18 / 15 / 7
Your parry counts −2. 7 wounds – bring Life
In German, die Mimic is simply “the mimic”. In English, a die is what you roll.
Die
Mimic
One sheet. Two dice. Ten minutes.
One hero, sixteen rooms and the boss in the top right corner. All of it on one A4 sheet, filled in with pencil and erased after the run. You roll – the monsters don’t.
A1The sheet
Play, erase, repeat.
You roll one d20 – once to attack, once to parry – and one d6 for your hero and whatever waits behind the next door. Monsters never roll; they have fixed stats and get tougher the higher you climb.
Everything goes on the sheet in pencil: stats, Life, wounds, your path through the dungeon. After the run you erase it – every run rolls up a new dungeon.
Tip Laminate it once, play with a wet-erase marker, wipe it clean. Or just use an eraser.
Die Mimic, sheet as PDF
Two-page version page 1 to fill in with big rooms, page 2 the rules
The sheet is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0: share and adapt it freely, non-commercially, under the same license.
Die Mimic is free. If you enjoy it, you can buy me a coffee: Donate (PayPal)
B1What you need
- 1 d20 two in colours are handier: red attacks, blue parries
- 1 d6 for hero, rooms and treasure
- Pencil and eraser or a laminated sheet and a wet-erase marker
- The sheet print it once, play as often as you like
C1How a run works
Create a hero
Roll 4d6, drop the lowest and assign the other three freely to Strength, Agility and Toughness. 6, 4, 2 makes a different hero than 2, 4, 6. Life = 6 + Toughness.
Roll the boss
Before your first move, 1d6 decides who waits in D4, top right. You start in A1, bottom left.
Enter rooms
Move into an adjacent room and roll 2d6: monster, treasure, trap, altar or a secret passage. The row sets how strong it is – row 1 is the rat, row 4 the vampire. Walk back through an empty room and you may rest there once.
Fight
First strike: if the monster’s Attack is at most your parry bonus + 12, it does not hit you in the first exchange, and your attack lands. Then two d20 rolls: attack + attack bonus against the monster’s Defense, parry + parry bonus against its Attack. Both count at once. A natural 20 deals double damage, a natural 1 on the parry is a fumble. Every second victory gains you a level.
Or sneak
Before the first blow: d20 + your full Agility + parry levels against the monster’s Attack. Succeed and you slip past, but the monster stays put. Fail and it costs you 2 Life, and the fight begins.
rule of thumb: worth it if Agility + 9 reaches the Attack
The boss
Nobody sneaks past the boss. Defeat it and you win. Fall before that, and the rooms you visited are your score.
rest here
D1Three bosses
3–4
Dragon
19 / 16 / 6
A 2 on your parry is a fumble too. hard to parry – your attack has to do the work
5–6
Demon Lord
18 / 15 / 8
You may not flee. save the potion!
Stats: Attack / Defense / Wounds. Bosses hit hard, but they can be hit. The fight is short and comes down to what you bring: Life, levels, items.
A2The Mimic
The chest is alive
The first 6 you roll on the treasure table in a run is not a wand but a mimic. It fights like the strong monster of its row, with one extra wound, and nobody sneaks past it – it already has you.
Defeat it and you get the experience mark and the wand. Every 6 after that is an ordinary wand.
Mimic tick once per run
B2Example run
A real run, roll by roll. The hero explores rows 1 and 2 first, then takes the shortest way up to the boss. Red is the attack roll, blue the parry. What the sheet looks like afterwards is shown above under “The sheet”.
| Room | Roll | What happens | Life |
|---|---|---|---|
| A1 | 4d6: 3 3 6 5 | Create a hero. One 3 is dropped, leaving 6, 5 and 3: Strength 6 (attack +4), Agility 3 (parry +1), Toughness 5 (Life 6 + 5 = 11).The 6 goes into Strength, because a hero who hits ends fights quickly. The 5 goes into Toughness as a cushion for the boss. | 11 |
| D4 | d6: 4 | Boss: the Dragon. Attack 19, Defense 16, 6 wounds; a 2 on your parry is a fumble too.It waits at the top right. The plan: explore rows 1 and 2 first, get stronger, then climb. | 11 |
| B1 → C1 | 2d6: 1 + 1 = 2 | Secret passage. The hero jumps to a neighbouring room without rolling, here C1. That room stays empty. | 11 |
| D1 | 2d6: 1 + 6 = 7 | Goblin (11 / 13 / 2). The hero sneaks: d20 8 + Agility 3 = 11 against Attack 11, just past.Any 8 or more on the d20 works, a 65 % chance. No experience mark, and the goblin stays in D1. The hero has no reason to go back there. | 11 |
| D2 | 2d6: 4 + 4 = 8 | Ghoul, strong monster (13 / 15 / 3). Sneaking would be only 55 %. But the hero has first strike: the ghoul’s Attack is no higher than parry bonus + 12.
| 10 |
| C2 | 2d6: 5 + 4 = 9 d6: 2 | Treasure: shield. Once per fight it cancels one lost point of Life.Against the Dragon, who hits nearly every time, that is a free point of Life. | 10 |
| B2 | 2d6: 6 + 5 = 11 | Altar. Refill all Life or tick one level: the hero takes Attack +1, attack now +5.Refilling would restore a single point. Against Defense 16, every point of attack counts. | 10 |
| A2 | 2d6: 3 + 2 = 5 d6: 1 | Treasure: healing potion. 5 Life back, any time.Rows 1 and 2 are now explored. Time to take the shortest way up. | 10 |
| B2 | – | Rest. Walking back through the empty altar room heals 2 Life, capped at 11. On through C2 and D2.Every visited room without a monster heals once. Before the boss, the detour pays off. | 11 |
| D3 | 2d6: 1 + 3 = 4 | Trap (value 14). d20 15 + parry bonus 1 = 16, disarmed.Row 3 is nastier: in row 1, an 8 would have been enough. | 11 |
| D4 | – | The Dragon. No sneaking, and its Attack of 19 is far too high for a first strike. Parrying needs an 18 or more, so the attack has to do the work.
| 7 |
Seed 1191 · dice from the simulation
C2What’s next
In the works, not yet available for download.
- soon
Two players
A race, or co-op on a single board. An extra sheet.
- soon
Catacombs
A second sheet with new rooms, monsters and three new bosses.