The Final Beat

The tie-breaker. When a round or a dance-off ends level, the System’s drum speeds up and plays trick beats. The dancer who stops exactly on the final strike wins.

Procedure: each side rolls 1d20 plus their Dexterity modifier. The target is exactly 20. The total closest to 20 without going over wins. A total over 20 means the dancer kept moving past the final strike and loses. If both go over, or both land on the same total, the drum goes again and both roll again.

The Final Beat is the only roll in the crawl where a high total can lose. The System finds this delightful.

This tie-breaker borrows one structural idea from the modern powwow circuit, where judges break a tie by having the drum speed up until a dancer misses the final beat. The crawl credits that idea and does not depict powwow dances; Crawlers dance their own styles.