Persona 5 Print & Play Board Game

Persona 5 Print & Play Board Game Rulebook

Table of Contents

Set Up

Step 1. Place the 3 stacks of resources (Stamina, SP, Bullet), and Cash Tokens on the table.

Step 2. Lay down the 5 Starting Locations (Home, School, Sales Clerk, Weapons Shop, Clinic).

Step 3. Select a Phantom Thief card and a Persona card for each player to play, set these in front of you. Place the dice on top of the social stat spaces starting with the same value as displayed in the space.

Step 3.1 If you have passives that give you additional resources, take those now (EX: Haru's Fully Loaded).

Step 3.2 Return unused Thieves, persona and confidant cards. Ex. One player game with Ryuji and Zorro, remove all other Phantom Thiefs, personas and Ryuji's Confidant card from play. If no one is playing Arsene, also remove Igor and Caroline & Justine confidant cards from play.

Step 4. Reveal 5 random Confidants, placing 1 below each location.

Step 5. Select a Palace, and place it in the middle of the table. Place the Reference card ON TOP of the Palace, covering the bottom half, only revealing the 0% Alert effect. As the Alert goes up, slide the reference card down to reveal the additional % Alert effects.

Step 6. Reveal 2 random Shadows per player next to the Palace.

Step 7. Place the Calendar down. Put a damage token on day 1 to act as the turn tracker.

Step 8 (Solo mode). Give yourself 1 of each resource.

Notes

Only Arsene uses the persona abilities of defeated shadows. (Only Arsene starts with 5 random shadows.) The other characters do not gain anything from defeated shadows. (They cannot give them to the Joker player after defeating them either.) In TWO player mode, both players may pick Arsene.

In TWO player mode, players do NOT share resources or their confidants.

Reading Cards

Phantom Thief Card

Starting Social Stat value: Use a dice to keep track of your Social Stat Values. These are your starting values. The higher they are, the more dice you roll when taking a Social Stat Check.
Social Stat Icon: Every player has 5 social stats. These are used when you take Social Stat Checks. Clockwise (starting with the Glasses): Knowledge, Guts, Proficiency, Compassion, Charm.

Persona Card

Skill Cost: The amount of resources you need to pay to activate this skill.
Skill Type: Match a shadow's Weaknesses to deal ANY damage.

Confidant Card

Special Stat Checks: These are the social stat checks you need to succeed to recruit this confidant. You must pass BOTH checks. Failing only 1 still grants +1 to that social stat.
Confidant Ability: You gain the confidant's ability immediately after recruiting the confidant, and it is active for the rest of the game.

Shadow Card

Shadow's Weaknesses: If you attack this shadow with a skill that has this Skill Type, any damage dealt becomes ANY.
Shadow Ability: There are effects that the shadows possess. Here, when you enter the palace, you must pass a Charm social stat check or pay 1 Bullet.
Shadow's Health: This is the damage needed to defeat this shadow. Here you need to deal 3 Bullet and 1 SP resources either with skills or by spending resources.
Persona Ability: This is the ability gained by the player ONLY IF YOU'RE USING ARSENE. The other personas have their own abilities.
Skill Cost: The amount of resources you need to pay to activate this skill. (Auto skills are passives.)
Skill Type: Match a shadow's Weakness to deal ANY type damage. (Also auto succeeds 'Dice' abilities.)

Turn Reference

On each day, you and your partner may take your turns in any order. On a player's turn, you take ONLY 1 of the following actions:

Visiting a new location

Move your player marker to a unoccupied location and perform the effects listed on your new location. (You cannot remain in the same location as you started on.)

Recruit a Confidant

Move your player marker to a location that has an available confidant. Perform both social stat checks. If both social stat checks pass, you recruit the confidant, taking their card and keeping it next to you. Their ability is immediately active and available. On a failure you gain a +1 to ONE of the social stats checked.

Discover a Location

Spend 1 Cash to reveal the top card of the Locations deck and place it next to the other locations. Then reveal the top confidant card of the confidants deck and assign it to the new location. Then visit that location and perform the location action or attempt to recruit the confidant.

Visit the Palace

Move your player marker to the Palace Card. (Multiple players can be in the palace.) Execute any 'On Palace Enter:' effects of shadows and the palace itself. These effects are cumulative. (You cannot remain in the palace as you started on.) You may fight as many shadows as you are able to (refer combat rules). When all revealed shadows are defeated, slide the reference card down 1 row, reveal 2 new shadows per player (unless palace says to reveal more).

You may continue to fight newly revealed shadows in the same turn. When you end your turn, any damage dealt to Shadows remain on those shadows, even after you leave the palace.

Once all players have taken a turn, move the day marker cube on the Calendar up by 1.

The game ends when

The Palace Boss is defeated, all players win.
Day tracker moves past 28 days and the palace boss have not been defeated, all players lose.

Action Rules

Visiting a location

You cannot visit a location you are currently in (move to a new location each turn). The effects on each location are carried out from top down. If the cost of a location can not be paid, do not carry out the effect of the location.

Recruit a Confidant

Confidants have 2 Social Stat Checks, you must pass BOTH checks to succeed the recruitment. For example, Kawakami requires you to successfully perform both a Charm AND a Kindness Test. (ref. Social Stat Checks)

After gaining a confidant, a new confidant is not revealed to take its place. The only way to discover new confidants is by discovering a new location.

On a failure, the day is not entirely wasted. Instead you gain +1 to one of the social stats you checked (only 1 stat, not both).

Roll dice equal the Social Stat being checked. If at least one dice rolls a success (face up side is a Phantom Thief symbol), you succeed on the check. (2 of 6 sides have a Phantom Thief symbol, if using a regular d6, a success is a 5 or 6.)

For example: Ryuji starts with Guts of 4. When he performs a Guts check, he rolls 4 dice. If one of them has a face up Phantom Thief symbol, he succeeds the Guts Test.

Discover a Location

When you spend the day to discover a new location, you MUST visit that location. You then choose to perform the location action OR attempt to recruit the revealed confidant.

Battle Rules

Visiting the Palace

Combat Rules

Revealed Palace Effects are cumulative.

Execute all 'On Palace Enter:' effects when you enter the Palace. (You decide the order of execution.) You may then start to use your resources (Stamina, Bullets, SP, and sometimes even Cash) to defeat the shadows in the palace. Each shadow lists the required resources needed to be defeated.

Resources you've used are flipped over, while used cash tokens are discarded.

You have access to all of your Persona abilities. They can be used as you can pay for their activation costs. Shadow Weaknesses matter (ref. Shadow Weaknesses)

Shadow Abilities

Some abilities begin with 'Dice:', for these roll 1 Phantom Thief die after paying its activation cost. Activate the ability if the dice roll lands on a Phantom thief symbol. Some Shadows have abilities that say 'on Death:', these execute when you defeat said shadow. (The effect only targets the active player.)

If you do not have the resources to pay for an On Palace Enter or On Death effect, ignore the effect.

Defeating shadows

Whenever you've defeated a shadow, you take the shadow card and keep it. This does not have any benefits unless you are playing with Arsene. After defeating all available shadows, security level immediately rises, and new shadows are revealed. You can stay in the palace and fight newly revealed shadows until you run out of resources. (This has the advantage of not triggering any newly revealed On Palace Effects.)

Fighting the Boss

When the palace's security level rises to 100%, the palace is flipped over to reveal the Palace Boss. Do not reveal any new shadows unless the Boss card specifically says to do so.

The previous effects of the palace card are no longer active.

The Palace Boss counts as a 'Shadow' for the purpose of abilities that target shadows.

If the Boss is defeated, the game immediately ends in victory for the player(s)!

Shadow Weaknesses

If you use a skill which a shadow is weak to, damage the skill does become ANY type instead, meaning even if a Skill normally only deals 3 stamina damage, you can use that 3 damage to deal SP, Bullet or Cash damage instead.

Terminology

Restore X: Restore a spent resource (Stamina, SP or Bullet) by flipping it from the black and white side to the colored side.
Spend X: Spends a resource (stamina, SP or Bullet) by flipping it from the colored side to the black and white side. Spending cash discards the cash token.
Gain X: Gains a new resource (stamina, SP, Bullet or Cash). When gaining a resource, it is filled, on the colored side, not spent.
Pay X: Spends a resource if possible. If a shadow or palace tells you to pay a resource, if you can't spend that resource, the effect is ignored.
ANY: The damage can fulfill any resource (Stamina, SP, Bullet or Cash).
Dice: Roll 1 Phantom Thief dice, the ability activates if it lands on a Phantom Thief symbol. If the skill matches a shadow weakness, you automatically succeed.
1/Day: Can be used once per day, inside OR outside of the Palace.
1/Palace: Can be used once per Palace entry. They are like 1/day abilities, but can only be used on days spent inside the Palace.

Clarifications

Yuuki Mishima: Mishima's ability can only be used while in the palace. He only counts confidants you've recruited, so Igor and Caroline&Justine does not count as you did not "recruit" them. The resource you recover does not need to be all Stamina or all SP, it can be a mixture of both.
Caroline & Justine: Personas you draw can not be assigned to your active Persona party while you are in the palace. You can change up your persona list as much as you'd like while outside the palace.
Persona Abilities that give resources: Persona abilities that give additional resources to the Joker player are gained only while that persona is active, and are always gained spent. (So equipping Thoth gives you 2 spent Stamina). When you unequip that persona, you lose those resources (losing unspent resources first.)
Alice's Persona Ability: Roll the dice ONCE for all shadows. Even if the dice roll failed, shadows weak to curse still lose 2 ANY.
"Amp" abilities: Skills like Ice Amp allow Ice skills to deal an extra Bullet damage. Even if the original skill does not deal Bullet damage, the Amp skill adds 1 Bullet, so Bufu for example will deal 2 Stamina and 1 Bullet with Ice Amp. If the target is weak to ice, all 3 damage becomes converted to ANY type, so even the extra damage from Ice Amp follows weakness rules.
Resource Limits: Resources are limited by the physical token supply. If there are no more SP tokens, you can no longer gain additional SP.
Social Stats vs Resources: Your 5 social stats are NOT resources. Your resources are Stamina, SP, Bullets, and Cash. Your social stats are Knowledge, Guts, Charm, Compassion, and Proficiency. These are NOT the same things.