Combat basics

During combat, characters take turns to move against their opponents. The order in which characters take their turns is based on how high they roll initiative. During their turn character's can perform Combat actions, such as move, draw an arrow, make an attack, charge an enemy, etc.

Even though characters take their turns in sequence. In the game world, the turns of players occur almost simultaneously. Every turn lasts two seconds.

Initiative

At the start of every combat, participants throw initiative to determine in what order they will take their turns. The character with the highest score starts, down to the character with the lowest score, who goes last. The initiative roll uses the character's dexterity as his consistency, and the number of willpower a character has as it's potential. When players roll the same initiative, the player with the highest willpower goes first.

Delaying and readied actions

Players can change the order in which their characters take turns by declaring at the start of their turn, that they will delay until after or just before another character. This character is then moved in the initiative order to where they specified.

In addition to delaying your turn, players can ready one combat action. The combat action will occur as soon something the player specified to happen occurs. This is called the trigger. A trigger can for instance be: an opponent enters this square. The readied action could be; make an attack against that opponent. The action always occurs after the trigger, and can only occur if the character (as opposed to the player) becomes aware the trigger has occurred.

After the trigger has occurred, the readied action takes place. This can occur anywhere in the turn of another character. When a trigger occurs, the readied action is performed, and the initiative order is changed. The character with the readied action is moved to the turn before the character who triggered the action. If the trigger doesn't occur until the next turn of the character with the readied action, the readied action is lost.

There is a subtle difference between a trigger based on something happening, and a trigger based on a character intending for something to happen. You might trigger an attack when someone attacks you. Because your readied action is always after the trigger, you will be attacked first, and then do your attack. Or you can trigger as soon as you become aware that a character wants to attack you. In that case you need to attempt to predict your opponent's move. Your opponent must make a roll to attempt hiding the attack, which you can make a dice challenge against. Persuasion versus insight should be used for this. If you do not pass this dice challenge, you will still know by the time you are attacked, but you do not make the first attack.

Melee attacks

There are two types of attacks, melee attacks and ranged attacks. A melee attack is done using a melee weapon, such as a knife, an axe or a sword. To do these kinds of attacks, characters must be near each other. Characters can only attack each other with melee attacks when they are in the same square.

When a character attacks another character, place their character identifier together in the square. Multiple characters place together like this during combat are called a combat cluster. Characters remain in the combat cluster either until they are pushed out, move outside the square, or move outside the cluster.

Ranged attacks

With ranged attacks you can attack targets in the same square or in a different square. Range weapons have a maximum range. If the distance between the attacker and the target is greater then the range, the target can't be attacked. If a target is in a different square then the attacker, there is a situational penalty equal to half the distance to the target, rounded down.

The distance is counted by taking the shortest number of turns required to move, climb and/or jump down to the target. Movement is only possible along horizontal or vertical axes. So if the target is in a diagonally adjacent square, you need to move one horizontal and one vertical, and so the distance is two. The shot will thus have a situational penalty of one on consistency (half the distance). If the target is higher, the number of turns it would take to climb to that height is included in counting the distance. If the target is lower, there is no distance cost since jumping down is a free action.

When using a ranged attack against a target in a combat cluster, you have a situational penalty on consistency, equal to the number of characters in that cluster. If the target manages to dodge the attack, you must re-roll the attack for another character in the combat cluster, now with the situational penalty decreased by one. Keep re-rolling until all characters in the combat cluster have dodged, or until a character is hit or the attack is blocked (rather then dodged). Decreasing the situational penalty by one every roll. The order in which targets are selected, is the same as the initiative order, starting from the original target.

Effects during combat

Most of the effects last two seconds. Because a turn lasts two seconds, most effects will influence your character for one turn. Longer Effects last more then one turn. The number of turns an effect lasts is easily calculated by taking half the effect's duration, rounded down. So an effect of five seconds will last two turns.

Stumble

If your character is in a combat cluster while hit by stumble, the character is moved out of the cluster. While stumbling, you can not use ranged attacks, and you can only make melee attacks against characters that are in a combat cluster with you. Because of this, you can only make a melee attack while stumbling, if you are attacked first.

While the effect lasts, you can not move in one of the directions of the locations you are in (left, right, up or down). This is the direction from which the effect came. If multiple directions could be applicable, the player causing the effect choose which direction. This can happen if the characters are in diagonal direction to each other, or if they are in the same square.

Daze

You can not take any actions during your turn, and you can not make defensive rolls until the daze effect has passed. If the daze effect is an odd number (1, 3, 5, etc.), you can not defend until the start of the turn in which the effect ends, as opposed to after the turn you are last effected.