One word: Excited
I just finished the first draft of the 1.3 physical conflict section, and I'm excited. I'll include it at the end of this post for ships and giggles.
Why excited? Well I had the new rules in mind, and I was pondering the age-old question: what does a GM do when
his draugr get charged by PCs? And this caused me to explore the limits of the system.
The combat rules are pretty simple. You get three actions, use them whenever you want, initiative determines your speed advantage, defense actions thwart attack actions, and protection reduces damage.
The mastery, however, seems daunting. Enter the draugr. Their standard tactic is to deliver the highest amount of damage possible. This works best on the least-armored foes, and swarm attacks (concurrent attacks) work well since characters can defend against only one attack at a time. Outnumbered draugr benefit most from dropping weak opponents as fast as possible.
Once that started making sense, I wondered about bandits. These guys are living creatures, interested in self-preservation and smart enough to recognize a losing situation. How would their tactics differ from the draugr? First, they don't want to be outnumbered. Since they're not normally heavily-armored, bandits will likely flee a group of four PCs until they can gather a group of four or more bandits. If that's not possible, they'll seek other advantages, for early use in battle. Surprise attacks, from initiative and the backstabber perk, are their best bets. Bandits will probably also seek to avoid a tank PC until they can outnumber him, or use a heavy weapon to get through his armor. Bandits are less likely to swarm, because they'll want to maintain some defense against the PC with the most lethal weapon.
This is the tip of the iceberg, partly because it doesn't even touch on mental or metaphysical aspects. Here's the physical conflict section, for both your amusement, and as a solicitation for input:
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Physical Conflict
It always comes down to this, if your game-group has a little pent-up anger. Physical conflict, commonly known as "combat," is the tactical attack-and-maneuver that determines who loses and who walks away. These rules make combat a little abstract, which blurs some lines but gives players the flexibility to do some creative things with their characters. These rules also utilize and enhance the extended conflict framework, which helps to make combat fair and action-packed.
This section discusses physical damage, postures in combat, special postures, range, and the gear of war (armor and weapons). But first, here’s a breakdown on how to conduct combat.
Combat Breakdown
In this example, two legionnaires, the PCs, have met two barbarians, and their earlier exchange has made it clear that fighting is inevitable. The general conflict rules will be augmented by the physical conflict rules to manage the speed and detail of the battle. The steps are numbered only to show the general sequence. Steps required in each combat are in bold.
1. Roll initiative. Each PC rolls an initiative contest for his character, and the GM rolls one or more contests for the NPCs.
2. Establish surprise. If one side had caught the other off-guard, the GM would make small initiative changes.
3. Count actions. Each character gets three actions per round.
4. Take turns. The character with the highest initiative takes his turn first. In this case, a legionnaire draws a gladius.
5. Respond to actions. While the legionnaire acts, the other characters may respond with actions. The barbarians respond by readying morningstars.
6. Choose posture. The other PC uses his response to climb onto the Roman wagon, changing his combat posture from offensive to defensive. The other characters remain offensive. Simpler movements, like close combat footwork, don’t require actions.
7. Attack. Still the first legionnaire’s turn, he attacks a barbarian with his gladius. He rolls a fight (melee) contest and his gladius damage. The other barbarian counterattacks with his response, so he also rolls fight (melee) and damage.
8. Defend. The barbarian under attack rolls defend (parry) and his armor protection. His contest beats the PC’s fight (melee), so no damage takes place. However, the PC can’t defend while attacking, so he takes the damage rolled by the second barbarian. He reduces the damage by rolling his protection and subtracting that from the damage, and adds the difference to his physical damage pool.
9. Combine actions. The legionnaire can combine actions during his turn, so he can choose to keep his previous fight (melee) contest if he wants to take the same action again. He decides that it was too low and rolls again. The barbarian decides that he won’t use an action to defend, saving one for later.
10. End turns. The first PC has used all his actions, one to draw his weapon and two to attack. He says he’s done.
11. Take half. The barbarians take their turns, and the GM decides to take half on their rolls to speed up play. The first barbarian passes on his turn, saving his last action for a defense if he needs it later. The second barbarian attacks the legionnaire in the wagon, and taking half gives him a 10 on his contest roll (before bonuses) and 4 on his damage roll.
12. Round up. The PC in the wagon is in defensive posture, so after he subtracts protection from the 4 damage, he multiplies the remainder by 50%. If this reduces damage to a fraction, like 1.5, the PC must round up to 2.
13. Minimum damage. If the PC’s protection roll had equaled or exceeded the 4 damage, a successful or uncontested attack still deals 1 damage.
14. End the round. The barbarians end their turns, and the legionnaire in the wagon takes his turn. He readies his shortbow, and the GM allows him to nock an arrow in the same action. Then he attacks the barbarian near him, with a fight (missile) contest. That barbarian is too busy to defend, having used all his actions, so he protects against the damage and adds the rest to his pool. The other barbarian has one action left, and he’ll lose it if he doesn’t use it. So he responds to the legionnaire’s bow attack by attacking the first PC, who is too busy to defend. When the legionnaire ends his turn, all remaining actions are lost, and a new round begins.
15. Flee or (don’t) die! On the next round, each character gets three more actions. One barbarian flees, costing two actions since he’s in offensive posture. The PCs let him go, to focus on the remaining barbarian. The barbarian and a legionnaire attack during the same action, and the damage fills their respective damage pools to the max. The GM decides that this reduces the barbarian to a bloody mess, who hits the ground and tries, pitifully, to crawl away. The PC decides what max damage means to his character, but whatever it is, he cannot take physical actions until he and the GM agree on how he’ll heal at least one physical damage.
Physical Damage
Since damage is a common goal in combat, it is the first thing to discuss. When characters make progress in combat, it takes the form of physical damage. Unlike the standard progress pool, damage pools are recorded on the losing side – the character taking damage. Since this can make tracking your progress more difficult, the GM is obligated to give you clues on how well you’re doing, like “the guard dog is keeping its distance and looks like it might consider fleeing,” or “the droid makes a grinding sound as it moves. Something must be broken in its hull.”
Physical damage (“P damage”) is abstract. The simple way to understand physical damage is to see it as anything that brings a character closer to physical death. This can include, but is not limited to: injury, exhaustion, freezing, burning, poison, disease, and bleeding. When a PC takes physical damage, he chooses what it means based on character concept, campaign theme, and the damage source, but the GM tells him the number headed for his P damage pool.
Dealing P damage is the same as earning progress. A successful, or uncontested for some overwhelmed opponents, contest deals damage. In combat, this is usually a fight or cast spell contest. A successful defense contest prevents all damage from the attack.
The best way to avoid physical damage is to prevent it with protection. Physical protection is normally provided by armor, but whatever the source, it is represented by a die that gets rolled against every P damage die, reducing the result. When the GM tells you how much damage you take, subtract your protection from it before adding it to your P damage pool. If the GM tells you that you take damage, you must always take a minimum of one, regardless of protection. For example, Five-Nine failed a parry, so the GM says, “the sentri-tron levels its arm-cannon at you and fires, for 6 damage.” Five-Nine has 5 physical health left, but his protection is d10, so he takes half, subtracts 5 protection from 6 damage, and adds 1 P damage to his damage pool. His player, Chris, says, “Five-Nine does a combat roll, sweating a bit, since that ‘bot will get a good shot in sooner or later.” Since a damage source and protection source don't always match up, like fur armor isn’t very good at protecting against fire, a little creativity can go a long way.
The next best way to avoid physical damage is to heal it. Natural healing, the removal of P damage from the physical damage pool, occurs at a rate of 1 point per day. The GM is free to increase this rate if a character gets full bed rest or has another feature that would help him heal faster. Remember that physical damage doesn't necessarily reflect wounds or injuries, so one point of healing per day doesn’t necessarily mean that an individual wound has closed up. Mostly dead characters, characters at max physical damage, only heal damage when decided by the GM. Spells like Cure are another good way to heal P damage, but they offer a trade-off: metaphysical damage for physical damage.
Combat Posture
This game assumes that combatants seek and take the best positioning in combat when it is easy to do so. In other words, you fight near your allies, maneuver to open up strikes, use cover when it’s available, and don’t let enemies get behind you. So while your location won’t be marked with grid coordinates, you’ll be tracked by an abstract location instead.
Your location is called your posture, and each character in physical conflict has one. The primary posture is called offensive, the secondary is defensive, and the special postures, flanking, mounted, and flying, define themselves in terms of offensive and defensive posture. Sometimes offensive and defensive posture are called “front row” and “back row” for simplicity, because they can look like rows when represented graphically.
Offensive posture describes where a character must be to effectively attack his opponents with martial arts or held weapons. This is the front line, the melee, or the brawl. It is also the default posture; whenever a character has no special reason to be in another posture, he’s offensive. This posture is the best for dealing damage, which makes it a dangerous one as well. In offensive posture, you deal only 50% damage to opponents in defensive posture when you attack them with the fight (unarmed) or fight (melee) skills. This benefit applies after protection reduces damage, if any. All other attacks deal full damage.
Defensive posture describes when a character is somewhat sheltered from offensive posture. This represents using teammates for protection, keeping distance from the melee, or using cover that is hard to reach. Because defensive posture requires a certain amount of protection from opponents, it’s not always available. Whenever you could reasonably keep your opponents out of reach, you can take defensive posture. If the GM doesn’t start a character in defensive posture and it’s available, taking it requires one movement action. Moving into offensive posture also requires one movement action. Defensive posture is a poor choice for attacking; your melee and unarmed attacks deal 50% damage to offensive opponents and no damage to defensive opponents, and your ranged attacks, including spells, deal full damage to offensive opponents but only 50% damage to defensive opponents. Again, 50% penalties occur after protection, or just before adding damage to a pool.
Characters who take positions that prevent 100% of damage are considered beyond defensive posture; they are in flight. Fleeing, or leaving combat, is a special and very important action that receives slightly different treatment in each posture. In defensive posture, you can usually just run away. Taking a movement action to do this removes you from conflict. During your action, opponents can try to prevent your flight: with stun guns, bolas, or highly persuasive words. Your movement contest determines how well you avoid them. If they fail, you’re gone. In offensive posture, you’re already in the thick of things, so it takes two movement actions to disengage from combat. On your first movement action, you try to take defensive posture and any offensive opponents can contest you in a way that might slow you down; fight (unarmed) and movement are good skills for this. On your second movement, you act just like a fleeing defensive character. If enemies try to prevent you and their contests succeed, you’re stuck where you failed.
Special Postures
Offensive and defensive postures are sufficient to run the majority of encounters in a game, but if you would like to increase the complexity enough to better represent military ambushes, hover-disc riders, or soaring dragons, you can use flanking, mounted, and flying postures as well. Following these is information on obstacles as they pertain to postures.
Flanking
Flanking posture represents surrounding your enemies, blocking their escape, or a pincer attack: attacking from both sides. You can take flanking posture if you have defensive opponents, there is a flanking position available, and you have a means to get to this place. To do this, you take two movement actions. The first movement is for leaving your current posture, and the second movement puts you in flanking posture. As in fleeing, your opponents can attempt to interrupt your movement.
Once in flanking posture, you treat opponent postures as opposites: defensive opponents are offensive, and offensive opponents are defensive. Furthermore, defensive opponents treat you as offensive, and offensive opponents treat you as defensive. This allows you to deal full damage to defensive enemies, but it also severs contact with your comrades. Once flanked, defensive characters must spend two actions to flee, as though they were in offensive posture.
Mounted
For those combatants using terrestrial mounts or vehicles, there is a special posture called mounted posture. This posture is only available when there are wide, open spaces in which the mount can move. A character enters mounted posture by 1) having a mount, and 2) spending an action on a movement contest. Until his next turn begins, treat a mounted character as being defensive. Whenever a mounted character makes a close-range attack, both he and his target treat each other as offensive for that action only. Mounted posture ends when a mounted character’s next turn begins, at which time he may spend another movement action to remain mounted.
For example, Sir Joustalot has brought his trusty steed, Jacque, into battle against several unruly barbarians. The barbarians did better on initiative, so they’re going first. Sir Joustalot is not surprised, so once a barbarian attacks him, he uses an action to take mounted posture. The barbarian’s attack succeeds, dealing damage as normal since his actions take priority as the initiating character. However, Sir Joustalot is now mounted, so the remaining barbarian attacks must treat him as defensive. When Sir Joustalot’s turn begins this round, his mounted posture ends. He then spends his second action to stay mounted, which will give him a full round of defensiveness (versus the few turns that his first action bought for him). To finish his turn, Sir Joustalot attacks the first barbarian with his lance, which counts as offensive during that action. Now that the barbarian faces full lance damage, he might choose to parry, or he might try to counterattack since his attack will count as offensive as well.
Flying
Another special posture is for dragon riders, F15 eagles, or airborne mages: flying. A character in flying posture is usually at medium or long range, and non-flying characters treat him as though he is not in conflict. When a flying character takes an action, he chooses whether he will be offensive or defensive during that action only. The non-flying characters may interact with the flying character only while he takes an action, and normal posture interactions apply. Medium and long range attacks can affect flying characters, with an appropriate amount of difficulty applied. If two or more flying characters engage each other, it is easiest to place them in their own conflict, using only offensive and defensive postures as normal.
Obstacles
To add interest to his battlefields, the GM can include obstacles, which add effects that affect postures. Some obstacles slow characters down - which increases the number of move actions to change posture or flee, or might require a certain minimum difficulty for successful movement contests. Some obstacles just provide cover, potentially making offensive posture impossible, or granting difficulty bonuses to parry contests. Others, like chasms or cliffs, could prevent one or both sides of the battle from using fight (melee) and fight (unarmed). Perhaps most dreaded is the dead-end: the defensive posture of one side cannot easily flee, and must instead try to breach enemy ranks as though they were flanked. There are no hard rules for obstacles, but GMs should include them on occasion to spice up combat.
Range
Distance matters. Spells, missile weapons, and combat postures all rely to some degree on the distance between two points. To save you from spending lots of time on measuring, the game provides four range categories to use. Time needed to move between ranges is up to the GM, but a general rule is to multiply each previous movement by two: one movement action between close and short, two actions between short and medium, and four between medium and long.
• Close. This is the front line of battle. Close range is where melee takes place, where someone could hit you with a weapon at any time. Close range represents the distance between two adjacent rows in combat: defensive to offensive allies, or offensive allies to offensive enemies.
• Short. This is the boundary of most conflict. It's a good distance for using thrown weapons, bows, and pistols. Voices can be heard clearly at short range, and spells with a range of "short" can target anyone in combat.
• Medium. Opponents are just outside combat at this range. This is a good range for some spells and rifles, but held (melee) weapons and thrown weapons are useless. Voices can still be heard at medium range, and this is where characters go when fleeing and flanking.
• Long. Only the most powerful weapons and spells can cause damage at long range. Distance and obstacles make it easy to disappear when at long range. Bows cannot fire past this range, and magic spells effectively become simple light shows. Voices cannot be heard at long range, but high-powered rifles can!
Weapons and Armor
Weapons are physical tools used to damage things. Armor is the natural response, the protection, used to prevent physical damage. Using either in combat requires some special considerations.
• Unarmed attacks. Every character can make unarmed attacks. These are the bites, kicks, punches, claws, and head-butts. Unless otherwise improved, these attacks do d4 physical damage. Unarmed attacks cannot be used as multiple weapons without perks, because extra effort and care are needed to get within striking range of an opponent.
• Improvised weapons. Some things are not supposed to be weapons, but they can do some damage if you're desperate. These do d4 damage, or more if they're heavy or sharp. Because they’re not designed as weapons, the difficulty to make attacks with these objects should increase with their damage dice.
• Missile weapons. These are combat-effective at close and short range. At medium or long range, opponents can easily dodge missile weapons, unless the opponent is unaware or surprised. Difficulty applies to medium and long range shots due to weather, light conditions, cover, and concealment. Missile weapons need reloading and have limited ammunition. Thrown weapons take one action (move or fight) to ready another throwing weapon. Slings need no reload action if your off-hand is holding ammunition. Bows take one action to reload, crossbows take two actions, and simple firearms take three actions to reload. Modern and futuristic weapons are usually semi- or fully-automatic. These weapons do not use reload actions until the magazines are empty.
• Multiple weapons. If a character isn't using a shield on his shield-arm, he has the option of using another weapon. Since heavy weapons require two hands, a character can use a medium or lighter weapon in his secondary hand. This provides the option of using the features of the secondary weapon instead of the primary weapon, or if the character has the dual wielder perk, one free attack action each round. A double weapon requires two hands but gives the wielder the choice of treating the weapon as two weapons, or of doing more damage by using it as a single weapon.
• Shield protection. Shields prevent characters from taking damage by increasing a character's defend (parry) skill: his ability to avoid damage. This means that characters get no benefit from shields unless they reserve parry actions for using them. Shields do not provide physical protection.
• Armor physical penalty. As armor gets heavier or more cumbersome, it offers more protection in exchange for a lower physical score. Wearing light armor reduces a character's physical score by 1, medium armor by 2, and heavy armor by 3. These losses are restored immediately after removing the armor.
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