Variant: Tactical Combat

The Tactical Combat Variant Ruleset upgrades the combat system from being largely narrative-driven to using a visual map-and-tokens system to represent player characters and other entities in the space of the world. This allows for a more granular and complex style of combat, which is highly desirable in games where combat is a primary focus. Tactical combat uses the same action rules as regular combat, as well as familiar concepts like Attacking and Initiative, but largely overhauls the movement rules, and places greater emphasis on things like cover and situational awareness.

The Tactical Grid

The core of the Tactical Combat variant rules is concerned with the Tactical Grid. Combats using the tactical combat ruleset must necessarily be resolved using a map drawn upon an underlying grid, with the grid being used to represent the positions and orientations of creatures, characters, and objects in the area, as well as to work out the distances between them and ranges of effects.

In order to better resolve questions of what objects are adjacent to each other and to simplify the rules for computing diagonal distances, tactical combat relies on a Hexagonal map-grid. Variant: Square Tactical Grids discusses the changes needed to these rules to make the game playable on a square grid. Determining adjacency is as simple as determining if two cells on the grid share an edge; if they do, the characters or objects in those squares are said to be adjacent.

For the purposes of compatibility with existing commercial offerings for character miniatures, and ease of adoption by new players who are experienced in other TTRPG combat systems, each cell of the Tactical Grid is said to represent a 5-foot distance - this scale is largely arbitrary, and any convention can be used at the table so long as all players agree on it. Diagonals distance is therefore taken by figuring out the minimum number of hexagonal cells that much be traversed between the center of Cell A and the center of Cell B, and multiplying by the 5-foot scale. This is where an example image would go, if I had one.

Traversal from cell to cell always happens across an edge.

Movement on the Tactical Grid

Under the Combat rules, Movement (Ordinary Combat Rules) is almost as simple as declaring a movement. In Tactical combat, the players all have one shared theatre to draw on which represents the position of all objects and characters involved in the combat, and so, a bit more thought is needed.

Characters necessarily have a speed, which is the distance they can move in a single movement action. If using the 5-foot-per-cell convention, this speed divided by 5 is the number of hex cells they can traverse in a single movement action. Absent traits or other special abilities that say otherwise, a character may not attack or perform other actions on the move. A movement action begins when they make to leave the cell they are in, and ends when they reach their destination cell. As with narrative combat, a player can take their movement action before or after their other action, spend both their actions that turn on movement, or even reserve a movement action ("if the orc starts to move toward me, I will run away").

Moving through Terrain Types

Each cell on the map represents some kind of terrain, whether it's a linoleum hallway, a rough stone corridor, a grassy field, or a mire. Where feasible, the Facilitator should ensure that the terrain in each cell is somehow clearly indicated so that the players clearly understand what is being represented.

Some terrain is considered Difficult Terrain - sucking mud, the rubble of a demolished partition wall, knee-high shrubs. This is terrain which a character could conceivably wade through, scrabble over, or carefully pick their way across. Difficult Terrain effectively costs double to move through; crossing a 5-foot-cell of shin-deep, heavy mud costs you the same amount of "movement time" as running down 10 feet of hardwood floor. Depending on the type of difficult terrain, there may be other difficulties. See Terrain Effects, further down this page, for more information.

Some other terrain is considered impassible. A wall is a kind of terrain, and so is a deep pit. Impassible terrain cannot be moved through without the use of a skill or ability to bypass it. A facilitator and a player should work out amongst themselves appropriate solutions to such a problem, as the potential number of combinations of "impassible terrain type" and "imagined solutions" is too large a space to rule them all definitively here.

Moving Past an Enemy

There are situations when a character must move past, or even through, a space in which an enemy character is standing. Perhaps the PCs are occupying the two spaces that represent the town gate, and here come the barbarians. Perhaps the players think they can shake the lawmen chasing them, but only if they round the corner near where that Lagosi tough is standing.

A character may enter a space that is adjacent to an enemy character without penalty. When attempting to leave that space, however, they may provoke an Attack of Opportunity, described below.

A player may not normally move into a space occupied by an enemy. They may, however, attempt an ability or combat maneuver to bypass such an obstacle, where appropriate.

Three Dimensional Movement

The tactical grid is two dimensional (albeit, technically, having three axes). That is to say, height is not natively represented on the hex grid. For most tactical purposes, minor variations in terms of uneven or sloped ground is not sufficient to be worthy of note. However, situationally, two characters might find themselves in combat with one another from very different altitudes. Perhaps one character is standing atop a high tower and in a position to sharpshoot against another, or the party is encamped on a ridge and spies enemies in the valley below. In these situations, the Facilitator needs to make appropriate judgement calls about reach and range. The height difference may constitute impassible terrain (in either direction), and may possibly also count as a form of cover.

Characters which can fly are not explicitly covered by this rule, either.

Terrain and Obstacles

Terrain Effects

As discussed above in movement, there are fundamentally three kinds of terrain: normal, difficult, and impassible. Normal terrain is terrain which bears no special consideration. Difficult Terrain may be traversed, but costs double the movement distance to move through. Impassible terrain may not be passed through at all, willingly.

However, some terrain has additional effects. Here are some common varieties of such effect:

• Slippery terrain, such as an oil-slicked portion of deck plating, requires the character to make an appropriate Agility check or fall prone, ending their movement.
• Mired terrain, like deep mud, may require the character to make an appropriate Agility or related skill check to avoid becoming stuck, ending their movement prematurely and keeping them there until they pass such a check.
• Some terrain has a damage associated with it. This damage may be expressed in terms of passing/stationary (such as 1d4/1d6), which represents damage done to the character for passing through or stopping in that cell. Facilitators are strongly encouraged to make this sort of penalty obvious before springing it on the player. There are rules for handling traps if you need actual surprise damage.

Ending movement in Difficult Terrain imposes a penalty of one bane on Dodge rolls made as part of resolving attacks, though other responses to being attacked remain available to the character.

Cover

Some difficult or impassible terrain, or even other objects, constitute cover. These are chiefly those objects which are large enough to hide behind, or are so large as to obstruct a player from view completely. There are two varieties of cover: partial and total.

Partial Cover is cover which a character may reasonably hide behind, but which is not large enough in and of itself to fully obscure a character from view naturally. The wall of a shoulder-high trench, a car, a low stone well, and an upturned table are all examples of partial cover. In order to qualify as cover, the obstacle must be of sufficient strength to reasonably withstand at least one strike of the enemy's weapon or combat effect - unrolling a tube of bristol board and diving behind it is not meaningfully cover. A character who has ended combat standing adjacent to an object that is partial cover imposes a bane against the attack roll of any character attempting any ranged attack which would pass through the space occupied by the cover, and has one boon on their Dodge roll as part of resolving that attack. If that character ends their movement adjacent to partial cover, and has an action left, they may spend that action taking cover. If they succeed on a dodge roll when taking cover, the object counts as total cover until the start of their next turn.

Total Cover is cover which a character would be entirely obscured by simply by being adjacent to it - a shed wall, large truck, fallen redwood, or so on. A character who has stopped in a cell which is adjacent to the cell the total cover object is in may not be targeted by ranged attacks which must pass through that cover's cell.

The durability of cover is important to consider. See the section on combat maneuvers for details on the Target Inanimate Object action, through which it may be possible to destroy cover.

Traps

Traps are a special sort of hazardous terrain which are not immediately obvious, at least in this context. See that section for rules on handling trapped terrain.

Attacking

The aim of movement on the tactical combat grid is to either remove oneself from a position where they may be attacked, or position oneself to better attack your enemies; though Tactical Combat does have an unjoined "maneuver" phase much like narrative combat, in which two or more parties might be attempting to move past each other on the grid.

While the rolls for Attacking are largely the same as for the main narrative Combat rules, there are special considerations to be made considering topics of melee vs ranged combat handling. Tactical combat also introduces a mechanic for handling Attacks of Opportunity

Melee Combat

A character who is unarmed, or who is armed with a weapon that has the melee property, or is taking an action with the touch range property, is attempting a melee attack. That character, and their target, are said to be "in melee", and remain so until the two move apart from each other, or one loses consciousness, or surrenders. Resolving a melee attack requires the usual rolls. Melee is a very basic type of attack with few special rules.

If a weapon has melee and reach for properties, attacks made with that melee weapon are considered melee attacks, out to its full reach distance. Characters armed with such a weapon also impose attacks of opportunity for adjacency as though those cells were adjacent to their own.

Ranged Combat

A character who is making an attack with a weapon with a range property other than touch is making a ranged attack. Ranged attacks require some additional consideration. As further detailed in the weapon rules, a range property has two values, such as 60/180ft. The smaller of these two values is called the interval. Ranged attacks are made with no penalty out to the interval distance, then one bane to the attack role out to the "second interval", which is twice the first value (in this case, 120ft), then a second bane to the attack roll out to the maximum distance, which is the second value. Ranged attacks require hard Dodge roll from the target if they are made from inside the first interval distance, and very hard if made outside that distance. In order to be entitled to a dodge roll against a ranged attack, the target character must not be in melee and must be aware of the attacking character.

A character who uses a ranged attack at a character who is 'in melee' has two options. The first is to take a bane to the hit, but guarantee that in the event of a miss, no other target is struck. The second is to run the risk that if they miss by less than 1/2 of their relevant skill score for the attack, they strike one of the other characters involved in the melee. If there is more than one other character involved in melee, the Facilitator should use their discretion to determine who is struck.

There may be other considerations to ranged combat specific to the weapon being used. A character armed with a ranged weapon threatens no cells for the purpose of determining Attacks of Opportunity, but gains access to the Overwatch (Combat Maneuver) action automatically. Attempting a ranged attack against an adjacent character places you and that character in melee, and unless otherwise indicated in the weapon description, or otherwise obviated by a trait or ability, imposes one bane on the ranged attack.

Offensive Use of Skills, Traits, and Abilities

Some skills constitute the basis of Combat Maneuvers, which are special actions that, while not being attacks, may resemble attacks. These combat maneuvers are special applications of skills that do not require you have trained those skills in order to use them; actions such as grappling a target, tripping them, or disarming them. Combat maneuvers count at attacks (usually melee attacks) for the purposes of triggering attacks of opportunity (namely, they don't).

Other offensive uses of skills and traits are not Combat Maneuvers. These include things like casting a spell (in settings that support this) through the appropriate skill, activating a piece of nearby machinery, and so on. As a general rule, these activities do trigger attacks of opportunity unless some other ruling or trait says otherwise.

Attacks of Opportunity

An attack of opportunity is a special attack made outside of the normal action economy and initiative order against a target who has exposed themselves to their enemy through some risky action, provided that enemy can seize the opportunity to capitalize on it. These tend to happen in special cases as noted above, when certain actions take place inside a threatened cell.

These opportunities include, but are not strictly limited to:

• A character exiting a threatened cell into a non-threatened cell;
• A character failing to defensively draw a weapon while standing in a threatened cell;
• A character attempting to use a skill in a way that provokes an attack of opportunity inside a cell, and;
• A character attempting to use an item that is not a weapon inside a threatened cell.

A character equipped with and currently wielding a weapon with the 'melee' property threatens all adjacent cells. If that weapon also has a 'reach' property, all cells in range of that reach property are also threatened. A character only threatens cells if they are not otherwise 'in melee', with the exception that they always threaten the other characters in melee with them. If Alice, and Bob are in a melee with each other and Bob attempts to break away by leaving his cell, Alice might be able to get her attack of opportunity. However, if they stay in combat and Charlie attempts to slip past them, neither Alice nor Bob get to make an attack of opportunity - they are too busy trying to kill each other.

A character who is threatening squares could be called the Threatener, and a character who raises an opportunity for an Attack of Opportunity could be called the target. Any time an attack of opportunity arises, pause all other actions to resolve it. The Threatener must succeed on an Initiative check. If they do, they may make one attack roll as normal against the target. No other penalty is imposed beyond the damage and effects of the attack.

Unless otherwise stated, this must be a normal weapon attack; if the player wants to use a Combat Manuever as an attack of opportunity, they would have to have a trait that allows them to do so.

There is no limit to the number of Attacks of Opportunity a character may attempt in a turn, though each occasion only raises one opportunity, and each opportunity must be met with a successful Initiative check to actually get to make the attack.

Facing, and Flanking

Characters in Tactical Combat have a property known as facing, which is the edge of the hexagonal cell they occupy that they are considered to be facing toward at the end of their turn. Changing your facing is a free action taken at the end of your turn, independent of your movement or attack actions. Facing is a small, but important detail.

A character's facing gives them bonuses or penalties to certain skill checks:

• Dodge Checks made in response to being attacked;
• Any observation-related skill check as pertains to combat situational awareness, at Facilitator fiat.

If the defending character is being attacked by or viewing a character that is directly in front of them (can be targeted by a line passing through the cell on the other side of the edge they are facing, the defending character gets 1 boon to the dodge roll or other skill check. If the character attacking or being observed is directly behind the player using a similar rule, the character has 2 banes to the roll. Using a similar line rule, if the character attacking is attacking from the cell immediately clockwise or counter clockwise of directly behind the player, the defending character only recieves 1 bane. There is no bane, or boon, for a character clockwise or counterclockwise directly in front of the fender. A character can use the attack option to counter attack players which are in the arc of the cell directly in front of, or clockwise or counterclockwise of that cell, provided they can reach the attacking player. See the attack resolution rules for more information.

Successfully executing a dodge action means that your facing immediately changes to the facing of the character attacking you, regardless of whether or not you are then subsequently hit by their attack.

Characters may also be flanked. A character is considered flanked when the following conditions are true:

• The defending character is in melee;
• The attacking character is performing a melee attack;
• The attacking character is allied to at least one other character who is in melee with the defending character, and;
• A non-curved line may be drawn from one edge of the attacking character's cell to the edge of their allied in-melee character's cell, such that the line passes through the defending character's cell.

In practice this means that a character is flanked where they are facing their immediate opponent, and another character is attacking them from any of the cells where they would have had a penalty. A character so flanked normally receives one additional bane to their dodge rolls (to the usual maximum of 2 banes). A character who has been flanked in combat in the previous turn may not execute overwatch actions unless they have a trait to the contrary.

Switching and Drawing Weapons

The weapon a character is currently holding is said to be the weapon they have equipped, even if they have several weapons in their inventory:

• The paladin Oleander Jonquil in the Wisteria setting is holding a war-glaive and has a throwing axe tucked into his belt. He is therefore equipped with the war-glaive.
• The outlaw Jack Lagos has already pulled his skinning knife, but he's tempted to reach for his six-shooter. He's therefore equipped with the knife.

A player may wield as many weapons as they care to, so long as they have sufficient hands to do so. Some weapons may require two or more hands to equip. In some exotic settings, some weapons may be equipped without being held in hand per se.

If a character wants to switch weapons, they must first free up their hands if they do not have a hand free, and have two options:

• They may hastily sheathe the existing weapon, if they have such a sheath, as a movement action.
• They may drop the weapon as a free action, consuming no actions to do so. The weapon lies in their current cell. Stooping to retrieve such a weapon is a full movement action on its own.

After a character has the necessary hands free, they may then attempt to draw the weapon in question:

• Unless stated otherwise in the weapon description, a character who is moving up to their full speed in their movement action may draw a weapon as part of that action with no penalty.
• A character standing still can attempt to draw a weapon as a free action by succeeding on a skill check with the skill that governs the use of that weapon, as shown in the weapon description. The player must declare their intention to do this prior to making the check. If the player fails the check, they have the option of either dropping the weapon as a fumble (which is the result of a critical failure of this check) and keeping their action, or taking a movement action just to draw the weapon.

A character who attempts to draw a weapon in a threatened square provokes an attack of opportunity unless they succeed on a hard skill check with the relevant weapon. They gain a boon to this check if the threatening character is already in melee. This only applies if the character is drawing a weapon while stationary. A character who has drawn a weapon in motion incurs no attack of opportunity for doing so but may incur such attacks as a result of their movement as normal.

Special Conditions

Some combat maneuvers and other actions in combat may result in a character having special conditions applied to them which have an ongoing effect turn-over-turn, such as falling prone, becoming paralyzed, and so on.

Visibility and Stealth

The tactical combat system concerns itself in part with what individual characters can see on the grid. Players are encouraged to consider these options carefully, in spite of the fact that they, as omniscient giants standing well above the field of battle, can see things their characters necessarily can't. This is especially relevant in actual tabletop play with physical maps and tokens, and is discussed more in the below section on Fog of War.

When one character is in a situation where they are unable to successfully observe another character, the unobserved character is said to have stealth. Stealth relationships can become very complex very quickly, but the rules that govern them are quite simple. Characters may also be considered to have Stealth in certain other situations, such as when they are successfully disguised as members of the opposite faction.

Adverse Conditions

Certain battlefield conditions globally affect awareness and observation. These include, but are not limited to:

• Adverse weather such as heavy rain or fog which may increase the difficulty of observation skill checks made past certain distances at the facilitator's discretion.
• The noise of heavy combat may be sufficient to drown out sounds, increasing the difficulty or adding banes to the necessary observation checks, again at facilitator fiat.
• A character may have a Special Condition (see above) which limits their observational abilities.
• Visual checks are harder for characters who are in the dark if they cannot naturally see in such conditions by means of a specialist trait.

Stealth and Maneuvering

Characters who have stealth can maintain stealth in one of two ways: - Remaining in a position where they have total cover from all members of the opposing faction. - Succeeding on stealth-related skill checks (see the stock Covert Movement (Skill)) taken as contests to the observation skill checks of characters who have line of sight to them (characters whose line of sight would not be obscured by an object granting total cover). Depending on battlefield conditions, one or more of the characters in such a contest may have boons or banes associated with them.

Further, a character who ends their turn in total cover is said to be Obscured. Such a character who then succeeds on stealth-related skill checks when they next move out of that total cover are said to have re-obtained Stealth until someone manages to observe them. This can be countered by a character reading an action to observe them as they leave the cover.

Beginning or ending a turn behind partial cover grants a bane to any observing character's observation checks made against a stealthy character's movements. Stealth checks to mover through or stop in open areas (areas without cover and areas that are not difficult terrain) are Hard skill checks for the character attempting to maintain stealth. Moving less than half your normal distance lowers this by one difficulty to a normal skill check (or an easy skill check if moving across or ending on difficult terrain or behind partial cover).

Stealth and Attacking

A character who manages to reach a suitable position may attack another character from stealth. If the attack is a melee attack, they lose stealth by doing so. If the attack is a ranged attack, and the weapon does not have the beam property, the attacking character can make an appropriate stealth-related skill opposed by the observation checks of all nearby enemy characters, and if fully successful on all of them, may retain stealth after having done so.

Attacks made from stealth are Sneak Attacks. By default, Sneak Attacks cannot be dodged and can only be reacted against using the other attack response options. Some defending characters may have traits that make them immune to *this property* of sneak attacks by explicitly stating they may dodge them. Some attacking characters or weapon types may have special traits that grant bonus damage when an attack is a Sneak Attack. Even if characters are entitled to dodge a sneak attack, the attacking character executing a sneak attack gains one boon to their attack roll.

Losing stealth as a result of an attack is resolved after resolving the outcome of an attack; that is, an attack initiated from the state of having stealth is *always* a sneak attack, even if the character loses the status of stealth as a result of having attacked. For this reason, it's important to resolve the maneuvering portion of stealth first if necessary.

Fog of War and Situational Awareness

Facilitator note: It is very difficult to resolve fog of war on a physical tabletop without the full participation of all players.

The Tactical Combat ruleset pays homage to Fog of War. Facilitators running the game through a digital tabletop solution are encouraged to use that solution's actual fog of war features to fully obscure unobserved non-player characters from view. However, since some groups might conceivably play in person, there are also "conditions" of Fog of War which tie into situational awareness, whether or not a token can be seen on the map.

Unawares

A character is said to be "unaware" of another character if:

• The observing character fails their skill check to expose a character who has stealth.
• The observing character's line of sight toward an observed character passes through total cover.

Characters who are not aware of a character should behave as if that character is not there. An attacking character not being aware of a defending character does not grant any benefit to the defending character if they are in the range of an Area of Effect attack.

Flat-Footed

A character who has entered combat is considered flat-footed if: - Their turn in the initiative order has not arisen yet, and; - There was no surprise phase.

Characters attacked during a surprise phase are always flat-footed.

A flat-footed character may take no defensive action when attacked other than the Sponge response.

Forewarned

When a character observes a character, either with stealth or one who is obscured with fog of war, they are assumed to be able to warn their allies to their presence at their descretion. Characters so armed have automatic awareness of characters thus warned-of if the "observed" character does not have stealth. If a character did have stealth when their presence is forewarned of, the observing characters have a boon to attempt to spot them until the next time the stealthed character moves.