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 (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 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.

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 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.