Combat
Combat is a core mechanic in many roleplaying games. Depending on your setting and the sort of gameplay your group prefers, you may wind up in combat during the run of a Tarnished Tale adventure, as well.
Like much the rest of the rule set, Combat is modular and subject to modification. You are encouraged to discuss which rules for combat you will use (and possibly, if using multiple styles, when you will use them) with your play group, bearing in mind the importance of Rule Zero. While many TTRPG players will be more familiar with systems that use a Tactical Grid for combat in a manner similar to strategy RPGs like Front Mission or Tactics Ogre, this is actually the variant combat rule in Tarnished Tale. The default method of combat is focused more on Narrative-Driven Combat. This is to facilitate the financial and temporal accessibility of play, by avoiding the requirement for just-starting-out hobbyists to provide tactical grids and miniatures or tokens in order to adjudicate combat.
Before Combat: Surprise and Maneuvers
As the veteran TTRPG player knows, there is a bit of a grey area between the parts of the game that can be said to be in and out of combat, and this problem only gets worse when considering a narrative-driven combat mechanic. There is doubtless a period in any combat where one party to the encounter means harm to the other party, but the other party isn't aware of it yet - either because the aggressor is hiding their motives or because the aggressor is physically hidden from their intended victim. During this twilight phase of combat, there are two important considerations: Surprise and Maneuver. A combat which is fully begun (i.e., past the surprise and maneuver phase) is said to be "joined".
Surprise in the context of combat is a kind of special initiative, or half-round of combat. As long as the targeted party is unable to observe the movements of the aggressor or fails an observation-related skill check as determined by the facilitator (for example, a skill intended to read the motives of the other party), the aggressor can be said to possess surprise. When combat begins, any characters who have surprise may participate in a special round of combat prior to setting initiative (if there are characters with surprise on both sides of a conflict, use the initiative rules to determine turn order). During this special surprise round, each character may take one or fewer actions. After the conclusion of a surprise round, if there are still surviving characters on both sides of the combat, combat is unambiguously joined.
Maneuver in the context of "unjoined" combat is a formal recognition of the combat phase having begun, but only *sort of*. A meanuevers round begins when the entirety of one party (the targeted party) is unaware of the presence of the entirety of the other party (the aggressor party), but the aggressor party is aware of the presence of at least one member of the targeted party. So long as they aggressor party remains entirely hidden from all members of the targeted party and no combat actions have been taken, the aggressor party can be said to be maneuvering. Initiative is taken and actions are resolved in turn order across both parties without combat actually having been joined. This allows the aggressor party to set up an especially effective surprise round or to initiate the retreat rules (see below) before actually firing a shot, so to speak. If combat becomes joined - through executing a surprise round or because the targeted party becomes aware of the aggressor party - reroll initiative and resolve combat as normal.
The surprise and maneuver phases both exist in the context of both 'vanilla' combat and the Variant: Tactical Combat combat rule variant, but might not exist in all combat types. They also might not always occur, at facilitator fiat. For example, if a combat was obvious before all parties to the combat arrived, there may be neither a surprise nor maneuver round. Reinforcements arriving part way through a combat may not always get surprise either, and instead the full initiative table should be recalculated. Finally, both player characters and non-player characters are capable of executing on surprise or maneuver as the situation warrants.
Entering Combat: Initiative
Once combat is called, the Facilitator should call for initiative. During the process of initiative, all characters are effectively competing to create a laddered ranking of who is the most ready for fighting. However, executing contested skill checks in every combination of characters present for a combat with a larger party on either side is prohibitively time consuming. Initiative therefore works in the following way under the vanilla combat system:
- All characters roll Initiative checks.
- Characters who succeed on this check get their full Intuition score as their Initiative Score for this combat.
- Characters who fail on this check get one-half their Intuition score (rounded down) as their Initiative Score for this combat.
- The facilitator ranks all characters from highest to lowest initiative score.
- In case of a tie, the characters who tied roll a skill contest for Initiative, with the winner ranking higher than the loser.
This final ranking is taken as the "turn order" for the combat. This turn order is static for the remainder of combat unless a significant factor causes it to change. Changes to the initiative order may be forced by:
- The sudden arrival of additional forces on either side of a conflict, or even the arrival of a 'third' faction;
- A major narrative event that causes combat to briefly stop, such as a distant explosion that catches the attention of all sides.
These are naturally just examples that arrived from play-testing and your group may find other reasons to reroll the initiative order.
Resolving Combat
Once initiative is settled, combat follows a linear flow, with turns taken so that players are never said to have been disadvantaged in terms of "screen time". A full narrative beginning at the first character in initiative order through to the final action taken by the last character in initiative order is said to be a round. All of the actions taken by a player during their place in the initiative order is said to be that player's turn. Every player can perform up to two actions in such a turn by default.
Rounds
A round begins with the first action of the first character in the initiative order, and ends with the final action of the last character in the initiative order. For narrative purposes, a full round takes roughly 12 seconds to complete, meaning there are five rounds in a minute of combat under the narrative rules. Of course, as this is narrative combat, there is fuzziness in the length of a round, and the Facilitator may fudge the amount of time that has passed during a combat as suits the overall narrative.
Turns
A character's turn is said to begin when they are asked what they wish to do (or, for NPCs, at the end of the previous player character or NPCs turn) and is said to end when the effects of their final action are resolved. A turn is effectively the same length as a round, despite initiative order. Initiative order places priority on whose turn it is to speak as well as whose actions are resolved in what order, but characters are not standing around simply waiting for their turn. For example, an attacking werewolf who is shot down prior to his turn may still have been charging for their attack as part of that turn, but was simply killed before they could execute on their desired actions.
A common effect shorthand is "until their next turn". This means the spell is in effect until the next time the character begins a turn, even if that means the effect is activated and then immediately deactivated. Characters should therefore think accordingly when choosing targets.
Actions
A character has two actions available to them during any one turn of combat, which they can use in a variety of ways:
- Movement to obtain an advantageous position, which includes interacting with world objects.
- Attacking using a combat skill in hopes of reducing another character's Hit Points.
- Certain Ability Traits may consume one or more actions to execute.
A character may also reserve action. When doing so, they keep over one or more of their actions until a certain precondition is meant. "I reserve an action to shoot the monster when it enters my line of sight", for example, or "I reserve an action to cut the bridge if the enemy attempts to cross it". If the precondition is not met before their next turn, it is lost. Sometimes the price of vigilance is inaction.
Ending Combat: Incapacity, Death, and Retreat
Combat continues indefinitely until any of the following conditions are met:
- All of the engaged members on one side or the other are incapacitated or killed. This usually happens when they are reduced to zero hit points, otherwise killed, or in rare cases when circumstances are contrived such that they cannot physically engage in combat any longer.
- An attempt is made to surrender, at which point combat is halted until a surrender is settled, or.
- A party attempts a retreat.
Under a retreat, use the Chase Mechanics to determine if one party can escape the other and give them the slip, unless some circumstance of the combat allows an immediate retreat, at Facilitator fiat. For example, the Big Bad Evil Guy may have had a secret, self-sealing escape hatch that they dive down with an action and seal with the other, preventing the party from following them. Alternatively, perhaps the party executed an instant retreat by demolishing the tunnel the scarab-people were using to attack their camp, preventing the enemy party from reaching them.