Movement

← Taking Actions ✧ Attacks →

During combat, characters are often in constant motion within their span. This motion is distinct from movement actions on your turn: run and climb. These challenge actions interact with three spatial concepts:

A span is a horizontal unit of space
A height is a vertical unit of space
A terrain feature is something within a span that provides cover, a threshold, or high ground.

Movement Actions

Running and climbing are challenge actions. You choose which action die to roll, reflecting how you approach the risk of movement.

Roll Attack to move directly and aggressively, at risk of lowering your guard.
Roll Brace if you’re really pushing yourself, at risk of exhausting your stamina.
Roll Maneuver if you’re deftly surmounting obstacles, at risk of losing your situational awareness.

Run

Roll Attack, Brace, or Maneuver to run quickly.✦ 5+: Move to an adjacent span, or into a terrain feature. Then, take a free action (other than Run) OR move a second time, without rolling.⬖ 3–4: Take -1 guard (for Attack), -1 stamina (for Brace), or -1 awareness (for Maneuver) to succeed. Otherwise, you fail. ⓧ 1–2: You only move once—into an adjacent span or terrain feature—and can’t take further action or movement.

Climb

Requires two free hands. Roll Attack, Brace, or Maneuver to clamber up to higher ground.✦ 5+: Move up 1 height. ⬖ 3–4: Take -1 guard (for Attack), -1 stamina (for Brace), or -1 awareness (for Maneuver) to succeed. Otherwise, you fail. ⓧ 1–2: You fail to climb.

Spans and Distance

The span is the basic unit of horizontal distance in WSSWNN: a space roughly 10–20 yards or meters wide. The size is deliberately inexact to account for various types of ground and obstacles.

Ultimately, a span is simply a space in which everyone can reach and interact directly with one another within a single turn. Unless otherwise noted, opposed actions can always affect characters within your current span. For example, you can make a melee attack against anyone within your span, unless they occupy a terrain feature that prevents you from reaching them.

When you Run, you either move into an adjacent span, or you move to occupy a terrain feature within your current span. One span can hold a number of terrain features.

Terrain Features

There are three types of terrain features: cover, thresholds, and on high, discussed in depth below. When taking advantage of terrain, keep these rules in mind:

Terrain features are relative. You may have cover relative to foes in one direction, but foes on the other side of your position still have a clear shot at you. You can have the high ground relative to foes on the ground, but a flying foe is on high relative to you.
Terrain features can overlap. A hut, for example, can provide all three: cover from its walls, a threshold from its narrow doorway, and high ground from its rooftop. The Guide has final say on which terrain features are available in a given span.

Cover

Cover includes trees and foliage, the interior of buildings, masses of ruined debris, or any terrain feature you could duck behind to disappear from foes’ view. The Guide determines what counts as cover.

When you move to occupy cover, foes from beyond the cover can’t target you with ranged attacks. You also need cover to take the Hide maneuver action.

Thresholds

A threshold is a choke point, such as a doorway, alley, or narrow pass— any space between walls that you and your allies could block with your bodies. By standing in a threshold, you prevent foes from crossing it—unless they go through you first! Thresholds also enable stronger heroes occupying the threshold to protect weaker heroes behind them.

Combatants in thresholds have limited mobility. While in a threshold, you can’t use the Evade or Outflank maneuvers—nor can you be outflanked by foes.

On High

On-high terrain includes hills, rooftops, treetops, and outcroppings, or the deck of a skyreme sailing over a battle. When you’re on high relative to a foe, you have the following benefits:

Foes on the ground can’t make melee attacks against you.
You have maneuver advantage on ranged attacks against foes below you.
You can make a jump attack with maneuver advantage on a foe directly below you (see Attacks).

If there are stairs or a slope leading to the high place, you can Run to occupy the feature. Otherwise, you’ll need to Climb.

Heights

A height is a unit of vertical space, just as a span is a unit of horizontal space. One height is roughly as tall as a single-story building (again, like spans, with some intended fuzziness). Being on high offers a number of benefits, but comes with one serious drawback: falling.

Falling Damage

Falling can be deadly. Assuming you don't plunge into the bottomless depths of the Skysea, falling onto a surface inflicts damage to your guard and potentially to your life. The severity of the impact damage depends on the surface you fall onto and the number of heights you fall from.

The lethal damage ignores armor, but it can be reduced or even negated: as a free action, roll Maneuver to attempt to land safely. Subtract your result from the fall's lethal damage. (If your Maneuver roll is less than zero, from a penalty, treat the result as zero.)

You may also intentionally fall—as part of a jump attack against a foe beneath you. If this risky attack doesn’t miss, the damage from falling impact transfers to the foe! The rules for jump attacks are explained in the next section, Attacks.

Floating and Flying

Some characters can become airborne, or ride on monsters or vehicles that are airborne. There are two types of airborne movement: floating and flying.

Floating characters can swim through the air as if they were swimming through water. While floating, you can take a special action—Float—to move horizontally one span or vertically 1 height up or down. This action automatically succeeds—no roll required—but you can't do anything else on your turn or move a second time, so it's slower than Running on the ground. Also, you can't Evade or Stand fast while floating.

Flying characters and creatures have more mobility than floating ones. While flying, you can take the Fly action, which works just like the Run action except you can move 1 height up or down as well as horizontally. On a success or struggle, you can move twice with this action, or move once and take another action. You can't Stand fast while flying, but you can Evade.

Avoiding Falling DamageEveryone gets to make the free Maneuver roll to reduce falling damage, but heroes may have other abilities that make them more likely to survive falls.

If a Wanderer rolls poorly on their Maneuver, they can use Leaf on the Wind to reroll it. (The Wanderer chooses one result; they don't reduce the damage by both results.)
Messengers can cast the Ride Wind spell to avoid all falling damage altogether.
Sorcerers can cast Untether to float.

← Taking Actions ✧ Attacks →

Google Sites

Report abuse