Prepare for Battle!

Battle! The clash of swords and spears upon shields—the whistle of arrows and sling bullets—the howls and screeches of demons and the exultations of mighty warriors as they jump into the fray and fall into the dust! Combat can be the most exciting part of the game, but it’s also the most complicated and structured. The previous two sections cover how actions resolve and attributes work. This section explains how to tie all these mechanics together to play fast, fluid battle scenes.

Be on Your Guard!

On your turn, you can draw and wield up to two armaments from among those you carry—one in each hand. Some armaments require both hands. Arms offer offensive as well as defensive benefits, along with your armor.
Chapter 6: Items & Conveyances, details all the arms and armor available.
Your grace protects you from getting hit by an attack. But even if an attack hits you, armor and most armaments provide an additional layer of defense called guard. An attack might strike you but bounce off your armor or get parried aside by your spear shaft, preventing a lethal wound.Think of guard as a buffer added to your grace. If an attack beats your grace but doesn’t beat your grace + guard, you prevent the attack from inflicting life damage—though the force of the blow still staggers you and reduces your grace, leaving you more vulnerable.Armor Guard is your base, passive defense. It includes your body armor and your helmet, along with the natural armor provided by a Shinarian’s clay form or the thick cuticles of certain Zordin. Active Guard includes your Armor, plus the guard bonus from an armament you wield defensively, like a shield, spear, or sword. Active Guard only includes the guard value of one such armament at a time.

If you hold two armaments, choose one to actively guard with.
Only shields can be used to actively guard Ranged Attacks.

Move to Attack!

The standard melee Attack is the core action you’ll take during battle, but it’s also fairly complex. A standard attack can inflict two types of damage: to grace (as they stagger from the blow) and to life (as you draw blood). How much damage depends on who’s attacking and what they’re wielding. An unarmed strike or a thrown rock inflicts:

-1 grace, and
life damage equal to your core Strength

Weapons, especially bladed ones, inflict more life damage, and heavy weapons like maces inflict more grace damage. Some bizarre weapons inflict damage to awareness instead of life. The Items & Conveyances chapter details how much damage each weapon inflicts. Attack outcomes. An attack only inflicts damage if it hits—that is, if it beats the foe’s current grace. But not all hits are the same. Foes with armor, shields, or weapons benefit from a guard buffer, which negates a hit’s life damage (but not its grace damage). If a hit isn’t guarded, it’s called a lethal hit and inflicts all its damage.

For example, the hero Wandu has 5 grace and has nothing to guard attacks with. The hero Chom has 3 grace but wears armor and holds a shield, so benefits from +4 active guard. Here are the outcomes if they’re attacked:

With her high grace, Wandu is less likely to take a hit. But with his formidable defensive gear, Chom is less likely to take a lethal hit. These thresholds change as you take grace damage, leaving you more and more vulnerable. After getting hit, Chom’s thresholds look like this:

And after another hit:

At zero grace, melee Attacks can’t miss you, and the grace damage they inflict saps your life instead!

The Flow of Battle

Battle is more than just defending and attacking. Before battle begins, the Guide and heroes set the stage:

The conversation between Guide and heroes has established low visibility, along with the presence of village houses that provide cover to hide behind and high ground to climb on high. That information is freely provided, but when Matreyis asks about potential threats, the Guide “charges” her for it.

The Transition to Turns

The menacing figures are still distant, so the heroes may have time to prepare. The Act First action determines whether they can, and so marks the transition from a more freeform conversation to the structured turns of battle, when every second matters.

The heroes don’t know what these figures are yet, but the Guide does: they are ghouls, creatures who are slow-moving but can magically sense the presence of living beings. The ghouls have average awareness (3), and normally this would be the threshold heroes need to beat to Act First. But the Guide reduces it to 2, since Matreyis did spend awareness to scout the situation—and communicates this.

Getting Into Position

Heroes use the Rush action to reposition themselves on high or to run across a relatively long distance during battle. The heavier a hero is, the harder it is to move this way.

← How to Play ✧ Anatomy of an Action →

Google Sites

Report abuse