Combat

Combat is a critical part of any heroic-scale game, covering the elements of physical peril, violence and round-by-round action. This is the realm of fistfights with frost giants, fleeing animated statues while riding on motorcycles, and solving an arcane puzzle box that will dominate humanity with seconds to spare. The following systems support those events.

### Initiative

At the start of a combat encounter, roll initiative to determine who acts first. Each player rolls for their individual characters and the Storyguide rolls for hers. Groups of Storyguide characters with similar statistics may share an initiative roll.

A character’s initiative pool is equal to the character’s best combat-related Skill + Cunning. This pool represents a character’s martial acumen and mental presence in the fight. Tally the total number of successes for each character, and rank them from highest to lowest. Results generated by player characters become PC slots; results generated by SGCs become SGC slots. This is the initiative roster.

The players choose which of them gets to take the first PC slot, then that player decides which of them takes the next slot, and so on. Similarly, the Storyguide determines which order her characters act in. In the event of a tie between Storyguide and player, favor the player.

**House Rules**

At the start of combat, each player rolls for their individual characters and the Storyguide rolls for theirs. Initiative pool is still Best Combat-related Skill + Cunning. The character with the highest number of successes goes first. If tied between players and NPC, player wins. If tied between players, highest Cunning wins, followed by Dexterity and then player decision.

After first player's action, they choose who goes next that round. After two characters on the same team take their action, they must next choose someone on the opposing team. This back and forth continues until everyone has gones, at which point the last person who went chooses who goes first and starts the new round.

### **Action Phase**

Once initiative is rolled, the round begins. When it is a character’s turn to act, they can take either one simple or one mixed action, though they may only attack once per turn. Reflexive actions can be taken at any time, even if it’s not your character’s turn.

**Reflexive actions** are done automatically, and often do not require any kind of roll. Activating a Knack is reflexive unless stated otherwise. They represent activities that take little to no time to perform. Actions such as looking around, retrieving objects from a holster, moving no faster than a character's maximum speed, or standing up from a prone position, are all considered reflexive actions and do not require a roll, but do count towards action limits for mixed actions.

**Simple actions** cover anything that would occupy a character’s full attention, such as stabbing an
ice golem in the heart.

A **mixed action** is what characters use when doing two things at once, such as climbing up a really big ice golem while trying to stab it. Mixed actions use the lower of the two involved pools, and split the successes between the two actions.

### **Attack Resolution**

1. Declare your target(s) and create a dice pool of appropriate Skill + Attribute. Target chooses what defense stunt they wish to perform and rolls for defense (Generally highest Resilient Attribute)
2. If target is in range, roll dice pool. Spend success to bypass opponent's Defense. Any additional successes can be used to buy stunts.
3. Target takes any Injury Conditions based on the Inflict Injury stunt.
4. Choose next legal character to go next in the round.

## Defending

Defending creates the basic difficulty an attack must beat in order to successfully hit its target, requiring the defending character to roll the highest of her Resistance attributes. Apply the successes on this roll to generate Defensive Stunts. Defensive Stunts persist until the end of the round.

### Defensive Stunts

 **Roll Away** | Difficulty equal opponent Resolve - Move away from attack one range band.

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