Movement, Aim, Taking Cover and Ranged Attacks



The Forbidden Quarter had a surplus of palaces, which were impractical for the Dragon-Blooded to steal away by ship. Those palaces were filled with precious things likewise too large, too fragile or too well secured to be removed safely.



Luckily, the captain’s girls had crow bars and no sentimental attachment to other people’s furniture.



Vases sailed out of windows, some even landing on the bedding heaped up to catch them. An ironwood desk lay in pieces, its gold hinges easily torn off the unbreakable wood. Bandits cavorted in dresses once worn by Winglords and Sorcerers, and an appreciable fraction the looted liquor was making its way onto carts.



The captain was reasonably happy with this sordid mess given the material she had to hand; her band controlled this street entirely, with only one gate currently open to be guarded. She anticipated losing stragglers to other looters or angry Cathaks, but this lot seemed likely to get at least some valuables to her ships or ships that would shortly be hers. But no sense going soft on them.



“Aoi, get your lot of sorry drunkards to finish stripping these empty dragon nests and get going. Someone’s going to come through this neighbourhood and kill everyone they find at some point, and if I come back to see any more of my crew making baths of wine barrels in the street, it’ll be me.”



“Right you are ma’am. Everything going well?”



“Swimmingly. I’ve seen plenty of corpses, not many are ours. Whatever soldier girls are left here are spread thinner than us and I ain’t seen a dragon.”



“We’ll be gone in half an hour, nevermind Hanako in her…” Aoi spontaneously sprouted an arrow in her throat, fatally interrupting her complaint about Hanako and the captain’s train of thought.



The captain idly poked the shaft as her henchwoman died, and looked back along its path. A black gate to the north, somehow overlooked despite its size, that had opened in perfect silence - surely not some ancient architect's deranged metaphor. Two archers in Cathak colours, one knocking her second arrow while the other aimed at the captain herself.



“You don’t know who I am. You had a bead on Splendid Avarice herself and you shot Aoi? Now you’re going to die because you didn’t have the damn sense to put an arrow in your death when she wasn’t looking.” Avarice began to lope towards her attackers, shuriken appearing between her fingers. “You lot keep working, I’ll kill these ones.”



Avarice broke into an erratic sprint, her enemies struggling to aim at the janking bandit as she considered how sophisticated a strategy she could have her band execute without Aoi.



“But kill anyone else you see!” They’d handle that. She leapt over one of the wine-soaked carts and hurled a shower of shuriken as the soldiers scattered and ducked behind the black gate’s doors.





Aoi’s death by ambush was cinematic, signalling Splendid Avarice’s need to roll Join Battle rather than being handled mechanically itself. Normally the Storyteller should hesitate to kill off the NPC associates of player characters without giving them a chance to do something about it, but neither Avarice or her player care very much for the lives of her underlings.



Avarice’s Join Battle roll is Wits (4) + Awareness (4) + Stunt 2 for 10 dice.



1, 2, 5, 6, 6, 7, 7, 10, 10, 10



8 successes, plus the usual 3 starting Initiative gives her a total Initiative of 11.



Both soldiers have a Join Battle of 5 (Wits 2 + Awareness 3).



1, 1, 2, 8, 9

2, 4, 5, 6, 8



Two successes and one success respectively gives them starting Initiative of 5 and 4 respectively.



The battle begins at long range. Both sides are using ranged weapons, so unlike Hikari and Tsune they don’t need to be at close range to make attacks. However ranged weapons have a maximum range, and while the soldier’s composite bows can shoot to long range, Avarice’s shuriken are useless beyond short range. She must close the distance.



The range bands are:



Extreme (rarely used, as combat is not practical at this distance)

Long

Medium

Short

Close



On her turn, a character may take the Move reflexive action in addition to her combat action in order to move one range band towards or away from something. All range bands are relative; technically a character could change range to one opponent without changing range to another. But most combat situations are reasonably intuitive - Avarice is at long range to the soldiers and wants to be short.



She has the first turn on Initiative tick 11, and uses Move to go to medium range. She doesn’t have a useful combat action to take (she might choose to use an Influence action using her excellent social traits on either her followers or opponents, but that’s outside the scope of this tutorial).



On Initiative tick 5, the first soldier acts, and she has a problem. While her bow can shoot to medium range, making an attack at medium or long range requires an Aim action to be performed before the attack. Aim cannot be flurried and you cannot move in the same turn. Aim normally grants a 3 dice bonus to the following attack, but the Aim to qualify for making a medium or long range attack does not grant this bonus.



She can’t attack Avarice this turn because she hasn’t taken the prerequisite Aim action. If she does take that Aim, she knows Avarice will simply close to short range on her next turn, making it unnecessary. If she moves away from Avarice to maintain distance, she still won’t be able to attack until she stops moving for a turn to Aim, during which time the bandit will simply close.



She could move towards Avarice and attack this round, but getting closer to the murderous brigands doesn’t sound like a good idea. Instead she uses the Take Cover combat action, which is a Dexterity + Dodge check against a difficulty set by the Storyteller. Since the archers were standing right at the gate, the Storyteller rules that putting part of the open door between one’s body and shuriken is only difficulty 1. The soldier’s pool is Dex (3) + Dodge (3) for 6 dice.



1, 3, 3, 6, 8, 10



3 successes - she takes advantage of the cover. The ST rules this is light cover, which grants +1 Defence.



The second archer follows suit on the next Initiative tick:



1, 1, 4, 5, 7, 8



She too succeeds and will enjoy a +1 bonus to defence.



With no Initiative change during that round, Avarice again goes first on tick 11 of the next. She closes to short range with Move, and then uses her combat action to make a withering attack on the archer with higher Initiative.



As with a hand-to-hand withering attack, the pool is Dexterity (4) + combat ability (Thrown in this case, 4) + Specialty (Shuriken) + stunt (2) + weapon Accuracy. However ranged weapon Accuracy is not constant but based on range. At short range, a thrown weapon has an Accuracy of +3, so Avarice’s total pool is 14.



The soldier’s Defence is based on her Evasion, which is her Dexterity (3) + Dodge (3) divided by two and rounded up, for a total of 3. Normally a character uses her best defence out of Evasion and Parry (Hikari, Tsune and their opponents all used Parry simply because it was better), but as ranged weapons cannot parry, ranged combatants will generally only use Evasion. In this case she gains an extra +1 for her cover for a total of 4 Defence.



1, 2, 2, 3, 4, 4, 6, 6, 6, 7, 7, 8, 9, 9



5 successes is a little on the low side for that big a pool, but it is a hit, with 1 extra success. Damage is calculated normally - Strength (2) + weapon Damage (7 for a light thrown weapon) + extra successes (1), for 10 damage. The soldier has a Soak of 6 from Stamina (3) + light armour Soak (3), leaving 4 damage to be rolled.



1, 8, 9, 10



Four successes means Avarice gains 5 Initiative, rising to 16, while the archer loses 4, dropping to 1. Not quite a Crash!









Aim (again), Cover at Close Range and Wound Penalties



Shuriken skittered off the gate from one hand and between the archers from the other, trapping Avarice’s target in cover. A hastily shot arrow obliged the bandit to jank sideways and break her run, but no second arrow came - the second archer was aiming with utmost care.



Avarice rushed in, ignoring the splendour of the temple grounds behind the gate, a spinning kick to the head and another handful of shuriken driving the soldier who had dared to shoot her into the meagre gap between open gate and wall, the shuriken ricocheting off imperishable stone and black metal alike.



She had run down archers before, and at this point the game was usually up. A bow was difficult to use at the point-blank range optimal for her little thrown razors, and few had the discipline to aim with a whirling, cursing bandit filling their view.



“Ye should have run with the rest of your cur friends! Without the dragons, this city is a deathtrap for…” An arrow tore a long strip through her thigh, introducing far more pain and blood into her routine than the plan called for. “I was going to let you off with a light killing, but now you get today’s special.”



On Initiative tick 4, the second bandit takes the Aim action. Her next attack against Avarice will be at +3 dice.



On tick 1, her companion finally has her turn and makes a withering attack targeting Avarice. Like thrown weapons, the Accuracy of archery weapons is based on current range, and short range is optimal for them - +4. Dex 3 + Archery 3 + Accuracy 4 is 10 dice. Avarice’s Evasion (she can’t parry with shuriken) is (Dex 4 + Dodge 4 + Specialty (vs ranged) / 2) + 1 for her stunt for a total of 6.



2, 3, 4, 5, 5, 7, 9, 9, 9, 10



6 successes just hits. Strength (3) + weapon damage (medium archery weapon +11) + extra successes (+0) is 14 damage. Avarice’s soak is 6 (stam 3, light armour 3), for 8 total damage.



2, 2, 4, 4, 4, 4, 7, 10



3 successes gives the soldier 4 Initiative, taking her back up to 5. Avarice loses 4, going down to 12.



Next round, Avarice still has the highest Initiative total and acts first. Her Move closes the distance to close range, where her thrown weapon has an Accuracy of +4 while the soldiers’ bows have -2. If she can keep the engagement at this range she’ll be able to rely on hitting with withering attacks and being missed in turn.



She takes advantage of this by making her own withering attack against the same soldier as last time, hoping to get that Crash she was robbed of in the previous round. Her pool is one better thanks to her improved Accuracy - 15, and the soldier’s Defence is still 4.



1, 1, 3, 3, 3, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 8, 9, 10, 10



8 successes gives her 4 extra successes, taking her base damage of 9 (Str 2 + weapon 7) up to 13. That’s 7 dice after the soldier’s 6 soak.



2, 5, 6, 8, 8, 8, 10



5 successes, giving her 6 initiative for a total of 18, while her target loses 5 to go to 0 Initiative. It's a Crash, granting Avarice Initiative Break and taking her to 23.



The other solder seeks revenge on tick 4 by making a decisive attack against the bandit. At only 4 Initiative, it has no chance of killing Avarice but being a decisive attack it doesn’t use weapon Accuracy, an advantage when Accuracy is negative. Her pool is Dexterity (3) + Archery (3) + Aim (3) for 9 dice. She spends a willpower point, taking her down to 2.



Avarice’s Defence is still 6, but if your target is at short range cover benefits both parties. Rather than trying to shoot around the gate at someone so close and contend with Defence 7, the soldier simply breaks cover (she moves a metre or two in the fiction, not changing range or otherwise interacting with movement mechanics).



1, 1, 4, 5, 6, 8, 8, 8, 10



5 successes + 1 from willpower meets the defence and thus hits. Damage is equal to Initiative, in this case 4.



2, 3, 7, 7



Two lethal levels of damage are inflicted. Avarice’s player marks X in her two leftmost health boxes. Health boxes have wound penalties associated with them, and the highest penalty with a filled box applies. Nearly all humans have seven health boxes like so: -0, -1, -1, -2, -2, -4, Incapacitated. So Avarice’s -0 and first -1 box are filled, causing her to take a -1 penalty to all rolls and to static totals (like Defence).



While she’s taken lethal damage and thus we describe blood in the fiction, Avarice doesn’t need to worry about mechanical bleeding unless she takes at least her Stamina in health levels in a single injury. Since her Stamina is 3, this 2 level wound won’t cause her to start bleeding out.



The archer’s Initiative resets from 4 to 3. She didn’t do much damage, but it cost her very little other than her combat action and dragged down Avarice’s superior dice pools a bit. Building up a massive store of Initiative for a one-hit kill is not always the best tactic - it’s useful to think about what your current Initiative total can achieve no matter what it is.





Disengage (again), Rush and Tied Rolls



As Splendid Avarice clutched at her thigh, the archer she had been harrying simply bolted past her, scrabbling over low walls and prayer wheels as she headed for the temple doors.



“That was undignified for both of us! Didn’t your Cathak Lizardlord or whatever she’s called teach you to have a pretty fight?”



Eyes locked on her fleeing quarry, Avarice idly tossed a shuriken behind her and into the other soldier’s lung before dashing off into pursuit. She didn’t think of herself as an evil woman, but she took a certain satisfaction in the wet coughing behind her.



Even when she’s sporting a wound penalty, staying in short range with Avarice is a losing proposition for the soldiers. They use their best advantage - they can split up, allowing at least one of them to be at a better range.



On Initiative tick 0, the other soldier takes her turn. Since she’s at close range to Avarice, who has no intention of letting her go, she must use Disengage to get away. She could flurry this with an attack, but against a more skilled opponent the dice pool and Defence penalty would be a terrible idea. Her dice pool is Dexterity (3) + Dodge (3) for 6, and she spends a willpower for a bonus success, taking her down to 2 points.



1, 5, 6, 8, 8, 10



4 successes + 1 for willpower, totalling 5.



Avarice’s pool is Dexterity (4) + Athletics (4) + Stunt (2) - wound penalty (1) for 9.



1, 4, 5, 5, 5, 7, 7, 9, 9



Only 4 successes, so the soldier’s disengage succeeds! She moves to short range, and if Avarice moves towards her next turn, she will reflexively move another band away, staying at short. On the downside, attempting a Disengage costs 2 Initiative, and the soldier goes to -2.



That ends the round, and at 23 Avarice is well ahead of either opponent and takes her turn.



Even with her wound penalty she likes her chances for a flurry. She intends to make a decisive attack against the soldier that wounded her, user her normal move towards the fleeing one, and then take a Rush action. Her decisive pool is Dex (4) + Thrown (4) + Speciality + Stunt (2) - wound penalty (1) - flurry penalty (-3) for a total of 7. The soldier left cover to shoot, so is now at Defence 3. Avarice spends a willpower for a bonus success; her rating is 7 so this takes her to 6 points.

3, 5, 8, 8, 9, 10, 10



7 successes, plus 1 for willpower for a total of 8. That’s 5 extra successes, which are irrelevant on a decisive attack. Avarice could have saved her willpower, but you must spend it before making the roll, and her player can’t predict her luck! Initiative is 23



1, 1, 1, 1, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 3, 4, 5, 5, 5, 6, 6, 6, 6, 7, 8, 8, 9, 10



Luck turns again, only 5 successes (10s don’t count twice for decisive damage). That’s still a devastating blow, filling the first five health boxes of the soldier with lethal damage and thus inflicting a -2 wound penalty. Since her Stamina is 3, she begins to bleed out whenever she takes a wound of 3 or more lethal levels, of which this certainly counts. This is generally not relevant in combat time, but causes her to take an additional lethal level every minute. She will be dead within two minutes unless she gets medical attention, which is unlikely given the nearest candidates for giving first aid are questionably sober bandits.



Avarice’s Initiative resets to 3. She moves to close range relative to the fleeing soldier, putting her at short range to the wounded one (who has no intention of stopping her and thus does not require a Disengage). This causes the fleeing soldier to use the reflexive move granted by her successful Disengage, so Avarice is now at short range from both in opposite directions.



Rush is a combat action that can only be used on a target at short range. It is an opposed Dexterity + Athletics roll that if successful grants an effect similar to Disengage - if the opponent moves away on their next turn, the character reflexively moves towards them, keeping the distance constant.



Avarice’s pool is Dexterity (4) + Athletics (4) + Stunt (2) - wound penalty (1) - flurry penalty (3) for a total of 6. She spends another willpower, taking her to 5 points (you may not spend willpower multiple times on a single roll, but it’s fine to do so on multiple rolls in one turn).



The soldier’s pool is Dexterity (3) + Athletics (3), also for a total of 6. She really wants to stay away, so she also spends a point of willpower, taking her down to 1. NPCs generally shouldn’t spend willpower freely (they’re usually not on-screen enough to manage it as a long-term resource like player characters), but this is clearly life and death for these soldiers. The Storyteller has given them small pools with the expectation they’ll be spent to balance these concerns.



Avarice rolls 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10. The soldier rolls 2, 4, 6, 7, 7, 10.



Both have 4 successes + 1 for willpower, totalling 5. It’s a tie.



Ties on opposed rolls are broken by the ST judging who has the better stunt. With her convention that unimportant NPCs don’t stunt, that doesn’t leave her much room here - given Avarice has any stunt at all, she wins.