The Defensive Round
When it is not actively your turn to act in combat, you are in what is called the Defensive Round In a defensive round you can not do anything except participate in story interaction and defend yourself against attacks. You cannot move, use items, use skills, cast spells, use minor runic manipulations, or attack. You can only defend, evade, or use defensive skills, including counter attack.
Defense Actions
When in the defensive round, you must declare what kind of stance you are taking: Defensive or Reactive. This will decide how your defensive round will unfold. The average player may choose to be in a defensive stance.
In the active round you can freely act as you like, within the confines of 1 of each action rule. However in the defensive round you are defending, more or less. Your defense could be to counter attack or aide an ally, or it could be to defend yourself.
Defensive Stance
In the defensive stance you are concentrating on your efforts to take less damage. While in the defensive stance you can use defensive skills as long as they affect you and your ability to defend. While in the defensive stance, you automatically get 5% of your Fortitude as a flat defense to reduce damage by. Here's some important information to know:
- You cannot counter attack, as you are focused on drawing yourself in.
- You cannot use skills that defend others, only yourself.
- If you use any defensive skills, know that you can only use one skill per attacker attacking you, not per attack.
Reactive Stance
In a reactive stance you are not focused on taking less damage. You are instead focused on reacting to what is transpiring. For each enemy you get to make one Reaction Check. If you succeed you can do the following:
- Counter Attack: you counter attack for yourself when attacked. You can counter attack for an ally if you have used Reactive Guard.
- Use Defensive Skills: You can use defensive skills that help your ally.
- Aided Checks: You can increase your ally's stat or skill check success by +5 if your ally is within movement range.
There may be more that you can do during a reaction, speak with your GM.
Special Defense Situations
There are situations which can affect how well you or your enemy target can defend or evade. Because of your limited cone of vision whenever an enemy target attacks you from a location outside of your frontal cone of vision, your chances at making a defense decrease. You are still able to defend, evade, or even use a defensive skill, however because you are being attacked outside of your field of vision, you react slower to the attack which decreases your ability to defend. These situations are attacked from behind, attacked from the side, or attacked while distracted, and they can apply to enemy targets as well.
Other situations make it difficult to defend against an attack as well. For example, a projectile attack could be near impossible to evade, but would not hinder your chance at making a defense check, whereas a covert attack could make it so that you could not even have a chance to make a defense check. Below is a table describing all of the various special defense situation.
Special Defense Situations Table: Shows the situations which could decrease your chances of defending or evading.
| Defense Situation | Description of Situation | Effect on Defensive Strategy |
|---|---|---|
| Direct Melee Attack from the Front or Thrown Object (Thrown Object is not Throwing Weapons but objects and weapons not meant for throwing) |
A basic attack coming from the frontal view of your character. | No effect, changes, or penalties. |
| Attack From Behind or while distracted. | Any attack coming from behind your character, or while you are distracted. | Requires a successful perception check; there is a penalty of -5 to any defensive action, including evade. |
| Attack From the Side | Any attack coming from the left or right of your character. | A penalty of -5 to any defensive action. |
| Most Projectiles (including Runic Rifles) and Throwing Weapons (weapons meant for throwing) | Defending or evading against a projectile shot from a bow, crossbow, or other basic projectile weapons except guns | A penalty of -20 to Evade %. |
| Gun | Defending or evading against a projectile shot from a gun. | A penalty of -50 to Evade % |
| Explosions or Large Areas of Effect | Defending or evading against any area of effect attack that covers more than one hex. | Cannot evade unless you are on the farthest reach of the attack. If so, you can make an Evade check with no penalty. |
| Seen Single Target Spells | Evading any spell that affects only a single target and can be seen. | No effect, changes, or penalties. |
| Invisible or Very Fast Single Target Spells | Evading any spell that affects only a single target and either cannot be seen or is extremely fast. | A penalty of -25 to Evade %. Can make a Mental check where a success decreases the penalty by half and a critical success removes the penalty. |
| Covert Attacks | Defending or evading against any hard to notice attack. | Must make a successful perception check with any penalties given by the skill in use before you can make any defensive action. |
Defensive Skills
There are certain skills that you can use to help you defend while in your defensive round. There are also skills that you can use to help your allies defend. As long as the skill is a defensive skill, you can use it during your defensive round.
Defending Against Spectators
During the course of the battle, if there are any spectators, some of the spectators may try to attack you. You would then need to defend against them, however it may not be as simple as defending against an enemy participant.
In order to defend against a spectator, you first have to make a successful perception check. If the attack is coming from a hidden spectator, you would need to apply any penalties. If you succeed at your perception check, you can defend against the attack like any other attack, otherwise you have to take the damage.
Defending against a spectator does not draw them into battle as participants, unless you use a counter attack skill as your defensive action.
Taking Damage
Despite how hard you try, there will come a time when you will take damage. Therefore it is important to understand how to calculate any and all damage you receive. This is also important for GM’s when figuring out damage for the NPC’s you fight. All damage is handled exactly the same way, whether you are a player character or a GM controlled NPC. Lets say the enemy target his you and deals 80 points of damage and you were unable to successfully make a defensive action. If you are not wearing any armor, that damage will go against your Vitality. Hopefully you are wearing some armor otherwise your character will not last.
Example on Taking Damage
Bob has 70 Vitality and his armor has 20% Soak, 100 Physical, and 30 Defense. An enemy does 200 damage to Bob. If Bob did not have any armor, it would have killed him. Luckily he does.
First we need to determine how much of the damage is not absorbed by the armor and is dealt against his Vitality. Remember it is done in this order: Soak > Physical > Defense > Vitality.
- 200 * 0.8 Soak (20% Soak) = 160
- 160 - 100 Physical = 60
- 60 - 30 Defense = 30
This means Bob loses 30 Vitality. Subtract that from his current Vitality of 70.
- 70 - 30 = 40
Bob is left with 40 Vitality remaining. So while he is hurt, at least he is still alive. He would not be if he didn’t have his armor.
Bob's Physical Protecion of his armor does decrease by the amount of damage it received, however it only decreases by 25% of the damage it received. This is the damage it received after Soak.
- 160 * 0.25 = 40
- 100 - 40 = 60
So Bob's new Physical Protection is 60 until he restores his armor.
Below is how your character's armor works to protect your character:
- Physical: Physical is the physical protection of your character's armor. It is the defense your armor provides. The character will only receive vitality damage from any damage that is greater than thearmor's physical protection and defense. The character's physical protection must be dropped to zero before the armor is destroyed. The armor's Physical Protection will only decrease by 25% of the physical damage it receives.
- Magical: Magical is the magical protection of your character's armor. It is the magic defense your armor provides. The character will only receive vitality damage from any magical damage that is greater than thearmor's magical protection and spirit. The character's magical protection must be dropped to zero before the armor is destroyed. The armor's Magical Protection will only decrease by 25% of the magical damage it receives.
- Defense: Defense is any added physical defense provided by your character's armor. Unlike Physical Protection, defense doesn't decrease. It will absorb any physical damage not absorbed by your physical vitality before reaching your actual vitality. Once your character's armor is depleted to zero (0), defense will no longer work unless your character has some form of natural defense.
- Spirit: Spirit is any added magical defense provided by your character's armor. Unlike Magical Protection, spirit doesn't decrease. It will absorb any magical damage not absorbed by your magical vitality before reaching your actual vitality. Once your character's armor is depleted to zero (0), spirit will no longer work unless your character has some form of natural spirit.
- Soak: Soak is a percentage of the damage that the armor simply absorbs. This is damage that doesn't affect or decrease the armor's physical or magical protection stat and damage that does not affect your character. Soak is calculated before physical and magical protection and defensive stats, therefore you would first reduce the damage by Soak, then by Physical or Magical, and finally reduce it by Defense or Spirit. Soak is a percentage, so if your total soak is 20 it is 20% meaning that the damage is reduced by 20%. The Soak stat does not decrease. Only when the armor providing Soak is destroyed do you no longer have this benefit.
Every time your character takes damage your character's armor's physical or magical will decrease by 25% of ny damage after soak. If it was a physical attack, your character's Physical decreases. If it was a magical, energy, or breath weapon attack, your character's Magical decreases. If your character was dealt 20 damage past soak, your character's Physical decreases by 5.
Piercing Damage doesn't get blocked by Soak, Physical or Magical, or Defense or Spirit. So it doesn't decrease Physical or Magical. This is the damage portion that avoids armor due to the piercing attack. So if the attack is 20% piercing and you do 100 damage, 20 of that damage is already avoiding the character's armor, with only 60 of that damage going through soak and the rest.
Death and Incapacitated
Should your character's Vitality ever reach 0, your character would be Incapacitated. When incapacitated you still have a chance of being restored.
When your character's Vitality reaches -10, your character is dead. Only very specific spells are said to help here.
Once your character's Vitality reaches 0 or less, you can make 1 save through to stand back up with 1 Vitatlity. If the attack instantly drops your character to -10 or below, you are given 3 save checks avoid this terrible fate. Instant Kill's only drop your character's Vitality to 0.
Incapacitated characters can still take damage until their vitality reaches -10.
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