Actions
Here we will cover the basic Actions. Stealth and combat Actions have their own sections.
Highlight
Your Action is the most important decision you make during a Turn. You might be constantly moving, feinting, ducking, and dodging, but here we simplify to your highest priority.
You declare what you want to do, and one of three things happens:
- You accomplish it
- The storyteller presents you with a Challenge to see if you succeed and to what degree
- The storyteller informs you that the Action is not feasible and asks you to choose another one
This system includes many named Actions such as Attack, Throw, and Carry. Please do not interpret these as the only Actions you may take. These are named to provide a clear distinction for the rules.
Mapping narration to Actions
For best results, we recommend that you describe what you are doing in narrative terms rather than use explicit action names. Consider the following scenario.
Fang stands in a banquet across from an odious magistrate.
“A cur like you should tuck tail and return to your icy kennel so you can lick your mistress’–“ begins the magistrate.
Fang’s player announces, “I slap him across the face.”
Is this an Attack? Well, that depends on intent. Fang’s player and the storyteller can talk it over. Does he intend to deal damage and knock the magistrate on his butt? Or is he slapping the magistrate in outrage over the insult?
Depending on that conversation, the slap might be the Attack action (starting a combat) or it might be a Water Challenge!
Free Actions
Many smaller activities do not require an Action. These are known as Free Actions to separate them from the normal kind. In general, anything you can do in a second or two without lowering your defenses is a Free Action.
Examples:
- Speaking
- While the system does not enforce a hard limit, try to keep it to a sentence or two
- If you start the Gettysburg Address, the storyteller may require that you spend your next Action to pay for all that talking
- Observing the world around you
- Fixing or fussing with your clothes and hair
- Manipulating simple objects
- The object should not offer resistance and needs to be manipulable by simple operations like tugs, shoves, yanks, and pulls
- Picking something up off the ground
- Carrying something in one arm (with the other free)
- Grabbing a bite of food, swigging a drink, using a tonic
Note that most of these free activities center on your own character. When interacting with allies, you must be Adjacent to that ally for the following Free Actions.
- Passing an uncontested object
- Smaller objects only – think a book, a sword, a scroll, a tonic
- If an enemy is also Adjacent and wants the object, then you must spend an Action to pass it safely
- Whispering or having a quick side conversation
When allies are not Adjacent, you will need to spend an Action to pass the item unless it is completely unimportant. For example, you can toss an apple to an ally across the battlefield if you want, but assume that any attempt to pass a tonic or a weapon will be intercepted.
Invalid Actions
You may not take the following Actions, no matter how you describe them:
- Readied Action
- You may not take any Action during enemy phases except as explicitly called out with individual abilities
- Defend
- You are already assumed to always defend to the best of your ability
Interacting
You are generally able to interact with an object within the same zone as you. You are assumed to reposition as necessary for this to make logical sense.
If an object is particularly out of reach (such as a bell at the top of a 30 foot, well-oiled pole), the storyteller will inform you and require Challenges as appropriate.
Certain effects can interact with objects and foes outside your current zone.
- For example, the “Range” property on weapons allows you to attack foes in adjacent zones.
- The “Long Range” property allows for attacks against even more distant foes!
Note that weaponry may be useful to attack at distance, but generally such effects cannot make other Challenges. It is one thing to jab a man with a spear at 3 meters out; its another to pick a lock with that spear at that range!
General Actions
Accomplish
This is the catch-all bucket for any kind of time-consuming activity that you automatically succeed at. The only cost is your Action that round!
As a general rule, if your Standard Result exceeds the Difficulty, you simply Accomplish it.
Blockade
Blockade allows you to establish a perimeter around your current zone. When you Blockade, any movement into or out of your current zone requires either:
- Your permission (automatically granted to allies unless you say otherwise)
- That the target Challenge and defeat your Prowess
- Disaster, Failure: The target may not complete this move and must make some other Move
- Success: The target may move through you
- Flourish: The target breaks your Blockade entirely; your Blockade Action immediately ends
When you take Blockade, it remains active until the start of your next turn
This Action requires that you have a chokepoint such as a door or a bridge that you could feasibly control. You may not Blockade open areas of space as foes may simply circumvent your position. Similarly, if a foe’s Blockade is causing you issues, consider destroying walls to make alternative routes!
Challenge
This is the catch-all bucket for anything and everything that requires a roll. See the elemental challenges section for the many optional subsystems.
Carry
This Action is for large, heavy, or dangerous cargo. The storyteller may require you to take this Action when you move with such difficult loads.
Note that you maintain your full defenses, even while carrying these objects.
This system does not track exact encumbrance. Instead, here are a few quick rules of thumb:
- When taking this Action, you may carry Prowess * 50 kg of materials.
- Yes, this means that master cultivators can carry far more than a normal person
- For every 10 kg past this limit, reduce all Defenses by -1
- When one Defense reaches 0, you have reached the utter capacity of what you can lift; you cannot meaningfully move larger loads
Sync Chakra
When you need to adjust to the needs of a Scene, you may spend time to adjust your Sync.
- Spend your Action and 1 Charge in a chosen element
- Then you may change any Synced equipment or Arts in the chosen element
If a Chakra has a Condition, you may not adjust that Chakra
Wait
Pass your turn without doing anything. There is neither compensation nor penalty for this.