Slipping into an Encounter
When the Story Guide decides, they may transition the group into Active Phase.
Active Phase Action System Cycle
(v:20 Awareness) & Stay Action
Initialization Actions
A/B Cycle - Full Round/Upkeep
Encounter Outro
Encounter Flow
(v:20 Awareness)
An encounter begins with an awareness check, this check determines the initiative, or order of who goes when. In cases where multiple players or non players have the same awareness, they gain their Action Slots simultaneously. Players will take their Active Phase before non players, and players who tie make opposed (v:20) checks. The winner goes first between the two, but the other can interject with Action Slots if interacting directly the other one in the Active Slot.
Stay Action:
A player with a higher Awareness roll may choose to start their Active Phase later in the Full Round, but once their place is assigned in the initiative it can't be changed.
Initialization Actions
Some effects and abilities may only be used during initialization. These are immediately applied or resolved before the player or character with the highest Awareness goes first.
Full Round: The Repeating Cycle
A Full Round is Five seconds.
The Full Round begins when the character with the highest awareness gains their Action Slots and starts their Active Phase. They may use or convert their Action Slots.
Until they have used all of their Action Slots, or converted their Action Slots into Reserve Slots and moved into their Reserved Phase, the next character does not gain their Action Slots.
When the character who goes last either uses or discards their Action Slots the Full Round ends. All Reserved Action Slots at this point are lost to Hesitation.
Upkeep
At the end of a Full Round, the Game Master and Players go through the upkeep process. During upkeep all of the following mechanics are resolved, as well as any outsider mechanics that use Upkeep to resolve.
Regeneration effects including resource recovery are applied during Upkeep.
Round countdown - Any actions, buffs, or debuffs that have a duration tick down by one or resolve.
Upkeep Damage and Healing over time effects. (Some DoTs and HoTs trigger with the use of every Action Slot or by other intervals based on their descriptions.)
Encounter Outro
Once all threats are played out, the Game Master may choose to run outro in a few different ways. One is all resolve, the other is the slow burn.
All Resolve is the easy way out. We end all combat effects immediately, leave the Active Phase, and clean the board. This is a cut the show to move things into the next scene.
Slow Burn on the other hand we will continue to go through rounds, but we will remove the Initiative Slots, Allowing players to volunteer up to their available Action Slots each round to work together to resolve an issue, and the Upkeeps keep coming. The Slow Burn is where a Combat Encounter converts into an Environmental Encounter.
Slow Burn Notes:
Stronger poisons and bleeding effects can still kill a character if left untreated. A heal over time effect can be added up to figure out how much is regenerated. Attempting to revive a downed or dead character is a good reason to go through a Slow Burn.
Taking Action
Active Phase
Once Awareness is determined and an order is made of who goes when from highest to lowest, we list everyone in Active Phase. Those who rolled the same (v:20 Awareness) go in the same Active Phase.
The last character’s Active Phase before Upkeep is called the Final Phase. All Actions taken at this point, before the last character uses or discards their Action Slots, Cost Four Times as many Action Slots to activate. (Twice as many Reserve Slots)
Slots not used are discarded due to Hesitation.
Slot availability:
Characters gain their Action Slots at the beginning of the Active Phase.
Until a player gains their Action Slots in the current round or has Reserved Slots, they cannot move or react to other's actions.
Action Slots:
All players have a base of (5 +/- Agility) Action Slots per Full Round. Abilities, Equipment, and some special effects may modify the total number of Action Slots a character has at their disposal in a round.
Reserved Action Slots:
If a character does not use all of their Action Slots and ends their Active Phase, all remaining Action Slots become Reserve Slots. Only skills and abilities that clearly state they may be used with Reserved Slots may be executed with Reserved Action Slots. Many abilities will have different costs depending on whether they are used in Active Phase or Reserved Phase.
Non-standard action lengths:
Actions that are normally considered free for an individual or as part of another action consume one action slot if more than one character has to interact with the objective or object.
Combo actions:
Some actions, skills, and abilities require multiple characters to both have active Action Slots and Reserved Slots and be in a certain proximity to each other to be usable. In these cases, the active character spends their Action Slots in order to initiate the action, and the other character(s) spend their Reserve Slots to finish the action.
Multi-Round Actions
There are many instances where we might take multiple rounds to perform an action. In these cases, the player can not Reserve their Action Slots. They have to use their Action Slots to begin the action, and will use their gained action slots in the next Full Round in the Active Phase to complete the action. If any effect would cause them to not be able to finish the action between this round and the next, they lose the Action Slots either way.
What ever (v:X) rolls attributed to the action still take place at the initialization of the action. We play this off as the second portion of the slot drain as recovering from execution.
In some cases, Multi-Round Actions are interruptible, interruptible effects have conditions than can make them fail. Their effect is resolved at the end of spending the Action Slots to use the ability. All rolls attributed to these actions are resolved once all the Action Slots to use the ability are spent on the Full Round of their conclusion.
Examples of Action Slot Ratings
Common: 1AS|2RS|4RS
Active Phase: (1AS)
Reserved Phase: (2RS)
Final Phase: (4FP)
Exception: 3AS|3RS|4FP
Active Phase: (3AS)
Reserved Phase: (3RS)
Final Phase: (4FP)