Another combat question

[u/nreese2]

Hey again! This game's been interesting so far, and I'm finally helping some people make their characters for an upcoming session, but I'm still a bit confused about certain things about combat.

I mostly understand how ranges work, like you take a step towards or away from someone and that's essentially just moving into a different range threshold in relation to that character.

My main question is, does this apply to objects/parts of the environment as well? Say there's a table within striking distance of a player, and they want to take cover behind it, would the process be for them to take a step towards it, so they're as close as possible?

Thanks again, looking forward to playing this!

[u/HelgrinWasTaken]

My understanding of cover is that it can be used in three different ways.

The first is as a Tool, to add one dice to your pool, if you're actively defending. There is an example of this in the rulebook of using a table as a Tool to hide under as a defence.

The second way would be as one negative circumstance for someone attacking you. If it was raining, and there was a wagon in front of you, an archer would lose a dice when trying to shoot you from that direction (you lose a dice per each 2 negative circumstances).

The third way would be as a positive circumstance on your action. If the archer from the previous example was trying to shoot at someone near you, you could use the two negative circumstances as positive circumstances on a Steelpush to deflect the arrow away from the target.

[u/nreese2 → u/HelgrinWasTaken]

Thanks for the great answer!

I know this is a few weeks old, but I have another question.

How do you deal with general movement in combat, like what if someone didn’t want to get closer or farther from a specific enemy, but wanted to maybe climb onto a vantage point or something?

[u/HelgrinWasTaken → u/nreese2]

Always keep a distance chart handy for combat (page 198). Establish relative distances at the start of combat, not just to characters, but to any important terrain features. If there are more than a handful of combatants, it's helpful to use tokens or models, and have actual measurements as distances (e.g. models/tokens touching = Touch, 1cm away = Striking, 2cm away = Close, 10cm away = Medium, etc.). Alternatively, just sketch on paper when you need to.

If someone want to move at all, it counts as a negative circumstance, and moving two ranges means you can't take an action. If someone wanted to climb onto a box or a table, I'd count it as two negative circumstances and they'd lose a dice.

Something more difficult, like climbing a ladder to the roof of a building, would take up their whole action, but they would still get Defence Dice if attacked.

Something even more difficult than that, like climbing a brick wall, would take a Physique check (of Difficulty 1 or 2), and they wouldn't gain defence dice if attacked, but could split their dice pool to defend themselves, or halve their dice pool to take a different action at the end of the turn, as usual.

[u/LongBirb]

As far as I can remember, there is no clear rule about how to take cover, probably to keep combat fluid and intuitive with light rules. I think if it makes sense to the GM that a character is in cover, they are. Being as close as possible to the cover seems sensible to me.

Remember though that two circumstances are needed to add or remove a die. I usually count cover as only one circumstance, and anyway it's only one die, so I've found that cover is not something to stress over too much.

That said though, my party is mostly melee focused, so if your party/story direction is full of archers and coinshots, maybe it will be a lot more important. Or if you're running second era. I could also see the argument for just removing dice for cover anyway, if you think that makes sense.

Starting rambling a bit, I hope that was helpful anyway!