Combat Tricks

During melee combat, a character may twist the blade in their opponent’s side, jab them with the sword’s hilt, or crush their jaw with the edge of a shield. During a social encounter, a character might make a pointed insinuation, a patronizing tap on the cheek, or a suggestive smile. These are all “combat tricks”, small opportunities for a character to make their actions more impactful.

This chapter presents an optional rule that models these situations, adding more excitment to encounters at the cost of slightly more complexity.

Learning Combat Tricks

Combat tricks are special techniques that must be known by the character in order to be used. With high enough skills, a character obtains a few tricks during character creation. After that, they must train or practice to acquire new tricks. See the Downtime chapter for more information.

Using Combat Tricks

Combat tricks are used during encounters (see the Encounters chapter), just after resolving an attack. They are effectively treated as an opportunistic follow-up to the character’s attack or defense.

All combat tricks require spending Determination Points. They cause a character to mentally extend themselves, putting extra effort in their action. This causes fatigue, which can make the character vulnerable to doubt if things don’t go their way quickly afterwards (see Damage and Injury).

List of Combat Tricks

Here is a list of common combat tricks. Players and the gamemasters are encouraged to come up with new tricks.

Each combat trick has the following characteristics:

Name: the name of the combat trick.
Type: whether the trick is offensive or defensive. By default, tricks are offensive, and may only be used by an attacker. A defensive trick may be used by a character on the receiving end of an attack, if they have rolled a defense.
Level: the cost in Determination Points to trigger this combat trick. By default, combat tricks cost 1 DP.
Conditions: some pre-requisites for using this combat trick. By default, combat tricks have no conditions and can be used freely.

Common Combat Tricks

These combat tricks may be used in any encounter and situation, whether melee combat, ranged combat, or social encounters.

Motivate Allies

Type: offensive and defensive
Condition: attack or defense roll scored a victory, or Rally action

After scoring a victory with an offensive or defensive action, or after a successful Rally action, the character gives out a rallying cry, a shout-out to allies, or even a simple wink to the rest of the party. Every ally within earshot or visible proximity immediately gains +1D3 DP.

Melee Combat Tricks

Melee combat tricks can be triggered while engaged in melee.

Bouncing Blow

Condition: crushing weapon
Level: 2

After a successful attack with a crushing weapon, the character deals their damage bonus a second time as extra damage with the attack. If damage bonus is zero, deal +1 damage.

If the attack was a critical success (either a Devastating Blow or a Precise Blow), deal maximum damage bonus plus rolled damage bonus instead. When damage bonus is zero, deal +2 damage.

Breaking Blow

Type: offensive and defensive
Level: 2
Condition: attack must be parried or blocked

When an attack is parried or blocked, the character spends extra effort to damage their opponent’s gear. If the character is the attacker, they damage the parrying weapon or blocking shield. If the character is the defender, they damage the attacking weapon. If a natural attack was used (such as a wild animal’s claws) the damage goes to the attacker’s body.

The character rolls their weapon damage a second time, but only applies it to their enemy’s parrying weapon or blocking shield. This is considered a separate damage dealing from the original attack or defense. If the character’s attack or parry was a critical success, they deal their weapon’s critical damage to the enemy’s gear.

Extra Push

Type: offensive
Condition: successful attack

After successfully attacking a target, deal +1 damage.

Prepare Defense

Type: offensive and defensive
Level: 3
Condition: successful attack or defense

The character orchestrates an attack or defense in such a way that they get an extra Defend action until their next turn. The character needs not have been victorious in their attack or defense, but they need to have rolled successfully.

Shield Strike

Type: defensive
Level: 2
Condition: defended with shield

After blocking an attack with a shield, if the Shield roll scored a victory over the attacker, the character may strike with the shield’s edge or center bulge.

Deal shield damage to the attacker as a separate attack. This attack automatically hits, but the target may spend an action to defend against it. In this case, they need to beat the original Shield roll.

If the Shield roll was a critical success (a Devastating Defense), the character deals critical shield damage instead. Since the Devastating Defense already dealt critical shield damage once, this means the character basically strikes the opponent twice!

Twist Blade

Condition: slashing or piercing weapon
Level: 2
Condition: successful attack

After a successful attack, the attacker deals their damage bonus as extra damage. If damage bonus is zero, deal +1 damage.