Combat Options

Incapability and Death

If a fighter looses more than 15 life energy points by one strike, e.g. by magic, she has to roll a TaP "Self control"-test. If she fails, she falls down to her knees and cannot react or respond to any attack for D6+3 fighting turns.

She will also be incapable of anything, if her life energy drops below 5 points after any amount of attacks.

If life energy reaches the 0 points level, she will sink into coma and if she does not receive urgent medical treatment, she will die after 1D20 normal turns.

If life energy, however, crosses the life-death-border at 0 and the life energy value gets negative, the fighter will die after 1D20 fighting turns, i.e. she will immediately need a healing potion or any other kind of magic.

Fighting Turns (FT) and Normal Turns (NT)

For the better overview, battle are not fought according to the normal time turns of 5 minutes. Nearly every fight will be over after that time, so the time is calculated relative to fighting turns, which only take 2 seconds. This will also limit the application of magic to pure fighting magic as you will see, because many other spells need much more time to be cast.

Option: Aimed Attacks

(Announcements, AT+) The ordinary attacker will stick to her modest knowledge of fighting and stitch and thrust his enemy for a long time. The results are known and shown above. Now, an attacker has the possibility to strike in a very particular way. But this increases his own risk of getting hit, too.

An AT+ is performed by announcing an additive to her AT-value. This value will be added to the dice roll for AT, so chances increase that she will not meet her own AT-limit and roll a higher value.

A warrior (AT:15, PA:12) announces AT+4, i.e. he may only roll 11 (i.e. 15-4) or under to succeed in the roll.

The defender may now roll a normal PA, if the offender succeeds. If the defender fails, the additive will now be added to the hit points and the damage points, respectively. So, it will become possible to hit a strike for incapability (HP more than 15 in one strike) with an ordinary AT+ attack, no magic involved.

So an AT+ attack allows bigger damage to the enemies. In Arkanian atmosphere the game terminology of AT+ becomes an aimed attack, i.e. the offender tries to hit some non-armoured body part, she takes all her STRENGTH to blow her enemy away or similar things.

Note: If, however, the AT+ attack fails, the attacker has to add the same additive to her next PA-roll.

If an AT+4 attack fails, the following parade will be a harder test with PA+4, e.g. a PA-value of 13 would end up as 9 just for the next parade. Afterwards the PA will return to its original value.

Parade

To parry an attack, the defender has two different possibilities.

• She may try to parry with her weapon. This value is modificated by the value indicated in the weapon list.
• She may also block with a shield. In this case the shield modifies the comparison value again, so this is also dependent on the attributes of the shield.

Don't panic, an example follows (see below).

The defender has to decide her way of parrying before throwing the dice for the first time. If she succeeds in throwing half or less the PA-value, it is called a "brilliant parade", which might have some special effects, as you will see.

Shields

Shields are generally employed for blocking or parrying enemies, they do not count as an additional armour. A fighter using a shield may not employ a two-handed weapon at the same time.

Parade by Shield

This comprises the case when the hero attacks by his standard weapon but defends with the shield. Shields are some sort of mixture between armour and weapon, that is why they cause a handicap as well as they give comparison values (CV, remember? Look it up here! The handicap is subtracted from AT and PA as every handicap of armour. The CV is added to the CV of the weapon to result in the final CV, e.g. a hero owning a sword (CV:7/7) and an ordinary shield (CV:-1/+1) would end up with CV:6/8. Generally, AT will be reduced by a shield and PA will increase as to be expected.

Shields are the only "weapons" that allow a parade to long-range weapons. In this case you use your PA-value as wearing your standard-weapon at the same time.

Rondradan wears leather armour and carries a sword, Algrid carries a war hatchet. After calculating all modifiers (handicap and CV of sword and hatchet), Rondradan fights with the values AT:11 and PA:9. He decides, he uses the shield he carries, too. Its CV is -1/+1. So his values will now be AT/PA:10/10, which is probably the better choice against an axe professional from Thorwal.

Shields

Option: The Brilliant Attack

If the attacking hero rolls 1 on a D20, he did a "brilliant" job. In this case, the defender may only defend by a "brilliant parade". She cannot avoid the strike.

If the parade fails, the defender does not get damage points according to a D6. Instead of rolling one (or more) D6, the attacker rolls a D20 for the hit points (so a sword as well as a barbarian battle-axe will give 1D20+4 hit points). Additionally, the armour of the defender does not count, i.e. hit points are the same as damage points in this case.

If you throw a 1 when you already announced AT+, you will, of course, still get your additive. The rule of 1 does not apply for animals or monsters, but it does apply for all humanoid creatures.

Most of the times a hero will hit her counterpart so heavy that the enemy has to stand a "Self-control"-test.

Option: High STRENGTH attacks (HP>ST)

There are heroes who have risen in STRENGTH during her formation and experience that much, that the weapon they carry may be forced into their enemy in a more focussed and convincing way. So, we give a value relating to STRENGTH for each weapon. This value will tell you, how much a weapon is receptible for things like that. A sword (ST-14), for example, will give one hit point more in every fight for each STRENGTH point above 14.

Torven (ST:17), a well-experienced hero, well known in his hometown Enqui, still carries a sword around him. Whenever somebody gets into a real fight with him, he will use his sword in a very focussed way, so that even a sword (ST-14, HP:1D+4) gets dangerous for his enemies with the modified 1D+7 hit points (17-14=3, so 1D+4+3=1D+7).

Option: Blunders

The world would not be fair if you were able to get something brilliant out of it, but you cannot fluff. So here is the balance, the blunder.

Attack Blunder

If a player rolls 20 on the D20 for her hero, the attack is absolutely fluffed, unless he may immediately roll a successful AT+8 test. If she succeeds in the test, we will not bother and allow her any advantages that follow form an AT+8 roll. If she fails again, she will have to face the destiny dice, i.e. 2D6.

If she fluffs while announcing an AT+ attack, she will have to add her additive on top of the +8 base for the second roll which may become absolutely impossible. But do not forget, any roll resulting in 1 is always a success even in an impossible mission. The entropy of nature in Arkania is so present that everything is possible if you try hard enough. In any case, if you just blundered, you may not use your "brilliant attack" as such an attack but rather as a lucky strike, that got you away from the gates of hell into Praios' sunshine again.

Parade blunder

The same thing happens if a hero is forgotten by her player and the player rolls a 20 when parading. Again she can be saved from the fierce destiny if the player succeeds in a PA+8 roll, but beware if not.

The Destiny Dice

Break Factor (BF)

All weapons and shields are equipped with the so-called break factor, abbreviated as BF. This factor gives a value for the ultimate strength and its tendency to break.

If a weapon breaks or a shield splinters, will be checked whenever a "brilliant attack" can be blocked by an equally "brilliant parade", because weapon and/or shield are used to their extremes in this case. The master interrupts the fight and both fighters have to roll a D20. If the value thrown is less than the break factor or equal, the weapon will break. Is the result greater than the break factor, the break factor rises by one. The new BF has to be noticed on the sheet.

The Break factor of a weapon increases also by steady use, i.e. after each adventure. The master has to decide when this will happen, i.e. when a chronicle is played to a certain amount. A hero can avoid these things by regular use of weapon balsam or remelting and harden the metal in a forge. Each point decreasing costs 1 ducat. Weapon with break factors less than 2 can only be restored by the producing forge to their original strength and every point under 2 will cost at least 5 ducats.

Weapons which broke once cannot be restored to full strength, i.e. it will always be a break factor greater than 2 or equal. No weapon can be restored to more than their full strength or respectively, it is possible to improve even the standard value of a weapon by one point in break factor, but this will cost as much as the weapon itself.