Stances – Part Two

A continuation on stances…

Mobility Stance

Oh the lovely mobility stance of doom and darkness. The stance which makes you which you could change stances three, NO, four times per phase! Wait… you can… if you are a fast striker or if you are being attacked. Well, whatever. We all know that Mobility Stance is exclusive to Athletics. Jens has proved to us how important this is, oh yes he has. Well, Mobility Stance has three modes actually. All three is possible to use by all who has Athletics. The warrior version’s of the Mobility Stance will come after the standard versions.

Active

The active aspect of this stance is to focus solely on moving and moving far and fast. Speed is of the essence and you want to do nothing else other than to run. In this aspect your full movement will be free of charge. But you can perform a Leap if you want which will cost you 1 SC – as a regular movement would otherwise. Leap increases your movement with LvL and it also makes it harder for others to hit you – if they try to hit you as a moving target that is. If you move your whole movement in any of the three stances you can roll a simple REF check and if you succeed you might take one additional step in any direction. The step must be taken immediately. Leap cost 2 SC in any other Mobility Stance and is not possible to do without any Mobility Stance.

Passive

The passive aspect of this stance might feel a little bit reversed from the usual way things are since the passive method is for attacking. If you are in Passive mode and passive mode only you can perform a Rush. Rush means that you can, immediately after completing your movement attack your target. It’s not that simple though. To be able to perform a Rush the following criteria must be met;

• The target must be within your line of sight
• The target must be within or adjacent to your base movement plus LvL¹
• The Target must be momentarily not moving²
• You must wield a melee weapon³

Rush costs 3 SC plus an additional weapon or technique SC. If the target is within your range and doesn’t have a skill such as Dodge or a Technique, you will hit your target. It will also have a chance of knocking the target off his feet. Rush does additional Melee DMG⁴. It always does at least 2 in DMG (1 for the Rush and 1 for the weapon).

Pending

The pending mode is automatically activated when an undesired object or creature within the characters line of sight in the direction he or she is facing moves within 2+LvL hexes. The character may then pay 2 SC to Retreat backwards from the desired target. The character must move in a relatively straight line and only moves Base Movement plus LvL. If a technique is applied such as Rush a (REF+LvL)vsREF roll is required to see who is the fastest. The Rush will still succeed only miss its target if the Retreat is successful. A successful retreat ends in regular passive stance and also decreases the characters Initiative with 5 (but never lower than REF). Retreat is possible to do from any stance as long as it’s a pending stance but then it costs 3 SC.

Warrior

Warrior, of course, has the same stances as above but they also have focused stances primarily meant for battle which is based on the usual three stances but not.

Close – For Grappling

When you want to keep your opponent close at all times and not let him retreat or withdraw from you this is the perfect stance to try to control your target’s movement as well as his position. This is an active stance and from this stance a warrior can perform Leap and their own special Stance Technique Dash. Dash is like Retreat only reversed. As soon as your target within your range, 2+LvL hexes, tries to move away from you or Retreat, you automatically follow them. Dash costs 1 SC and only warriors are capable of using this technique to begin with. Unless your Target or something else stops the character the Dash is automatically a success without any roll, especially in the case of someone using Retreat to get away from you. The RNG of Dash is Base Movement plus LvL plus 1. You cannot run past your opponent.

Medium – For Melee Weapons

This is a passive stance and it’s solely meant to cut down your target where they stand. It improves Rush but also gives the Warrior a special Stance Technique known as Ram. It improves the Rush RNG to include any additional movement such as Striker movement. If you doesn’t have a Striker Type you have one additional hex in your Rush Movement as a warrior, even if you use the Rush from regular Passive mode. The Rush also costs 1 less SC for Warriors. Ram though is a possible extension technique of Rush. The warrior can chose to Ram his opponent which means that the character first Rushes against his target and ram his body into it⁵ and if successful the target might be knocked off balance. If so then the warrior can attack with his weapon if he has any. Without any weapon a second attack is not possible. The ram costs 3 SC and a possible follow up attack has standard damage of 2 SC.

Ranged – For Bows

This is a pending stance meant to keep the distance from enemies and always be mobile. It’s best used with a Bow or a Crossbow but can be used with any ranged weapon. In this stance the warrior can Retreat, but Retreat is even better. The range from your target is the same (Base MOV+LvL) but the range of the Retreat now includes your Striker Movement as well, if you don’t have any you add one more in movement. Also your bonus to REF-rolls is REF+(LvLx2) instead while Retreating. You decrease your initiative as usual with 5 every phase but never below REF. Also Retreat only costs 1 SC, even if you are in the standard Pending stance. The special technique for this stance though is named Running Shot and enables the warrior to move his base movement plus LvL minus one and fire an arrow. It takes one additional action and it requires that the character already have an arrow on the string. The warrior must first show his path and then decide from which point he’ll fire his arrow, the character must move at least one hex before shooting and it must be in the same direction as the end destination. The technique costs an additional 2 SC.

Precautionary Stance

The second stance gained from Intuition is Precautionary stance. This stance requires LvL 2 or higher in the skill. This is a skill one uses to counter anything that might happen with a predetermined action. It’s a way to react before you actually are aware of what you’re reacting to. Sometimes this will be the only thing between life and death and other times it will be very annoying.

This is a form of passive stance even though it can also be considered a pending stance. You can move, but only one step at a time. You are fully tense and ready to act as soon as something happens. You can ignore a few different elements if they are steady or natural enough but other than that almost anything sudden or unexpected that happens will trigger the precautionary action you chose. When you enter this stance you chose and pay for one action – can be an attack enhanced with a technique – which you will automatically do as soon as something happens. For every phase or step you take in this stance you’ll have to pay a third of what you’ve paid in SC until you stand down or until something happens.

The bonus with this is that you get a reaction bonus on REF with +3 per LvL and depending on what kind of action you’ve chosen you’ll get +1 to +4 per LvL to succeed to, that is if you even need to roll a roll. During a battle with initiative you’ll lose 2 initiative each phase until you’re at your minimum initiative of REF. Note that you cannot do this if you have split initiative or is in any other way multi initiated in battle.

The downside with this though is that if someone friendly were to do something sudden you must hinder or stop yourself from releasing your attack or whatever you’ve prepared against them. In this roll you’ll have a penalty of -1 to -4 per level to stop yourself. The most common PRO in this case will be REF but it might also be FOR to stop a weapon or WIL to ignore it. Either way, you will have to reset your action. It’s possible to set your precautionary action to a change of stances, but it must be an active or passive stance and not a pending stance.

Resting Stance

This stance is possible for everyone but only those with Combat Arts will find in really useful. Without the mentioned skill, resting will give a maximum of 5 SC per phase, but then the person has at least 20 in PHY. All the resting stances are pending and have a requirement that you cannot perform any task or even get hurt to gain SC. Note that the stance is the same no matter which speciality you have. In ALL resting stances you have to be completely still or your rest will be cancelled. As stated, even if somebody hits you it will be cancelled.

Light

Light Resting Stance, or minimum resting stance is what everyone can do. The difference here between a character with Combat Arts and a character without Combat Arts is that the character with Combat Arts will be able to get twice more SC. In this stance you are able to move, but then your resting that phase will be forfeit. You can chose to change stance after being attacked, but you cannot act on the same phase as you’ve been in this stance. If you succeed to rest you’ll get PHY (LvL) plus Combat Arts (LvL) in SC. Every phase you lose 1 action. You can only use passive skills such as Hide in this stance.

Medium

Medium Resting Stance is even more dangerous than light in that you cannot cancel it. Once you’ve initiated it you can’t stop it. You must be crouching, or leaning against something and you must also have some kind of substance or sustenance to devour. You will be stationary until you’re done and you will have a penalty in all awareness and cognitive rolls thus also being easier to surprise and to frighten. In this stance you’ll get your Stamina Recovery back every phase for 1 action. Every time you use this recovery though you must cross one of your SC or take a penalty of -1 TM on PHY.

Heavy

Heavy Resting Stance is the most dangerous stance of the three. It will restore two times your Stamina Recovery every phase, but it takes two actions instead of one. One to settle down and one to get going again. You basically take a powernap when you perform this stance and must be stationary as well. Preferably sitting or lying down. You must, just as in medium stance, have food or drink to be able to do this fully. You can get a penalty on your recovery if you don’t and try anyway. The penalty will most likely effect how many SC you must cross or how big your penalty on PHY will be. If you have these though you must cross 3 SC or take a penalty of -2 TM in PHY each time. You will not be able to roll any rolls at all during this stance and almost every attack directed at your character will automatically hit. It’s a good idea to be defended in a situation like this.

I will continue this later in a third post. It seems like writing about stances easily eats up pages…

1. It doesn’t matter if your weapon has longer RNG ↩

2. You cannot under normal circumstances use Rush to intercept someone in the middle of their movement ↩

3. Unarmed doesn’t count unless you have the Technique such as Tackle or Ram ↩

4. Half of your FOR DB rounded down ↩

5. FOR DB in DMG and SR ↩