Tabletop Rules

We have deliberately made the tabletop rules for Faded Glory as simple as possible.  Most of the skills characters have translate over with no need for change or modification therefore all that is really needed is rules for how to handle combat. 

Tabletop combat takes place over four stages

1. Initiative

Simply put this is to see who goes first. A combat turn is divided in to four segments, everyone involved in the combat rolls 1d4 to see in which segment they will act.  The higher the number the quicker the combatant gets to act.  A combat turn is supposed to represent approximately 10 seconds of real time.

If a combatant is attacking from stealth or the person they are attending is otherwise not expecting the attack and the attacker rolls a higher initiative than their target they are considered to be attacking from surprise.  The person running the game can choose to impose a -1 initiative penalty to people being surprised if they feel the situation warrants it.

2. Declaration

Each character and the person running the game will declare the actions of the combatants for that turn.  Each character gets one action per turn and they can declare whether they wish to move, attack, parry or cast a spell.  Characters with a sword and shield get a free parry each turn in addition to whatever they choose to do with their sword.  Characters using two weapons can choose to attack twice, attack once and parry once or parry twice.  It should be noted that if characters declare a parry attempt at this stage and their attacker does not perform an action that needs parrying the action is lost.

3. Actions

At this stage dice are rolled to see whether attacks actually hit their intended targets.  The system for rolling uses d6's and breaks down like this:

Warriors and Rogues need to roll a 2 or better to succeed in a parry or attack on a d6 using their primary weapon.  For off hand weapons and shields they need to roll a 3 or better on a d6.

Mages, Soul Casters and Psions need to roll a 3 or better to succeed in a parry or attack on a d6 using their primary weapon.  For off hand weapons and shields they need to roll a 4 or better on a d6.

Any attempt to strike a specific location on a target increases these target numbers by 1.

Attacks from behind or against a prone target reduce these target numbers by 1.

Attacks from surprise automatically hit for the first attack.

All Mage and Soul spells take 1 turn to cast so if a mage rolls an initiative of 3 this round and starts casting a spell then it will complete on segment 3 of the next round.  If a caster is struck between the time they start casting the spell and when they finish then the spell is lost just as it would be on a live game.

Innate spells as used by Psions or those on an item can be used on the same segment they are cast.  A character with innate spells can still attack with a weapon and use an innate spell but will only be able to use one innate spell per turn.

4. Resolutions

Once the dice have been rolled its time to resolve the outcome of the turn.  Anyone who has been successful in an attack should roll a d6 and find out where on their target they struck. (Unless they called where they were striking and took the appropriate dice penalty)

1 = Head

2 = Right Arm

3 = Left Arm

4 = Right Leg

5 = Left Leg

6 = Chest

Anyone wishing to use abilities like Dodge to avoid an attack that connected can do so at this point.  After that, the damage to the combatants is totaled up so everyone knows what damage they took as if in a live game.

Damage will affect a character exactly as it does in the live game.

Once everything is resolved, if the fight continues the four steps begin again.