Combat takes place in ‘turns’, which are variable amounts of time, with adventurers and their foes and allies
taking actions in order based on their skills and how badly they want to go first. Basic combat is:
•determine Initiative (who goes first)
•act in order of initiative (do stuff)
•repeat as necessary
Within a turn, you can do one or more major actions, which take a lot of your attention, and one or more minor actions, which take some attention, but not as much. Walking is a minor action. Shooting a gun is a major action. You can do multiple actions in one turn. In the simplest case, each adventurer acts in order of initiative, does all their actions, then play proceeds to the next person. To be a bit more realistic, you would do one action, and after everyone else has done one action, then you can take another action, repeating until everyone is done for that turn. If you are just getting started with role-playing, we recommend that you start simple and work your way into detail as you feel you need it.
EABA is designed to fit itself to your desired
level of detail, so use the level you are most comfortable with.
In a turn, your actions will either consist of simply ‘doing things’, like walking, shouting orders, or other things that usually require no skill or attribute roll, and things that do require a roll of some kind. For these, you just take your skill or attribute roll, apply anything that adjusts the roll, and then roll against the difficulty of the task. If you succeed, you do what you were trying to do. If not, you fail at the attempt. Either way, that is your action, and then whoever acts next gets to try their hand at things. Theoretically, this is pretty simple. Players, however, have a way of making even simple things complex...
INITIATIVE
Combat, or most any sort of time-sensitive encounter will run in ‘turns’. A turn is just an arbitrary “how much stuff can I do?” interval, but practically, turns are just punctuation marks in the story of the conflict.
Each turn begins with determining ‘initiative’. This really just means “I act before you do”. This can be really important for two people with guns pointed at each other. Going first is usually important enough that people are willing to take a penalty to do so, and that is what initiative is about.
Initiative is a secret declaration process. Each player takes any number of dice or tokens and just cups them behind a hand, with an amount showing from a minimum of zero to a maximum of their Agility (for combat skills) or an attribute of their choice. You can always declare zero. Most combat actions will have initiative based on Agility (using your fight value if using the secondary attributes), but if you decide to base your action on some other Attribute, you have to declare it before your initiative is revealed. In addition, the first major action you take in the round must be based on that Attribute.
If you put some dice behind your hand and say “Strength”, you are committing yourself to a first action that somehow involves a direct use of Strength or a skill based on Strength.
In addition to your initiative declaration, you may add a die or tokens of a different color, with an amount showing up to your Dodge. This does not affect when you act in a round, but it is a penalty on your actions just like your initiative. The difference is that the amount of your Dodge also is an increase in the difficulty for one other person to hit you and half that amount (round up) for everyone else to hit you. Dodging is immediate. It does not have to be your turn to act for dodging to be in effect. Note that dodging halves any distance in meters you move in that turn (which is a -2 to the distance level).
EABA gets around all this by using a variable
time scale for combat, increasing the time in each round after the first by using the Universal Chart. In the beginning of a fight, the timescale is very short, you do not get to do much and the situation is very chaotic. As the combat progresses, the timescale gets longer. You can move farther, engage more targets, take time to make plans, and so on. It is a system where being able to draw your gun faster than the other guy is important and can be a single turn, but it is also a system where being able to run around the building, break into a car, hotwire it and drive it through the wall to surprise the bad guys can also be a single turn.
However, as the time spent in a conflict
increases, so does the chance of resolution. If the situation that brought about the combat has not resolved by the end of the tenth round, one side or the other will surrender, withdraw or otherwise do something to end the conflict. If it is a chase, one side either gets away or gets caught. Remember, by the time you finish the tenth round of a fight in
EABA, the total elapsed time for adventurers
has been sixteen minutes. That’s more than enough time for reinforcements to arrive, for you to elude pursuit, or whatever it takes to end the conflict and move on. There are ways to reset this clock, and all sort of special cases, but we will get to them later.
The important conceptual thing to remember about EABA is that you are no longer doing things on a second-by-second basis. If the gamemaster says a turn is thirty seconds long, it does not mean you get to make thirty skill rolls to shoot or hit things. Start thinking about a goal for each turn rather than an action for each turn.
So, with that high bar set for expectations, let us get into how it actually works. This will be in the order of initiative, action types, and turn sequencing.
If you look up videos of real-world firefights, like police shootouts caught on dashboard cameras, you will see a lot of people desperately trying to get as much lead in the air as fast as possible. Or imagine a duel at twenty paces or gunslingers facing each other in the Wild West. Declaring high initiative to go first, to have a chance of putting a bullet in the other guy before they shoot back is the way things often work in the real world.
Ambush!
lf you are in a situation where a person or group has the drop on another, or the disadvantaged party has no idea something is about to happen, it is an ambush. The attackers have an initiative of their Agility or whatever attribute they are using, but take no penalty for that ‘declaration’, while the defenders are counted as initiative of zero. The defenders will get one major and minor action on the first turn, on initiative 0.
If you have won initiative and are going first, it does not mean you are acting in your own little time bubble. You do not get to run around a wall and flank someone without them noticing, nor do you get to saunter across an enemy field of fire because you move before they shoot. Having initiative means that the complex situation that is combat allows you to do certain things in spite of your enemies being able to see your actions and
wanting to interfere with them. For instance,
someone might see you trying to flank them, but be pinned down and unable to seek new cover. You might be able to run across an open area because your foes are reloading or distracted. You are still noticed, but their ability to act on what they see is based on their initiative declaration. The initiative system does add a step to each turn, but it adds lots of tension, drama and leads to more realistic-feeling combats. It is a life-or-death wager, trading chance of success for chance of going first, without knowing ahead of time what your foes are planning. If you would rather not use it, just do initiative like everyone declared zero, and they declare how much Dodge they are using before their first action or when the first attack is made against them, whichever comes first.
If you have a Dodge of 4, you can put a die of a different color behind your hand when declaring initiative, with an amount showing of no more than 4. If you had a ‘2’ showing, you would take an additional -2 penalty on all your rolls, but one foe you were aware of who is trying to hit you will take a +2 to the difficulty of their task, and everyone else would take a +1 to their difficulty. Everyone acts in order of initiative declaration, from high to low, with ties resolving in order of Agility or whichever attribute is being used. A gamemaster can choose to let each player do all their actions (AA,BB,CC), or let everyone do one major (and/or minor) action in initiative order, and then act again in the same order until everyone is done for the turn (ABC,ABC). The thing about initiative is that you take a penalty of your declaration on most external tasks you initiate that round. So, your aim (an external task) is affected, but not your melee damage (not a task) nor your roll to avoid being stunned (an internal task). If you are hurrying to go first, you hurt your chances to succeed. But if you take your time and go last, you may not be in any condition to act when your turn finally comes around...
If you declare ‘3’, then your rolls for external tasks on that turn are reduced by 3.
This is why you may be technically capable of doing several actions, but succeeding at them all is another matter. Between the penalty for multiple actions, dodging and your initiative declaration, you may have no dice left to roll! Most of the time, bad guys will all declare the same initiative, just to make it easy for the gamemaster. High profile foes are exceptions. You may have noticed that since the maximum initiative declaration is your Agility, someone with a higher Agility should always be able to go first. This is indeed the case, if they are willing to take a penalty on all their rolls for an initiative declaration that is that high.
ACTIONS
In a turn of combat you get to do certain things for free. That is, with no penalty to your rolls. You may do one ‘major action’ or one ‘minor action’ with no penalties. Remember that these internal penalties are subtractions to your die rolls, not adjustments to difficulty. A major action is an attack, whether with a sword, gun, fist or paranormal power. A major action is also any move of more than your walk distance and up to your run distance, or part or all of a complex action like picking a lock, drawing a weapon or reloading a weapon. If you use more than your run distance and up to your sprint distance, this counts as a major action, but generates penalties for two major actions. This means that any skill or Attribute roll that has to be made while sprinting (like if you hit a slick spot) is at an extra -3 penalty. A minor action is blocking, parrying, talking, moving at walk distance or less, or aiming or adjusting a weapon (like flicking a safety). You can do a minor action at the same time as a major action. So, you can walk and punch, flick off the safety on a weapon and shoot it, talk and run, and so on. However, the order can be important. Do you shoot, then take a few steps, or take a few steps, then shoot? Movement is a sort of continuing action. You never do more than one movement action in a turn, so you do not say “I am running twice”. However, for whatever movement action you declare, you can apply turn mod to it when you have a chance to act (we will get to ‘turn mod’ in a minute). So, you can walk, but later on you can decide you want to ‘walk further’, and apply more turn mod to your distance. You may do more than one of any non-move action in a turn. But, later, separate actions in that turn get a cumulative penalty. For each prior minor action, the penalty is -1, and for each prior major action, the penalty is -3. Most skill uses are separate actions, but movement of the same type is a continuation of the same action.
Action & reaction
Combat is interactive. Seldom will you be able to do something without someone else noticing it and likely trying to interfere with it. Initiative is the degree to which people are willing to go in order act first, or to react to what they expect others to do. There are two special cases to the initiative rules.
holding action: If you have the initiative, you
can declare a specific major or minor action as ‘held action’. This lets you react to something before it happens or has an effect. Your melee opponent retreats and you advance at the same time. You kick a gun out of the guard’s hand before they have a chance to shoot you. You fire at someone the instant they pop out from cover. If a turn ends and you still have not acted, on the next turn you may continue the held action, or get a penalty-free +2 on declared Initiative (or cinematically, Initiative of your full Agility). You are still waiting. In a case where people have held actions based on each other, the one with higher Agility goes first. Imagine two gunslingers, each waiting for the other to go for their gun. Held actions normally resolve with a +0 turn mod. They are individual actions, not a series of actions.
desperation action: The other exception is a
‘desperation action’. Say you are at a small store and you see a car barrelling towards the plate glass at the end of your aisle. This may change your plans for the turn. If you give up as much turn mod as is being used against you, you may defensively react to an imminent threat to your life. This can be one major or minor action at a turn mod of +0. That is, something you can reasonably do in one second. If a car is going to run you down, diving out of the way is an action. You may not do desperation actions to react to anything faster than your reflexes. This is subjective. You could not dive out of the way of a close pistol shot, but if you somehow spotted a rifle’s muzzle flash three hundred meters away, you might be able to dive for cover before the bullet arrives.