Teamwork
Challenges
Conflicts
The heroes get into a straight-up fight, and have a chance to win (if they don't have that chance, or can't possibly lose, it's a contest instead).
Conflicts are more than just physical. While a shootout with a rival gang or swordfight atop a rocky peak are both obvious applications, an argument with a loved one, a tense interrogation, or politicking and rumormongering to further your agenda and weaken your opponents' at a high society ball are all just as valid.
Timing matters when using some kinds of #Teamwork in a conflict:
- You can invoke an aspect on an ally's behalf to improve their roll at any time
- You can help an ally before their turn comes around by creating an advantage or giving a +1 bonus as your action.
- If they take their turn ahead of you, you can use up your turn (skipping it for that exchange) to give them a +1 teamwork bonus.
Taking Harm
When an attack is successful, the defender must absorb the blow and suffers harm equal to THE NUMBER OF HITS the attack exceeded the defense by. You can PUSH THROUGH hits by marking STRAIN boxes or suffering CONSEQUENCES.
If you can't or don't push through all the hits, you are TAKEN OUT - you're removed from the scene, and THE ATTACKER DECIDES HOW IT PLAYS OUT.
Strain
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Consequences
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Recovery
At the END OF EACH SCENE, every character clears their strain boxes. Consequences take more time and effort to clear.
To start the RECOVERY PROCESS, the person treating you will need to succeed at an overcome action with an appropriate skill (usually Tend, sometimes Understand, occasionally something else). This overcome action faces difficulty equal to HALF the severity of the consequence: Adequate (1) for a mild consequence, Good (2) for moderate, and Great (3) for severe. These difficulties increase by 1 when you're trying to treat yourself (it's easier to have someone else do that) and/or if the treatment is occurring in sub-par conditions. These increases STACK - attempting to Tend a severe consequence on yourself with poor supplies in the middle of the jungle would require a Superhuman (5) effort.
If you succeed on this roll, rewrite the consequence to indicate that it is healing. A "broken arm" may be rewritten as "arm in a cast," for instance. Success here is only the first hurdle - it TAKES TIME to clear the consequence.
- Mild consequences take one full scene after treatment to clear.
- Moderate consequences last longer, taking a full session to clear.
- Severe consequences only clear when you reach a 2 Character Creation#Breakthrough
Extreme Consequences
Extreme consequences are a fourth severity of consequence that permanently, irrevocably change a character. Taking an extreme consequence reduces harm by 8. When taken, you must REPLACE one of your character's existing aspects (other than their high concept, which is off-limits) with an aspect that represents the profound change to the character resulting from the harm they've taken.
There is no option to recover from an extreme consequence; it has become a part of the character now. At your next Advancement#Breakthrough you may rename it to reflect how you've come to terms with it, but you can never go back to your original aspect.
Between breakthroughs, a character may only use this option once.
Extreme consequences exist outside of the normal consequence track, and though you may always choose to take one, you are never required to - even if your consequence track has filled, you may choose to be taken out rather than suffer an extreme consequence. These are huge, character-altering moments, and should therefore be rare.
Conceding
So, how do you keep from suffering permanent trauma, dying, or worse? You can INTERRUPT any action in a conflict to CONCEDE as long as the dice haven't hit the table yet. Just give in. Tell everyone you're done, you can't keep going. You lose and exit the conflict, but YOU GAIN A FATE POINT plus an extra one for each consequence you took during that conflict.
Harm and Mechs
Armor
Armor is similar to strain in play, but differs in two ways. First, where strain clears automatically at the end of each scene, restoring armor requires you to be in a position where it makes fictional sense for your mech to be repaired. If a scene ends with your mech crash-landed in the desert, no spare parts to work with, and no one else around for miles, you're going to need either a way to change your circumstances or some very impressive Tinkering.
The other difference is how you upgrade your armor. Where strain is innate to your pilot and scales with their Persevere skill, armor is a mechanical quality of your mech, not you as a person. Armor can be increased during a 2 Character Creation#Breakthrough instead of taking a skill increase. If you ever get a new mech, those upgrades do not carry over. You and your GM may decide together that it's fictionally appropriate for the new mech to already have better-than-standard armor when you get it (e.g. it's a fresh-from-the-factory prototype custom-built to your specifications), but that is not an assumed default.
Breakdown
Breakdown works a little differently than consequences. Instead of the wide-open field of situation aspects you can create when your pilot suffers harm, Breakdown pre-defines the way that damage to your mech escalates throughout a fight. This is meant to take some of the pressure off everyone at the table to quickly figure out wording in the heat of a battle, automatically create relevant and usable aspects, and tune those aspects to continuously ratchet up the tension of the scene.
A DENTED mech (2 harm consequence) has taken damage that isn't immediately harmful, but creates a weak point that can be exploited later. Maybe an important structural piece is cracked, or an armor plate is blown off to expose a vulnerable area.
A DAMAGED mech (second 2 harm consequence) has had one of its systems or capabilities weakened, but retains most of its functions - maybe it's lost a booster and slowed down, or its targeting is thrown off, or its joints are starting to lock up.
A DISABLED mech (4 harm consequence) has lost a critical function - perhaps a destroyed limb, a broken weapon, loss of flight capability.
A DOOMED mech (6 harm consequence) is moments from destruction - you can still try to fight, but you're likely to need a new mech afterwards. Perhaps oxygen is leaking, the power plant is overloading, or you've lost all mobility and are a sitting duck.
Unless there is a relevant aspect in play somewhere in your game that would prevent it (e.g. "critical supply shortage" at your hangar), Breakdown is cleared entirely at each breakthrough as your mech is repaired to full function. Such aspects are hugely impactful to the tone of a game, as well as to overall player agency; the GM should keep that in mind and have talked with the players about the kind of story they all want to tell before one is deployed.
Losing Your Mech
If you concede while your mech is Doomed, the mech is DESTROYED unless you or an ally in a position to intervene sacrifice a point of Refresh and describe how it survives the engagement through extreme luck or effort (as with buying stunts, you can never drop your refresh below 1). If your mech is destroyed, you acquire a new one at your next breakthrough, or earlier if the fiction offers an opportunity to do so (e.g. stealing one from an enemy base). Work with your GM to design a new mech that's appropriate for the state of the fiction and the resources available to your character. A replacement mech at breakthrough should never cost you resources outside the fiction layer; the game is premised on you being a mech pilot, and even though you spend a lot of time out of your mech, you should never be without access to one for an extended period.
If your mech is ever taken out while you're in it, it is destroyed, and whoever took you out gets to decide what happens to you as though you were taken out on foot. See 2 Character Creation#Replacing Your Mech for what to do if you survive.