Systems: Conflict

Off Limits - You may not strike another player or staff member in the head or groin or attempt to trip them. The head and groin are particularly sensitive and tripping can injure a player - we don’t want to do that. As a safe rule, your best damage targets are from the shoulders down to the waist and both arms.

Light Touch Combat - Combat is intended to be light touch - a hit should be hard enough to be felt, but not so hard as to leave bruises. Try your best to avoid causing actual pain.

Attacking - Any aggressive action taken against a character constitutes an attack. If an action helps a character, such as removing a Mental effect, or restoring health to them, it does not count as an attack. Only actions which result in a negative effect are considered attack. All Damage effects, Mental effects, and Status effects count as attacks. Draining health or energy does not count as an attack.

Machine Gunning - Players must allow enough time for a Resist to be called between attacks in order for the attack to count. Attacking faster than this is called “machine-gunning”, and is a form of cheating. Players being attacked this way may notify you with the call "Machine Gunning" to let you know that you need to slow down, and that they may have ignored one or more of your attacks. However, you can deflect and riposte without worrying about a machine gun call. You may not strike the same location twice in a row.

Detecting Attacks - Physical attacks are obvious. You know instantly when someone is attacking you physically. Packet attacks that deal damage except for the “Force” call are detectable. The Force call is damage dealt, but the source is unknown. When any non-damaging packet or Mental attack succeeds, you immediately suffer the effect but do not know who attacked you unless they are the only one nearby. If you resist any non-damaging packet or Mental attack you do not know what effect you resisted or who used it.

Defending against Melee and Brawl attacks - Innately, your defenses are things like moving out of the way or parrying an incoming attack. Certain powers will also allow you to avoid incoming attacks. When using these powers, simply call “Resist”.

Defending against packets, bullets, and other thrown objects - Your innate defense against these ranged attacks is to dodge them. As with Melee and Brawl, call “Resist” when using a power to avoid an attack.

Shaking Off Mental Attacks - Once per hour, you may expend a Willpower point to immediately Shake Off and cancel the remaining duration of a Mental Effect as if you were just now Resisting it. This includes those effects with extended, signaled, or persistent modifiers, but not effects with 'Irresistible' in the original call. Any limitations and cost increases for Resisting the original effect still apply.

Duration and Instant - Effects which have a duration describe how long they last in the power descriptor line. Instant effects do not list a duration. Effects with durations may not be activated reflexively. In other words you may not choose to activate an effect with duration in response to an attack. The effect must be active on your character when you receive the attack. Instant effects that allow a resist, immunity, or otherwise impact an incoming effect must be used reflexively.

Resist vs Immune - If you would resist an ability used on your character, call “Resist.” If you are immune to an ability you may call one Resist for the duration of the immunity the first time you resist a power, but after the initial resist must switch to “Immune” calls. You may do this for each different sig call used to which you are immune.

Immunities don't stack - Always on immunity effects remain on at all times and do stack with other immunity effects. Any immunity effect with a duration does not stack. Once a new immunity is activated on your character, the previous immunity is suppressed, though the timer continues. If the first immunity is part of a larger power (such as elemental form) you keep any other functionality.

Filtered - The incoming effect was modified. If a power doesn't outright resist an effect, but the effect is modified, you call "filtered" - this lets the attacker know that while you did not resist the effect was changed, but not how.

Effects that Level and Effect Caps - While a number of effects allow you to increase your damage or healing, or level up from their basic amount, of damage or healing, these effects all have a maximum amount of damage or healing they can reach called their cap. Damage dealt by firearms caps at 5. Healing and all other sources of damage cap at 4. There are some systemic exceptions, such as the Imprint power, which allows you to exceed the brawl damage cap under certain circumstances, and effects like Fill Pool or Revitalize, which restore an entire pool to full, ignoring these caps.

Resolving Damage - Damage reduces your current health, not your maximum health. If you hit with a damaging attack in an area that is not off limits and a resist is not called then damage is dealt. Players can lose temporary health by being damaged. You can also lose health through health draining abilities and by being fed upon.

Death Blows - A special type of attack intended for theatrical effect. Any character may perform a death blow using any method with which they may normally deliver a damage effect. The target is immediately reduced to 0 health and enters the Dying state. The normal cost of that method applies. A special note about Death Blows is that they can be resisted for no cost by the targeted character. If a character chooses to resist the attack they may choose to take any amount of damage from the attack including none. This resist must be called when used. To perform a Death Blow, call out “Death Blow” when you would normally make your sig call.

Becoming Grappled - A player with the Grapple power may initiate a grapple by placing their hand on your shoulder and calling "Grapple." You may resist this with abilities that defend against physical attacks. While grappled, you may not use any abilities tagged as physical or cause damage. You may not move away from the grappling character. This effect ends if the hand is removed from your shoulder, if either character is dealt damage, or upon completing the “Breaking Free” call as below.

Breaking Free from Grapple - While grappled, you may not do anything that does damage or has the Physical tag, but may attempt to end it with a “Breaking Free” 10-count. Any damage to either party breaks the grapple.

Staking - Driving a stake through the heart of a humanoid thing isn’t an easy process, but it is important when dealing with certain types of supernatural creatures. In order to drive a stake through the heart you must have a tagged Stake. Place the tip of the Stake against your target’s chest, and make a 10 count. “Staking 1, Staking 2, … Staking 10”. Upon completing the count, if your target is a Vampire they immediately enter Unconsciousness. While they do not lose any actual health they respond to any power which would detect their health with “0”. Leave the Stake across the chest of the target. If the weapon is removed, the Vampire may return to a conscious state at whatever health level they had prior to the staking. Driving a stake through the heart of something that *isn’t* a Vampire reduces the target to 0 health, forcing it into the Dying state if it was not already there. This is considered a physical effect.

Cutting off the Head - You can actively kill a Dying being by “removing the head.” For balance reasons, since this game is intended to include Player vs. Player regularly, you can’t just stab something and kill it. There needs to be a chance to interrupt the kill. Since cutting off the head does not require any uncommon tools, it takes longer to perform. Place a boffer/foam blade, a claw boffer, or a tentacle boffer against your target’s neck (gently please). Begin an audible 60 count of “dismember”. You do not need to be skilled with the weapon to perform this action. Each count should take 1 or more seconds. If you complete the count without being interrupted, the creature is Dead.

Regaining Health

You may regain health through the following methods:

1. Being Given Health - Certain abilities let other characters give you health. These will use a signature call of "Giving Health". Unless specified in the signature call (such as a # change to "Giving 2 health"), each time someone makes the signature call it restores 1 health.
2. Medicine - The Medicine ability lets someone heal a character other than themselves. The signature calls for Medicine are “Bandage”, “Medicine”, “Stabilize”, and “Surgery”. The amount of health restored should be called out.
3. Health Potions - Created by Herbalists, health potions allow you to regain a small amount of health. These cannot be used on dying characters.
4. Healing Abilities - Healing Touch restores health as stated in the signature call (such as Healing touch 4).
5. Regeneration - Certain abilities allow a character to restore their own health.
6. Mortal Regeneration - Mortals regenerate a small amount of health. If your health is reduced from maximum by 2 or less (and no more) then you will regenerate those 2 health at a rate of 1 per hour.

Complications - If under the effects of Aggravated Damage your healing is affected - please see the Aggravated Damage section.

Stealing Blood - Any time you would take blood from a target you may choose to not ingest it and instead place it inside of a container. It must be the last point of blood you take and you do not gain the blood for feeding. If you take blood this way you must already have a closable container available. Mime spitting the blood into the container, then at your first opportunity write on a 3x5: “Blood Vial: [name of target], [date], [time], taken by [your character] / [your name].” Blood vials last for 24 hours. These may be used in some rituals. You may not speak between draining the last point of blood and spitting into the vial (your mouth is full of blood). These vials are not usable as Blood Talens and cannot be used to refill Blood Pool.

What You Know About Your Own Health Characters can feel when they're injured, but may not know exactly how badly. When reduced by 2 or more health, characters know they are injured or in pain. When reduced below 1/3 of their maximum health, characters can tell they are in extreme pain or badly injured. It is recommended that you role play some level of pain at these levels. While you are welcomed to continue to play pain after your injuries have been healed, it is not required. You may also wish to use terms like "I'm in pain, but it will pass" to describe situations where your natural healing will take care of gaining the remainder of your health or where you have already been healed but wish to continue role playing the effects of pain. You know when you are not feeling well as well, such as when under the effects of aggravated damage, poison, or disease, but do not know the reason for this unease, and should not be able to say "I've been poisoned" so much as "I feel sick"

Overriding Effects

Shorter duration effects of a different effect class and/or modifier take precedence, but do not overwrite the original effect. To overwrite an effect, the new effect must be of the same effect class and modifier, and have a longer duration than the remaining duration on of the current effect. If someone has Extended the duration on an effect, and you wish to overwrite it with the same effect class, the Extended period must pass first or you must use your own Extended effect. The different classes of effect in game that can be overwritten are: Status, Mental, Physical, and Form. There are two modifiers to these effects classes, Instant and Persistent. Instant Effects do not interact with the overwrite mechanism, but are otherwise treated as their original power type. Persistent Effects run a much longer duration and use an overwrite mechanism based on that duration, but are otherwise treated as their original power type. Form powers, represented by a mask, are usually unlimited duration unless otherwise specified. This means that Form powers without set duration always override other Form powers when used.

Nodes

A Node refers to a static location where characters can re-generate one or more energy types. Many individual Node types are described in the Supernatural Rule sections they apply to. Many nodes cannot be attacked, but some nodes can. Node regeneration is described on the card. While regenerating at a plot-provided Node, individuals gain energy at an accelerating rate. As long as you remain at the node, every 4th time you gain energy increase the amount of energy generated per tick by 1. If you spend energy, your energy level decreases, or leave the regeneration radius this effect resets. While more than one node may be near each other, or one node may provide more than one energy type, you may only gain energy via tick from one node or person at a time, and may only gain one type of energy at a time from nodes or people.

Attacking, Restoring, and Strengthening Nodes

To attack a Node, approach the Node. Spend 1 of any Energy type, remove 1 Node Health token from that node. One character may only remove 1 token every 15 seconds, but may continue to do this until the Node is empty by spending an energy for each health removed and waiting 15 seconds between removals. If you are currently Tainted, you may choose to Taint any node that you remove 5 Node Health from with a single Taint type that you are affected with. To Taint the node, drop a 0.5x5" slip of paper in front of the node card with the text: "Tainted: [type]". When removing Health Tokens, please place them next to the Node Card. When a Node is reduced to 0 health, it ceases to function. If a Node that is attackable has 0 health, that Node no longer functions (it provides no benefit). It will provide no benefit until restored to its Normal Health. When the Node reaches 0 health, add a card that says “BROKEN: [node health]” where [node health] is the amount of health required to restore the Node. IF such a card already exists, move it in front of the Node card.

To restore a Node, approach the Node. You must be able to spend the Energy type that Node supplies. Spend as much of the Node’s Energy type as you wish, and restore that many Node Health tokens by placing them in the Node baggie. When a Node is restored to its Normal Health, the Node will function as normal. Place the “BROKEN” card behind the regular Node card.

To strengthen a Node, approach the node. You must be able to spend the Energy type that Node supplies. Spend as much of the Node’s Energy type as you wish, and add that many tokens to the Node baggie. This has no mechanical effect except to make your Node harder to reduce to 0 Node Health. One character may only do this once every 6 hours.

Examples of attackable nodes include the Caern, Bastet and Gurahl Dens, or Ratkin Crash Space.

Non-Combatants in Combat

When fighting a non-combatant, the rules simplify significantly. Abilities can only be used within appropriate range of the non-com player (melee abilities within melee range, packet-delivered and ranged weapons within about 20 feet, and mentals around 10). Designate the target by pointing a boffer, nerf gun, packet, etc. in their direction but do not strike, throw, or fire. Call out the normal call for the ability. You must wait 2 seconds between signature calls when engaged in this type of combat. If a non-com wishes to flee before being attacked they should be allowed to do so, assuming they have not been part of the action already. If a non-com wishes to flee once combat has begun, you may pursue them continuing to call numbers for up to 50 feet. If you have not reduced them to 0 health or unconsciousness by this point, they may flee the combat provided they do not return to the combat zone for at least 10 minutes.

Healing others as a non-combatant, if you are unable to physically reach the target, requires that you touch them on the shoulder prior to making the healing call. If you are unable to reach targets easily, for example due to a wheelchair, you may use a claw-length boffer to perform the touch, though it should not be marked as a claw unless you are also using claws. If you used a potion or bandage to provide this healing, expose the prop within touch range during the process. As always potions and other single use items should have their tags torn after