Combat

Combat in Seed uses a dynamic initiative system - essentially, each combatant has a countdown, called a "Delay", based on the last action taken, that must pass until they may act again. There are two sorts of operations in battle - adjusting initiative between actions, and the resolution of actions.

Initiative

THE BASIC FLOW OF COMBAT

1. If someone has a 0 delay, they may act. (If more than one combatant has a delay of 0, they all act before any more time passes, though they act in a certain order.) They decide an action and its effects are resolved.
2. If no one has a delay of 0, time passes until someone's delay is 0 - "ticks" pass for each combatant at the same rate. Effectively, each combatant subtracts the lowest amount of delay any combatant has from their delay, which leaves one or some combatants with delays of 0.
3. All combatants with delays of 0 act, taking on delays in doing so.
4. Repeat until the battle ends.

If multiple combatants have delays of 0, the player characters act first, and then the enemies. Player characters may decide among themselves which order to act in, as may the enemies.

HOW BATTLE BEGINS

Battle begins when two groups of combatants, the party of player characters and the group of enemies (or "monsters", occasionally) decide to fight. When combat begins, everyone takes on a delay equal to 30 - 1d6 - Their LUC.

HOW BATTLE ENDS

A battle ends when all no enemies or player characters remain to fight - usually this occurs because they've been reduced to 0 HP, but the same effect is gained by combatants fleeing from battle, being turned to stone, or being ejected.

A battle also ends if either side decides to surrender. For the enemies, a surrendering force still grants full rewards. For the player characters, surrendering might mean capture as opposed to death. Against some enemies, surrender might not make sense - discuss it with your GM.

The GM should also decide what being reduced to 0 HP means in their campaign - whether it's death, grave injury, or simply being knocked around too much to be useful.

TRACKING DELAY

If you're playing online, it's strongly recommended that you use tracking software to post delay counts to your players as they act. Players should state the delay they take on after each action, and the software can quickly iterate a new round and call another action.

Even if you're playing around a table, bringing a laptop to use one of these spreadsheets might be a good idea. Another solution would be to use a track on a large sheet of gridded paper with the lines at 100, 95, 90 marked, all the way down to 0. Each combatant could place a small token on the sheet - after an action, the combatant moves their token up to the delay they just took on, and each combatant moves their token down a number of lines equal to the current lowest delay.

Most combats only involve delays only slightly surpassing 60D. You could probably get away with 70 lines!

Actions

TAKING A TURN

Every turn a combatant takes consists of performing an action, taking on a new delay, and then adjusting their status timers. These three steps are the action, delay, and status phases of a turn.
In the action phase, you select an action ability to perform - either one of the [[Seed Basic Actions|basic actions]], or one of your class abilities. Every action ability has a relevant CoS, a target, a delay, an effect, and some keywords summing up how it interacts with other regions of the rules; for example, a fighter's Flare abilities can be activated after a Technique.

You then choose the target for the action, according to the target field for the action. If it's "Target: Single", you choose a single target on the battlefield, if it is "Target: Group", choose either your group or the enemy's, and so on.

When you perform the action, roll its CoS against each of its targets. When using an ability that targets multiple combatants, roll against the CoS individually for each combatant effected by the ability. Apply the effect of the action to each target the result check is successful against.

Many effects can modify the CoS, based on what sort of action it is - sword strikes will be less accurate if you're blinded or against evasive targets, for example. What sort of effects, properties and conditions can affect a certain action are generally defined by its keywords. Each individual modification takes effect. Remember that if a CoS is increased to 100 or higher you do not have to roll, and if the CoS is reduced to 0 or below, you cannot.

An action ability's effects are laid out in its effect text. Generally, abilities will inflict or restore health, inflict or remove negative conditions, or grant some beneficial enhancement to you or your allies, though there are some that have stranger effects. Some abilities may allow you to instantly perform multiple actions - target and resolve all of these before taking on any delay.

If an action triggers any reaction abilities, which are automatic responses such as counter-attacks, they occur at the very end of the action phase, after action effects are resolved but before any delay is tabulated.

After resolving the effects of the action, you take on a delay - this is the "Delay Phase". Each action has a delay given by "xD". Certain abilities and effects can modify the final delay of an action. Add the final delay of your action to your delay, or call it out to whoever is tracking initiative, usually the GM.

After acting and adding delay, you also decrement the duration of every condition, enhancement or other timer affecting you by 1. If this reduces any effect to a duration of 0, they expire and are removed. Conditions or Enhancements that have effects after you act (such as regeneration or poison effects) also apply in this phase, immediately before durations are adjusted.

The flow of a turn:

1. Turn Starts
2. Select which Ability to Use, and Target It
3. Roll the Ability CoS for Each Target
4. Apply effects for every success
5. Any triggered actions may activate
6. Take on a delay based on the used ability
7. Resolve statuses and conditions that have effects after each action, in order of player preference
8. Reduce the durations of all statuses by 1, removing any that now read (0)
9. Turn Ends

DAMAGE, HEALTH, AND THE KNOCKOUT BLOW

Every combatant in battle has some amount of Hit Points (HP), both a current value and a maximum. It serves as an extraordinarily abstract measure of their health and vitality. When a target receives damage, it is subtracted from their HP. When they reach 0, they fall.

The Damage Formula

The damage inflicted by most actions is some variant of this formula:

[ ( [ Attribute x Power x Power Multiplier(s)] + Some Dice ) x Situational Modifier - Armor ] x Defense Factor.

The relevant attribute and power are decided by the action ability. If an ability says it inflicts "weapon damage", the power will be the power of the equipped weapon and the attribute will be ATK.

Some abilities will apply power modifiers or multipliers. Modifiers add and subtract, and are applied before the multipliers. (All multipliers multiply together in sequence.)

Dice are constant and based on the ability. They add some random factor to the damage inflicted.

It is of note that attributes, power, dice, power modifiers, and power multipliers are based only on the action ability and the character and will usually only change in battle if you equip another weapon. They will never be affected by actions or statuses. As such, players should calculate that term in advance of each session, to speed up play.

Situational modifiers are written as percentile adjustments. The situational modifier term begins at 100% and is generally adjusted in steps of +10%. A good set-up from an ally, a magic barrier, or a tremendously satisfying critical blow can all grant situational modifiers.

Armor directly reduces damage from all incoming attacks. Some monsters have access to Magical Armor (which applies only to magic damage) or to Physical Armor (which applies only to physical damage).

If the target is in a defensive stance, they may be applying a defense factor to incoming damage, multiplying it by some fraction. Typically, they're performing the "Defend" action and the factor is 3/5. They lost an action to do it, but it grants them a large reduction to loss of health. If a combatant somehow receives two defense factors at once - for example Rampart, which allows grants a defensive stance to their allies - they only apply the best whenever they take damage.

Some actions and effects have different, special formulae for damage entirely. For example, the Knight's Black Rose spell inflicts damage based on the caster's HP. These are stated in the effect text.

Regardless of the result of this equation, if it produces a final damage number less than 1, the action inflicts 1 damage. In the same fashion, a single "hit" from a damage expression or other damage effect can never inflict more than 9999 damage - this is known as the "Damage Cap", and exists mostly as an homage to video games. A GM could repeal it without affecting balance too much.

Damage Types

Damage can carry descriptors that describe how it's affected by some properties and effects. Most damage is either physical or magical - physical damage is generally inflicted by techniques, and tends to be less accurate, cheaper, and carry stranger effects along with it. Magical damage is generally inflicted by spells, and tends to be the more accurate and more powerful side of the equation.

The phrase "weapon damage" describes damage inflicted by techniques.

Weapon damage can be ranged - if it's not, it's melee. Melee weapon damage can be reduced by striking across rows, while ranged weapon damage does not. They also work differently with respect to some counter-attacks and evasive abilities. Some other abilities also explicitly state that they inflict ranged or melee damage - these apply the rules governing ranged and melee damage, even if they aren't weapon strikes. If damage is explicitly stated to be melee, the effects of rows apply to it, for example.

Damage can also be of a single element - one of Fire, Ice, Lightning, Water, Shadow or Holy. Generally, the element of damage only matters to determine how it interacts with other abilities, but this is a fruitful place to consider house rules, if you feel like it.

Dealing with Damage

A combatant who is reduced to 0 HP falls, taking on the "KO" status which greatly restricts their choice of actions until the point where they are brought back by a Life effect, perhaps by a Phoenix or its Down, or a Raise spell.

Most monsters don't have access to Life effects, so the GM may simply choose to remove them from the field of play. Player-characters can be removed from the field of play if no one has any Life effects, too.

Healing effects restore health to damaged targets. The formulae from healing effects uses formulae much like damage, with attributes, power, dice, and situational modifiers. However, they ignore armor and defense factors. (As they aren't damage.) Healing effects generally do not increase HP beyond maximum except in very rare, explicitly stated cases.

Combatants who are at 25% of their maximum HP or less are treated as being in "Critical Health" sometimes referred to as "SOS". This serves as the break-point for many abilities based on low health, such as Bloody Stream.

WIELDING WEAPONS

Every character in Seed fights with some sort of weapon.
Weapons determine the damage and delay of most Techniques. They also have some inherent properties, based on weapon type.Properties granted by weapon type only apply to strikes with that weapon.

Whenever an action inflicts "Weapon Damage", use the damage code of the equipped weapon. Whenever an action has a [W] code in its delay or floor, replace that with the weapon's values for delay or floor.

Weapons and other equipment can also modify weapon strikes. Any ability that inflicts weapon damage inherits the weapon's effects, such as a tome's MP Charge or a dagger's ability to Power Strike.

Weapon strikes can inflict critical hits - a character strikes a target with a weapon, and the result check is less than their Critical value, they inflict +100% damage with that hit. Additionally, if any attack with a weapon has its final CoS actually under 0, generally through luck expenditure, the attack with inflict a critical hit, even if the weapon has no critical value.

If a character isn't carrying their weapon (maybe they got thrown in jail?) they use these statistics instead:

Damage: 1d8 + 9xATK
Delay: 40D F15

PAYING PRICES

Many actions have certain costs; They can require items, MP, time to charge, or cause you to lose health. You only pay the price of an action once each time you perform it, even if the price is stated in the effect text.

MP: MP stands for "Magic Points" - it refers to the reserve of energy a character uses to perform their skills and cast magic. If an action has an MP cost, you must pay that MP cost as the action is used. If there is insufficient MP, the action cannot be performed.

CT: CT stands for "Charge Time". When you perform an action that has a charge time, declare that action, its CT and give yourself that much delay and enter a "Charging Stance" until the CT finished, which follows the normal rules for Stances - you then actually perform the action the next time you receive a turn, paying the other prices at that time. When you begin a Charge Time, you are not actually taking an action as such - so effects, such as Poison's damage, that occur after taking an action do not affect you, and neither do the statuses affecting you decrement. You can choose to cancel out of a charge time to perform a Wait action when the CT is completed, but the action does not "remain charged" for when you wish to use it next. If your charging stance is cancelled or if you cannot perform the action when your delay reaches 0, you may act freely instead, taking any other action. Note that a character's delay being increased - like from the effects of the Stun spell - does not end the charging stance or prevent it from completing, but it does increase the time needed before the CT is resolved!

Items: Certain actions require and expend items. If the item is not present, the action may not be performed.

Receive a Status: Some actions inflict a condition or other effect on you after they resolve, but before the status phase kicks in and reduces all timers.

Loss of Health: Some actions cause you to lose health as they resolve - reduce your HP total by the listed amount after all other effects from the attack have been resolved. If the loss of health will exceed your current total, you can still perform the action - it'll just knock you out afterward. This loss of health is not damage, so it will not receive situational modifiers, be reduced by defense factors, or anything of the sort.

Luck: Some actions cost LP. Treat these just like MP costs.

Other: Other costs and drawbacks may be outlined in the effect text of an action.

REACTIONS

Some abilities are Reactions - these are like action abilities that have triggers instead of delays. Whenever the situation outlined in the trigger occurs, the actor with the Reaction ability performs it, against a target decided by the trigger. To model a low "chance of activation", most reactions have lower CoSes than action abilities.

If a combatant has several of their reactions triggered by one action - for example, they have both Counter and Bonecrusher equipped, and they are struck by single target melee physical damage - they select which reaction is triggered, and then roll for its CoS. That is to say, a given action can only trigger one reaction from each target of the action.

Reactions never trigger other reactions, to prevent an infinite loop.

When a reaction's result check is unsuccessful - that is to say, it misses - the combatant does not pay any costs of the reaction. This prevents, say, potions being expended on unsuccessful Auto-Potion triggers.

Someone who performs a reaction has not taken a turn - their statuses don't decrement, and they don't suffer the effects of Poison or Sap.

QUICK ABILITIES

Quick Abilities offer combatants the powerful ability to break the normal course of action, leaping in and interrupting. For player characters, each Quick ability can be used once per battle. For monsters, Quick abilities can be used as long as they can pay the cost, though only once per activation.

Each quick ability declares when it can be activated. When you use a quick ability, declare it boldly, interrupting whatever's going on and instantly resolving it. If you're a little bit slow when activating a Quick ability, you can backtrack game events slightly, going back to the point where the ability would be activated and resolving the effects properly instead. (For example, if an ally has already calculated damage from an attack, and declares that the attack would knock them out, you can leap in and go "Actually, let me Guard Assist that…" and resolve matters as if you did.) Please be reasonable with the back-tracking (IE, don't go across the actions of two players) and let all dice rolls stand as they were before fate was altered in this fashion.

Before Acting abilities can be activated at the beginning of your turn, directly before you act. They generally modify your next action.
After Acting abilities can be activated at the end of your turn, right after you resolve the status phase. They generally modify your next action, and are popular among monsters.
When Appropriate abilities can be activated in response to a certain trigger, like a reaction. They generally modify or react to the triggering event.
Anytime abilities can be activated whenever you like.

You can only use one Before Acting or After Acting ability per turn.

Every combatant begins with two special Quick abilities - one offensive assist (Either the Strike Assist or the Spell Assist) and one defensive assist (the Guard Assist). You can call them "SA" and "GA" for short!

The S.A can be activated whenever an ally successfully damages an enemy with an action. It allows you to immediately perform a follow-up attack. Only one S.A can be triggered by a single action.
The G.A can be activated whenever an ally is targeted, struck, or damaged by an action. It allows you to leap in the path of the action, redirecting the resultant hit onto you.

These abilities are detailed under the Basic Actions.

Every class has two Upgrade abilities, one which enhances their offensive assist and another which refreshes their defensive assist. When you gain your offensive assist, you have to rename it, and you have to rename it again when you upgrade it. Renaming your defensive assist is optional, but you can do it if you want.

SPECIAL ABILITIES & REFRESHES

Like Quick abilities, certain abilities have the "Special" keyword, which indicates they may only be used once per battle. These tend to be flashy battle-changers: look for opportunities to use them to their greatest extent!

Certain abilities allow for other abilities to be "Refreshed". When an expended ability is refreshed, you can use it once more in that battle. You can't "stock up" multiple uses of the ability before using it, however.

LUCK

Combatants have a certain reserve of Luck, sometimes called LP. A combatant's maximum and starting LP is equal to their LUC attribute. A PC's luck is restored whenever they resupply, and a monster's luck is restored whenever it loses a battle.

Player characters can spend their Luck anytime during a battle to achieve any of the below effects:

  • Decrease the damage of an incoming attack by -10%.
  • Increase the potency of Magic or Support abilities by +10% while reducing the MP cost of the ability by -10%.
  • Change the result of a result check by 10 in either direction. (Your actions or actions targeting you.) (Attacks made with a weapon whos result is reduces to 0 or lower inflict critical damage.)
  • Reduce the delay or CT of an action you're performing by 5, up to -10. (Only a maximum of 2LP can be used at a time to speed up an action, unlike the other uses for LP which have no limit.)

Monsters usually use their Luck to power certain abilities, instead.

ROWS & BATTLE FORMATION

Each group in a combat is divided into two rows, front and back. Combatants in the back row receive some protection from melee blows, but in turn have their attack power reduced. Specifically, combatants in the back row take on a -20% situational modifier to damage from enemy weapon attacks and to damage they inflict with their weapon to the enemy - these effects are ignored by ranged attacks such as with bows. These modifiers also apply to any damage explicitly stated to be melee damage.

If a combatant in the back row attacks an enemy in their back row, the total modifier would be -40% to a melee attack.

Combatants may change rows with the "Row Change" movement ability, freely available to all.

Some abilities target a row, targeting everyone inside of it. Abilities which target specific rows lose their restriction if there are no combatants in the row it would normally target. Abilities may also push combatants from one row to another.

If at any point one side's group has no active combatants in the front (They are all been KOed, transported into another dimension, or the row has simply been left bare) those in the back row receive no situational modifier. There's nothing to get in the way.

Battle formation is obvious information to all combatants. Player characters should be asked their formation at the beginning of the session - enemies, those tricky fiends, can decide their formation as the battle begins. Of course, players can alter their battle formation at any time out of battle. The default formation which the party can be assumed to be taking unless otherwise stated is "everyone in front" - if the party forget to state it, and the gamemaster forgets to ask, they'll start the battle arranged like that.

CONDITIONS & ENHANCEMENTS

Occasionally, an action creates a lasting, timed effect borne by a single target: a special affliction or benefit, called a Condition (if good) or an Enhancement (if bad.)

When such an effect is applied, it has a duration, defined by a number in parantheses in the effect text, like (4) or (3). If an effect is marked with a (U), it doesn't expire over time. A combatant generally can't have the same condition more than once, except when explicitly stated: if the condition or enhancement is re-applied, simply reset the timer to that granted by the ability, if it's higher.

When a status comes into effect, it has a duration, generally defined by a number in parentheses after the action in the effect text. For example, a spell that inflicts burning (4) inflicts a burning condition with a duration of four - it will last four actions before dissipating. Some effects will create conditions that don't expire naturally; these have an unlimited duration and are suffixed with (U). Affecting a combatant with a condition or enhancement they are already bearing resets the duration to that granted by the effect, if that duration is higher than the one upon them. (That is, a Pulse (2) effect will increase someone who has Pulse (1) to Pulse (2), but won't make a difference to a combatant with Pulse (4).)

The effect of a condition or enhancement is described in the text of the relevant ability.

Rarely, combatants will have immunities to statuses; These do not affect the CoS but simply mean that the effect simply fails to be applied. The action may still be successful - it just does nothing. No event, action or effect can create a condition on a combatant that is immune to it.

Conditions can be removed before they expire by Cleanse effects, which can be found on items and abilities. Certain abilities can remove Enhancements, too.

OUTSIDE OF COMBAT

Abilities that directly restore HP or remove conditions can be used out of combat. (Generally, conditions don't persist after combat, but some do.) Abilities that target monsters or inflict damage, like Conduit, can't be used out of combat.

ANATOMY OF AN ACTION ABILITY

Delay:

Delay is often written as a static number, but the code [W] can also appear here. [W] should be read as the delay of the equipped weapon used to perform the ability.

Targets:

Single - One combatant of your choice.
Double - Two combatants of your choice.
Triple - Three combatants of your choice.
(Different Rows), (Not All Same Row) - At least one target must be in the front row and at least one target must be in the back row.
(Same Row) - All targets must be in the same row.
Row - Strikes one row.
Self - You.
Group - Either your party or the enemy party, as you choose.
All - All combatants on the battlefield - the enemies, you, and your allies.
Triggering Enemy - Applicable to reactions, this reaction ability targets the enemy who triggered the reaction.
Other targeting methods are possible and usually denoted as Special - these will be explained in the effect text.

Occasionally you might need to select a Random target - either random among one party, or one random combatant among the entire group. On a computer, simple random number generation will do the trick - assign each combatant a number, pick a number randomly.

At the table, you could have everyone roll a die of some size - like a d10 or a d20 - and have the highest roller be the selected target, deciding ties based on the whim of the GM. (Or another roll, if you feel like fairness is important.)

Unless otherwise stated, the content of this page is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License