Vaesen - Combat Tracker
The ruleset implements fair degree of automation to handle combat encounters. The following features are added to the combat tracker:
Trackers for Slow/Fast actions. For PCs, the markers are linked to and triggered from the PC Sheet. For NPCs the GM uses the combat tracker directly.
Linked values for Health, Stress, Armor Rating and Air Supply during combat
Targeting enables automation with automatic damage and armor roll calculations
Pause-mechanism before damage allocation to support stunts and allow the GM to handle all cases before damage is committed to an actor or cancel attack/damage sequence.
Automatic Initiative rolls for NPCs
The combat tracker has the following categories that can be expanded globally or per actor:
Targeting – displays the actors targeted
Abilities - enabled for NPCs - displays Abilities, Skills and Equipment entries from their sheet and allows relevant rolls to be made directly from the CT without opening the actor’s sheet. Animals and Vaesens will have their attacks listed here as well.
Combat - this category is populated automatically when successful attack is made against the actor. It will display the information on the attack (what the dice pool was, the base damage and successes generated). GM can use buttons to adjust the result of the attack action before committing.
Space/Reach – Speed is added to this category.
Effects – remains unchanged
COMBAT FLOW SUPPORTED BY THE AUTOMATION
The following is the recommended sequence of actions for handling automation-assisted combat. The flow is the same for NPCs and PCs (will be referred as Actors in the section below), with the only difference is the location from where the attacks & stunts are marked and used. Players use their character sheet’s ACTIONS tab to execute attacks and spend stunt, while the GM is using the buttons in the ABILITIES & COMBAT category in the actor’s entry in the CT. If the player wishes, the GM can also spend stunts on their behalf using the CT buttons.
Combat Tracker in Vaesen has been enhanced to drag & drop different type of actors – NPC, Animal and Vaesen. From now on, NPC is used to describe the three type of actors that can be used.
Preparation Phase:
Add PC to the combat tracker.
Add Encounter or NPCs to the combat tracker (Non-PC actors will automatically roll their initiative values)
Combat Phase & Combat Flow
PC/NPC targets another actor. This requires combat map with tokens, otherwise the GM will assist the player and make targeting on their behalf.
PC/NPC makes attack roll
The combat flow is paused, and the targeted actor has
COMBAT category populated with the result of the attack. The player or GM uses the relevant buttons to spend stunts as appropriate. Spending extra successes is tracked by reducing the Successes counter. Once depleted, no more successes can be spent, and message will be logged in the chat for the GM. The BASE DAMAGE can be adjusted using the Ctrl + mouse wheel. Certain stunts apply immediately.
The GM clicks APPLY button, which triggers armor roll on the target and health is reduced.
Next combatant.
CREATURES WITH SPEED OF 2 OR MORE
Some vaesens might have abilities that allows them to act more than once per each Round. This rule is easy to follow on tabletop but becomes challenging in virtual tabletop environment. In Fantasy Grounds, an NPC actor in combat tracker separate copy of an NPC from the library, rather than reference (PC actor is reference is to the character sheet of the payer).
Recommendation for handing such situations is to place separate NPC with the same name but on different initiatives. Players will continue targeting the enemies marked in RED, while the entities marked in YELLOW are for marking the extra actions.
