Conflict Actions
You can do pretty much anything during a conflict, but you’ll probably use most of your actions to gain an advantage, eliminate enemies, or avoid getting killed. The following actions are especially useful.
ATTACK ‡ ANALYZE ‡ FLEE ‡ PREPARE & PROTECT
Attack
Roll a relevant Warfare skill check with the weapon’s ATT as a modifier.
If successful, deal damage as indicated by the weapon’s DAM, and the GM applies it according to the enemy type being targeted. Finally, you have the following additional ways to use [+] beyond the normal ones:
attack roll
1 [+] Increase the damage tier you deal by one this verse.
1 [+] Declare one or more additional targets (up to TGT). If the weapon has the Quick feature (like all slashing and automatic weapons), this can be 2 or even 4 targets per [+]. (keep the weapon’s maximum TGT limit in mind)
Switching Out Successful Attack Actions
If you, after a successful attack check, realize you don’t want to deal damage with it, you can use the success just like a [+] instead, introducing aspects or truths into the scene, linked to your action. These aspects or truths can affect enemies, allies, or the environment. They may also influence events or declared end troubles to change the course of the conflict.
Unarmed and Improvised Attacks
If you’re attacking unarmed, treat it as an attack with a weapon with damage equal to the tier of your highest Natural Weapon feature (usually provided by corruptions), or Bruise I if you don’t have any. The GM has the final say on attacks with improvised weapons, and may freely tweak values according to the situation. Maximum targets TGT is your own SPD/5 while fighting this way.
Range
Weapons don’t have any specific range, the GM decides if an attack is possible or if a “hard to hit” aspect is demanding an extra [+] If the GM decides a target is at an impossible range, you could always try a panic check.
Augmented Attacks/Reloading
Using an augmentation works like an attack but modified by the weapons AGM instead. The attack also affects the target with the intended or unintended effect of the consumable.
You normally don’t need to reload your weapons in Astro Inferno, they’re always ready to use – still, weapon jams or even broken weapons can be introduced as negative aspects or truths resulting from triggered or end troubles.
Analyze
Attempt to get hints about how to improve your situation, or reveal that which is hidden or unclear, by rolling a relevant skill check (usually from the Perception skill tree).
On a success, ask the GM anything, possibly spending [+] to ask further questions. On a failure or botch, the GM may use the negative aspect or truth to introduce dire news or fake findings.
Not everything requires an action to ask about. Some questions can usually be asked of the GM straight away, to which they can reply fully or approximately. Adversary count and type are usually open information, while bones, mortality, and damage usually require analyzing. In the end, however, it is all up to what the GM believes to be most appropriate for their game.
Flee
Run for your life, leaving this cursed conflict and all of your allies behind by rolling a relevant skill check (usually from the Movement skill tree).
On a success, you are out of the conflict, probably safe and sound, but you’ll have to wait for the conflict to end before the story shifts back to you. The last character in a conflict cannot do this, though. They need to end the conflict to get away, so think twice before fleeing (or letting someone flee before you.)
Prepare & Protect
Get ready to do something later in the verse. First, declare what you’re preparing for. Then, roll a relevant skill check. [+] left over from other actions can also be saved to be used as preparations later that verse. Preparations are especially useful for protecting and taking cover, but may be used for a wide range of actions.
Protect
Protecting is a maneuver where you parry or distract the enemy in order to avoid damage to yourself or to a nearby ally. It allows you to reduce the damage dealt to a character by a future attack or effect by 5. If you have rolled a bunch of [+] there is no limit to how many prepared protections you can use in the same verse or to whom they are applied, as long as the GM thinks it makes sense.
While fighting a horrid tentacled beast, the Defiler makes a Jump check to get to a higher position and gets 2 [+]. She spends both to prepare protections against any attack from the beast, against her or the Thief, planning to shout and curse at the beast if it tries to attack. At the end of the verse it lashes out with its barbed tentacles against them. Because of her preparation, the Defiler can lower the damage dealt to one of them by 10, or to both by 5.
Take Cover
Taking cover is getting yourself or a nearby friend to a safer position. It allows you to halve all damage dealt to a character until the end of the verse. Each character can only benefit from cover once in a verse, but you can prepare as many as you like to get all your friends into cover. When a character is both benefiting from cover and under an effect that reduces the damage (such as a protection), always apply the cover modification and halve the damage first.
The Thief had one take cover action prepared, but as the Defiler took more wounds than him, he decided to spend it to halve the damage she took, pushing her behind a pile of debris at the last second.
Preparations remain available until they’re used or the verse ends. If there are still any unused preparations after the end trouble resolution, they may be converted to half as much [+], rounded up, which must be spent right away, representing your hurried, stressed actions at the end of the verse.
Protective Actions\
- PROTECT - 1[+] reduce damage taken by 5
- TAKE COVER - 1[+] halve taken damage (once/character)