While the cultures comprising the Federation have moved beyond the divisive and destructive wars of their pasts, other spacefaring civilizations in the known Galaxy have not. Strife and conflict remain present threats to peaceful exploration and discovery. Wherever two intelligent beings exist together, there will be differences of opinion, and while a peaceful resolution is preferred, one is not always possible.
This chapter deals with various types of conflict characters may face during a game session: social conflict, personal conflict, and starship conflict.
SOCIAL CONFLICT: Deals with resolving disputes through personal interaction. This can take a wide variety of forms, ranging from simple deceptions to achieve short-term goals to protracted negotiations over the fate of worlds. Social conflict is detailed in page 279.
PERSONAL CONFLICT: Deals with the use of violence to achieve an objective. Characters may engage in combat willingly, or they may be forced to defend themselves. Starfleet officers are taught there are alternatives to fighting, and finding ways to prevent or end combats are just as important as having the means to defend themselves and others. Personal conflict is detailed in on page 284.
STARSHIP CONFLICT: Deals with the use of starships and their powerful armaments and defenses, either to protect an interest or oppose an adversary. Starfleet nominally operates in a defense-first perspective, firing only when fired upon or when there is no other recourse. Other spacefaring civilizations operate with a similar philosophy, though not all do. Some, like the Klingons, find honor and glory in direct combat, while others prefer to use their mighty spacecraft to exert their influence or display their strength. Starship conflict is detailed on page 294.
Conflict Structure
The sequence of events in any type of conflict is split into rounds and turns. In a round, each character takes a single turn, during which each character can attempt a single major action and several minor actions. The round ends when all characters present in the scene have taken a turn, if they can.
At the start of any conflict, the gamemaster chooses a character to take the first turn. The choice is based on the following:
PLAYER CHARACTERS: By default, the gamemaster chooses a single player character to take the first turn. This may be an obvious choice, based on events that built up to the start of the conflict. If there is any uncertainty, the gamemaster selects the player character with the highest Daring.
NON-PLAYER CHARACTERS (NPCs): If the NPCs have an obvious reason to take the first turn, (e.g., they have ambushed the player characters) the gamemaster can select an NPC to take the first turn.
THREAT SPEND: If there is doubt as to who should act first, the gamemaster can spend 1 Threat to allow an NPC to take the first turn.
Turn Order
Once you have completed your turn—attempted a single major action and any minor actions—the action passes to the opposing side (typically the gamemaster), who chooses a single NPC to act next. Once that NPC has taken their turn, play goes back to the players, who decide which of the player characters left to act takes the next turn.
Keeping the Initiative
At the end of your turn, you can spend 2 Momentum (Immediate) to Keep the Initiative, handing the action to another player character instead. A character who takes a turn due to keeping the initiative must hand the next turn over to the opposition. In any case, no character may take more than one turn per round in a conflict.
Stress
Every main character, and some supporting characters, have a limited ability to withstand stress, resist consequences, and avoid injuries during tense or dangerous situations.
A character can withstand a maximum amount of Stress equal to their Fitness attribute; your choice of species, talents, and other factors may affect this maximum. Each time your character faces a consequence, you may choose to suffer Stress instead.
When you suffer Stress, the severity of the consequence—usually a number between 1 and 5—tells you how much Stress you must endure: mark that amount of Stress on your Stress Track, like so:
If you can’t endure that amount of Stress without going over your maximum, suffer whatever Stress you can (filling your Stress Track) and suffer a complication, representing some additional problem faced during the conflict.
There may be other circumstances which cause you to suffer Stress. Exposure to extreme environments— intense heat or cold, or thin atmospheres—as well as physical fatigue, starvation, dehydration, sleep deprivation, poison, radiation, diseases, or substance withdrawal can all inflict Stress, at the gamemaster’s discretion.
FATIGUE
When you have suffered your maximum Stress, you are Fatigued. You can continue to act, but your body and mind are struggling and you are far from your best.
When you are Fatigued, you cannot suffer more Stress, and you suffer +1 Difficulty on all task rolls. Further, select one of your attributes: while Fatigued, you automatically fail any task using that attribute. That attribute is shut down.
RECOVERING STRESS
Starfleet officers and other characters lead intense, challenging, and often stressful lives. However, managing the stresses of such a life, and having ample time and opportunity to rest and recuperate, is a necessary part of an effective and happy crew.
A character can recover Stress in several ways. Each time you recover 1 Stress, clear one marked space on your Stress Track. If you’re Fatigued, you can only recover from Stress by resting, or if an ally helps you. Ways to recover from Stress include:
MOMENTUM: After a successful task, you may spend 2 Momentum to remove 1 Stress (Repeatable) from yourself or one ally who can hear you. A character cannot remove more than 3 Stress in this way on any single task.
REST: You can recover from Stress outside of conflict by spending time resting and relaxing:
A breather takes a few minutes, during which you stop all strenuous activity, and perhaps grab a quick bite to eat or something to drink. Recover 4 Stress.
A break takes at least half an hour and up to a couple of hours. This may involve a modest meal, or taking some personal time for recreation, such as playing a game, reading, or engaging in creative pursuits. Recover 8 Stress.
Sleep or a similar extended period of rest takes several hours, typically somewhere comfortable and quiet, and is normally accompanied by a meal and/or something to drink before or after sleep. Some characters, depending on species, may sleep less, but supplement this time with meditation or other form of waking rest. Recover all your Stress, up to your normal maximum.
The gamemaster may adjust the amount of Stress recovered by resting depending on the conditions and quality of rest. Poor conditions are usually a reason to do so— needing to rest in the wilderness, with limited rations and poor shelter may cut down the amount to half its normal value. Increasing the amount of Stress recovered often comes from improved quality conditions, such as exceptional food and drink or quality time spent with friends and loved ones.
At the gamemaster’s discretion, Stress can be recovered in other ways, but there should always be a cost. Rest takes time, which could be spent doing something else. Attempting to find alternatives to rest, such as by using chemical stimulants, may have side effects or other consequences.
NPCs and Stress
The rules for Stress apply to player characters. Supporting characters and NPCs are treated differently.
A supporting character does not have Stress under normal circumstances. A supporting character who has one value has maximum Stress equal to half their Fitness (rounded up). A supporting character with two or more values has maximum Stress calculated as if they were a main player character.
NPCs do not have Stress. Notable and Major NPCs may spend Threat to avoid consequences. They cannot be Fatigued and cannot reach maximum Stress. The cost to avoid Stress is the same for NPCs as for player characters, but paid using Threat.
A Notable NPC may spend Threat to avoid a consequence or injury once per scene.
A Major NPC may spend Threat to avoid consequences or injuries as often as they wish (and have Threat to spend).
Social Conflict
In Starfleet, an officer’s ability to deal with people is an important part of their successes and their failures. Officers of all kinds, but those aspiring to command especially, need to be able to read and deal with people both individually and collectively. This isn’t limited only to their subordinates and their superiors, but also to strangers—a Starfleet officer represents all of Starfleet, and so some basic understanding of diplomacy is a necessity.
Social conflict is the collective term for tasks and challenges resolved through deception, diplomacy, bargaining, intimidation, and a range of other social skills. Not all personal interactions are social conflict, but all social conflict is driven by interactions, especially those where each side has different goals or may not wish to yield to the desires of another.
At the heart of social conflict is a desire or goal, which takes the form of a request: one side wants something, and the other side is either able to grant that request, or they are standing in the way of that goal. It comes down to one character asking another a question.
There are a few different responses to that question, and the character being asked may respond in one of two ways:
YIELD: The character receiving the request agrees to it, and grants that request as far as they are able. A character won’t inconvenience themselves to do this, nor will they do more than is reasonably necessary to help. This is automatic and requires no task.
RESIST: The character receiving the request refuses to grant it. Regardless, the character denies the request outright, but they may face consequences for resisting.
Regardless of any other consequences, if a character resists a request in a social conflict, then that request cannot be made again without being changed, or without some other change of context.
As persuasion is driven by context, what is impossible in one situation may be feasible in another. It may be useful to break up a goal into smaller, more reasonable requests, each resolved separately, pursuing a greater objective piece by piece.
This is also where social tools come in. Social tools allow a character to alter the context or circumstances of persuasion, normally in the form of applying traits or other factors, and they can be used individually or collectively to shape a social conflict.
During a social conflict, each side may have different goals, meaning that each side engages in their own actions to further those goals. Even in something as seemingly one-directional as an interrogation, the interrogator will be trying to get information, while the interrogated party may have a goal of their own, such as trying to prove their own innocence.
Resisting Persuasion
If a character resists when faced with a request, this becomes an opposed task. The asking character first rolls an appropriate combination of attribute + department to set the Difficulty. The Difficulty can be altered by factors such as traits like deception, evidence, intimidation, or negotiation.
The resisting character rolls in response, using whichever combination of attribute + department makes the most sense given the circumstances.
If the asking character wins, the resisting character may either give in to the asking character’s request, or they may resist by suffering Stress. The severity of this (the amount of Stress it costs) is equal to the number of successes scored by the asking character. The asking character may increase this severity by 1 by spending 2 Momentum (Repeatable).
If the resisting character wins, the request is not granted, and there is no further effect.
Social Tools
Social tools are the methods by which you can alter the context and circumstances of a social conflict, moving things in your favor. Each social tool is an action, and they can be used individually or collectively to shape a social conflict.
DECEPTION
Falsehoods and deceit can be valuable tools, and honorable if the ends are honorable too—but lies are dangerous. Deception can be used by itself to make a request seem more reasonable or palatable, or it can be used in conjunction with other tools to create a more significant impact. However, effective deception requires skill, cunning, and an understanding of who is being lied to.
Deception is always an opposed task. The character creating the deception first rolls to set the Difficulty. They gather a dice pool, rolling against their own target number as if they were making a task roll. However, they are not rolling against any specific Difficulty; just count how many successes they score. The person attempting to see through the deception gathers their dice pool and rolls against their target number. If they score more successes, they are not deceived.
Successfully deceiving someone convinces them of something that is not true, creates a trait that represents the lie they now believe, and will shape their future actions accordingly.
Deception can be used to establish lies in preparation for future Persuade tasks. Empty threats can intimidate a foe with a peril they believe is real, and history is full of scams, cons, and tricks where people bargained with things they didn’t own. The problem with Deception is that it’s all a lie. If the target discovers they were deceived, they will hesitate to trust your character in future, and may even seek retribution—in effect, you lose the trait you created and suffer a complication in its place. Further, any complications suffered while establishing a lie may reveal flaws in your deception, making the target suspicious.
Successful Deception also adds 1 Difficulty per successful lie to the severity after a Persuade opposed task is rolled. However, it also increases the deceiver’s complication range by 1 for each lie as well, as lies can become entangled and complicated.
EVIDENCE
The counterpoint to deception is Evidence—offering something that provides certainty and proof of your claims. In many cases, providing evidence may be a straightforward affair, automatically successful, but convincing someone the evidence is legitimate may be difficult, particularly if that person expects deception, which may set a Difficulty for a task. Each piece of evidence is a trait, either allowing you to attempt a Persuade task or decreasing the Difficulty by 1.
Evidence can be used in conjunction with any of the other social tools, and their use is often the driving force of those tools. Providing proof of your ability to carry out a threat can be vital when intimidating someone, giving evidence of your ability to pay during negotiations can smooth things along, and even deception can benefit from the right forged documentation if it helps make the lie more believable.
Each relevant piece of evidence the target is willing to accept also adds 1 to the severity after a Persuade opposed task.
INTIMIDATION
A direct and crude method of coercion is to inspire fear, doubt, and uncertainty in your opponent. Intimidation uses threats to compel someone into action by convincing others that their non-compliance will be met with force.
Intimidating someone is an opposed task, with the Difficulty of each task based on the relative perceived strengths of each side—it is easier to intimidate, and to resist intimidation, from a position of strength. Intimidating someone requires they believe there is a real threat.
Successfully intimidating someone imposes a trait upon them, representing their fear of whatever the threat was. Failing to intimidate someone makes further attempts to intimidate them in that scene more difficult, often requiring even greater threats to compensate.
The drawback of Intimidation is it is inherently hostile, which can cause problems of its own. Employing Intimidation creates an antagonistic tension between the two sides—represented by traits—which can worsen other forms of interactions, cause lingering resentment, or even provoke a target to aggression.
NEGOTIATION
Negotiation is a fine art, requiring a keen mind and strong willpower. Negotiation involves compensation in exchange for granting a request, and this compensation can take many forms, with different people and different circumstances susceptible to different offers. The Ferengi and many other cultures trade in gold-pressed latinum and other precious goods, continually adjusting their offers until they reach the best deal for themselves. Diplomats mediate disputes, arranging the terms of trade agreements and territorial disputes by securing concessions from each side until everyone is happy (or at least willing to comply).
When you negotiate with someone you create a trait that represents what you’re willing to offer, and a complication that represents the cost of that offer. Each new offer is considered a new change of circumstances for the Persuade task. Negotiation doesn’t require a task by itself—it is more a process of trial and error.
Negotiations may involve a lot of position shifting from both sides, as they make and retract offers, or discover the other party doesn’t have what they want. In some situations, numerous sessions of negotiation may be needed to obtain what one party wants from someone else to progress.
The drawback to Negotiation is the cost of success. You may find yourself offering more than you wanted to give up, or you may find that what you obtained was worth less than the price you paid for it. Failing to provide what was offered can also produce serious problems, which can be significant if the negotiations were based on a lie.
In some ways, Negotiation is the antithesis of Intimidation—achieving a goal through offering something productive, rather than threatening something destructive. Few beings will be amenable to trade and negotiate with those they’ve been threatened by, and such trades may have a steeper cost because of previous hostilities.
Social Conflict in Combat
Social conflict and combat are not mutually exclusive modes of conflict. As long as characters can communicate, they can engage in social conflict. While social conflict in combat—such as convincing the other side to surrender—is unlikely to have much subtlety or nuance, it can be helpful to convince opponents to put down their blades and begin talking again.
In these instances, it’s worth remembering that communication doesn’t have to mean speech, text, or any other form of complex communication. Actions can convey ideas as effectively as words, so long as the ideas aren’t particularly complex. A disruptor fired as a warning shot can be a threat, while conveying a false appearance— hidden troops, sensor decoys, or a feigned retreat—can be an effective deception. Using these non-verbal cues, as well as more precise forms of communication, can be an effective way of ending a fight with less violence.
Deception Against Player Characters
Player characters may not be receptive to NPCs lying to them. This can make the deception part of social conflict tricky to use against player characters, particularly as picking up the dice and attempting a task can signal an adversary is lying, regardless of the result.
In these situations, there are two possible approaches:
Play the rules straight, with the players knowing things their characters cannot always detect. It may be worth occasionally invoking values negatively, essentially offering Determination to players to convince them to play along with an NPC’s lie.
Keep NPC lies secret during play, and let the player decide if they think an NPC is lying to them rather than rolling. If they suspect deceit, let them attempt a task to see if their character notices anything. If the players ask to roll too frequently— like asking for a task with everything said by every NPC—then treat suspicion as escalation, so each time they attempt a task to find if an NPC is lying, it adds 1 Threat, as NPCs notice and are insulted by the unfair scrutiny.
Personal Conflict
This section deals with situations where violence—hopefully a last resort, or a tool of self-defense—has broken out. Combat does not prevent other methods being used, and any worthwhile battle will have an objective above and beyond simply overcoming the enemy. These goals are normally straightforward: reaching a location, object, or person, or preventing the enemy from doing those things. There may also be a time factor involved in a combat encounter, where achieving the goal in a specific time frame is necessary, or one side needs to fend off the enemy long enough to complete some other challenge.
One important consideration for combat is that not all combats are fought to the bitter end—few combatants are willing to die pointlessly, and even implacable foes like the Borg or the Jem’Hadar know the value of regrouping rather than pushing on against hopeless odds. Instead, combat frequently ends in one side retreating from the battle. This may involve a fighting withdrawal on foot, the arrival of a transport, or getting transported out.
The Battlefield
In a battle, knowing the location of every combatant is important, and determining both absolute position (where you are on the battlefield) and relative position (how far you are from a given friend or foe) is essential. Rather than track everything in precise distances, Star Trek Adventures resolves this matter using distances and zones.
Environments and Zones
The battlefield in which you fight is always a discrete location—a building, a colony street, an area of wilderness, part of a starship, or another area. A battlefield is divided into several zones based on the terrain in the area. A simple battlefield may consist of three to five significant zones, while complex environments may have many more. For example, combat inside a starship may treat individual rooms as distinct zones, using the internal walls and bulkheads as natural divisions, while a city street may focus zones on features like parked vehicles, the fronts of buildings, alleyways, and so forth.
Track your characters’ place in combat by noting which zone they are in. This should be easy in most cases, as zones are defined by the terrain around them, tracking your character can be a matter of simple description: a character may be described as ‘behind the control console’ or ‘standing by the shuttle’. This has the advantage of relying on natural language and intuitive concepts, rather than specific game terms, and avoids the tracking of relative distances which can become fiddly where there are many characters present.
Zones do not have a fixed size; they are based on the features of the battlefield. A forest may be divided into many small zones between trees, while its clearings will have larger zones. Larger zones convey quicker movement and easier target acquisition in open areas, while the smaller zones convey cramped conditions and short lines of sight.
Individual zones often have terrain effects defined when the gamemaster creates them, like cover or difficult terrain, interactive objects, or hazards. Some zones may be defined more by the absence of terrain than its presence, and some environments are enhanced by a few ‘empty’ zones between obstacles.
Distances and Range
Movement and ranged attacks range is measured in four distances and one state, based on the battlefield’s zones.
Reach is the state when an object or character is within or moves into easy reach of your character. You enter Reach to interact with objects manually or to make a melee attack. When you move your character into or within a zone, you can declare they are moving into or out of Reach of something. Being within Reach of an enemy increases the Difficulty of any task that isn’t a melee attack by 1.
Close range is defined as the zone you are in, or a distance of 0 zones.
Medium range is defined as an adjacent zone, or a distance of 1 zone.
Long range is defined as two zones away, or a distance of 2 zones.
Extreme range is any zone beyond long range, or a distance of 3 or more zones.
Movement and Terrain
Moving to anywhere within Medium range requires a minor action. Moving further than this requires a major action. Movement can take many forms—walking, running, jumping, swimming, climbing, etc.
Difficult terrain describes any ground requiring more effort to cross, either because it hinders you or because you need to be careful where you step. A zone may be filled with difficult terrain, slowing anyone attempting to cross it.
Terrain Momentum Costs
Difficult Terrain Momentum Cost
Thick mud, loose sand, stairs 1
Swamp, unstable rubble 2
Steep slope, fast-flowing water 3
Obstacle Moment Costs
Wall or barrier up to waist height, or a short jump 1
Wall or barrier up to chest height, or a long jump 2
Wall or barrier taller than you, or a long jump with a run-up 3
Obstacles are similar in that they hinder your movement, but they exist between zones—attempts to move from one zone to another where an obstacle is present may slow your progress. Obstacles may be barriers you need to climb up or over, or they might be gaps that you need to jump past.
When you attempt to move from an area of difficult terrain, or cross an obstacle, you must spend 1 or more Momentum, depending on how difficult the terrain or obstacle is. This is Immediate.
If you do not have sufficient Momentum available (and don’t want to add Threat), you must find some way to generate the points you need. The simplest way to do this is to attempt the Sprint task as a major action, generating Momentum with a Difficulty 0 Fitness + Security task—any successes become Momentum, which can be spent on moving through the terrain. Other tasks can also generate Momentum in this way, but taking the Sprint major action combines movement and a task into a single action for the sake of convenience.
Characters with appropriate traits (representing gear for traversing terrain, or perhaps physical adaptations suitable to a particular type of movement) may reduce the cost of crossing types of terrain by 1, at the gamemaster’s discretion. For example, Denobulans evolved to climb quickly and efficiently, and thus reduce the cost of difficult terrain when climbing.
Falling
Sheer drops, steep slopes, precarious catwalks, deep chasms, and other places where falling is a possibility are the most common forms of hazardous terrain. As falling is such a common risk, it deserves specific attention, which can also serve as inspiration for how to handle other hazards.
The simplest way to consider falling is to inflict damage—falling a long way may cause an injury. However, this is probably the least interesting way to approach the situation, and if the group isn’t in combat, it can be an inconsequential one. Further, there are a range of other possibilities that could be explored:
The fall was inconvenient, and the climb back up will slow the group down as they wait for whomever fell.
The fall was inconvenient, and the character that fell is stuck unless someone figures out a way to get them back up. That might be a task or challenge.
The fall was inconvenient, and the character that fell is separated from the group and must make their own way to their destination.
The fall was painful, and the character that fell suffered a complication, like a twisted ankle, or some other inconvenience. This might be avoided by suffering Stress.
The fall was dangerous, and the character that fell suffers an Injury (which cannot be avoided), needing medical attention to stabilize and help to continue.
You could offer Success at Cost on tasks to avoid falling; the character may only fall part of the way, but grab onto something, or lose an item in the process. This is useful for falls that would otherwise be deadly.
Cover
Cover is a common terrain effect, representing objects that interfere with your ability to see or attack a target clearly. Cover allows you to turn an enemy ranged attack into an opposed task, giving you a better chance of resisting them and possibly counter-attacking. Cover can be represented by a location trait.
A zone will either provide cover to any creature in the zone, or the gamemaster may point out features within the zone that grant Cover (requiring you to be within Reach of that feature to benefit from it).
Interactive Objects
Interactive objects are any object or terrain feature you can manipulate. Doors and windows are examples, as are control panels and computer terminals. Interacting with these objects may only take a minor action, but a complex object might need a major action, including a task, to interact with properly, at the discretion of the gamemaster.
Communication and Perception
DISTANCES AND COMMUNICATION
You will want to communicate during combat—battle cries, verbal challenges, and other dialogue. Your characters can converse normally within Close range—they’re near enough to one another to be heard and to make themselves understood without raising their voices.
A character at Medium range can be communicated with, but they’ll need to raise their voice and shout to be understood. At Long and Extreme range, you can shout to communicate, but conveying any but the simplest of meanings is unlikely. Communicators and similar technologies make distance trivial, allowing you to communicate across vast distances with ease.
DISTANCE AND PERCEPTION
The further away something is, the harder it is to notice. In game terms, this means characters in distant zones are harder to observe or identify. The Difficulty of tasks to try to notice creatures or objects increase by 1 at Medium range, by 2 at Long range, and by 3 at Extreme range. Your gamemaster describes what you can see clearly, and people who aren’t trying to hide from sight can be seen moving at most ranges. Traits, such as darkness or smoke, increase the Difficulty to perceive others or make it entirely impossible depending on the trait. Species traits often apply here, as some species can perceive things more clearly in darkness, or see over longer distances.
OTHER SENSES
Humanoid perception is generally dominated by sight and hearing, but other senses can come into play depending on the species. A character’s sense of touch is limited to Reach. Humans and most other civilized species can only detect the most pungent smells outside of Reach. Creatures with a keen sense of smell—such as Klingons and Vulcans—can detect scents within Close range, and tasks made to detect something by smell beyond Close range increase in Difficulty by 1 per zone.
A species with a particularly keen sense may reduce the Difficulty of all tasks related to that sense, while dull senses increase the Difficulty of those tasks—in any case, this is covered by the creature’s species trait.
Telepathy can be thought of as a sense in this regard, able to discern thoughts and the mental presence of other creatures over a distance. Similarly, the use of scanning equipment such as a tricorder can allow you to detect things that would be otherwise unable to be perceived.
Combat Actions
In any given turn in a combat, you can attempt one major action and one minor action. You may gain additional actions by spending Momentum or adding to Threat.
Minor Actions
Minor actions are short activities that do not include a task. They are taken in support of a major action, like moving into position before making an attack. You can take 1 minor action on each of your turns, and may take an additional minor action per turn by spending 1 Momentum.
Personal Conflict Minor Actions
Action Effect
Aim When you make an Attack this turn, you may re-roll a single d20 on the task roll.
Draw Item You pick up an item within Reach or draw an item you are carrying. If using the item doesn’t require a task to use, you can use it immediately as part of this minor action.
Interact You Interact with an object in the environment, such as opening a door by pressing the control panel or issuing a simple voice command to a computer. Complex interactions may require a major action and a task roll instead.
Movement You move up to one zone, to any point within Medium range. You cannot take this minor action in the same turn as a Movement major action. If there are any enemies within Reach of you, you cannot perform this action.
Prepare You prepare for or set up a task. Some items require this minor action before they can be used, and some major actions require this minor action before they can be attempted. Sometimes items will grant special benefits if this action is used before performing a task.
Stand/Drop Prone You drop to the ground, making yourself a smaller target, or stand up from being prone. You cannot Stand and Drop Prone in the same turn.
Major Actions
Major actions are the main activity you perform on your turn, and normally include a task. You can attempt 1 major action during your turn. You can attempt a second major action on your turn by spending 2 Momentum (this adds 1 to the Difficulty of any task on the second major action). You may also gain a second major action during the round if you are the subject of the Direct action. You may not attempt more than two major actions during any round.
Personal Conflict Major Actions
Action Effect
Assist You Assist a character with a task roll during their turn. (See Teamwork and Assistance, page 255). If they have not yet acted, take this action on your turn, and Assist when they take their turn. If they attempt a task before your turn, you may choose to Assist them immediately, but you give up your turn later in the round to do so.
Attack You Attack an enemy or other viable target and attempt to injure them. See Attempting an Attack (page 290) for details.
Create Trait This is a task with a Difficulty of 2, using an attribute + department and focus based on what you are doing. If successful, you create, change, or remove an existing trait, or increase or decrease the Potency of an existing trait.
Direct This may only be attempted by one character on each side in a position of authority (the highest-ranking person, or a nominated leader). Spend 1 Momentum and select one ally who can hear you. They may immediately attempt a single action with no +1 Difficulty; you Assist with Control + Command.
First Aid You attempt to revive a Defeated character within Reach. Attempt a Daring + Medicine task with a Difficulty of 2. If successful, the character is no longer Defeated, though they may still have an Injury. Alternately, you may tend to an Injury on another character within Reach. Attempt a Daring + Medicine task with a Difficulty equal to the Injury’s severity. If successful, one Injury is treated (see Recovery and Healing, page 292).
Guard You defend yourself, preparing for an attack. This is an Insight + Security task with a Difficulty of 0. Success increases the Difficulty of any attacks against you by 1 until the start of your next turn. You can confer the benefits of this task to an ally within Reach instead of yourself—this increases the Difficulty of this task by 1, and the benefit lasts until the start of your ally’s next turn.
Other Tasks Perform a task at the discretion of the gamemaster. Circumstances or objectives may dictate a task, and dangerous situations may require overcoming an extended task or completing a challenge. Pass You choose not to attempt a task.
Ready You choose another major action to take as a reaction to something else. When the trigger event occurs, you temporarily interrupt the current character’s turn to resolve your readied major action, then play proceeds as normal. If the triggering event does not occur before your next turn, the action is lost. You can still perform minor actions during your turn as normal.
Sprint You run forward, trying to cross the area quickly. You move two zones, to any point within Long range. If there is difficult or hazardous terrain, you may attempt a Fitness + Conn task with Difficulty 0 as part of this action, to generate Momentum to cross the terrain as part of this action.
Being Prone
While you have the Prone trait, the Difficulty of all Ranged Attacks against you from Medium range or further away increase by 1, and if you are in Cover, you gain an additional +1 Protection. However, Melee Attacks and Ranged Attacks at Close range gain 2 bonus Momentum against you, and you cannot attempt any movement-related major actions. Bonus Momentum cannot be saved.
Attacks
An Attack is the most direct major action in combat. The process for attempting an Attack is shown opposite:
Attempting an Attack
1
CHOOSE A WEAPON AND TARGET: Select the weapon you wish to Attack with, and the target. You must also choose whether you intend to inflict a Stun or Deadly Injury; if you choose to inflict a Deadly Injury, add 1 Threat.
MELEE ATTACK: Can be attempted against any target within Reach.
RANGED ATTACK: Can be attempted against any target you can see.
2
ATTEMPT ATTACK: Make a task roll to see if the Attack is successful.
MELEE ATTACK: Attempt a Daring + Security task with a Difficulty of 1. If the target is aware of your attack and able to defend themselves, this becomes an opposed task instead, resisted by the target’s own Daring + Security.
RANGED ATTACK: Attempt a Control + Security task with a Difficulty of 2. If the target has Cover from the attack (see Cover, page 287), then this becomes an opposed task instead, resisted by the target's own Control + Security.
3
RESOLVE ATTACK: If your Attack succeeded, you inflict an Injury upon your target (see Injuries, below).
COUNTERATTACK: If the Attack was an opposed task, and the target won, then they may either move out of Reach (if in melee) or spend 2 Momentum to Counterattack, inflicting an Injury upon you in return.
AVOID INJURY: A character who suffers an Injury may Avoid Injury (page 292).
Injuries
When you successfully hit an opponent during combat, they may become Injured. Some environmental effects also come with a risk of Injury, such as falling from great heights, being set on fire, exposure to hostile environments, industrial or engineering accidents, and a range of other hazards.
When a character is hit by an attack, or is affected by a hazard (an environmental danger, such as a fire, falling rocks, or similar), they suffer an Injury.
The exact nature of the Injury is described as a character trait (see page 250), one which represents the damage done to the character. As with any trait, this may make some actions more difficult, or even impossible, depending on what the Injury represents. When a character suffers an Injury, the nature of the attack or hazard which caused it will suggest a name for that Injury—for example, a disruptor may cause a Burn trait—but players or the gamemaster may suggest a fitting alternative. The gamemaster’s ruling on this is final, however.
All sources of Injury also have a severity. This is a number, normally between 1 and 5, which indicates how evere the Injury is. The severity of an Injury is important in a few different ways, explained below. When you succeed at an Attack, you may spend 2 Momentum to increase the severity by 1. This is repeatable, but you cannot increase the severity by more than 2.
When a character suffers an Injury, they are also Defeated. A defeated character immediately falls prone and cannot take any actions for the rest of the scene. Characters can recover from being defeated in a few ways, described in the following sections.
SET PHASERS TO STUN
Injuries broadly come in two categories: Stun and Deadly, and which one an Attack or hazard inflicts will be listed in its description: for example, an Unarmed Attack inflicts Stun Injuries.
Some Attacks have multiple options for the kinds of Injuries they can inflict. For example, a Phaser can inflict Stun or Deadly Injuries. Where this choice exists, you must choose which kind of Injury you wish to inflict when you choose the target of the attack. If you’re counterattacking, make this choice when you spend Momentum to counterattack.
Stun Attacks are intended to incapacitate a target without causing lasting harm. An Injury caused by a Stun Attack only lasts while you are Defeated. If you stop being Defeated, a Stun Injury is removed at the end of your next turn, as you shake off the effects.
Deadly Attacks are those which inflict serious harm upon the target, which might result in death. If you choose to make a Deadly Attack, add 1 Threat. While you have one or more Deadly Injuries and are Defeated, you are Dying, and you will die at the end of the scene if you do not receive medical attention.
STRESS AND AVOIDING INJURY
When you suffer an Injury, you may Avoid Injury by taking Stress. Suffer Stress equal to the attack’s severity to ignore that Injury, suggesting that you ducked out of the way at the last moment or otherwise resisted the attack. This also prevents you from being defeated by that Injury as well.
RECOVERY AND HEALING
You may provide First Aid to help defeated and injured allies. The First Aid action allows you to attempt a Daring + Medicine task with a Difficulty of 2 to tend to another character within Reach. If you complete the task, the patient is no longer Defeated. Alternatively, you may attempt a Daring + Medicine task with a Difficulty equal to the Injury’s severity to treat an Injury the patient has suffered.
A treated Injury no longer imposes any penalty, but it is still an Injury, and it will need proper medical treatment to remove entirely. Further, complications may result in a treated injury “re-opening” during strenuous activity, requiring the injury to be treated again.
Longer-term healing cannot be done during combat. An Injured character requires medical treatment to remove the Injury completely. This treatment is normally a Control + Medicine task with a Difficulty of X and takes X hours, where X is the severity in both cases. Add 1 to the Difficulty and the complication range if the Injury was not treated. This Difficulty may be modified further by circumstances—attempting to heal a severe disruptor burn in a damp cave with a basic medkit is much harder than attempting the same thing in a well-stocked sickbay.
If the patient has multiple Injuries, treating them all at once could be treated as a challenge, or even as an extended task (with a progress track of 3x the number of Injuries), at the gamemaster’s discretion.
Assistance in Combat
The Assist action works a little differently to most other major actions in combat. You can choose to Assist when another character declares the task you wish to help with, even though it isn’t your turn. However, you can only provide this assistance if you have not already acted this round, and assisting means that you will not take a turn of your own later in the round—assisting takes up your turn instead.
While this may seem complex on the surface, in play it makes teamwork and assistance easier to resolve: you don’t have to plan in advance if you want to Assist someone, you simply declare it at the moment it becomes relevant, so long as you’re not doing anything else that round.
NPCs and Injury
The rules for Injury here apply primarily to main player characters. NPCs and supporting characters are treated differently.
A Minor NPC, or any supporting character who does not possess any values, does not suffer injuries. They are instantly Defeated by any successful attack and cannot choose to Avoid Injury. The only difference between Stun and Deadly attacks against a Minor NPC or basic supporting character is that Stun attacks leave them unconscious and Deadly attacks kill them instantly (or disintegrate them, at gamemaster’s discretion).
A Notable NPC, or any supporting character with one or more values, suffers injuries as normal. Supporting characters may Avoid Injury as player characters do (but have only half the amount of initial Stress), while a Notable NPC may spend Threat equal to severity to Avoid Injury, but they can only do so once per scene.
A Major NPC receives Injuries as normal and may Avoid Injury by spending Threat equal to severity.
Protection
A character wearing armor, or using some other protective device, has Protection; for example, combat armor provides Protection 1. When you suffer an Injury, the severity is reduced by an amount equal to your Protection, to a minimum of 1.
Injury Complications
In some circumstances, it may be fitting for a character to suffer minor traits that represent minor Injuries: cuts, scrapes, bruises, sprains, fractures, and burns that are not serious, but which are still painful or inconvenient. If you’re attempting to heal a character, complications you suffer may be applied to your patient, representing new problems encountered (or even caused) during treatment.
Suffering these minor Injuries does not cause Defeat, and they are not counted towards the total number of Injuries a character may suffer. However, these complications can result in higher Difficulty for other tasks.
These “minor Injury” complications can still be treated and healed in the same way as other complications, as if they had a severity of 1. Complications may also exacerbate other Injuries, adding 1 to the severity of an existing Injury (or minor Injury).
Personal Conflict Momentum Spends
Momentum is a key tactical resource during combat. When you generate Momentum in combat, you have numerous options available to achieve victory over your enemies, empower your comrades, and bolster your own prowess.
You have all the normal Momentum options (page 260) available to you in a combat scene, with additional options related directly to combat. Spends listed as Repeatable means they can be repeated as many times as you have Momentum to pay for them, and spends listed as Immediate can be used at any time during your turn (and can be paid for by generating Threat). If a Momentum spend is neither Immediate nor Repeatable, you can only use them once per turn.
Personal Conflict Momentum Spends
Combat Momentum Spend Description
Added Severity (2 Momentum, Repeatable)
Increase the severity of a successful attack by 1 for every 2 Momentum spent. You cannot increase the severity by more than 2.
Alter Trait (2 Momentum)
You create, change, or remove a trait in the scene. This change must relate to the task completed.
Extra Minor Action (1 Momentum)
You take one additional minor action on your turn.
Keep The Initiative (2 Momentum, Immediate)
At the end of your turn, pass the next turn to an ally instead of an enemy. Once that ally has acted, the next turn must go to an enemy.
Obtain Information (1 Momentum, Repeatable)
You ask the gamemaster a single question about the scene, which the gamemaster must answer truthfully.
Extra Major Action (2 Momentum)
You may attempt one additional major action. If this action includes a task, the task’s Difficulty is increased by 1.
Disarm (1–2 Momentum)
Target drops one weapon they are holding to within their Reach. This costs 1 Momentum if the weapon is held in one hand. If the weapon is two-handed, the cost increases to 2 Momentum.
Buy D20s (1–3 Momentum, Immediate, Repeatable)
Before you attempt a task (but after the gamemaster sets its Difficulty), build your dice pool, starting with 2d20. Add bonus d20s granted from talents and other game effects. Add more d20s by spending Momentum or adding Threat. The first bonus die costs 1, the second costs 2 more, and the third costs 3 more. You can't roll more than 5d20 on any task attempt.