Chapter the Fifth
How a fight actually runs, what modifies it, and how it ends. Vagabond fights are short by design — some foes die in one blow, and that's the intent.
Combat begins the moment someone physically harms someone else. A Round is about ten seconds, and it is divided into Turns — one per Group, not one per creature.p. 14
Groups that want more structure within the Heroes' Turn can use Rotation — clockwise from the GM — or Initiative, going from the lowest Reflex Save Difficulty to the highest.p. 14 With four or more players, one of these is worth adopting; freeform ordering starts to bog down once several people are all deciding at once.
Anything that happens outside your Group's Turn is an Off-Turn. You get to act on one only through the Hold Action, or through a Perk or Feature that says so — Check Hook, Interceptor, Guardian Angel and the Vanguard's Stalwart all key off this.
One Action and one Move per Turn, in any order, and the Move can be broken up around the Action.
| Action | What it does |
|---|---|
| Attack | An Attack Check with an equipped Weapon; on a pass, deal its damage |
| Cast | Cast a Spellp. 90 |
| Hold | Bank your Action or Move to spend on an Off-Turn |
| Jump | Spend half your Speed to leap that distance horizontally |
| Rush | Gain extra Speed this Turn equal to your Speed |
| Use | Interact with or use an Object |
That list is a starting point, not a fence — the rules explicitly allow acting "in a way that isn't accounted for here". Describe it, and the GM names the Check.
A surprising number of abilities are bought by skipping your Move rather than spending your Action: off-hand attacks while Dual-Wielding, the Bard's Virtuoso, the Hunter's mark, Sharpshooter, Deft Hands. If a player asks "can I do both?", check whether the ability costs the Move rather than the Action — often it does, and the answer is yes.
Swapping the weapon in your hands costs your Action or your Move. Getting into or out of armour takes a full Scene, so it isn't something that happens mid-fight.p. 75
Your Attack Difficulty is fixed and derives from the Skill the weapon uses, not from the target. Melee and Brawl run off Might, Finesse off Dexterity, Ranged off Awareness.
| Keen | Crit threshold drops by 1 (Fighter's Valor stacks with this) |
| Brutal | One extra damage die on a Crit |
| Versatile | Damage die one size larger when used two-handed |
| Cleave | Half damage to a second Target as well |
| Ranged at Close | Hindered — back off, or take the Akimbo Trigger Perk |
| Thrown | To Near freely; to Far with Hinder |
| Crude weapon | Use a comparable weapon's stats at −1 damage; may attack with Craftp. 76 |
| Oversized | Huge and larger creatures add roughly a die per Size step above Medium |
Ammunition isn't tracked. As long as you have a quiver, case or box, you're assumed to have arrows.
This is the part that catches everyone coming from other systems. Enemy attacks land automatically. The Hero rolls the defence instead.p. 14
| Option | Save | Hindered when |
|---|---|---|
| Block | Endure | the attack is Ranged — unless you have a Shield weapon |
| Dodge | Reflex | you're wearing Heavy Armor |
On a pass you ignore one of the attack's highest rolled damage dice — not the whole attack. Against a single-die attack that's everything; against a 4d6 monster it's a quarter of it. On a Crit you take nothing at all and get an Action out of it.
You can't defend while Incapacitated, and Vulnerable Hinders your Saves against attacks while giving attackers Favor. Stacking Vulnerable on a big enemy is the single most effective thing a support character can do.
Armor is subtracted from Attack damage. A Cast is a different Action resolved by a different Check, so spell damage ignores armour completely — the only exception in the game is Orichalcum armour, at fifty times base cost.p. 8, 76 Against an enemy caster, your Reflex Save and your positioning are the whole defence.
Armor is subtracted from every attack that gets through. At the levels where enemies deal d4s and d6s, an Armor 3 Hero is taking roughly half damage from everything, permanently, without rolling anything. In a large party the front rank should be in the heaviest armour their Might allows.
If two or more Allies are Close to a foe, that foe is Vulnerable — provided it's no more than one Size larger than them.p. 11 This is the biggest reason a bigger party hits harder than the sum of its parts: with four Heroes, almost every melee target is Vulnerable almost all of the time. It's free, it requires no rolls, and new players routinely forget it exists.
You can't move through a foe's space unless you're at least two Sizes larger, or something says otherwise — Halflings and the Squat trait being the obvious exception. Small creatures occupy a space but don't block movement through it.
| Hero starts one | Attack Action and a passed Brawl Check |
| Hero escapes one | Action to Save; on a pass the Grapple ends and you regain half your Speed |
| Enemy starts one | Its Melee Attack Restrains, forcing a Save |
| Enemy escapes one | Its Action forces you to make a Brawl Check to hold on |
Whoever is doing the restraining has their Speed halved unless the target is smaller. A Grappled target is Restrained: Vulnerable, Speed 0.
A Brawl Check with a Brawl or Shield weapon equipped, against a target your Size or smaller: on a pass, push it 5' or knock it Prone. The Vanguard is built almost entirely around this.
On a battlemat, one square is 5'. Speed refreshes at the start of your Turn.
| Difficult Terrain | 2' of Speed per 1' moved — climbing, squeezing, deep liquid, rubble, dense growth |
| Prone | Crawl at 2' per 1'; 10' of Speed to stand |
| Falling | 1d6 per 10' fallen, up to 20d6, landing Prone |
| Climb / Cling / Fly | Move at full Speed in that medium; without a Climb Speed you're Vulnerable while climbing |
| Darkness | Anything without a suitable Sense acts as Blinded, and therefore Vulnerablep. 9 |
Light is a weapon in this system, in both directions. Dropping Shade on an enemy backline, or simply dousing the torches against something with Darksight, makes the whole opposing group Vulnerable.
Learn Vulnerable cold; roughly half the others reference it.
| Vulnerable | Its attacks and its Saves against attacks are Hindered; attacks against it and Saves against its attacks are Favored |
| Berserk | No Cast or Focus, can't be Frightened, makes no Morale Checks |
| Blinded | Can't see, and is Vulnerable |
| Burning | The listed die of damage at the start of its Turns until doused |
| Charmed | Can't willingly attack the charmer |
| Confused | Its Checks and Saves Hindered; Saves against its Actions Favored |
| Dazed | Can't Focus or Move without spending an Action on it |
| Fatigued | 0–5. Each point fills a Slot; at 3 no Rushing; at 5 you die |
| Frightened | −2 to damage dealt |
| Incapacitated | No Action, Move or Focus; auto-fails MIT and DEX Checks; Vulnerable |
| Invisible | Unseen; those who can't see it act as Blinded regarding it |
| Paralyzed | Incapacitated, Speed 0 |
| Prone | Crawls, can't Rush, Vulnerable to melee and on Dodge |
| Restrained | Vulnerable, Speed 0 |
| Sickened | −2 to healing received, plus whatever is in brackets |
| Suffocating | After a minute without air: d8 each Round, and equal-or-above your Might gives 1 Fatigue |
| Unconscious | Blinded, Incapacitated and Prone; Close attacks always Crit |
Written Cd4, Cd6 and so on. Roll the die each Round: on a 1 it shrinks one size, and a 1 on a Cd4 ends the effect.p. 7 Most temporary Statuses are tracked this way, so a Cd6 lasts noticeably longer than a Cd4 without anyone having to count Rounds.
Enemy statblocks also use Recharge Cd4 for their nastier moves — once used, the ability comes back when the Countdown ends. The Encounter Console rolls all of these for you.
Hands open or a Trinket held. Then assemble the Cast:p. 90
| Damage only, or Effect only | free |
| Both together | 1 Mana |
| Extra damage | +1d6 per Mana |
| Touch, Remote, Imbue | 0 |
| Cube | 1 (+1 per extra 5' cube) |
| Aura, Cone, Glyph, Line, Sphere | 2 (more to enlarge) |
You only roll a Cast Check when an unwilling Being is a Target. Buffs, light, terrain and healing simply happen.
Damage is instant; effects last until your next Turn unless you Focus. Sustaining against an unwilling target costs 1 Mana and a passed Cast Check each Round — and you can only Focus on one thing at a time, so a controller who Focuses is committing their whole fight to it.
Two limits worth writing on the sheet: your maximum Mana per Cast is your casting Stat plus half your Class Level rounded up, and area Deliveries hit everything inside them unless you specify otherwise. Fireballing your own front rank is entirely possible.
Enemies check Morale when the first of their Group dies, and when they drop to half HP or half the Group is down. The GM rolls 2d6 against the Group leader's Morale score; higher than the score means they break and retreat or surrender.p. 15 Groups with no Morale value, or that are Berserk, fight to the death.
Combat ends when a Group is wiped out, surrenders and is accepted, or successfully flees. A fleeing Group spends its Action and Move running; unless someone gives chase, the fight is over that Turn.
Morale is what keeps fights short, and short fights are the design goal. A GM who quietly ignores failed Morale rolls turns every encounter into a grind — and a fleeing enemy who reappears later with friends is worth more to the campaign than a corpse.
Group-based Turns mean Vagabond scales up more gracefully than initiative-based systems — nobody waits through five other people's initiative counts. But a few things change as the table grows.
| Players | What to do differently |
|---|---|
| 2 | Use the Plot Armor Luck variant if nobody heals: at 0 HP, spend 1 Luck to regain d6.p. 22 Consider giving each Hero a Hireling, or start at Level 2 |
| 3 | Runs as written. One character should hold Detect and one should hold some healing |
| 4–5 | Adopt Rotation or Initiative for the Heroes' Turn. Flanking is now nearly permanent, so raise enemy numbers rather than enemy size |
| 6+ | Split the party into two Groups with their own Turns. Ask for declarations before rolling, and put one player in charge of the map |
The practical scaling lever is number of enemies, not tougher enemies. Because Heroes have very few hit points and enemy attacks land automatically, one enormous monster with a 4d6 attack will simply delete a Hero per Round regardless of party size. Several mid-tier enemies spread the incoming damage, give everyone something to do, and let Morale end the fight naturally. Sheet 06 covers Threat Level budgeting.