Techniques and Actions
During Phase four of your turn you Advance your technique or techniques which are in play. This process of advancing techniques goes in the following steps.
Invoke the Electra attribute of your character for Speed points. Some or all of the Electra attribute's Potential will be used to advance the technique, by one TimeTick for each Speed point. The Electra attribute may've already been invoked in an earlier phase of your turn (for example to Change Plans) - as long as there is some Speed points left you can still advance this turn. For example assume your character has Insight (Electra 4) you may Invoke it for 3 points of Speed, and save the 1 for something else. The 3 points of Speed will cause the current technique to advance by 3 TimeTicks.
Move the covering-card down the current technique to reveal a number of TimeTicks equal to the Speed Points you are using. If this results in the last TimeTick being exposed that technique is then enacted and a new Technique may be deployed.
If step 2 completes an action, where the action description makes a call on a (Derived) Attribute, you must do an Attribute Check to see if the action is successful. Eg on the Earthhammer spell (right) revealing the 3rd TimeTick completes the Draw Rune action, and an Attribute Check against must be made. [http://storybridge.org/pic/cards/earthhammer2.gif]
The action may require other special conditions, for example the Cut action during the Cut technique requires your character to have a weapon card, and the Use action of the Earthhammer spell requires the character to have an iron ore artifact card. Some actions and techniques will not work on certain scenario squares. In these cases even if the Attribute Check is successful the acton will not succeed.
If it is successful, that action is then enacted, and any effects in it are applied to their stated targets, and the Technique is advanced into the next action, if there are sufficient Speed Points to do so.
Attribute Check
An action will generally require a test of the characters skills to see if they successfully perform it. In many cases the test will be trivial. Sometimes however the character will not be able to apply the skills needed, due to other demands or due to the conditions under which the action is attempted.
Actions have at least one Derived Attribute Call (such as Draw) on a coloured background to indicate the Defined Attribute it is derived from. We must then do an Attribute Check to see if it meets the Call.
The standard requirement for the Attribute Check is that the character must provide 1 point of the required type. We can see what Defined Attribute to Invoke by the background colour: Red for Electra, Yellow for Corpus and Blue for Spiritum. Draw is Spiritum.
The rule is: Standard Attribute Check is 1 point
For example where the Earthhammer spell says Draw that means that 1 points of Draw (a Derived Attribute of Spiritum) must be provided. And where its says Direct 1 point of Direct (a derived attribute of Electra) must be provided.
In the latter case, the character will have to balance up Speed with Direct. Speed is also a derived attribute of Electra and is needed to advance the technique. If the character has Brilliance (Electra 5) they can advance by Invoking Electra for 3 points of Speed, and still have 2 points left for Direct.
Variations to the Theme
There are also a raft of circumstances that can add other factors to the Attribute Check.
Various artifact cards modify particular derived attributes, without modifying other attributes derived from the same main Attribute. For example "Plate Armour hauberk and vambraces" has a -2 penalty to Speed, "Ring of haste" imparts a +2 to Speed, and "Wand of Summoning" provides +3 to summoning.
Many scenario cards will impart a penalty to some derived attributes, or even whole categories of them. "Crumbling Stair" gives a -2 penalty to Standard Movements, Acrobatic & Martial Arts Manouvres, and Martial Arts Attacks. Other possibilities are spells, and special abilities which may increase or decrease derived attributes.
Techniques Increasing Difficulty of their own Actions
There are some techniques where actions within that technique, make other actions more difficult due to effects imparted. An example of this is the Jumping Spinning Back-kick - a difficult and advanced martial arts technique. It requires your character to perform a Jump x 2 action with the text "Jump x 2 up to kicking height". Whilst jumping all Attacks, Manouvres and Counters are +3 to Skill Calls (States above).
Because of the x 2 we must multiply the current skill call x 2, to give 2.
Lets assume our character has Divinity (Spritum 5) and can Invoke 2 Jump and still have 3 Spiritum spare.
The next action in this technique is "Spin accelerating the kick". Note from our States that whilst spinning all Attacks, Manouvres and Counters are +2 to skill call. Spin is a Manouvre so instead of being 1 it takes 3 and the character must now Invoke 3 Spiritum to complete that action.
Our character can complete this action. But now he is out of Spiritum.
The next action is "Kick to your surprised opponents face : dmg 3". This Kick action requires spiritum 1 +2 for the jumping, +2 for the spinning, for a total of 5.
Unless our character has something like a staff of jumping (+2 for Jump, and all Martial Arts Attacks, Manouvres and Counters performed while jumping) he will fail in his attempt to do this action, unless he waits until next turn to advance this technique.
Failing an Action
If there are not enough points for the skill call, typically it will be ideal to interrupt the action before it fails. But if the inertia is too great this may not be possible - see the section on Inertia.
If the technique cannot be interrupted, and not enough points are available for the skill call, then it fails.
Whenever an Action fails, unless there are special abilities or effects which state the contrary, the Technique is abandoned. It goes to the side of the tableau as though it had been enacted, and the player must perform a Alternate Ready (one of the Basic Actions) costing 2 time ticks.
The effects and other desired results of the Technique do not take place, unless they were specified in an action which took place prior to the failed action. This will be rare as the effective actions are usually only followed by fairly easy "follow-through" type actions.
The Consequences of Failure
Often technique cards will specify particular consequences of failing, specific to that technique. A common one is falling. Any technique which involves a jump action will have Fall as a failure consequence.
Falls cause an amount of crush damage, and cause the character to go to the state "Prone". The character must perform the Default Actions Fall and Ready in order to get to their feet, before any other techniques may be deployed. If the character was wielding a weapon at the time of Falling they must check for Dropping (and if dropped, Breakage) as below.
Weapons - Failure Consequences
If a character has a Weapon Artifact which was involved in the failed technique, that technique may specify "Fail: drop" or "Fail: break", or even both "Fail: drop/break".
Dropping: the character rolls a 10 sided die - if the result is greater than their then the weapon is dropped.
Breakage: roll a 10 sided die, unless otherwise indicated. If the result is greater than the break figure shown on the weapon card the weapon breaks.
Next: Attributes