6.4 Maneuvers

First describe your maneuver. Remember that this is an anime battle—you'll want to bounce off walls, do crazy stunt flips, swordfight in mid-air, and so on. You can also taunt your opponent, embarrass them, rally your own troops, trigger a trap, or whatever else you come up with that would work to bring you into a better or your opponent into a worse situation than before, whether it’s physically, mentally, or socially—or that brings you closer to achieving a goal.

Zadie is attacked by the critters, and it’s my turn afterwards. I decide to start out with a maneuver, which is really my only choice because I don’t have any strike or charge dice yet.

I’m telling the GM and the other players that Zadie runs for one of the wagons in the caravan. She runs up the side, grabs the railing on top, and flips over onto the roof. She reaches underneath her layers of armored clothing and produces a scavenged block of a strange material. She tosses it into the mass of critters, who crowd around it, trying to tear it apart immediately. Zadie draws Silent Reaper from her back, aims, and fires into the block, which explodes and kills several of the demons.

You gain a certain number of basic dice for the action according to the Group Competence rating, ranging from 1 to 4 dice. This rating goes up over the course of the conflict, as described in the Raising Group Competence section below. These dice do not come out of the adversity’s pools but from a never-ending stash of additional dice.

You now add a number of dice from your Action Pool, ranging from 1 to 3 dice. You have to add at least 1 die. If your Action Pool is empty, you can’t maneuver.

Other players can also give you a gift die each from their own Action Pools, if they think your maneuver was particularly impressive or if they just want to support you. They do not have to explain how their characters assist, though they can describe a small bit of support if they want to, without fully combining their actions (for that, see Combined Maneuver below). Granting another player a gift die does not use up the giving player’s action for the turn.

Finally, add any dice from conditions, weapon effects, and so on. If you're using a charge power (like Heroics), declare it and spend the charge dice before you roll.

The starting Group Competence of 1 gives me 1 die. One of the other players also throws in a die from her Action Pool, and I add 2 from my own. This gives me a total of 4 dice to roll.

Roll all of those dice for a chance to gain successes, which are dice showing 3 and higher. Every 3, 4, and 5 earns you 1 die for your Strike Pool. Every 6 earns you 1 die for your Charge Pool. 1s and 2s fail to gain you anything and are discarded.

If you have enough dice, simply move the dice with the right numbers onto your Charge Pool and Strike Pool circles and put the 1s and 2s away. If you’re using tokens, move those accordingly. If you’re just writing things down, erase the appropriate number of dice from your Action Pool and write the gained dice into your other pools.

After your roll, if you have a trait marked from a character scene, you can unmark it to reroll your failed dice. You need to describe how the trait figures into your current maneuver. Roll the failed dice and figure out dice gained as before.

I roll my 6 dice for Zadie and get a less than satisfying result. 1 die shows a 4, another a 6, and the other 2 dice are all failures (a 1 and a 2). I move the die showing the 4 onto my Strike Pool circle and the one showing the 6 onto my Charge Pool circle, and I drop the other 2 dice into the big bowl from which the GM draws dice. I could use the trait I marked in the earlier character scene to reroll the 2 failed dice and probably earn another success or two, but I decide to save that up in case things get really bad later on.

If you earn no dice at all (that is, you roll all 1s and 2s), your action dice are returned to your Action Pool, gift dice from other PC players go back to their Action Pools, and the GM dice and any bonus dice and used charge dice are discarded.

Unless you have a relevant power or weapon effect, you cannot earn more than 5 dice in a maneuver. If you rolled more than 5 successes, pick which 5 you want to earn (in other words, prioritize between strike dice and charge dice, if applicable) and discard the rest.

Maneuver Descriptions

The player who acts describes their maneuver. The description should fit the mood, established environment, and so on. The description of the opposition is limited to the following:

Against individuals, you cannot describe whether you injure the individual with your action or how it otherwise affects them. Only describe the intent of your maneuver. The person controlling the individual gets to add how that actually affects that individual after you make your roll.

Against squads, you can describe injuring one or more of the squad members with your maneuver, but not in a crippling way. You cannot describe killing any of them or otherwise taking them out of the fight (that happens specifically with wounds). You can describe temporarily disarming them or otherwise creating handicaps. The other player will add reactions after your roll.

Against swarms, you can describe taking out several of the units of the swarm with your maneuver. However, if the player who controls the swarm has identified standout units within the swarm (a leader, an alpha dog, a champion), those are treated like individuals. Against those, only declare the intent of your actions, and the other player will describe how that plays out after your roll.

When I described my maneuver earlier, because I’m fighting a swarm, I got to describe how the explosion tears apart a bunch of the critters, sending them flying in all directions, screaming and leaving behind trails of smoke.

Raising Group Competence

At the end of each turn, the GM is in charge of raising the Group Competence. The basic rule is that the Group Competence goes up by 1, to a maximum of 4, if at least one gift die was given to any Maneuver during the round (whether it came from the GM or another player). You can find optional rules and alternatives for Group Competence in Chapter 10.

Combined Maneuvers

PCs can gang up to perform a maneuver together. This uses up the action of every character who participates for this turn. Characters who already have acted this turn cannot participate in a combined maneuver.

One character needs to be designated as the leader for the combined maneuver. The combined maneuver takes place on the leader’s turn to take an action.

Every player involved in the combined maneuver can contribute 1 to 3 dice from their Action Pool. The leader’s player describes the joint action, and the other players help out with their parts of the description.

The Group Competence dice are added to the maneuver as usual, plus 1 additional die for every character who participates in addition to the leader. A combined maneuver involving 3 PCs and a Group Competence of 2, for example, earns 4 basic dice.

The leader rolls the dice for successes. She is limited to gaining 5 successes, and all successes have to go to the leader’s pools. The leader can unmark one of her marked traits in order to reroll the failed dice.

It’s the next round, and Rasheem has climbed up onto the wagon next to Zadie’s. We decide to team up this time, with Zadie taking the lead. Rasheem is fighting the demon squad, and he’s having trouble, so I’ll try to help him out. First, Daria describes how two of the demons climb up on top of the wagon. One of them jumps at Rasheem, who drops to the ground and kicks the demon up into the air. Then I describe how, after kicking some critters off the wagon, I see Rasheem from the corner of my eyes. I whip out Silent Reaper again, switch it on rapid fire, and send a hail of bullets straight over the supine Rasheem and at the demon that’s still on the wagon, watching it fall backwards to the ground. The other demon is falling back down and Rasheem jumps up and hits it with his oversized scimitar, sending it flying sideways into a big boulder at the side of the road.

The Group Competence is up to 2 by now, and we get 1 extra die from teaming up, for 3 basic dice. The other two players chip in with a gift die each, raising our pool to 5 dice. Rasheem's player puts in 2 from her Action Pool, and I add 2 from mine. I roll all 9 dice, earning 4 strike dice and 2 charge dice. I can only keep 5, however, and I can’t hand any to Daria, so I decide to keep 2 strike dice and 3 charge dice and discard the rest of the dice.

Awesome Tokens

If you manage to earn 5 or more dice (strike and charge dice combined) at once, the GM will award you an Awesome Token. You can use these during the conflict for some benefits or at the conclusion for others (see Ending Conflicts).
You can spend your Awesome Tokens during a conflict in the following ways:

For 1 Awesome Token, you can take a free strike, achievement, or charge power action, even if you’ve already acted in this round. You can do this at any time in between two other characters’ actions, even right after you earned the token. You cannot use it to take a maneuver action.

For 2 Awesome Tokens, you can have your strike count against 2 opponents at once. Designate both targets and roll your dice once (with the option of using your traits to improve your roll), then apply the successes against both. If some of your dice only work against certain types of adversity and you’re using the tokens to strike against different types, make a separate roll for the type-specific dice.

For 3 Awesome Tokens, you can combine both of the above effects.

You can use your Awesome Tokens on behalf of another player to benefit their PC.

With our combined maneuver, I earned 5 dice, so I also get an Awesome Token. I decide to spend it right away and get to make an immediate strike. I’m going try take out the demon that I blasted with Silent Reaper. I could use the token on Daria’s behalf and let her character do a free strike, achievement, or power action, but I just earned a bunch of strike dice while she doesn’t have enough to overcome the demons’ defense, so I’ll use the token on me.