Reading Abilities (Elemental Powers)

Reading your abilities is critical to playing properly. Understanding how your effect resolves, how you pay for things, and how it interacts with others and with yourself -- that is the crux of strategic play in this game.

The Anatomy of an Ability
For this, let us refer to Flame Fluidity for dissection and understanding.

Flame Fluidity (1) Type: combo (2) Prerequisite(s): 5 SP (3) Burn 2 supply (4); make a chain check. On a success, regain 2 AP. On a failure, burn 2 HP. On a break, burn 4 HP and burn 1 supply. (5) - Cannot combo attack after using this. Does not count as a combo attack. (6)

(1) First is the name of the ability. This is used as shorthand for communication. Nothing too fancy.

(2) Second is the action type of the ability. This is important to know how you can use it and how much AP you need to spend. Passive abilities do not need to be activated and are always in effect if you have the ability.

(3) Third is the necessary prerequisites of the ability. This shows how much SP the ability costs and what other abilities, levels, or achievements you need to meet to acquire this ability.

4, 5, and 6 make up the full effect text of the ability. This is how the ability actually functions.

(4) Fourth is the cost of the ability, and is denoted by all text that comes before a semicolon. Some abilities may not have this.

(5) Fifth is the effect of the ability, and is denoted by all text that comes after a semicolon. All abilities have this, and it is the entire text if there is no cost.

(6) Sixth is the notes of the ability and any other important information to keep in mind when using the ability.

Activating an Ability
When activating an ability, we concern ourselves with 2, 4, and 5.

2 determines when and how we may use this ability. If it's a reaction, we may use during our turn or a foe's turn. Otherwise, it must be used on only our turn.

4 determines what we must do to use the ability. The cost must be done before we can even start the effect of the ability. All resources must be burned and all characters and squares must be targeted/chosen and declared. This means that all characters know what characters and squares are targeted/chosen before the effect is finished.

5 determines the effects of the ability. After the costs have been paid and enacted and all reactions (if any) have run their course, then we may do our effect wholly uninterrupted.

Understanding Ability Terms
Effects can have a lot of terminology in them, and understanding them is critical to even using them to begin with! In this section we cover all the various keywords and what they do, require, or otherwise mean.

Advantage/Disadvantage
Advantage and disadvantage are two very similar effects that can be very powerful. They are not very common and can easily change the momentum of a combat.

Advantage allows you to roll a d20 twice and take the better result, whereas disadvantage forces you to roll a d20 twice and take the worst result.

Burn
To burn X of a specified resource means to spend that much of that resource. Burning is always associated with a specific resource to spend, which is often supply. If you burn something as part of a cost, you must have the required amount of the resource to be able to burn it to pay for the cost. Otherwise, if you burn a resource as part of an effect, the lowest it can reduce that resource to is 0.

When you burn X supply, you spend that much supply and reduce your current supply.

When you burn X of an attribute (VIT/ALA/PER), you actually reduce the score itself, also affecting your attribute modifiers. Burnt attributes are very difficult to recover and should not be done lightly. They recover when you take a long or full rest.

Damage
Damage is the term for anything that would reduce your HP. All attacks and many other effects that would harm you will deal damage.

Non-lethal Damage
Non-lethal damage is an alternative meter of wear and tear that isn't your HP. Non-lethal is a special type of damage that does not directly reduce your HP; instead, you can take a total amount of non-lethal damage up to your maximum HP, at which point it causes you to fall unconscious.

You may be wondering about the concept of non-lethal damage, as HP is already a measure of not true injury. It may help you to think of non-lethal damage as creeping physical pain from bruises, scrapes and otherwise that alone does not impact you, but all together that no amount of adrenaline can push off forever. It only impacts you once you're past the point of no return, whereas HP is your stamina and endurance; the difference is perhaps minor but there is one regardless.

Deflect
Deflecting is an effect that reduces the die size of damage you would take. For example, if you deflect a d6 atk. die, you reduce it to a d4 instead.

The damage reduction chart is as follows:

Range
A range is how far away something can be from the source to be affected, measured in squares. Range is typically written as "range of X" or "range X", where X is the number of squares.

On the grid, cardinal and diagonals are equally far away from a square.

Adjacent squares are the squares to the left, right, up, and down of the originating square, in addition to those up-left, up-right, down-left, and down-right. For visual analogy, consider the number 5 on a cell phone keypad or on the number pad on a keyboard. "5" is the originating square, and 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, and 9 are all adjacent squares.

To measure range, simply count adjacent squares from the originating square until you have counted up to the maximum of the range.