Ravaged Realms is a roleplaying book with all rules and details that you need to play in this wonderful world, full of heroes, villains, magic and mysteries.
The only thing you have to bring yourself is paper, a pen or pencil, and dice. If you...
The Opposition System This system has been designed to make battles fast, rewarding, highly punishing and over all a team-effort. While a player can get far on their own, they will quickly feel inferior when dealing with greater threats, such as vampires, dragons, demi-gods or powerful rulers such as Kings or Queens. The entire party has to work together to achieve victory and every player is involved no matter which character is taking their turn.
Who goes first? Players always decide what to do first. They decide amongst themselves who will take the next action. Once this has been declared, the RM (Realm Master) decides if any enemy will oppose the chosen action.
Opposing a player: If an enemy wants to oppose a player, or is targeted by a player, an "Opposition Roll" will take place. The RM chooses the action that their unit wants to take and rolls a D20, adding the relevant skill to the roll.
The player then does the same, adding their skill bonus for their chosen action. This is called the "Opposition Roll" and is the defining mechanism of this game system.
The Opposition Roll (OR): An Opposition Roll is always rolled when a player or another unit takes an action.
Actions: There are two different types of actions and oppositions; Active and Passive.
Active opposition: An active opposition is made when a player and an opposing unit are aware of each other's actions. Both the player and the RM (or another player, if the target), roll a D20, adding the skill bonus for the skill they are using.
Note that this does not have to be the same skill; it just has to have the same aspect to it (physical, subtle or mental). There is more on this in the chapter Skills.
If the defendant does not want to use a skill, they will simply use their Passive Defence instead, if attacked, or a basic attribute, matching the attribute of the active character's skill, if targeted by a skill rather than an attack.
Passive Opposition: A passive opposition roll is made when a player or unit is trying to do something that does not have an active opponent. This could be brewing a potion, trying to pick a lock, understand a difficult book or ambushing someone. These rolls are made against an average difficulty that is determined by the act itself rather than an opponent's skill. The average difficulty is +5 but this can be modified in different ways as seen below:
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*This is in addition to the original +5.
The RM will chose the difficulty based on what the player attempts to achieve.
Opposing Roll Outcome Whoever rolls the highest in an active opposition is the winner and so will be successful with their action. The opponent's action will fail, having been thwarted by the winner's action. This also means that the losing action is spent for that round of combat. (This leaves a lot of room for the RM to explain the situation, as much as he or she is comfortable with).
In the case of a tie, the person with the highest skill level will be successful, or, if this is also a tie, the person with the highest attribute related to their chosen skill is successful. Anything else results in a stalemate and both actions are lost.
Opposition Points (OP) A character can overpower their opponent during an opposition roll. This is determined by the difference between the winning total and the losing total, giving the winner that many OP to spend on their action. These points can be used to active a wide array of skill effects and character combat powers, depending on the character's expertise.
Example: Rothgar rolls a total of 19 and his opponent - a measly goblin - rolls a total of 9, after adding their skill bonuses. This means that Rothgar wins by 10 points, giving him 10 OP to spend.
Actions During a battle, each character has 1 Move Action, 1 Active Action and 1 Extra Action each turn by default.
Active Action An active action is the standard action that a player will perform during each of their turns. This action can be anything the player feels like doing, as long as they initiate the action. If they use this action as an opposition, it has to have the same aspect as the initiated action. An active action does not have to target anyone and does not have to be used as a response to an opposition.
The RM still has the choice to oppose but if they choose not to, the opposition becomes a Passive Opposition.
Extra Actions All characters have at least 1 Extra Action that they can use each round. An Extra Action can be used in one of two ways: either as a direct response to an opposing action targeting the character or as support for another character. If it is used as a response to an opposing action, the character acts in the same way as if they had used an Active Action.
Support A character may use one Extra Action each time another friendly character within Medium range is using an Active Action. This Extra Action adds +3 to that Active Action roll. A maximum of two characters may support one Active Action for the total bonus of +6.
The support itself can come in many forms, either in distracting the opponent or pointing out a flaw in their defence, for example. The RM does not need to know the exact details but it can aid in the overall feel of the combat.
Example: Jacksson has 2 Extra Actions while Rothgar has 1. They are both within Medium range of Melindra as she readies to attack an orc. They both spend one Extra Action each to support Melindra, resulting in Jacksson deflecting the orcs blow and Rothgar grappling his axe, leaving him exposed long enough for Melindra to attack. Afterwards Jacksson has 1 Extra Action left and Rothgar is all out until next round.
Passive Defence: The Passive Defence is the last chance that a character has to avoid an attack. At a much lower dice bonus than any skill has, this is based more on luck than anything else. The Passive Defence is only used if a character is targeted by an opposing action but has run out of both Active and Extra Actions.
Acting Last: A player can choose to wait with their Active Action until the enemies have had their Active Actions. Any player who wishes to do so has to wait until all other players have had their Active Actions and then all the remaining enemies. The player can still use Extra Actions like normal during this time. After this has been done, the player can choose to target any enemy within range that has used up all their Extra Actions, forcing them to use their Passive Defence instead.
