Rules
Card Types
There are many different types of cards in Aura Clash. To see a card’s type, check the text inside the long rectangle underneath the card’s picture. The only exception is Foundation Cards, which instead show the Foundation’s base ranks in each Stat. Each type of card is detailed below:
Foundation Cards define a character’s base Cores before learning any Techniques as well as their Skills. Some possess single ability ingrained into their chi-fueled body while others grant +1 to a specific Core.
- Foundation cards can be stored next to your Core piles and are always available.
Technique Cards represent a character’s mastery of a Style or Element. Some are even Freestyle Techniques that anyone can learn, which still represent one’s mastery over chi. Each Technique card adds +1 to your Foundation’s base rank in a specific Core (Power, Fortitude, Agility, or Soul) as well as supplying you with the abilities list on that card.
- The top-right corner of each Technique card lists how much AP it costs to “learn” the Technique and add it to one’s deck. That value is the same amount of AP that the card represents when taking damage.
- For example, if you suffer 200AP damage then you may either lose two 100AP cards or a single 200AP card.
- Underneath the picture of each card is listed which Core pile it belongs in as well as which Style or Element is needed to learn and use the Technique.
- Freestyle Techniques can be used by any Martial Artist.
Non-Player Character (NPC) cards are largely meant for Game Masters. For many GMs it is much easier to give NPCs a quick selection of default stat cards, for example throwing three upside down cards in the NPC’s “Power” Core pile to represent 3 Power, rather than actually giving them proper stats.
To make up for this, each NPC is given at least one “innate” ability listed on the card as well as a passive; these innate abilities are always available unless targeted by the Disable ability. NPC cards can be augmented with Cores or other abilities to enhance their prowess.
- For more accurate depictions (and higher difficulty), each NPC has a suggested set of common NPC Techniques listed directly on their card.
- These are optional for Game Masters, depending on how important a fight is or how much preparation time is allowed.
Combat Actions
Combat is the core focus of Aura Clash and is divided into rounds and turns. Each round is composed of every character in combat getting to act for 1 turn. On each character’s turn they may perform one Main Action as well as a few specific actions that do not take up their turn.
These represent the main choice a character makes each round and the bulk of what they do on their turn. The default options are:
- Power Up (Full): Untap all your tapped cards and you may choose new cards to be Focused for each Core. In addition, when you Power Up (Full) you can Sustain any one of your undamaged Techniques. You do not have to choose a Focused Technique.
- Technique: Activate any Technique card with a tap effect listed. If the card says “Free” then it does not take up your turn and you may still perform an Action.
- Aid Another: Add +1d6 Accuracy and +100AP Damage to an ally’s next attack. Stacks up to 3 times.
- Flee: A character may attempt an Athletics roll to escape from combat and flee the scene. Every enemy in the fleeing character’s Zone may contest this roll for free without taking up their Reaction.
- The character using Flee must beat every enemy in their Zone on the Athletics check. Any enemy may move to the fleeing character’s Zone if they wish and roll Athletics, though they may provoke an Attack of Opportunity for leaving their current Zone.
- Ranged Attacks cannot be used in place of Athletics against someone using the Flee action; the Athletics roll represents dodging any such attacks by creating too much distance too quickly.
- If the flee attempt fails, the escapee’s turn is over and they are still in combat in the same Zone as anyone who beat them and wishes to be in their Zone.
- If the flee attempt succeeds, they have escaped combat and cannot be re-engaged by their pursuers for the remainder of the scene, so long as they continue to avoid their persuers.
- Movement: Each character can change Zones once per turn. This does not take any action. Leaving a Zone with enemies inside it will provoke an Attack of Opportunity from every enemy in the Zone you leave.
- Reaction: Characters can perform 1 Reaction in between their turns. Reaction effects trigger immediately and can interrupt declared actions. For example, if a block is used after a character rolls a critical hit and rolls their damage, the attack is stopped and the damage is negated.
- Passive: Passives are minor effects that are always active so long as their card is Focused, they do not take any actions to activate. A passive effect is often listed at the bottom of a card with a ֎ symbol.
- Discussion: Characters can speak to others for a few seconds. This is not a combat action and is more a general rule to limit giant dialogue in fights. While each turn is technically 1-3 seconds, up to 6 seconds of conversation may be had as characters are used to high speed combat.
- Discussion typically cannot help in combat by default and is more for roleplay or coordination, like one player asking another to help in their Zone. Some players may try to abuse Persuasion or Deception to aid in fights and while that should be discouraged, it may sometimes be allowed at GM discretion if it makes enough sense in the situation.
- Scoring 10 Survival successes to tell a hungry Beast not to eat them would not work, it is hungry.
- Scoring 4 Persuasion successes to get the guards to listen to the party that they’re innocent might work, if they have not injured a guard badly yet.
In addition to the basic actions of combat, the Martial Arts grants the players certain bonus abilities.
To use these, characters can “Flip” their cards over to gain benefits at certain times. Flip effects do not take up any Action or Reaction for that round unless otherwise stated. Characters can flip any Core to gain the following benefits based on that Core’s type:
- Power Up (Full): Untap all your tapped cards and you may choose new cards to be Focused for each Core. In addition, when you Power Up (Full) you can Sustain any one of your undamaged Techniques. You do not have to choose a Focused Technique.
Flip when you roll Damage against an opponent. Gain Advantage on your Damage roll and add your Flipped card’s AP value to your damage successes.
- “Advantage” means you roll your damage twice and choose the higher result.
- After choosing the higher result, add +100AP Damage to your roll if you Flipped a 100AP card or add +200AP Damage if you Flipped a 200AP card.
Flip when suffering Damage to roll 1d6 per Fortitude and negate 100AP Damage per success. This is called a “Soak” roll. Add your Flipped card’s AP value to your soak successes.
- If you Flip a 100AP card, subtract 100AP Damage from your attacker’s Damage roll, plus 100AP per Fortitude success. If you Flip a 200AP card, subtract 200AP Damage from your attacker’s Damage roll, plus 100AP per Fortitude success.
Flip to reroll your Accuracy roll on any Attack.
- If flipping a 200AP Agility Core, you may take a second action instead. This can only be done on your turn and can only be performed once per round.
Flip to Power Up (Full), meaning you can sustain a Technique and untap all Focused Techniques.
- If flipping a 200AP Soul Core, you may use any Core’s 100AP Flip effect as long as it’s applied to an Energy attack.
- For example, you may roll soak against Energy attacks, add damage on your Energy attack, or reroll Accuracy on your energy attack.
- This effect stacks. You can flip a 200AP Soul Core and a 100AP Power Core to roll your energy attack’s damage three times, choose the highest, then add +100AP Power from the Power card and +100AP Power from the Soul Card (since it is treated like a 100AP Power Core).
Handling Combat
Combat begins when characters roll Initiative or one side ambushes an unsuspecting party, and combat ends when one side either surrenders or falls to 0 Current AP, which typically means they have lost all their Core cards to damage. The important steps to performing combat can be found below.
Characters determine who goes first by rolling Initiative which is 2d6 + Agility. Characters act by result in descending order, with the highest number going first.
- For example, a character with 5 Agility Cores rolls 2d6+5.
- Ties go to the character with the most Agility ranks. Ties with equal Agility ranks re-roll to see who goes first between them.
When everyone still in combat has taken a turn the Round is considered over and the next Round begins. This means everyone takes their next Turn one at a time, starting with whoever scored the highest Initiative roll and continuing in descending order.
Most cards have a tap effect shown with a symbol. These effects represent spending your chi to activate Techniques. To do this, you simply turn one or more of your Focused cards sideways.
- You can only tap Focused cards to spend chi, including Sustained Cards.
- Tapping a card has almost no effect on your combat benefits from that card except that you have less cards left to tap to pay for future actions. You do not lose the Passive bonuses of the tapped card, you do not lose the +1 to a Core from that card, and you do not lose access to the activated ability of that card.
- Tapping cards is only used to measure your pool of combat chi; if you do not have enough untapped cards to use a Technique, you cannot activate it until you untap more cards, normally by using the Power Up option.
After choosing which attack to use and spending the chi, a character rolls 1d6 for each rank they possess in the stat used for that attack to determine if they hit their target. This means Agility for Physical Attacks and Soul for Energy Attacks. If this Accuracy roll has equal or more successes than the target’s defense, then the attack is a [Success] and deals the damage and/or effects listed on the card.
Characters defend against attacks with their Defense, which is their Fortitude dice pool halved, round up. Characters do not roll defense by default. If your attacker scores less successes than your defense, their attack fails and has no effect.
Each attack card lists how much Damage it inflicts upon a successful accuracy roll. Some affects may add bonus damage, but the main way to enhance a card’s damage is to either roll a Critical on the Accuracy roll or to Flip a Power Core. Both of these options allow the attacker to roll 1d6 per Power and add 100AP damage to their attack per success.
The damaged character must choose an amount of AP worth of cards to discard equal to the damage they receive. They then place these discarded cards off the field, typically to the right of their Deck. This is called the Damage Pile. The damaged character can choose which cards to discard, and it is typically best to get rid of Flipped cards as their abilities are unavailable.
- If a character discards their Focused card when taking damage, they can choose a new card to be Focused for that Core.
- If a character discards a tapped card to Focus a different card when taking damage, they must tap the newly Focused card.
When taking damage, characters may Flip a Fortitude Core to make a “Soak” roll to negate the damage, acting as the opposite of a damage roll. Each success on a Soak rolls removes 100AP damage from the attack against the character rolling Soak.
A character’s Aura Pressure (AP) is a measure of both their combat potential and their vitality. Each card in a character’s Deck has an AP value in the top left corner which indicates that card’s cost in exp and their health value. When a character suffers damage, they discard 100AP worth of cards for every 100AP Damage dealt.
- For example, a character who is dealt 300AP Damage successes will have to discard cards into their Damage Pile until they’ve discarded 300AP worth of cards; either three 100AP cards, or one 200AP card and one 100AP card.
- Characters are defeated once they reach 0AP.
- This typically means all their AP is in the Damage Pile, but certain Techniques let characters gift cards to others. If someone is dropped to 0AP except the cards they have gifted to others, they are still defeated but their benefactor may still use the gifted cards.
- Characters can recover 100AP per day of rest, plus another 100AP per 1,000AP they have unlocked.
This effect applies if your attack successfully hits your opponent, which occurs when your accuracy roll equals or exceeds their defense and thus the attack is considered successful.
This effect applies if your attack fails to hit your opponent.
Whenever a dice roll results in more 6s than any other number in accuracy or offensive Clash rolls, it is a Critical and triggers any [IF CRITICAL] effects. Criticals on accuracy rolls let the attacker roll Power for damage without having to Flip a Power card. If a Clash has no [IF CRITICAL] effects, then scoring a Critical with it will allow the user to Power Up 1 or inflict 100AP damage against their target(s).
- Critical accuracy rolls automatically succeed so long as the dice pool rolled was not lower than the target’s defense.
- Critical Clash rolls automatically succeed so long as the dice pool rolled was not half or below the enemy dice pool rolled.
- Only the initial dice pool roll counts towards a Critical. If the first dice pool roll does not perform a Critical then no alterations will make it a Critical unless otherwise stated.
- Effects such as automatic successes, Locked dice, additional results from Exploding Dice, or effects that reroll dice do not count towards a Critical unless otherwise stated.
- The only exception is Advantage, as it’s not considered altering the roll but rather rolling twice and choosing which roll actually happened.
- For example: Ti Leng is rolling 7d6 on an attack’s Accuracy roll.
- His results are 1, 2, 2, 4, 6, 6, 6.
- This is a Critical hit as he has more results showing a 6 (three results) than any other number.
- If he scored one more 2 on his dice roll it would not be a Critical hit, as he’d have three 2s and three 6s so there would not be more 6s than any other number.
Whenever an attack has more natural “1”s than successes, it is a Botch. The roll is an automatic failure and has negative consequences decided by the GM. The severity of the botch should be decided by how many “1”s were rolled versus how many successes were rolled.
- For example, a botched soak roll may add to your attacker’s damage, a botched accuracy or damage roll may subtract a certain amount from your defense for 1 round. Botch results are ultimately up to the Game Master and may include story penalties.
- Natural “1”s scored from rerolling dice or rolling additional dice after the initial roll do not count towards a Botch, but can be used to negate a Botch.
When a dice roll scores a natural “6” on any 1d6, count that 6 as a success and roll that 1d6 again; if the new roll succeeds, you gain another success, so a total of two successes from that 1d6. If that new roll scores a natural “6”, you may gain a success and roll it again. Continue until no more “6s” have been rolled. All rolls have Exploding Dice by default.
