Protective Actions & Reactions
Design Decision: Defensive Reactions + Overwatch
Characters are never frozen while visible threats develop. Two separate systems handle out-of-turn responses:
- Defensive reactions — a separate stat-based budget for repositioning and self-protection on other characters’ turns
- Overwatch — a deliberate turn action that sets up a conditional offensive response
These two systems do not overlap. Reactions are defensive. Overwatch is offensive. Neither triggers cascading counter-reactions.
Defensive Reactions
Core Concept
Every character has a reaction budget — a small amount of time (in seconds, like the action economy) available for defensive responses during other characters’ turns. This budget is separate from action economy; you always get your full turn AND your reaction capacity.
The reaction budget is determined by stats (likely Awareness, combat experience, or similar — exact stats TBD). A veteran gets significantly more reaction capacity than a rookie.
What Reactions Can Do
Reactions are defensive and positional only:
| Reaction | What It Does |
|---|---|
| Shift | Move 1-2m — get behind nearby cover, adjust angle against a flanker |
| Drop | Go prone or crouch — reduce profile |
| Track | Turn to face a moving threat — negates flanking bonus |
| Brace | Hunker deeper into existing cover — improves cover protection |
What Reactions Cannot Do
- No shooting. Firing at a target during their turn is overwatch, not a reaction.
- No throwing. No grenades, no equipment use.
- No offensive actions of any kind. Reactions reposition you — they don’t threaten anyone.
Why Defensive-Only Prevents Cascading
If your reaction is purely positional — you shifted behind a crate, you went prone, you turned to face — there’s nothing for the acting player to counter-react to. You didn’t threaten them. The exchange ends cleanly: they acted, you adjusted, done.
Reaction Budget and Multiple Threats
The reaction budget is spent across the entire round, not per enemy turn. If two enemies flank you in a pincer:
- Flanker A moves: You spend reaction time to shift into cover against A.
- Flanker B moves: If you have remaining budget, you can adjust again (smaller shift, track, go prone). If you’re out, B gets their flanking angle.
This means:
- Veterans (large reaction budget) can respond to 2-3 threats before being overwhelmed. You might need three people to successfully flank a grizzled combat vet.
- Rookies (small reaction budget) can react to one threat and are exposed to the second. Easier to overwhelm.
- Multiple threats are genuinely dangerous even to skilled characters — eventually, reaction capacity runs out.
Turn-Based Artifact Acknowledgment
In reality, a pincer flanking maneuver happens simultaneously. In our turn-based system, flankers move sequentially, meaning the defender reacts to them one at a time. This is an accepted limitation of turn-based design. The reaction budget mitigates the worst of it — you can react to the first mover, and the sequential nature means you at least get something — but it doesn’t perfectly simulate simultaneous movement. We accept this tradeoff.
Overwatch
Core Concept
Overwatch is a deliberate action taken on your turn. You commit your action economy to watching a zone — if an enemy enters or crosses that zone, you get a shot at them.
How It Works
- On your turn, you declare overwatch and designate a zone (a corridor, a doorway, an open area).
- Your turn is spent: Hands (weapon ready), Focus (watching the zone), Legs (stationary, braced). Your full action economy is consumed by maintaining overwatch.
- When an enemy enters your zone, you choose whether to fire. You are not forced to shoot the first target you see — you can hold for a priority target.
- Your overwatch shot uses your action time budget (already committed), not your reaction budget. This means you can still use defensive reactions while on overwatch.
The Tradeoff
Overwatch costs your entire turn’s action economy. You don’t move, you don’t shoot at a guaranteed target, you don’t reload or heal. You’re betting your turn on someone crossing your zone. If nobody does, you spent your turn doing nothing offensive.
The payoff: you shoot at a target mid-movement, which is tactically powerful. They’re exposed, possibly out of cover, and your shot is braced and aimed.
Overwatch + Reactions
These are separate systems. While on overwatch:
- Your action economy is committed to watching the zone (and firing if triggered)
- Your reaction budget is still fully available for defensive repositioning if someone threatens you from outside your overwatch zone
You’re not helpless while watching a corridor. If someone flanks you from behind, you can still track or shift.
Interaction with Other Systems
- Action Economy: Reactions draw from a separate budget, not from your action economy channels. Overwatch consumes your action economy for the turn. The two budgets are independent.
- Initiative: Turn order determines when enemies act, which determines when your reactions trigger. Higher initiative characters may have more reaction budget (TBD — initiative may influence reaction capacity).
- Contact Phase: The Contact Phase handles pre-combat positioning. Reactions handle in-combat repositioning. Both serve the same principle: you should not be caught helpless unless you genuinely failed.
- Cover and Positioning (TBD): Reactions interact heavily with cover mechanics. Shifting behind cover, bracing in cover, tracking to deny flanking bonuses — all depend on how cover is defined mechanically.
Playtest Questions
- What is the right reaction budget for different skill levels? (e.g., rookie = 1-2 seconds, veteran = 3-4 seconds?)
- Which stat(s) govern reaction budget? (Awareness? Combat experience? A derived stat?)
- How far can a “Shift” reaction move you? (1m? 2m? Stat-dependent?)
- Alternative to test: Shared action/reaction pool instead of separate budgets. Same total time, player decides how to split between acting and reacting. Creates a meaningful tradeoff but introduces planning complexity. Worth playtesting against the separate-budget model.
- Does overwatch consume the entire action economy, or could a “partial overwatch” exist where you act briefly then set up overwatch with remaining time?
- Can overwatch be set up as part of a turn that includes minor actions (e.g., reload then overwatch)?
- How does overwatch interact with the channel system’s time budgets? Does the shot timing depend on weapon type (snap shot speed vs. aimed shot speed)?