Each combat encounter happens in a single location. This may be a ruined building, a city street, an area of wilderness, or the floor of a vault. The location is divided into several zones based on the terrain features or natural divisions present in the area.

Movement and ranged attacks use descriptive terms to measure their distance in combat, relative to the objects’ placement within zones. 

Range is measured in the following five categories:

• Reach is when an object or character is within arm’s length of your character. You can interact with objects and make melee attacks within your reach. Being in reach of an enemy is disruptive to ranged attacks and tests, adding +2 to the difficulty of any test that isn’t a melee attack.
• Close range represents any distance within the zone you’re in—a distance of 0 zones.
• Medium range is any distance to something in the zone adjacent to your current zone. Medium range is a distance of 1 zone.
• Long range represents objects 2 zones away from your current zone. Long range is a distance of 2 zones.
• Extreme range represents any objects beyond long range. Extreme range is a distance of 3 or more zones.

Movement in Zones

When you move into a zone as part of a movement action, you can move your character within reach of any object within that zone. So, when using the Move minor action to move into an adjacent zone, you can move to any point in that zone. Equally, when using the Sprint action, you can move to any point within a zone that is 2 zones away. This could put you into Reach with an enemy, or an object you need to get to.

Difficult Terrain and Obstacles

Difficult terrain describes any ground that requires more effort to cross, either because it hinders you or because you need to be careful where you step. A zone may be filled with difficult terrain, slowing anyone attempting to cross it.

Obstacles are similar in that they hinder your movement, but they exist between zones—attempts to move from one zone to another where an obstacle is present may slow your progress. Obstacles may be barriers you need to climb up or over, or they might be gaps that you need to jump past.

When you attempt to move from an area of difficult terrain, or cross an obstacle, you must spend one or more extra Action Points to do so, depending on how difficult the terrain or obstacle is.

If you do not have sufficient Action Points available, then you need to find some way to generate them. The simplest way to do this is to take the Rally major action, generating Action Points with a Difficulty 0 STR + Athletics test; any successes become AP, which can be spent on moving through the terrain.

Difficult Terrain and Obstacle Examples

Cover

Cover provides additional Damage Resistance against Physical and Energy-based attacks. Objects in the environment will provide a certain amount of DR, as a number of Combat Dice (  DC  ), depending on what they’re made from and how resilient they are.

When you are attacked by a Physical or Energy-based attack while behind cover, roll the number of  DC  listed in the Cover Values table and add that result to your DR for that attack.

To benefit from cover, it needs to obscure the location hit, whether that’s from a melee or ranged attack. You cannot be targeted by an attack if the cover obscures your character’s entire body, as you can only be attacked by something that can see you.

Cover Values