COMBAT & ACTION

Each unit gets a budget of points per turn, and every action — moving, attacking, reloading, using items — costs points.

Enemies choose targets based on an internal threat table: damage dealt, healing done, and taunt abilities all generate 'threat', and the enemy attacks whoever tops the list.

Weapons hold a limited magazine and must be manually or automatically reloaded, consuming reserve ammunition and a vulnerable animation window.

Attacks that damage everything within a radius or shape rather than a single target, rewarding positioning of both the caster and the enemies grouped in the blast.

Damage is absorbed by a separate armor or shield pool before it touches the underlying health total, with the two pools often behaving differently — armor regenerates, health doesn't; armor blocks certain damage types, health doesn't.

Attacking an enemy from behind or a flank deals bonus damage or triggers a special move, rewarding positioning over raw stats.

Temporary stat modifications applied to characters: buffs raise damage, speed, or defenses; debuffs lower them or impose vulnerabilities.

Attacks that propagate between targets — lightning that arcs to nearby enemies, projectiles that ricochet, effects that jump on kill — making enemy density a damage multiplier and positioning a shared vulnerability.

Holding an attack button builds up power before release, trading a longer commitment window for a stronger hit — bigger damage, wider area, or knockback.

Attacks link into sequences — light-light-heavy branches into a launcher, aerial follow-ups, finishers — with each input window and branch point defined per weapon or character.

After use, an ability becomes unavailable for a fixed duration.

A precisely-timed parry or block opens a brief window where the defender can land a devastating, often unblockable, counter strike against the attacker.

A positioning system where terrain grants defensive bonuses, typically at two tiers: half cover (partial protection) and full cover (stronger protection).

A random chance for an attack to deal amplified damage — the classic 5% chance for double.

Effects that deal damage across a duration — poison, burn, bleed — rather than instantly on hit.

Attacks and defenses are categorized — physical, fire, ice, lightning, poison — with each type interacting differently against enemy resistances and the environment.

Defensive terrain that can be damaged and eventually destroyed by sustained fire or explosives, meaning a safe position is only temporarily safe.

A cinematic, high-damage kill animation triggered against a weakened or staggered enemy, ending the encounter (or a phase of it) with a dramatic flourish rather than a normal attack.

Attacking an enemy that's being threatened from another direction — or from its side or rear — grants bonus accuracy or damage, rewarding coordinated positioning.

Hides parts of the map the player has not scouted or cannot currently see, typically in two layers: unexplored (fully black) and explored-but-not-visible (terrain shown, units hidden).

Damage dealt to allies counts and hurts them, meaning careless shooting, explosions, or area effects can injure or kill teammates.

A partial-hit result between miss and full damage — attacks that connect at bad angles, against deflection, or from underleveled attackers deal reduced or deflected damage.

A restorative effect that returns health gradually across a duration rather than instantly, common as a support-class tool that trades burst reliability for sustained, harder-to-interrupt recovery.

Occupying higher ground grants combat bonuses — accuracy, damage, range, or line of sight — making elevation a positional resource.

A dangerous object that must be passed on before a timer expires — a ticking bomb traded between players, a curse that jumps on contact, a debuff you shed by touching someone else.

Invincibility frames: a short window, usually during a dodge or after taking a hit, when the character cannot be damaged.

Turn order is determined by a speed or initiative stat rather than fixed player-then-enemy alternation, so faster characters act more often and slower ones less, and turn order itself becomes a strategic target.

Abilities that stop an enemy's action mid-cast — canceling a spell, stunning a channel, silencing a caster — turning timing and target prioritization into an active combat skill.

Consecutive eliminations without dying unlock escalating rewards — score multipliers, powerful abilities, or game-changing killstreak rewards like airstrikes.

A second-chance state at the moment of death — downed but shooting from the ground, a brief revival window, one clutch chance to undo the kill.

Determines what a unit can see and target: walls block vision, elevation extends it, smoke and foliage degrade it.

A resource pool distinct from health that fuels abilities and spells, depleting on use and regenerating over time or through specific actions, gating how often and how much a character can use their non-basic abilities.

Moving away from an adjacent enemy without disengaging carefully provokes a free attack from them, punishing careless repositioning and making retreat a tactical decision rather than a free action.

Rewards for exceeding what a kill required — bonus resources for massive final blows, gib rewards, style points for excessive force, or mechanics that carry surplus damage onward.

A unit sacrifices its action to enter a watchful state, automatically firing at the first enemy that moves through its line of sight during the opponent's turn.

The defensive triad: block absorbs damage at low risk and low reward, dodge evades with moderate timing demands, and parry — the tightest window — deflects an attack and opens the enemy to a counter.

Attacks that pass through their first target — bullets punching through walls and bodies, arrows skewering lines of enemies, armor-piercing rounds trading raw damage for penetration.

A temporary state of heightened aggression and power — increased damage, speed, or a transformed moveset — usually triggered by taking damage, low health, or building a meter, that trades defense or control for offense.

Combat resolving continuously in live time — attacks, dodges, and decisions executed as they happen, with reflexes, spacing, and timing as first-class skills alongside build and strategy.

Combat runs in real time but the player can pause at any moment to assess, queue orders, and issue commands, then unpause to watch them execute.

Enemies take reduced damage from some damage types (resistances) and extra from others (vulnerabilities), so matching your attack to the target is rewarded.

A downed-but-not-dead state with a countdown — bleeding out while teammates race to revive, crawling with a pistol, stabilizing versus full revival — as death's negotiable antechamber.

A protective energy field absorbs damage before health, typically regenerating after a delay when the player avoids further hits, encouraging a poke-retreat-regen combat rhythm.

All players' orders executing at once — plan phases where both sides commit blind, then resolution where the plans collide — rather than alternating turns.

Explosive or area weapons deal damage to everyone near the impact point, not just a directly-hit target, rewarding proximity to enemies with area denial and punishing tight clustering.

Attacks, dodges, blocks, and sprints all draw from a regenerating stamina pool; empty stamina means you can neither attack nor escape.

Temporary conditions applied to combatants that change their state: poison ticks damage, stun skips turns, burn adds damage over time, freeze immobilizes, bleed punishes action.

A meter that rewards varied, uninterrupted, skillful combat with rising style ranks — and punishes repetition or getting hit by draining it.

An ability that forces or strongly compels enemies to attack the user, letting a tank redirect threat away from vulnerable allies.

Time quantized into discrete simulation beats — server ticks resolving all actions at fixed intervals, energy systems granting turns by speed, games where 'real-time' is secretly a fast turn sequence.

A visible queue of upcoming turns — the sidebar showing exactly who acts next and how far ahead, with speed stats and abilities reordering the future in real time.

Combatants act in discrete turns rather than simultaneously in real time.

Enemies have specific body parts that take extra damage, can be crippled, or yield special effects when struck, rewarding precise aiming over spray-and-pray.

Effective distance as a weapon property — the spear outreaching the dagger, rifles with damage falloff curves, minimum ranges that create dead zones, the tactical grid's 2-range archer safe behind the 1-range wall.