Hiding.Declaration.Assessment

[noom777]

If I want to hide in the middle of combat do I need a maneuver or a block action?
And when my opponent wants to find he will roll alertness as a maneuver or as a kind of attack action using allertness or investigation?
Also do you need an action for an assessment or a declaration in an exchange?
Thank you again!

[Haru]

Ok, two parts to this:
First, I would require you to invoke an aspect related to either an opportunity to hide or the opponent being preoccupied, so he won't see you for a moment. Otherwise, being in fight with someone and then just hiding would be kind of strange.

Second, the way I would do this would depend on the situation.
- Do you want to hide to get out of the fight? That's a concession, you lose the fight, but you live to fight the next one.
- Do you want to attack out of a hidden position? Create an aspect and tag it on your attack. I would probably let you do this without the requirement from the first part, because it would otherwise just be an aspect for an aspect, which wouldn't really make sense.
- Do you want to hide to prepare something without someone hitting you all the time? Put up a stealth block and have the attacker roll alertness "attacks" to find you. Remember that the attacker can do maneuvers as well, to increase his chance of finding you. Of course, this could become option 2a, if your opponent decides to leave, because he can't find you for too long.

[sinker]

I have to disagree with Haru on the first point. For me, as long as there wasn't an aspect that I could compel to prevent you from hiding (I.E. "Wide open space" or "Sandswept desert") then I would assume that you can find cover. There's no actual rule that you need an aspect to hide, so if I'm preventing you then it's a compel.

Otherwise Haru's totally right. It depends on your intent. If you're trying to prevent something by hiding then it's a block, If you're trying to benefit a future action then it's a maneuver, and if you're trying to escape then it's a concession. Keep in mind though that a concession does not have to be terrible for you. It usually just means that you have failed at your objective in the conflict.

As for how someone opposes your hiding it depends on what you did. If you maneuvered then they could remove the aspect with a maneuver of their own (the difficulty being how many shifts you managed).

If you create a block then any action that they take that opposes the block will counter it if it overcomes the block. So for example if they attack you with Guns while you're hiding then if their attack overcomes your block then the block is removed. They could also attack with Weapons, maneuver with Alertness, or many other things.

Concessions have their own rules for negotiating them, etc. It'd be best if you look them up in Your Story.

Finally my thought is that an assessment for aspects that aren't visually obvious can't be made in conflict. If you look at the assessment action in the Empathy skill it requires 15 minutes of interaction, and you usually don't have that kind of time in conflict. Declarations on the other hand take no time as they are not actions on the part of the character, but on the part of the player.

[Tedronai]

If you create a block then any action that they take that opposes the block will counter it if it overcomes the block. So for example if they attack you with Guns while you're hiding then if their attack overcomes your block then the block is removed. They could also attack with Weapons, maneuver with Alertness, or many other things.

Though it would probably be reasonable to modify that action with Alertness (or possibly Lore if the hider is sufficiently supernatural, with that bar lowering substantially for those with the Sight)

[sinker]

Agreed.