Intense Action

One-pager. Intense Action answers how much can you do at once, and how well? It replaces the action-point and "how many actions" bookkeeping that thrashed between every past edition with one idea: attention is finite, and your modifier is how you spread it. Its companion is Initiative — Initiative sets when you act; this sets how much.

There is no action budget to track. In a round you have one primary focus, room for one deliberate secondary action, and your automatic / reflex actions — dodging, flinching, keeping balance, noticing — ticking along underneath. What you can do is set by the body and by skill, not a point pool; what it costs is attention.

Your modifier is how you spread your attention

Split your focus and everything suffers. Declare your deliberate tasks in priority order:

Each task takes −1 for every other task, and −1 more for each task ranked above it. Take the hit as an ease factor (you do it worse) or as effectiveness (you do less of it) — a divided move covers a third to a half the ground rather than failing outright. Read one column, as always: worse or less.

Concentrate — go all-in on one thing — and buy a bonus at your reflexes' expense. Pour everything into a single task and it gains a positive modifier (about +1; more for absolute tunnel-vision), but your automatic / reflex actions take a penalty: you won't notice the flanker, you won't dodge well. The sniper who lives inside the scope makes the shot and is oblivious to all else. That trade is the choice.

Promote a reflex when you want it done well. Automatic actions happen on their own at a baseline; spend real attention on one and it climbs — +1 as a secondary, +2 as your primary (measured against leaving it automatic). A sniper watching for a target: make noticing his primary and it's +2 to spot; keep the shot primary but really want to see and it's +1.

A secondary action cannot pre-empt. You can't win the race to act (see Initiative) with something you're only half-attending to — pre-emption belongs to your primary.

What counts as a task

A task is a thing you want rolled. That is the whole test, and it polices itself. A step, a shouted word, drawing a weapon, aiming — these aren't tasks; they happen, with honest consequences (pop up to fire and you're still half-exposed when the round ends). There are no "free actions": a thing is either of no consequence, or it isn't free. But it only costs you attention if you cared enough to roll for it. So advance–attack–retreat is one task — the attack — and takes no penalty. Decline to make your movement a task and you simply move: noisily, visibly, at the GM's discretion.

Help sheds tasks

A helper doesn't hand you a bonus — they take a task off your list, and the ladder does the rest. A sniper ranging his own shot and firing is two things (the shot at −1); give him a spotter who owns the ranging and he's down to one, at 0 — the spotter is worth exactly +1, and it falls out of the rule. Two consequences worth having: help can't push you past your own focused best (the ladder bottoms out at one task, so assistance can't be stacked into absurdity), and a helper who takes nothing gives nothing — the shed task is real, the spotter rolls it, and a spotter who blows the roll hands over bad numbers. A helper who is genuinely better than you is a separate thing — good information — earning an ordinary situational bonus (the aimed / braced family), not a rung on this ladder.

Reactions: parry, dodge, flinch, duck

Reactions are tasks too — but ones you didn't plan, so they're priced apart. Not a pool: take as many as you like, each at a cumulative −2. Keep parrying and you simply get worse at it; skill decides how far down that ladder you stay dangerous — so the better fighter gets more good reactions, with no bookkeeping.

The parry you saw coming is cheaper than the parry you didn't. Tasks you declare together share the ladder above; a reaction you were surprised into pays the full −2 each. This is a large part of why waiting — declaring a trigger and holding for it — is worth so much.

• Parry (opposed): a critical parry lets you counter; an overwhelming one leaves the attacker off-balance (disarm, or trade places).
• Dodge (opposed): dodge and give ground for a one-off advantage — which is what makes melee move, fighters circling and yielding ground instead of standing toe-to-toe.
• Flinch / duck: exposed and shot at, ducking back to cover is a legitimate reaction (at the stacking penalty).

Never pay twice

The ladder prices dividing your own attention. The situation's ease factor prices the world — range, cover, light, the target's movement — never your multitasking. If firing-on-the-move already cost −1 for being two tasks, it does not also take a separate "firing on the move" penalty. Charge it once, on the ladder, and leave it there.

Beyond combat

Attention is finite everywhere. A Pursuit is this at a longer tempo — driving and shooting and reading the road split the same way. Space combat is a crew shedding tasks to one another (that is what a crew is for), each station one focused task. And because the split is measured against the round, the rule scales with tempo for free: move-and-watch are two tasks inside a three-second firefight, one-each across an afternoon of tracking.

Emergent tactics: in almost every other RPG, players concentrate fire to kill one target at a time, because a dead enemy is the only less-dangerous enemy. In ForeSight a wound is −(level) to everything and a stun takes an enemy out of the turn, so a hurt, rattled foe is dramatically less dangerous than a healthy one. Once the worst threats are handled, the smart play is to spread attacks across as many enemies as possible — degrade the whole group rather than execute one at a time. It falls out of the rules on its own, and it mirrors how real firefights are won: by suppression, not by headcount.