The Basics
Dice Pools
Dice pools are formed pretty much the same as they are in Storyteller and Storytelling, you take Attribute + Skill and roll that many d10s. What sets Storypath apart from those, imo, is that Storypath permits and explicitly encourages far more flexibility in what combinations can be used to perform a given action. You don't have to use Might when making a Close Combat roll; heck, you don't even need to use a Physical Attribute. I think this flexibility creates a lot of verisimilitude and keeps characters from being locked into a given stat distribution in order to achieve a given character concept.
Skills
Storypath uses sixteen Skills, which can vary depending on the given gameline. I like to think of Skills as the "what you are doing" part of a dice pool combination. It is never stated in any of the rules, but personally I think of Skills as being divided into chunks that map to different parts of the main systems: four Skills each largely dedicated to Action Adventure, Procedural, and Intrigue, and then two skills each that are largely dedicated to the two major subsystems, Combat and Crafting. I'll talk about them later on.
Once you have at least three dots in a given Skill, you can buy Specialties for that Skill; if you have this level of Skill at chargen, you get a free Specialty. Specialties grant at least +1 Enhancement, a free conditional success, that a character can apply to other Skills for actions where the Specialty would be relevant; for example, a character with a Firearms Specialty in Pistols would be able to apply their Enhancement to a Technology roll to perform maintenance and repairs on their pistol, or an Occult specialty could aid in a Culture roll to navigate supernatural societies. Additionally, in the Scion and Dystopia Rising: Evolution lines, when you fail at an action you have a Specialty in, you gain an additional point of Momentum (more on that later).
In the Trinity Continuum and Dystopia lines, characters with 3+ dots in a Skill can also buy Skill Tricks, which allow you to spend Momentum for a variety of benefits, from adding dice and increasing Scale to adjusting Target Numbers or more narrative effects. A given Skill can have 1 Skill Trick at 3 dots, plus one more for each dot over 3.
Attributes
You have your usual nine Attributes in Storypath, which are made up of their Arena and Approach. Arena is what kinds of situations and challenges it applies to, and Approach is the method in which those situations and challenges are, well, approached and dealt with. The combinations of the Physical, Social, and Mental Arenas and the Force, Finesse, and Resiliance Approaches create the nine Attributes of Might, Dexterity, Stamina, Presence, Manipulation, Composure, Intellect, Cunning, and Resolve. I like to think of Attributes as the "how you are doing it" part of a dice pool combination.
Mixed Actions
When you want to do two separate things at once, you use a Mixed Action. You figure out the dice pool for each action, and then roll the smaller pool. The successes from this roll are spent on the Difficulties and Complications of both actions, and it is possible to succeed at one while failing the other. If you have Enhancements, they can only be spend on the actions that they apply to.
Tiers and TNs
In Scion and Trinity, characters and Antagonists are divided up into four Tiers. Tiers largely dwell in the background, and mainly determine a character's "weight class." Their major function is determining TN (8 for Tiers 1-2, 7 for Tiers 3-4) and determining Attribute and "power" caps; however certain abilities invoke Tier as a measure of what kinds of targets the ability can and cannot effect, have additional effects on targets of a given (usually lower) Tier, or even whether a character can have the ability at all.
By and large, abilities that invoke Tier do so to cut out non-meaningful opponents, or represent the intrinsic advantages of having greater narrative/metaphysical weight. Tier represents, in a broad sense, whether someone is a person you can dunk on, a peer, or a person who can dunk on you.
Additionally, higher Tiers can have broad narrative and mechanical impacts that I can't really define well because there aren't many proper examples of how higher Tier characters work at this point in time.
Difficulty and Complications
Difficulty is largely the same as what most of you are familiar with. Gather successes equal to the Difficulty, and you succeed on the action, leftover successes determine how well you succeeded. What's different in Storypath is what happens when you fail to gather enough successes and fail, although that whole shebang is something I'll get into later.
Complications are contextual obstacles, risks, or potential consequences that are related to but separate from the challenge's Difficulty. Complications are have their own 1-5 rating, and are paid off using the same pool of successes that you use to pay off Difficulty, but do not come into play unless you manage to overcome the Difficulty.
Complications being separate from Difficulty is a wonderful thing imo, as it allows for more dynamic and diverse outcomes to a given challenge, and can be used to make challenges more serious without halting the characters' progress. The consequences don't even have to affect the characters in question; instead, they can give their enemies advantages.
Its only Difficulty 1 to grab the valuable jewel on exhibit, but there's a 4 point Complication to do it without alerting security -- and regardless of whether the character can pay off the Complication or not, its sure to lead the story in an interesting direction.
Enhancements
Enhancements are the counterpart of Complications: contextual advantages and edges, instead of contextual obstacles. Each level of Enhancement grants one success to applicable actions. As long as a player rolls at least one success, then they gain additional successes from all applicable Enhancements. Only the most exceptional and potent advantages grant more than 3 successes, and Enhancements that singularly or collectively grant more than 3 successes should almost always come with an Enhancement drawback.
Speaking of which, some Enhancements come with drawbacks, particularly those above 3 points; for example, getting drunk might help you fit in at a party, but would hurt your fine motor skills. The three main ways to play out a drawback are to add a Complication along with the Enhancement, increase the Difficulty of a later roll, or grant an Antagonist an Enhancement they can use against you.
Teamwork is one specific source of Enhancements; a single character can assist another on a given action, rolling the same or different (but relevant) dice pool and adding their successes to the assisted character's roll as an Enhancement, up to a total of 3. These are the default limits; certain powers can increase the number of people that can assist, the level of Enhancement, or both.
Scale
Ah, Scale, one of my favorite mechanics in Storypath. Scale represents a significant gap in power or scope between two things. There are two ways to apply Scale, Narrative and Dramatic.
Narrative Scale is a multiplier applied to successes or static values, and is usually applied to minor characters, scenery, and other non-critical story elements. Its entirely appropriate to just handwave the results and use the multiplier as a benchmark for what happens.
Dramatic Scale is applied to central story elements, and provides a +2 Enhancement to relevant actions per difference in Scale, or half the Enhancement to static values.
This split represents the ability of the player characters and other narratively important people and things to bridge these gaps through luck and sheer chutzpah, while set-pieces and minor characters are just going to get rekt; differences of even 2-3 Scale are enough to justify automatic success or failure against trivial characters. That said, heroic resolve isn't the only way to bridge gaps in Scale; you can also go out and get some Scale of your own on your side. As I think is said somewhere in Scion: Origins, who needs the power of the gods when a pick-up doing 80 literally hits like a truck?
Scion rates Scale from 0-6, with 0 being human level. Trinity goes from 1-6, but has 1 be "baseline" instead of specifically human; a sedan outclasses a human in terms of speed, but is only normal compared to other cars. Dystopia is an interesting beast, because its Scale goes from 0-4; it isn't a game of epic deeds or sweeping vistas like the other two, and its Scale ranges accordingly. There are many different Types of Scale, from Size and Speed to less tangible gulfs like Leadership. Scale, like other Enhancements, can come with drawbacks and challenges of their own; a giant's Size Scale might let him toss cars around, but it would hinder him when trying to be stealthy.
In Scion and Dystopia you also have the Shockwave rule, where actions (mostly attacks) of great Scale spread their effects out across entire, and even additional, range bands, with the Scale of the action decreasing by 1 form each range band effected.
Conditions
Conditions are long-term statuses that affect characters, whether positive or negative, or even a mix. When a negative Condition would cause you to fail an action, it provides 1 Momentum on top of any other Consolations. Conditions fade over time, but if they are resolved before hand, it provides one Momentum. Particularly dramatic or severe Conditions are Persistent Conditions, which can only be resolved with magical aid or an equivalent.
Fields
Fields are specific types of Conditions that apply to everyone within a specific "place," which is not defined by distance or range, and can have a number of different features. Essentially, Fields are the mechanical context in which a game takes place.
Stunts
Ah, Stunts. I may not have been entirely accurate when I said earlier that Enhancements were the flipside of Complications; one could argue that Stunts would fill that role. Stunts in Storypath do not grant additional dice like in Exalted; rather, a player can spend their leftover success to purchase additional advantages or change the scene in their favor, instead of leaving them aside to become threshold successes. The various game lines provide a wide spread of specific Stunts with specific costs, but if you want to make a generic Stunt or buy a spur-of-the-moment advantage, then the guidelines are that the Stunt must:
1. Link back to the success of the character's action;
2. Affect a different Attribute + Skill combination than the one the player used; and
3. Be narrated out by the player as to how they change the scene.
From there, the three basic types of Stunts are the complicate Stunt, which inflicts a Complication equal to successes spent on another character; an enhanced Stunt, which grants you or another character an Enhancement for a later action equal to successes spent; and the difficult Stunt, which adds to the Difficulty of actions other characters take against you equal to successes spent.
Scion has a particular type of Stunt called Twist of Fate, where if you have used a Path to enhance an action, you can buy a Stunt to change the story itself and shifting narrative details, although not in a supernatural way. This is basically a more complex and limited version of Dramatic Editing in Trinity.
I like Stunts, because like Complications, they provide greater dynamism and nuance in how you can succeed, letting you stack the deck in favor of you and your friends rather than just "yeah, you did the thing" and nothing more.
Complex Actions
Complex Actions are made up of a series of separate but linked tasks and challenges called intervals. Each interval has its own dice pool, Difficulty, etc. Each successful interval provides a Milestone, and once enough Milestones have been accumulated, the Complex Action is completed successfully. Depending on the urgency of the task, you may need to acquire the necessary Milestones within a limited number of intervals.
The normal Teamwork rules can be used for Complex Actions to collaborate on intervals, or the pair can attempt to achieve different Milestones during the same interval, in which case they roll separately.
Failure
And now we come to the last part of the basic system rules: failing. When a roll fails to gather enough successes to buy off the Difficulty of an action, the action fails. That is not the end, however; when a character fails, they gain a Consolation. A Consolation can be anything from the revelation of a different path to success, an Enhancement on a later action, or even a new character showing up to provide assistance or information.
Gaining Momentum
The most common and simplest Consolation is Momentum. Momentum is a narrative resource drawn out of a pool shared by all players, the size of which is determined by the number of players and the gameline in question. When you get Momentum as a Consolation, add 1 point to this pool. Botches add 2 points, but can't give any other type of Consolation.
Spending Momentum
Momentum can be spent to add 1 die per Momentum to the dice pool, add an additional interval to a Complex Action for 3 Momentum, and activate Knacks, Skill Tricks, and other powers.
It's a central conceit of Storypath (with the exception of They Came from Beneath the Sea!) that Momentum and Momentum-related functions are the only way to add dice to to the dice pool. Otherwise, you gain Enhancements.
Scion: Virtues
In Scion, the titular demigods and special humans called Saints have a Virtue Track, which have two opposing Virtues at each end of a five point track; you start at the center point. Whenever a character takes an action that is in line with one of these Virtues, you shift places on the track towards the relevant end, and when you spend Momentum on that action you add an additional die per Momentum. Thus, Virtues give you more bang your buck when spending Momentum. Once you reach the one of the poles of the track, you gain the Virtuous Condition. In this state, you must act to fulfill the Virtue you are suffused with, and cannot act against it, either. Of course, whenever this causes you trouble, you gain Momentum, keeping you topped off and able to take advantage of the boost your Virtues give you.
Paths
Paths are key concepts that define a (usually player) character, and represent how that character is linked to and interacts with various parts of the setting. They have static effects, primarily in the case of chargen, but can also be actively invoked during play to gain narrative and to a lesser degree mechanical advantages. A starting character typically has three Paths, defining his origins (and unsurprisingly is referred to as the Origin Path), his "place" in the setting or in the PC group, and an organization or social group he is closely tied to, whether positively (a dues-paying member) or negatively (a defector or staunch foe).
Skills, Permissions, and Edges
The primary mechanical benefits Paths give is defining the bulk of a characters starting Skill dots. With the exception of Scion, Paths have four related Skills among which the player may distribute three dots in any manner they like. In Scion, Paths have only three Skills, but the player rates their three Paths as primary, secondary, and tertiary (much like Arenas), and receive three, two, and one dot(s) respectively in each Path Skill.
This difference in power is somewhat balanced by non-Scion Paths also granting Edges, which are much like Merits in Exalted and CoD. Each Path grants two dots worth of Edges from among a set of Edges associated with the Path, and purchasing Path Edges with xp is also cheaper. Edges grant easier access to Enhancements, limited Scale, and narrative benefits, making up for the lower amount of raw dots.
Scion Paths instead grant "permissions," which allow characters to purchase and/or select Knacks and Boons that are unique to specific paths, the Path of a given Pantheon granting permissions to use their Pantheon-Specific Purview and its Boons being one example. Additionally, Scion Paths simply grant players access to anything relevant to its concept, like if your Paths says you're rich, then you have money. These kinds of things are handled by Edges in other games.
Connections and other invocations
Paths have Connections, which are the resources and people a character can access thanks to their Paths. They come in three types: access, which provides specialized equipment of workspace (like a fingerprint database for a cop), group, which is like access but for a well defined group of people rather than things, and contacts, which are single persons that have a relationship of some kind with the PC, skills related to the Paths, and are inclined to do the PC a favor or two. Contacts have a rating and an equal number of tags, which define what ways/areas the contact can provide assistance, and how significant their assistance is. A PC can, once per session without penalty, invoke a Path to gain access to their Connections; further invocations apply the Suspended and then the Revoked Conditions, which represent violations of codes of conduct, contacts feeling taken advantage of, or simply pushing your Connections too far, and represent greater and longer lasting difficulty to invoke the Path in the future, and more severe demands required to get back into your Connection's good graces.
Additionally, a Path can be invoked once per session to grant additional dice to a roll that could plausibly apply to your path experience.
Path Ratings
Paths in Scion as general things, and can be acquired and lost as narratively convenient. In other games, Paths have ratings from 1-5, and improving a pre-existing Path or gaining a new one requires xp. Paths are expensive, but are cost effective and solid investments once you've saved up enough. A higher rating increases the potency of Connections, increases the number of times you can call upon then without penalty, and provides another set of three Skill and two Edge dots to distributed amongst those associated with the Path.
The 3 Areas of Action
The 3 Areas of Action are the three core systems of the game, and govern the bulk of what happens in Storypath, how it happens, and what you'll be doing within that context. The core systems are largely the same across all the currently released gamelines, with some differing details and minutae. There are also two main subsystems, for combat and crafting, and those two can and do vary significantly according to the needs and themes of the individual game line. Well, Crafting does, the meat of the Combat system, at least, is pretty much always the same.
Action Adventure
Action-Adventure is about all the physical stuff that happens in the game.
Time
Time is pretty much the same as in Exalted; combat time -> scenes -> matryoshka doll clumps of sessions.
Initiative
For Initiative, players and antagonists roll to determine the placement of PC and NPC "slots" in the initiative order. The players and Storyguide then decide which PC or Antagonist goes in which of the appropriate slots on the initiative roster. So even a character that rolled terribly on their Initiative roll can end up going first, if the players agree that they should take the top PC slot.
Action Types
Storypath has simple actions, which consumes a character's attention for the round. If they want to do two things at once with their simple action, they need to use a mixed action; reflexive actions, which are pretty much the same as in Storyteller; and, of course, free actions and such.
Movement
The various types of movement are usually reflexive, and involve moving Range Bands. How exactly you are moving only really comes into play when you are hindered or endangered by your surroundings, the movement is reflexively contested, as it is for Disengage and Rush, or if the movement hinders further action, such as dropping into and rising from prone, or diving behind cover.
Terrain
There are two general types of Terrain: Dangerous Terrain, which imposes Complications on a movement action (ex: running through a burning building), and Difficult Terrain, which makes movement more difficult, but not necessarily harmful. Difficult Terrain causes the default Move action to no longer be Reflexive, and characters must succeed on an Athletics roll to move one Range Band; additionally, all other movement takes place at +1 Difficulty.
Chases
Chases are simple or complex actions, usually opposed, that represent a fleeing or pursuing an opponent. Non-opposed chases can represent a race, or just covering an amount of distance in a set amount of time.
Procedurals
Procedurals are the space where mental action takes place, from investigation and research to planning or scouting.
Leads and Clues
The two main components of gathering information are leads and Clues. Leads are things you generally just get by being in the right place at the right time, or through Path contacts and Consolations. Leads are the stuff that would make you say "Looks like we've got a mystery on our hands." The information they offer is generally pretty basic, however, which is where Clues come in. Clues are generally a challenge to uncover, but provide further insight and deeper understanding of the situation or subject at hand. Strictly speaking, Clues are not necessary to advance or conclude the plot, but they can speed up the end, provide the players with a more thorough understanding of what is going on, or allow them to pursue personal agendas and side stories.
Clues and Stunts
When trawling for information, a player can spend their threshold successes on Stunts to gain more information, further detail on the information they have, or add their own touch to the information. The four general Stunts for this are Extra Clue, with a self-explanatory effect; Interpretation, which gives the player more context or insight into a lead or Clue; Q&A, which lets a player ask the Storyguide a question about the Clue; and Player Inspiration, where with Storyguide approval a player can make up a new fact associated with the Clue.
Information as an Enhancement
Successes on information-gathering or planning rolls can be use to buy Enhancements, which can enhance later actions or be banked and used to buy information stunts at a later point. This can allow for things like enhancing a combat roll after studying your opponent's fighting style, enhancing a Medicine roll to perform a surgical operation after studying the patient's medical files, and having a relevant fact about a species of monster pop into your character's head using successes from an earlier research session about mythical creatures.
I really like the Procedural system; I feel that it adds a third dimension to Storypath that Exalted sorely lacks. There are so many secrets, patchwork or distorted information, and forgotten knowledge and history in the setting, and yet there isn't really a system to really dig deep into that aspect of Creation.
Intrigue
Intrigue is the place of all things social occur. Intrigue centers around two main systems, Influence and Bonds, which occur in the context of Attitude and Atmosphere.
Attitude
Attitude represents how one character feels about another, whether positively or negatively, and how intensely they feel that way. While those are the only things Attitude means mechanically, there are many different types of Attitude beyond general "positive" or "negative," and these define how a character's Attitude can affect or be utilized by an influence action. Attitudes can be shifted by influence actions, Consolations and Complications, or just the logical flow of events (people will not remain friendly with you if you keep borrowing money and not paying it back).
Atmosphere
Atmosphere if the general vibe or mood of a social interaction or situation. It can be generally positive or negative, although specific atmospheres are also possible, and is rated 1-3. Atmosphere then adjusts the Attitude of all those affected by/within the Atmosphere according to its rating. It's just like how a tense situation can make normally friendly people snappy.
Influence
Influence works like any other challenge, by forming a dice pool and rolling against a Difficulty. Attitude always grants an Enhancement to an Influence challenge, whether it be to the roll being made or to the Difficulty of the character being influenced. Complications can be things like leaving hard feelings, drawing the attention of a third party, or inspiring an unintended action. Influence can be used encourage/discourage behavior (get someone to do something), encourage/discourage belief (get someone to think something), shift the rating of a character's Attitude or the Atmosphere, or assess a target's Attitude.
The base Difficulty of a given influence action is generally defined by how risky or strenuous the influencer's goal is, as well as how much the goal runs counter to the target's current relationships and worldview. If the Difficulty is overcome, then both PCs and NPCs have the ability to refuse the influence attempt, should they feel that accepting the influence would negatively affect the story, or if it makes them feel uncomfortable. In such an instance, the influencer receives Momentum or another form of Consolation (typically an Enhancement to a later influence attempt), with greater compensation provided if rather than merely refuse, the target chooses to immediately act against the influence.
Bonds
Bonds are the connections and relationships between characters. You can have bonds of friendship, romance, or even adversarial Bonds.
Bonds are spendable, made up of successes added to a pool when the Bond is formed, and depending on the game line these successes can be spent of various actions that involve or affect the relationship. Bonds also can grant Enhancements or inflict penalties on Influence attempts on the character, depending on the context. A hit man will be better able to resist attempts to convince him to kill his beloved mother, but attempting to seduce a target in front of your lover will cause increased Difficulties or inflict a Complication that will break the Bond if not paid off.
Crafting
Crafting is the most variable of Storypath's two major subsystems, but overall, they boil down to a Complex Action, with each Milestone representing an ingredient acquired, elbow grease applied, etc.
Scion's Crafting system is based on different Tiers of items, with the character's Tier limiting the kinds of things they can make. There isn't really much nitty-gritty to it until you get to Tier 3 and can start making Relics.
Trinity's Superscience crafting system divides exceptional items into five ranks, which determine the number of additional Enhancements, equipment tags (more on those in a bit), Edges (more on those later), or other special abilities that can be put into the item. Superscience has three levels of Superscience, which determine what kinds of characters can make that level of tech, and who can then use it. Each level grant an additional level of Scale over baseline technology on top of other benefits.
Crafting also has special Stunts, called Jury-Rigging and Overclocking, which let you make things rapidly in exchange for a more flawed item and boost performance in exchange for burning out the item, respectively.
Combat
The second of Storypath's two major subsystems. The bones system is pretty simple: you roll the relevant attack dice pool, and use your successes to first buy off the target's Defense to hit them, and then any Difficulty of the Inflict Injury Stunt to hurt them. The meat of the system lies in affecting the context of that path from Point A to Point B.
Defense and Health
Defense is basically the static Difficulty that must be overcome for anyone to injure you or otherwise ruin your day with various Stunts. It is always at least 1; while Defense can be raised and lowered both temporarily and permanently, it cannot ever go below 1.
Health, much like in Storyteller, is set out as a number of Injury Condition boxes, representing afflictions of varying severity. These categories are Bruised (-1), Injured (-2), Maimed (-4), and Taken Out. For every 2 dots of Stamina above 1 that a character has, they gain an additional Health box, although what type of box and in what order depends on the gameline. Knacks, Edges, and other powers can also provide additional Health boxes, whether temporarily or permanently. I'll go over Injuries more when we get to damage.
Defensive Stunts
While various powers and types of equipment can raise Defense, the most basic means of defending yourself is through a defense roll. In response to an attack, the character rolls their highest Resilience Attribute, and divides any successes among Defensive Stunts, which last until the end of the round. The most basic is the Dodge Stunt, which increases Defense by the number of successes spent; others include Dive for Cover, which allows you to move one range band and get behind Cover in response to a ranged attack, and Roll Away, which allows you to move one range band away from an attacker (differs from Disengage in that its not a gamble on whether the attacker will let you move away, as far as I can tell). Other Defensive Stunts can be acquired through powers, equipment, and Edges.
Additionally, you can perform a Full Defense action, which may not be part of a Mixed Action; you roll your two highest Resilience Attributes, and in addition to the normal Defensive Stunts you may spend successes to directly raise the Difficulty for enemies to inflict Injuries on you.
Cover
There are four levels of Cover (expendable, light, heavy, full), which, once a character has successfully Taken Cover, provide a varying number of Health levels that absorb incoming damage; these levels must be divided up among all the characters using the Cover.
Attacking
To attack in Storypath, you decide how you are going to attack, form a plausible dice pool, and roll to beat the target's Defense. Once you have bought off Defense, you may use your remaining successes on Stunts; specific ones built into the Combat system, Stunts granted by powers and etc., or just general ones you made up on the spot. Not all combat Stunts will be available to all forms of attack.
The most basic pair of Stunts all attack actions have are Inflict Injury and Critical Hit. Inflict Injury costs (0 or 1 + target's Soft Armor) successes to buy, but without a relevant form of Scale over the target, it can only be bought once per attack. Critical Hit has a base cost of 4 successes, and allows you to inflict and additional Injury on top of the Inflict Injury Stunt, but as far as I can tell it can only be purchased once.
Other combat Stunts involve your usual options of knocking opponents around or on their ass, grappling, disarming, sundering their equipment, blinding them to hamper their own attacks, feinting to grant an ally an Enhancement for their attacks, pinning down opponents with ranged attacks, and so on. Combat Stunts are as much about hindering your foes and supporting your allies as they are about laying down hurt.
A Personal Note
Be aware that in some games lines, some Stunts can be more...terrifying than others, so Storyguides and players alike beware. This largely stems from there not really being a way to contest non-damaging attack Stunts once the attacker has overcome your Defense, and normally your pool to roll for Defensive Stunts or gain Enhancements off of is not that large. The cheap costs of the Close-Combat versions of Stunts like Disarm/Seize and Sunder can all too easily turn a combat into a clusterfuck if an enemy closes distance and all parties at the table are not on the same page, so discuss with your group or come prepare for enemy action, whether mentally or literally in-game. The easiest solution to implement, imo, would be to take a page out of Dystopia's book and make such Stunts have costs equal to the target's relevant Combat Skill, so that a master swordsman isn't disarmed just as easily as a novice.
Damage and Injuries
As I said up with Health, a character has four types of Health boxes that can hold four types of Injury Conditions: Bruised (-1), Injured (-2), Maimed (-4), and Taken Out. While I use (-#), since that's what most of the books use, its equally valid to use (+#), since unlike Storyteller Injury Conditions don't inflict penalties on your dice pool, but rather increase the Difficulty of actions relevant to the Injury. Injury Conditions are specific, so rather than getting a +1 general Difficulty increase when you fill in a Bruised condition box, you get something like Black Eye -- increasing the Difficulty of Firearms actions -- or Sprained Ankle, which increases the Difficult of all actions, but only if you've Moved.
Injury Conditions don't need to represent actual wounds and such, either; they can be curses, or even "Fated Injuries" kept to the side for later, representing a bullet with your name carved into it that is destined to bring you down.
When a character takes an Injury Condition, their player may select from any of their unfilled Health boxes to represent it -- so they don't need to be taken in order. If you want, you can choose to take a Maimed Condition right away, or even opt to be Taken Out. The latter saves you from being weighed down by a pile of serious wounds later on, and also adds three Momentum to the pool when you're Taken Out, and again whenever you being KO'd hampers your team. While Taken Out adds the most Momentum per instance, all Injury Conditions generate Momentum when they would cause you to fail, as with any other negative Condition. While their are powers that allow the injurer to select which level of Injury they want to inflict instead of the injuree, such powers are fairly rare.
Indirect Damage
Indirect Damage operates on different rules than normal damage (pauses for cries of "no shit"). Sources of Indirect Damage are rated 1-5, and whenever the need to resist them comes, a character makes a Stamina + Resolve roll, and uses their successes -- along with the rating of any relevant protective equipment, in cases where the source cannot be protected against completely by the gear -- to reduce this rating. If above 0 afterwards, the source inflicts its rating in separate Injury Conditions. Sources of Indirect Damage have types and tags, determining how and/or when a character can suffer from them, how often the character must make rolls to resist harm, whether its lethal or non-lethal, etc.
Stress
Another "type" of Health and Damage that shows up in Dystopia Rising is Stress, which is distinct and resolved separately from the Health Track. Stress Conditions also have four types: Troubled (-1), Distraught (-2), Haunted (-4), and Burned Out. Like Health, characters can gain additional Stress boxes through higher Resolve, although this boost is limited to characters who have Psi or Faith Edges, who are the character most likely to need to deal with Stress Condition directly, anyway. While the other two gamelines aren't as inherently harsh and brutal as Dystopia Rising -- and don't make death as cheap and temporary, either -- such that mental harm needs to be tracked, nor do they have the systems specific to DR that are built to work with the Stress track, I think that Stress is an interesting mechanic that could be fruitful to try selectively porting over to other Storypath gamelines, depending on what type of game you're trying to run.
First Aid
After combat, characters can give and receive First Aid, allowing them to downgrade Injuries to ones of a lower level; Maimed becomes Injured, Injured becomes Bruised, and Bruised Conditions are removed when downgraded (presumably, Taken Out becomes Maimed, but I can't find an explicit confirmation of this in any of the books). The base Difficulty to remove an Injury is based on its severity: Bruised (2), Injured (3), Maimed (5), Taken Out (1 x each other Injury Condition the target has). An Injury can only be downgraded this way once, and only if the injured character has an empty box of a lower level available. A character can only remove a Condition through First Aid once per session. Given these constraints and the increasing Difficulty to downgrade Taken Out as a character accumulates more Injuries, you can see that there are benefits to choosing to be Taken Out early beyond becoming a Momentum generator.
Characters with the proper magic, superhuman powers, or advantages can overcome these limitations, applying first aid more readily, more often, or even just healing the health level outright.
Range
Like movement, Range in combat uses Range Bands, which determine how far away your enemies are from you, the types of weapons that can be used to hit them and they you, and what the default Attribute you use for your dice pools to attack at that range. The "near" range bands are standard Physical territory, but as you get farther out, ranged attacks get steadily more Mental.
Complicate Action
Complicate Action is a term that encompasses the variety of actions meant to block or prevent a person from performing a task. A character declares they are going to take a Complicate Action as part of a mixed action on their turn, and can be anything from protecting another character, defending and object, or preventing a character from operating machinery. As long as the Storyguide believes it is possible for the character to stop another character from performing the given action, then the character can complicate that action. Complicate Action inflicts a Complication (Blocked) on any character attempting the relevant action, equal to the number of successes spent on Complicate Action. If a character chooses to or is unable to buy off the Complication, then they automatically fail to perform the action.
Ambushes
Ambushes and surprise attacks work much like a surprise round in D&D; if the ambushers' roll to sneak up on their target beats the target's roll to detect the ambush, then the ambushers gain a round in which they can act but their targets cannot.
If either or both the ambusher and target are groups of people, pool the successes rolled by each member and divide the total by the number of people in the group.
Equipment
I say Equipment, but this is largely about for Weapons and Armor, and maybe Vehicles. More utility-oriented types of gear tend to provide either advantages not represented mechanically, have their own niche rules, or just provide preexisting mechanical benefits like Enhancements.
Every piece of equipment is less of its own specific thing, and more of a cluster of tags. Equipment is where tags reign supreme. The default is that a single weapon or piece of armor can have 3 points worth of tags, after negative tags have been factored in. These limits are more flexible for Super-Science and Relics, the latter of which I'll talk about later. Trinity uses somewhat different rules, allowing tags equal to (amount determined by time period) + the character's Wealth Edge. Additionally, unlike Scion, Trinity weapons and armor provide at least +1 Enhancement and 1 level of Soft Armor, respectively, before other tags are applied.
As for what tags actually do, for weapons they determine range, reduce the costs of certain Stunts or provide Enhancements for others, and grant other non-Success based advantages; while for armor they determine the types of damage they can protect against, the level of Soft Armor (increasing the Difficulty of the Inflict Injury Stunt) or Hard Armor (ablative Health Levels) the armor provides, how obviously armor it is, and so on.
