You’re completely helpless—you must mark a combination of three conditions or fatigue to escape.
Trapped is the status for when you’re encased in ice, or you can’t move because a heavy beam has pinned you, or you’ve been pulled into the earth so only your head sticks out. It represents immobility, an inability to take physical action unless you put out a massive effort to get yourself free. If every combatant on one side of a fight is Trapped and unable to free themselves…then the fight’s over!
To be able to free yourself from being Trapped, you must mark a combination of three conditions or fatigue—so you could mark 1-fatigue and two conditions, or three conditions, or 3-fatigue, etc.—but you must also be able to take appropriate action to free yourself. If you’re encased in ice, but you’re a Technologist with a pack of flares on your belt, then maybe you can figure out a way to wriggle and light one, melting the ice. If you’re encased in ice, but you’re an Airbender…you might be out of luck! But always talk about what you do to free yourself. The GM, as always, is a fan of the PCs, so if you present some cool, reasonable way to apply your skills and training to get free that makes sense within the fiction, they will at best say “yes,” and allow your PC to pay the cost; at worst, they’ll consider this
.In combat exchanges, you can pay the cost and free yourself in between exchanges, as long as no one immediately rolls into another exchange. But if the fight is raging around you, then you might be helpless for an exchange as you free yourself (and pay the cost) and your comrades try to keep your foes away from you. If a friend does something to free you, however, then you can be set free without having to pay the normal cost of the status! A firebending ally who melts the ice encasing you removes Trapped at no additional cost.
If you are targeted by a foe while Trapped, and nothing stops the foe from acting, then there’s no uncertainty—you can’t move, after all—and the GM says what happens. Remember that bending requires movement in nearly every case to use!
Most of the time, you must be
before you can be Trapped—it’s hard to trap mobile fighters! But sometimes a technique might apply the status directly, or in the situation it makes sense to inflict Trapped straight away—for example, when a mudslide crashes down a mountain and catches a character unawares.