Combat Rules

Taking Actions

On your turn, you may take a major action and a minor action. You can take your actions in any order, and can take fewer actions if you like. You may also replace your major action with a second minor action, if you want.

Major Actions

A major action requires a focused effort, often affecting something or someone else, and requiring an ability test. Taking a swing at an opponent, trying to override a lock in the midst of a firefight, and providing first aid to a wounded ally are all examples of major actions.

Minor Actions

A minor action is not as involved as a major action, but still represents a deliberate effort on the character’s part and usually works automatically with no test involved. Things like running toward a new position, fetching an item from a container, or reloading a gun are all examples of minor actions.

Free Actions

A free action takes a negligible amount of time, and doesn’t count toward your usual limitation on actions. The rules note when something is a free action. The GM can restrict the number of free actions you can take, if it wouldn’t be realistic for you to perform them all on your turn. You can talk as a free action, for example, but since a round is only 15 seconds long, what you can say in that time is limited.

Making Attacks

There are two basic types of attack: melee and ranged. Both are handled the same way:

• Choose a target within range. Default close combat range is 2m.
• Roll your chosen combat skill focus versus enemy's Defense.
• If you miss with a gun attack, check the Drama Die for weapon capacity; your gun might jam or be out of ammo (see Weapon Capacity, following).

Range

Ranged attacks take place over a distance, with each type of weapon having a range, given on the Weapon Range table. Attacks out to the weapon’s listed range are made without a modifier. Attacks beyond that range, out to the weapon’s maximum range (150% of range), have a –2 modifier to the attack roll. 

Determining Damage

Once an attack hits, you determine the attack’s damage, unless you’re doing something like a stunt attack. You roll dice based on the type of attack, modified by your abilities and the effects of any actions or stunts:

Attack Damage = attack type dice roll + ability + modifiers

For any unusual weapons that may come up, the GM should determine their damage and the ability modifier (if any) that applies to it, and whether or not the attack counts as using a makeshift weapon.

Applying Damage

Once you’ve determined the attack’s damage, figure out what effect it has on the target:

1. Subtract the target’s Toughness (including armor) from the damage. Penetrating Damage ignores Toughness.
2. Spend Fortune to eliminate some or all of the remaining damage on a 1-to-1 basis.
   1. If any damage remains, they may gain Injured to reduce damage by 1d6.
   2. If any damage remains, or they already have Injured, they may gain Wounded to further reduce damage by 1d6.
   3. If a Wounded character takes damage, they are Taken Out.

See Conditions for details on Injuries, Wounds, and being Taken Out.

Taken Out

The attacker may choose to impose any one Condition that is reasonable for the type of attack which takes out the target. 

Similarly, a target taken out by a roundhouse punch or kick might be unconscious or even dying, or merely exhausted. The key point is that the attacker decides on the target’s condition.

Rolling Over

In essence, the character’s player chooses to take that character out of the encounter, much like a taken out result (previously) except the player chooses the character’s condition, subject to the approval of the GM, rather than leaving their fate up to their opponent. 

You can only roll over in an encounter before you are taken out. Once you begin applying damage from an attack that has the potential to take you out, it’s too late to roll over.

Breathers

After an encounter, characters get a breather, a moment to recoup and catch a short break. When they do so, they regain 1d6 + Constitution + Level in Fortune.

Regaining additional Fortune points or recovering from conditions requires an Interlude Activities and possibly the recovering activity.

Taking Cover

• You can jump behind cover using the Take Cover stunt as part of your action.
• You can move behind cover as part of your movement. You may need to drop prone in order to gain the most benefit from available cover.

Attacking Objects

There are times you might want to shoot out a lock or kick in a door, essentially attacking an object. Attacking an object during combat is much like attacking a living opponent.

You make an attack roll as usual, but instead of Defense, use a TN based on the object’s size, using the Object Combat Target Numbers table as a guideline. The GM may increase the TN if the object is moving, and based on other factors.

In some cases, an attack roll isn’t appropriate. If the object would be easy to hit, or what you really want to do is to disable or modify it instead of just wrecking it, a basic test might be called for instead. Finally, note that some stunts bypass the rules here; in those cases, use the rules listed for the stunt, instead of those in this section.

You’ll often attack an object as part of the Stunt Attack action, in which case attacking it has whatever effect the stunt designates, or as an action where the results are determined by the GM. If an object might be gradually battered apart, the GM can assign it Toughness and Fortune based on the desired goal (it takes more damage to destroy a door than to just kick it open). The GM can also determine that some attacks inflict double damage to particular objects (roll damage dice twice and add them together), while others inflict half damage. The GM may decide that some attacks are penetrating, or even useless against given targets. This represents the fact that, for example, an axe will readily chop down a tree, but a bullet or a kick won’t.

Weapon Capacity

Guns have limited amounts of ammunition and are subject to mechanical problems like jamming. In game play, rather than having to track every round fired, you can use the following guidelines to handle things like misfires, jams, and running out of ammo.

Weapon Jams

When an attack with a gun misses and the number on the Drama Die is a 6, then the weapon has jammed or run out of ammo. Reloading the gun or clearing the problem takes a minor action. The Rapid Reload stunt can reduce this time, as can some talents.

The Churn and Firearms

The GM can also spend points from the Churn Pool (see Chapter 12) on a missed firearms attack, reducing the Churn Pool by 1 to pause a gun to jam or run out of ammo, or reducing the Pool by 2 to say the weapon cannot be cleared without a Fixing interlude (see Chapter 5).

Explosives

Unlike attacks with ranged weapons that must be aimed, you don’t need to score a direct hit on a target with a grenade or other explosive device, just get close enough to catch them in the blast.
Grenades are thrown weapons with a range of 10 + Strength meters. Use the Ready action to have the grenade in your hand, and then you can take a Ranged Attack action to throw it. Grenade launchers load and fire grenades automatically and don’t require a Ready action, but they’re subject to running out of grenades or jamming, as described under Weapon Capacity, previously.
A grenade attack is a TN 11 Accuracy (Thrown) test, modified for difficult throws at the GM’s discretion. Success means the grenade lands and detonates where you intended, but failure means the grenade lands up to 1d6 meters away in a direction of the GM’s choosing, and then explodes. Grenades affect everything and everyone within 5 meters of the explosion, dealing damage and any additional effects.
You can use action stunts with grenade attacks. Each stunt can only affect one target but you need not assign all stunts to the same target. If you catch two foes in the blast of a grenade and generate 4 SP, for example, you could use Overcome Toughness on one foe and Knock Prone on the other.

Vehicles in Combat

• Operating a vehicle counts as your Move action. If a vehicle provides cover, it hinders you as you shoot out an open window or attack in some other way, as per the usual rules for Defense and Cover, previously.
• Characters in a vehicle can use the Activate action to operate built-in weaponry, if any.
• Attacks on vehicles are variations of the Stunt Attack action. Generated stunt points are used to inflict damage with Vehicle Combat Stunts. If the vehicle has a Hull rating, an attack must spend SP on the Penetrate Hull stunt to overcome it before devoting them to other Vehicle Combat Stunts.

Furthermore, using the rules for attacking objects (presented earlier in this chapter), the GM can adjudicate damage to specific vehicle parts, and invent effects when those specific parts are damaged or destroyed. For instance, if a character shoots out the tire of a ground vehicle, the GM might decide this prompts a test to prevent a crash and, in any event, slows the vehicle down.

Crashes

A crash leaves a vehicle inoperative. Temporary repairs may be possible at the GM’s discretion, with the result of the Drama Die indicating how effective they are and how long they last.

At the least, the repaired vehicle has a penalty to tests to operate it equal to 7 minus the result of the Drama Die on the repair test until it undergoes more complete repair.

See Environment for Impact damage rules applicable to a crash.