Attacks in Ground Combat

To attack in ground combat, a character must have a line of effect (LOE) between them and the opponent. A character has a suitable LOE if a straight line can be drawn from anywhere within their tile to the tile their opponent is in. LOE is distinct from simply visualizing an opponent, as transparent objects, such as a glass wall, would still prevent an attack from connecting. Unless otherwise specified, Maneuvers that target an opponent require LOE as well.

Attacks use a Trade Roll and amount of AP determined by the weapon the character is wielding (See Weapons). To make an attack against an opponent, the character first spends AP before making a Dexterity based Trade Roll. If the result of the Trade Roll is higher than the opponents Defense. The character then rolls damage based on the weapon they use.

A character with no weapon may make an unarmed attack. Unarmed attacks require six (6) AP to perform and utilizes a Dexterity Attribute Roll for the attack roll. On success, an unarmed attack deals damage equal to a character’s Strength Attribute Modifier. If a character has a negative Strength Attribute Modifier, they roll 1d4 and subtract their Strength Attribute modifier. If their result is greater than one (1), it is reduced to one. If their result is zero (0) or less, the damage dealt is zero (0). Characters a Strength Attribute Modifier of negative four (-4) or lower are incapable of hurting other characters with their unarmed attacks.

Critical Strikes

Sometimes, in combat, a character manages to land a lucky blow that wouldn't hit normally. When making an attack roll, any roll of twenty (20), before accounting for modifiers, on the 2d10 roll results in a Critical Strike.

A Critical Strike gains two bonuses. The first, is that a bonus of plus three (+3) gets added to the attack roll after all other modifiers are accounted for. This does not result in the attack automatically succeeding but significantly improves the likelihood of success. The second benefit occurs if the attack is successful. The character making the attack adds their Dexterity Attribute Modifier plus an additional two (+2) to their damage roll.

If a critical strike deals more than half a characters maximum HP in a single attack, the character receiving the damage also receives a randomly determined Injury determined by the Table: Injury Chance.

Figure: Injury Chance

Injuries

Both Critical Damage and Targeted Strikes can cause an Injury. An Injury represents harm to specific body parts, which inhibits the usefulness of that body part. Dismemberment is a more advanced form of injury that typically occurs if a character receives a second injury to the same body part. Different body part injuries have different effects on characters.

Leg Injury:

Leg Injuries result in limited movement. When a character receives a Leg Injury, they must immediately make a Dexterity Attribute Roll with difficulty equal to the damage dealt to avoid falling prone. If a character suffers a leg injury, they add one (1) AP to the cost of walking and crawling. Furthermore, the difficulty needed to cover a desired jump distance increases by three (3). If they receive a second leg injury to the opposite leg, the AP cost to walking and crawling increases by another one (1).

If a character’s leg becomes Dismembered the penalties are severe. The AP to walk or crawl is increased by two (2) and jumping becomes impossible. Additionally, the character gains a stack of Open Wounds. If a character has the other leg Dismembered, they receive an additional Open Wounds, can no longer walk or jump, and crawling now requires an additional four (4) AP to perform.

Arm Injury:

Arm Injury results in difficulty completing actions that require the use of arms. If a character suffers an arm injury to their primary arm, they receive a minus three (-3) penalty to Trade Rolls (including attacks) that utilize arms. If the arm injury is to their secondary arm, this penalty is only minus one (-1). When a character suffers an arm injury, if they were wielding a one-handed weapon in the injured arm, the must make a Dexterity Attribute Roll with difficulty equal to the damage to not drop the weapon.

Dismemberment increases the penalty to Trade Rolls by to minus five (-5) and minus three (-3) for the primary and secondary arm respectively. If both characters arms are dismembered, they may not perform any actions that utilize their arms. Additionally, the character gains a stack of Open Wounds for each Dismemberment. If a character has an arm injury and needs to crawl, the AP needed to crawl is increased by one (1) per arm Injury or Dismemberment. If both arms are Dismembered, the character cannot crawl.

Head Injury:

Head Injury results in perception issues. A character who receives a head injury becomes Dizzy for a number of cycles equal to the damage dealt. Additional head injuries do not result in Dismemberment but increases the amount of damage received from the attack by two (2).

Organ/Neck Injury:

Organ and neck Injury results in the character receiving Open Wounds. Organs cannot be dismembered, rather they gain additional Open Wounds. If a neck Injury would occur while a character is already suffering from a neck Injury, they are decapitated, resulting in death.

Eye Dismemberment:

Eyes cannot be Injured. Instead, they are immediately Dismembered if an Injury would occur. Losing one eye results in a minus three (-3) penalty to all Trade Rolls requiring perception. If a character loses both eyes, this penalty drops to negative nine (-9) (see Blind). A character needs to rely on their listening in order to determine where other characters and objects are.

Targeted Strikes

In addition to characters receiving an Injury from random Critical Strike. Characters may also receive an Injury from an intentionally targeted attack. An attack that specifically aims for a character’s limb is called a Targeted Strike. To make a Targeted Strike, a character makes an attack roll with a penalty to their roll depending on the targeted body part (Table: Targeted Strike Penalties).

If the attack roll is successful, the attacking character rolls damage as normal. The target receives damage as normal but the body part also receives an Injury. If the damage exceeds half the targets maximum HP, the body part becomes dismembered instead. If a character chooses to do Bruising Damage, dismemberment does not occur, even if the damage exceeds half a characters HP.

Table: Target Strike Penalties

Fighting with Two Weapons

When wielding two weapons, a character may choose to alternate attacks between weapons. This results in faster attacks at the expense of accuracy. When wielding two weapons, characters attack with a penalty of minus three (-3). After making an attack with both weapons, the AP cost of each weapons attack is reduced by one (1). So, the first attacks with each weapon are done at a character’s normal AP cost, the second attacks with each weapon have their AP cost reduced by one (1), the third by two (2), etc.

Characters must alternate between weapons to receive this benefit. Additionally, a weapons AP cost may not be reduced to less than half its normal AP cost. If wielding melee weapons, characters reset their AP reduction benefits if they move further than one (1) meter between attacks.

Bruising Damage

Bruising damage is non-lethal damage that is done when trying to disable a character without killing them. When a character takes Bruising damage, that damage is recorded separately from the loss of HP a character takes. Any time a character takes an amount of damage (bruising or normal) that results in a total bruising damage greater than their current HP, they must a make a Willpower roll to remain conscious as if they had dropped to negative HP. The Difficulty of this roll is equal to ten (10) plus the difference in their Bruising damage and their current HP.

Fighting with Cover

One-way characters can improve their survivability in combat is to make use of solid objects and terrain for cover. If a solid object is large enough that a character can reasonably hide behind it during combat, they can use it for cover. If a character is behind a solid object that completely blocks an opponent’s LOE, they become an invalid target for attacks. Examples can include tables, concrete barriers, or small vehicles. If characters decide to attack over cover, they forfeit the total cover they previously had until their next cycle. Instead, they gain a plus three (+3) to their Defense for the cycle.

One special case of cover is corner cover. When moving into a square that is adjacent to a corner wall, a character may still get full cover from the wall. By spending one (1) additional AP when moving into the square, they press up to the wall, providing cover from attacks that originate from squares outside of a forty-five-degree (45°) angle from the corner (Figure: Corner Cover Invalidating Attacking Squares). Similar to other forms of cover, if a character attacks from the corner, they forfeit their total cover in favor of the Defense bonus instead.

Figure 5 Corner cover invalid attacking squares. The character (C) receives corner cover from the wall (grey). Enemies in the red squares do not have LOE against the character despite a line being drawable between the squares.

Recovering from Ground Combat

Recovering HP

After Ground Combat it is almost guaranteed that one or more characters will have missing HP. Recovering HP is straight forward. If a character is not suffering from Open Wounds, they heal one (1) hp per shift they spend resting. Rest does not require that a character be asleep, merely not participating in any strenuous activity (such as working or fighting).

Another character can make a Trade(Emergency Medic) Roll to treat characters during a rest. This Trade Roll has a difficulty of ten (10) plus the amount of HP the character is missing. This Trade Roll requires two (2) hours, meaning a character can treat four (4) characters in a shift. If successful, the treated character recovers an additional one (1) HP. Note that the character being treated must still rest for an entire shift to receive this benefit.

When using a Medical Bed, the character treating injuries gains plus three (+3) to their Trade Roll when treating a character resting on a Medical Bed. Characters can be rotated between a Medical Bed and a normal bed during a shift of treatment. Therefore, a Medical Bed can support treatment of up to four (4) characters.

When utilizing shifts, a particularly skilled character can attempt to treat more than four (4) characters. To do so, they increase the difficulty of their Trade Roll for all characters they are treating by two (2) per additional character treated. For example, if there are five (5) characters missing three (3) HP, a Trade Roll of fifteen (15) is needed to treat each of them. In most cases, shift treatment will utilize an assumed Trade Roll. If an assumed Trade Roll is not high enough to treat some characters, those characters need to be rolled for individually.

Restoring Attribute Penalties

Attribute reduction is debilitating in the long term and can depower a character until their attributes are restored. If a character’s attribute has been reduced to negative one (-1), then the character will naturally recover for the reduction at a rate of one (1) per week (excluding penalties from Tiredness).

By being treated by the appropriate specialist (Table: Trades for Attribute Restoration), the character can restore an by an additional one (1) per week. To treat a character’s Attribute Damage, a the specialist character must spend a total of two (2) hours in at least five (5) days of a given week with the character being treated. The specialist makes a Trade Roll with Difficulty equal to ten (10) plus one (1) per penalty in the Attribute.

Table: Trades for Attribute Restoration.