Violence

Vio­lence is ruinous. You can recov­er from wounds, but you can­not so eas­i­ly recov­er lost peace, trust, or secu­ri­ty. Don’t start fights you don’t think you can win and don’t will­ing­ly insti­gate a fight with­out some advan­tage at your side.

Vio­lence is played in the per­il timescale.

Vio­lence is an exchange: An attack made using a com­bat skill and a defense made in response.

getting an edge

Any edge against an oppo­nent nets you +2 to attack d12 rolls and +1 to dam­age. Get an edge against oppo­nents who are:

  • Stag­gered
  • Sur­prised
  • Prone
  • Sleep­ing
  • Knocked out
  • Grabbed
  • Receiv­ing your charge
  • Fac­ing away from you
  • Attack­ing with a short­er weapon vs your block or counter

attack

Roll a com­bat skill. Depend­ing on your suc­cess and the out­come of your tar­get’s defense roll, you dam­age them.

Attack­ing costs an action. You get 2 actions per turn.

charg­ingGet an edge on your melee attack roll if you move at least 6 m before attack­ing. You can do so as part of a sprint.

aimed attacksTar­get­ing spe­cif­ic body areas incurs a penal­ty:

  • melee aimed attacks: -2
  • ranged aimed attacks: -4
  • aim­ing for a tiny area (either) -6

defend

Choose a defense: Roll Agili­ty to dodge or Melee to block or counter.

Defend­ing costs a reac­tion. You get 2 reac­tions per turn. You spend them when it’s not active­ly your turn. Use reac­tions to:

  • Defend (attack, block, or counter)
  • Turn and adjust you fac­ing after a foe moves
  • Per­mit an ally to move through your space

You can’t react if uncon­scious, sur­prised, blind­ed, or back­stabbed.

getting hit

A suc­cess­ful attack dam­ages a body area. Ran­dom­ize a wound loca­tion, com­pare the dam­age to present armor, then apply a wound cor­re­spond­ing remain­ing dam­age.

Pro­tec­tion by armor

Armor is expressed as Hardness|Reduction. For exam­ple, 7 hard­ness and 5 reduc­tion (steel plate armor) is writ­ten 7|5.

If a hit body area is armored, com­pare the dam­age to hard­ness, then apply reduc­tion:

  • If the dam­age does­n’t exceed hard­ness, it becomes blud­geon­ing dam­age. If it exceeds it, it breach­es the armor.
  • Sub­tract reduc­tion from the dam­age.
  • Remain­ing dam­age becomes a wound.

combat throws

For expe­di­ence, roll all the dice involved in an attack or defense simul­ta­ne­ous­ly as a com­bat throw. An attack throw com­pris­es the attack d12, the hit loca­tion die (d20,) and the dam­age die. For defend­ing: The defense d12 and the reduc­tion die for your dodge/block (or your attack dice if you counter.)

cohesion

Start­ing your turn next to an ally means you’re in cohe­sion with them. You enjoy the ben­e­fits of fight­ing as a unit:

  • You can move freely through each oth­er’s spaces
  • If you’re knocked down, an ally behind you can catch you as a reac­tion, pre­vent­ing the fall
  • You don’t risk missed shots hit­ting your allies

confines

To swing a weapon, you need space equal to its reach on one side of you. Stab­bing and ranged weapons aren’t affect­ed by this. Two-hand­ed weapons require at least 1 meter between you and your tar­get. With inad­e­quate space, you suf­fer -4 to attack. You can always pum­mel while con­fined or too close.

cover

In bal­lis­tic times, mere armor is insuf­fi­cient. Cov­er is crit­i­cal.

full cov­ertotal­ly inter­pos­es your body rel­a­tive the angle of attack. Attacks against you hit the cov­er­ing object, not you (unless dam­age pen­e­trates the cov­er.) Enfi­lad­ing attacks still hit.

half cov­erpar­tial­ly inter­pos­es your body rel­a­tive the angle of attack. Attacks against cov­ered body areas hit the cov­er­ing sur­face, not you. Usu­al­ly, 50% if you is pro­tect­ed.

  • Waist-high cov­er pro­tects from the abdomen down.
  • Lean­ing to attack from full cov­er con­sti­tutes 50% cov­er.
  • Lying prone con­sti­tutes par­tial cov­er: 50% of shots miss.

Dam­age that pen­e­trates cov­er may hit a body area behind it.

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