Cepheus Review : Combat (continued)
TOC
Weapons and Combat - Attacks
Noted as the most common likely significant action, attacks require you to declare a target and means (melee or ranged weapons), and the target, if applicable, may react.
The standard skill checks used in making an attack are:
•Melee Attack = 2D6 + appropriate melee combat skill + Strength or Dexterity DM (attacker’s choice)
•Shooting Attack = 2D6 + appropriate gun combat skill + Dexterity DM
•Thrown Attack = 2D6 + Athletics + Dexterity DM
There’s a table of common modifiers including recoil in zero G, cover, and laser sights. For cover - a later section defines cover and modifiers based on how much of the body it protects, and how crouching or laying prone affect that. As to laser sights, since I don’t think even a standard “unaimed” attack is precisely “spray and pray”, I’m not sure only applying a laser sight bonus if you are declaring “aiming” is correct. At least with handguns and operating at handgun ranges, a laser sight, and even an open holo/dot sight, make it much easier to see where you are actually pointing your weapon. More importantly, laser sights don’t require the weapon to be held up at eye level and still tell you (nearly) exactly where you will hit even making “snap” shots.
“Coup de Grace” is allowed, basically an automatically succeeding execution of a helpless target that you are adjacent to, and completely reasonable. What I find more interesting are the reaction actions: dodging and parrying. There is no limit to how many times you can react in a round, but the reacting character must be aware of the attack, you can only react once to any given attack, and each reaction lowers your effective initiative and applies a -1 DM to all skill checks until the following round.
I may have to ask how that precisely works out. If the character has already acted in a given round, then it’s pretty obvious these penalties apply to the following round, but if the character has not acted yet in a given round, does it apply both to the current round and the next, or is the character’s next turn considered the “following” round?
I’m inclined towards the latter understanding, as lowering initiative even in the same round may allow others to act before the character that otherwise would not have, and I don’t see consistency in doubling the penalty just because a character hasn’t acted yet in a given round.
Incidentally, dodging can also be applied to explosion damage, more so if dodging involves diving into cover.
Free Actions
To quote:
Some actions are so fast they do not even qualify as a minor action – shouting a warning, pushing a button, checking your watch, and so on. A character can perform as many of these free actions as he likes in a turn, although if he performs several the Referee may require him to spend a minor or even a significant action on his various tasks.
Basically, use common sense, at the referee’s discretion.
Extended Actions
Rules for covering things that take more than one combat round. Characters aren’t part of the regular initiative order as they’re focused on something else, and if hit, have to make a save to not lose the progress for that round.
Delaying
A character can elect to delay, effectively interrupting people with a lower initiative (and as a result resetting their initiative to that lower value). They also have the option to forego their action, and get a nearly-guaranteed first action the next turn. Nearly, because if multiple people delay that way, it’s resolved via dexterity ordering rules.
Comms and Conditions
Rules here explicitly lay out that to get benefits from the tactics or leadership skills, you ahve to maintain communication, or be able to re-establish it. Comms includes direct line of sight, radio, laser, and maser comms.
Battlefield conditions such as darkness can provide DMs to ranged attacks. Darkness, Smoke and Fog, and weather extremes are accounted for. Of course, there are sensors to overcome some of this, insofar as knowing where targets are, such as thermal, EM, and even gravity detection.
Blind and Burst Firing, and Other Specialties
I mentioned spray and pray earlier. Blind firing is penalized by adding 1 die to the attack and discarding the highest. Also, if more than one target is potentially in the line of fire, friend or foe, roll to randomly determine what is hit.
Burst firing is effectively two modes: targeted “short” bursts directed at one specific target to hopefully do more damage, or area fire that increases the chances of hitting a target.
Extreme range firing is the category for sniping. People with three levels of skill in a rifle or similarly ranged weapon at a target at extreme range, at an additional negative modifier, if stationary and set up with a brace, stand, tripod, os similar.
For zero gravity, you actually are required to use the lower of your weapon or zero-G skills, with a recoil penalty for weapons not explicitly low-recoil.
Unlike ACKs and versions of D&D, no special skill or proficiency is needed to shoot into melee - but there is still a negative penalty, and missing has a chance to hit whoever is adjacent, friend or foe.
At this point I have to register a complaint that the various combat options are alphabetically listed, resulting in panic firing and other options showing up after grappling instead of grouped with various ranged combat options.
Panic Firing is treated as burst firing for damage with a -2 DM. You’re dumping the mag.
Shotgun Spreads - at medium or long range shotguns and flechette guns lose damage, but gain a bonus to hit and a chance to also hit other people or things within personal range of the target. As a note - real shotguns have a pattern approximately 1 inch wide for every yard, affected by choke and other factors. That is a spread between 12 inches and 50 inches, or roughly .3 to 1.5 meters.
In short, the ability to hit multiple people with a single shot is somewhat overrated, but not wildly so.
Suppression Fire uses up twice the normal amount of ammo and is intended to throw off the target character’s initiative and negatively impact any skill checks (including attacks). Some targets may be unaffected because they are zealots, enclosed in an armored vehicle, etc.
Thrown weapons include directly damaging thrown weapons like spears and daggers, as well as grenades and the like that cause damage via their explosive payload. Missed attacks scatter, but is likely not relevant outside of explosives (most of the time). This scatter is modified by the effect, or degree of failure.
Grappling
Grappling is an opposed natural weapons skill check. Winning the check gives the attacker several options including forcibly dragging, throwing, or disarming his target.
Stances
Characters can be standing, crouching, or prone. Standing characters use the rules as normally described, crouching characters move at half speed but take better advantage of cover, and being prone is the most complicated. Prone characters can parry but not dodge or make melee attacks. Ranged attacks are at -2 unless you are at close or personal range.
Tactics
Tactics can grant an entire unit an initiative bonus, while leadership - a significant skill check - can grant an initiative bonus to one character.
Damage
Damage is based on the D6 damage of the weapon, but you add the effect of the attack roll as well. The first time a character takes damage it is applied to endurance, until it reaches zero, then strength or dexterity (character owner’s choice), until zero, then the remainder. Subsequent attacks may apply to any of the physical stats.
If either STR or DEX reach zero, the character is unconscious, and if all three reach zero, dead. Unconscious characters may make a check after a minute to wake back up.
Armor reduces the damage values by it’s rating, but an attack that succeeds with an effect of 6 or higher always does at least one point of actual damage.
Fatigue is also accounted for but I didn’t find the rules terribly clear as to how it mechanically ties to endurance. Otherwise, it seems straightforward, and a character with the status “fatigued” has a significant negative DM to all checks.
Injuries
From the chart above - any character with any damage is wounded. They may heal naturally, and don’t appear to be otherwise negatively affected. Seriously wounded characters who are somehow still conscious are severely limited in their movement (1.5m/round) and they cannot take minor actions in combat.
I don’t think it’s a blanket ban on minor actions - significant actions are not banned - so much as you have to choose whether you want to trade off your significant action for minor ones, or movement.
Natural healing is highly affected by the character’s endurance - so it’s likely advisable to recover that first. Rates vary depending on how active the character is. Seriously wounded characters will have a hard time recovering naturally and unaided.
First Aid can help, but is less effective after the first five minutes, and cannot be applied after the first hour. Recovery is based on the effect of the medicine check. Surgery can heal more, but can also cause more damage, and only benefits characters that are seriously wounded. Medical care requires a hospital and bedrest.
Conclusion - for now
There are still a couple more pages of vehicle combat rules, but we’re going to draw this to a close for today.
All in all, I like the rules. There are more of them than in CT, but they also cover more, and with a little reorganization for clarity, also make sense and are easily applied.
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