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Combat

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Rounds And Actions

A round consists of everything that could happen in about 10 seconds of real time. Roughly. Give or take.

Even though every player and the GM take their characters’ actions one after the other, in ‘reality’ these actions are all taking place at virtually the same time, the only variation being that swifter characters are getting shots off or strikes in a split-second before anyone else.

Also, it is worth remembering that the ten second scale of a round isn’t necessarily exactly ten seconds. It could be eight. It could be fourteen. The point is that everyone’s had a chance to do two actions of something in that time.

Summary Of The Round Sequence

1. The GM resolves any special events that may occur outside of any individual character’s round, e.g. lightning strike, a car breaking down, a geyser erupting.

2. Each character (PC or NPC) resolves his round, taking up to two actions.

Order Of Activity

The character with the highest Initiative (after any modifications) will go first in the round. Once that character has acted for the round, the character with the second highest Initiative will get their chance to act, and then the character with the third highest, and so on, until all characters have acted.

Should two or more characters have the same Initiative score (this is usually only the case with generic grunt NPCs), the tie can be broken either by discussion between players and the GM, or by rolling a D6 for each character, determining a sub-order of activity, highest to lowest.

Optional Rule: Rolling For Initiative

If the idea of having characters taking actions purely in Initiative order seems to rigid, here’s an optional rule that may make things more flexible and unpredictable.

At the start of each round, all characters involved in the combat take an Initiative test. The results of these tests are used to determine round order in the following order:

1. The characters who passed the test go first, with the character who passed by the largest margin of success going first, then the character with the second largest margin, and so on.

2. The characters who failed the test go next, starting with the character who failed by the lowest margin, followed by the next lowest margin, and so on.

This method may slow play down slightly, but it does limit the supremacy of high Initiative characters who often get the most kills in a combat simply by getting the first shot. This way, even a skinny Juve has a chance of taking down an Officio Assassinorum Assassin. It is advisable to roll collectively for large groups of identical NPCs in a battle situation.

Surprise

Often, one side or another in a combat has caught the other by surprise, and manages to draw weapons, fire or otherwise act before their opponents. When this is appropriate (ambushes, characters kicking a door in and opening fire, backstabbing etc.), the GM may force all characters surprised by events to halve their Initiative for the first round of combat.

Actions

A character can carry out two actions in a single round. Here is a list of common actions:

Move

This covers any method of movement, including walking, running, swimming, driving, leaping across ravines and so on.

Draw Weapon

A character can draw or holster up to two weapons, or swap weapons from one hand to the other. This cannot be combined with firing or attacking in close combat unless the character has appropriate abilities.

Fire Weapon

A character can fire a ranged weapon.

Throw Grenade

It takes one action to throw a grenade, but be aware that on most occasion's the grenade will have to be removed from a pouch, pocket or webbing before being thrown, which counts as a Draw Weapon action.

Attack

A character can attack an opponent in close combat once per action. See the Close Combat section for more information.

Do Nothing

Yes, this is an action. Every action spent doing nothing allows the character an Awareness test to spot anything unusual going on in the immediate area. For example, Chaos cultists creeping up on the party from behind might not normally be noticed in the thick of combat, but if a character takes the time to look, he or she might see them. Do Nothing actions can actually be combined with any Movement speed of walking speed or below (see below).

Other actions are possible, and many are covered in other parts of the rules.

In the case of activities not covered by the rules, it is up to the GM to decide how many actions are required to complete it, and if it requires any kind of characteristic test. For example, downloading data from a cogitation engine’s database could take as many as a dozen actions (a minute), and require a Sagacity test in order to find the information to download it. Obviously, it will be difficult to do this while under fire, and the margin of success of any characteristic test may affect the length of time the activity takes.

Combining Actions

It is possible to combine two actions into one, thus allowing a total of three or even four actions in a round. All combined actions that require some form of D100 roll have their chances of success halved, after all other modifiers. For example, leaping across a gap while firing a weapon imposes a penalty on both the Strength test for leaping and the Ballistic Skill test for shooting.

Optional Rule: One-Action Rounds

The normal two-action rounds system is designed to simplify multiple actions. For example, most weapons take two actions to reload. Aiming and firing a weapon takes two actions. Concentrating and casting a psychic power… you get the idea.

However, for extra realism, how about halving the number of actions a character can take to just one? This adds an immediacy to proceedings, with characters being interrupted while concentrating, being taken down by an opportunistic shot while aiming at a target, and so on.

Be aware that many persistent psychic powers will only last half as long, and plasma weapons recharge twice as quickly. You might want to leave these factors as they are (after all, changes that benefit or hinder the PCs have the same effect on NPCs), or you might want to tweak things to compensate.

There’s something else that really needs changing though: bleeding. A character now bleeds to death twice as quickly. Instead of running bleeding at D3 points per round, consider changing it to a flat 1 or 2 point per bleeding injury. Or leave it as it is, and expect more deaths.

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