This week I have a friend who's flown in from NY, and he's telling me about this really fun D&D campaign he's in, and it's got me all hyped for an old school fantasy romp. I started thinking about what system to use, and Scattershot came to mind.

But, I still haven't seen anything on damage or combat rules...
Do you have anything in development you can toss my way?

Thanks Fang,

Chris

I hope this doesn't disappoint you, but so far we've been too caught up in the Techniques and the Transitional stuff that we haven't counted out the numbers yet. (Although that is much of what is left.)

By the numbers:

• It's your turn. You call out your action (provided you haven't forfeited all of them). An attack is in progress and you roll your 2d10.

• Your opponent (who by this action becomes engaged in melee with you), Forfeits one of his upcoming actions and calls out a defense. He's defending (and let's say that he's not off-guard to you so there's no Combat Advantage against him) and he rolls his 2d10.

• Quickly, in both your heads you subtract the sum of the roll from the appropriate rating. Yours from your skill employed in the attack; him from his Agility as he has chosen to Dodge.

• You both call out your MIB numbers simultaneously.

• Now you divvy up the action.


• If your MIB is higher, your attack directs the result.
• If his MIB is higher, his Dodge directs the result.
• If his MIB is negative and yours is positive, same as A.
• If your MIB is negative, you miss and his action is not forfeit.


The actual result is a combination of the two actions 'lead' as directed.

• If either MIB is at or above the Critical Juncture Threshold, positive or negative, then 'who it goes against' creates the appropriate result. Telling Blows, Catastrophic Failures, permanent changes, or critical hits all fall into this category. More Auteur Approached games will have lots of lurid detail here. Joueur play often simply applies Residual modifiers. It depends on how you play. For Dungeons & Dragons reminiscent play, I'd just call them critical hits or fumbles and have the 'victim' make something up.

• Now for damage....


Take the Attacker's MIB and subtract the Defender's MIB, this is the Resulting MIB. (Note a negative RMIB is a miss.)

If you're just using fists, the RMIB is the damage, pure and simple. If you have 'unusual strength' (outside of 9-11, see the UE Chart elsewhere in this forum), you will multiply the RMIB by the Multiplier indexed on the UE Chart. (This isn't as calculation intensive as it might first seem; because you know the Critical Juncture Threshold ahead of time you can precalculate your damages. For Dungeons & Dragons, I'd Suggest a Critical Juncture of 6 or 7; a 13 Strength yields damages of 0, 2, 3, 5, 6, 8, or 9, Scattershot rounds everything normally.)

Here's where we haven't 'done our homework.' Weapons offer a straight addition to the RMIB before the multiplication. (Our original thought was dagger +1, short sword +2, long sword +3, and so on; we haven't tested any numbers yet.)

Next is the Hit Points misunderstanding. In virtually every game that uses them, Hit Points are a scale of health or wounds. In Scattershot, Hit Points are a track of how much 'fight' you have left in you. Zero or negative Hit Points means the character just can't 'get up and fight' anymore; it's not unconsciousness, you aren't bleeding to death, you just can't fight.

What about wounds? Well, in Advanced Scattershot, wounds are a detail tracked by notation with guidelines based on hit location, protection, and attack. In Intermediate Scattershot, you simply suffer from generally whatever was thrown at you; a sword fight means cut wounds. In Basic, you're just hurt. What's important is the effects of Telling Blows. Take a mace Telling Blow to Area 2 (the head) and you can decide that you are stunned for RMIB turns or knocked out or get a mental disadvantage of RMIB points or whatever you like; it's your head.

Now, a moment about armor. (I know I promised I'd put it in the Mechanix, but every time I try I wind up rewriting it to better reflect the Techniques I have down by that point.) If you spent points on armor (like a power based on Power), you can look up the rating of it in the Bonus column on the UE Chart; otherwise each piece (or suit in the Basic game) has a static rating at creation. This is simply subtracted from the Multiplied RMIB. (Or that's as far as we've gotten. One of the problems inherent in our design process is I have to get the card game running again before we can playtest out these parts.)


• Check for Following Actions. Smoke 'em if ya got 'em. They don't count against your 'Two Action per Turn Limit.'

• Take you next action or pass play to the next person's turn.

Now, one of the things I haven't described here is how you can change the outcome by burning a MIB point (on a ±5 to the Effective value - like Strength - for that action), tossing in an Experience Dice (either way, plus or minus), both, play on circumstance (this is where you do things to yield more Combat Advantage - remember it subtracts from the defender's rolls), or 'change the mix' (going down on one knee for a block improves it at the sacrifice of your position) retroactively (as I described better elsewhere).

None of this covers magical effects (well, almost) or any other situations. Do you need anything else clarified? Thanks for the interest, I'm dying to know how things turn out.

Fang Langford (who really needs to get to bed now, g'nite)

p. s. Are you serious about combat rules? It's Mechanical play, just Initiative (see those threads here in this forum) and then counter-clockwise around the table until someone says it's done (even if the last blow hasn't fallen).

Much thanks!
Sorry, I had went back and checked the mechanics rules after I posted and realized that some of the combat questions I had were answered there.

I totally got the idea of HP="Fighting Spirit" or morale, as opposed to physical damage, it makes a lot of sense.

As far as the magic and other stuff, I'll probably work up some rules to use with it, I just wanted to get a solid base to work with.

Chris

Bankuei wrote: As far as the magic and other stuff, I'll probably work up some rules to use with it, I just wanted to get a solid base to work with.