Let’s get things straight right from the start: combat
should never be the focus of a DWAITAS scenario. So when combat does happen, you want it to be fast and
furious - or, depending on how you look at it, quick and dramatic. The goal of
the following variant rules is to make combat scenes quicker to resolve, with
fewer dice rolls involved, while maintaining genre emulation and fast-paced
action as the main priorities of the system. And how do we achieve that, you ask? Simple: by doing away with reaction rolls (which are only used during combats anyway) and replacing them with quicker resolution procedures, as detailed below.
Fighting
Combat
Forget about defensive reaction rolls. Melee combat
should simply be resolved as a series of conflicts based on Coordination + Fighting. Since these
rolls are made simultaneously, there is no need to compare each opponent’s
Coordination to determine who goes first.
This
roll represents an overall combination of offensive and defensive maneuvers. The
one with the highest roll wins the conflict, with the result being interpreted
as usual (i.e. the loser suffers an amount of damage based on his opponent’s
Strength, weapon and degree of success), unless the winner was going for a
special trick or maneuver (see below).
If the two rolls result in exactly the same total, the
advantage goes to the player-character (incidentally, the basic conflict rules
as they stand already integrate this, since “the
Gamemaster uses the antagonist’s result as the Difficulty for the player’s
rolls” and that a result of “0-3” above the Difficulty means success).
Characters have the option of fighting defensively, focusing on dodges, parries and other
defensive actions rather than attacking their opponent; in this case, they gain
a +2 bonus to their roll but will not inflict any damage if they beat their
opponent. In this case, a simple Success result (“Yes But”) means that the character
escapes from harm but will not be able to attack during the next round (i.e. he
must continue to fight defensively), while a Fantastic result (“Yes And”) means
that his swift defensive maneuvers put him in an advantageous position for next
round, giving him a +2 bonus to his Fighting roll next round, whether he
chooses to fight normally or defensively (in which case he receives a total
bonus of +4), or allowing him to break away from melee and start running for
his life.
Special
maneuvers (like disarming etc.) can be handled by the
Gamemaster on a case-by-case basis and should normally require a Good result to
succeed – or even a Fantastic one for the most acrobatic or spectacular tricks.
In most cases, attempting such a special maneuver should prevent the character
from dealing the usual physical damage for his attack. If you use areas of
expertise in your game, each specific trick or tactic (including defensive
fighting) could be chosen as an area of expertise – or the Gamemaster could
allow characters to develop a particular fighting style, granting the usual +2
bonus to a whole repertoire of maneuvers.
When a single character is facing multiple opponents in Fighting combat, simply make a single
Fighting roll for the group, using the highest (Coordination + Fighting) total
among its members (provided they do not have the same combat total to start
with) and granting a +2 bonus for each extra attacker. Thus, a bunch of three
guards with a Coordination of 3 and a Fighting skill of 3 will actually have a
combat total of 10 when acting collectively. If the group wins the conflict,
their opponent will only suffer a single injury, again corresponding to the
deadliest damage total in the group. In other words, a single character
heroically facing two or three opponents at the same time is far more likely to
get hurt than if he was facing a single opponent, but if this does happen, he
will not be hurt significantly more (which seems perfectly in keeping with the
spirit of the game and its source material).
Marksman
Combat
Marksman combat can also be made quicker and simpler
with a few changes and adjustments here and there, using the same basic
principles as for Fighting combat above. In this variant system, Marksman
combat should be resolved using the same rules as Fighting combat above, with
the following differences and adjustments:
Unlike Fighting combat, Marksman combat is not
resolved as a direct conflict between opposed dice rolls but as a succession of
separate dice rolls. Within a round of Marksman combat, shooters act in order
of initiative, i.e. in decreasing order of their Coordination score. Ties can
be broken by comparing the characters’ Awareness scores; if two shooters have
the same scores in both Attributes, they are assumed to act simultaneously.
Also note that the Quick Reflexes trait allows a character to always act first,
regardless of his actual Coordination score.
Hitting
a target requires a (Coordination + Marksman) roll. As for all
other standard actions, the Difficulty of this roll is set by the Gamemaster,
taking into account factors such as distance, terrain, visibility and cover -
simply use the same modifiers as in the standard rules, adding them to the
Difficulty instead of subtracting them to the shooter’s skill roll. Thus, if
the target is under cover, the shooter’s skill roll will suffer a Difficulty
increase of +2, +4 or even +10, depending on the amount of cover available.
Characters involved in Marksman combat (or trying to
run away from shooters) can also attempt to make themselves harder to hit by
using evasion. This does not require
any roll but allows the character to add his Coordination score to the
Difficulty of all Marksman rolls made against him. Evasion counts as an
extra action, meaning that any Marksman roll made by the character during the
same round suffers a -2 penalty.
The rules on special
maneuvers and multiple opponents
given above can also be applied to Marksman combat to handle trick shots and
concentrated fire by multiple shooters – keeping in mind that the main goal of
this system has nothing to do with ‘tactical realism’ and everything to do with
fast-paced drama and genre emulation.
A
Note on Psychic Combat
Some forms of psychic conflict can also be viewed as a
form of combat. Most situations (like Possession attempts, for instance) will
involve a psychically active ‘attacker’ and a resisting defender. In such
cases, each character will make his own roll, according to the usual rules: as
far as such powers are concerned, defining the defender’s roll as a ‘reaction’
or as an ‘action’ really has no consequence in game terms. If the defending
character is attempting another action while resisting to the psychic attack,
this other action should incur the usual -2 penalty. Lastly, note that the
variant system detailed for Fighting combat above could also be adapted to
psychic battles and other “clash of wills” between characters endowed with
mental powers.
Story
Points in Combat
Since these rules no long require the use of “reaction
rolls”, my variant rules on the use of Story points in conflicts (as detailed
in some previous entries and compiled in the current-and-soon-to-be-revised version of the Temporal Toybox) become significantly simpler: since reaction rolls
per se no longer exist, it is no longer necessary to make a distinction between
“competitions” and “oppositions”.
Shifting
the Scales: In all conflict situations, each character involved in
the conflict is allowed to spend one or several Story points after the roll once for each character, period. In the
case of Fighting combat, spending Story points after the roll can revert the
outcome of a conflict, i.e. turn a failure into a “Yes but…” success (but not
into a Good or Fantastic result), according to the usual rules. Using the
variant rules detailed above, this means that a single, well-spent Story point
can prevent you from being injured AND allow you to injure your opponent.
Escaping
from Harm: In addition, a character should always be able to
reduce the damage of an attack he has just suffered at the cost of 1 Story point
for each degree of success. This applies even if the character was completely
unaware of the attack (the infamous “sniper situation”), if he didn’t have any
defensive roll to make (as in the case of Marksman combat) or if he has already
spent Story points to affect his conflict roll (in the case of Fighting
combat).
Example: The Doctor is fighting a fencing duel against a renowned swordsman. En
garde! The first round is resolved as a direct conflict of Coordination +
Fighting. This conflict is won by the swordsman, who gets a Good result, but
the Doctor’s player spends 2 Story points, turning this into a simple Success
for the Doctor – enough to avoid all damage AND injure the swordsman. But
wait! The swordsman has some Story
points, too – and the Gamemaster decides to spend 1 point to shift the result
from a simple Success for the Doctor to a simple Success for the NPC. At this
stage, the Doctor’s player cannot spend further Story points to shift the
scales once more, since every character involved in the conflict roll has
already spent Story points… but he can still spend 1 Story point to escape from
harm and ignore the damage from the swordsman’s attack (“It’s just a flesh
wound!”), without changing the outcome of the conflict roll (i.e. the swordsman
does not suffer any damage).
