The following information is provided to clarify certain actions during combat.
Vital Blow
Normally, the better you hit someone, the more damage you do (i.e., you add the result points of your attack to the damage value of your weapon). This means that the
+8DN/+4Damage modifier actually decreases the damage caused. How can that be right?
Vital blow is supposed to be used against targets that have weaknesses or holes in their defenses. For instance, a character who wears full body armor might have an unarmored area around his eyes. That explains the +8DN to hit: the open area is that much more difficult to hit.
What about the +4Damage though? That’s a net loss of four points! I should be able to do much more damage with a vital blow than four less than what I was doing before, shouldn’t I?
Yes and no. Basically, what needs to be determined is the effect of the vital blow. It isn’t enough to say “I want to do a vital blow” and blaze away anymore. Sometimes, the people or creatures you’re fighting won’t have apparent weak spots at which to aim, so vital blow will be useless (in regards to causing more damage). Other times, you just won’t know where to aim.
Here’s the theory behind vital blow... Your character is fighting an armored opponent. Your character has a weapon with a damage value of 15. Your opponent has a Toughness of 10 and an armor value of +5/20. His total Toughness is 15. However, his armor only covers his torso and upper legs and arms—his head is wide open and so are his lower legs.
You declare a vital blow attempt, so the gamemaster asks where you are aiming. You say “the face.” Instead of using the
Aimed Hit Location Effects Table (on
page 36 of
The Rule Book), the gamemaster uses the vital blow rules. He adds eight to your enemy’s dodge and, when you hit, he tells you to add +4 to your damage value, plus any result points.
The gamemaster also tells you that your enemy’s armor (TOU+5/20) is now not being applied—you didn’t go through the armor, so you don’t have to worry about it. That means that you effectively get to add an additional +5 to your damage because you bypassed his armor.
In addition, a good gamemaster would probably assign one to three more damage points based on the fact that you just shot the guy in the face. He might even decide to read the damage on the Intimidation column of the
Interaction and Combat Results Table (on
page 20 of
The Rule Book) as well as the Damage column because this sort of attack would probably scare anybody. This should more than compensate for the damage you seemingly lost performing the vital blow.
Let’s face it—if you’re in combat with someone and decide to aim at a comparatively small portion of their anatomy (presumably one they would try like the devil to protect), you’re going to have to “take something off” the attack in order to be sure of a hit.
However, let’s say that, instead of fighting some thug, you’re battling an unknown alien. The alien has tentacles instead of arms, and there seems to be some sort of fungi growth where a head would normally be. You declare that you would like to perform a vital blow. The gamemaster says “oh, really?” and asks how you plan to do this. You say you’ll target the fungi growth. The gamemaster gives you the standard +8DN to hit, but doesn’t tell you that the fungi growth is a decoration worn by the creature. Not only do you get no extra damage, but you don’t get any at all.
So, the vital blow doesn’t work versus some aliens. At least not the same way. Maybe striking the same creature underneath the lower tentacles has the same effect as punching a human in a sensitive area—or maybe not. You’ll have to figure this out for yourself. The point is that the vital blow option does not inherently cause more damage—it is up to the gamemaster to determine how “vital” a vital blow is.
The Trick Shot (+6DN/+2Damage)
An alternative to the
vital blow is the trick shot. A trick shot can be used to target a particular area of a person’s body (or even a weapon the person is carrying). The base effect is that if the shot hits, an extra effect takes place along with the standard damage (or in place of the normal damage). The base modifier to hit is +6, but it may be adjusted by the gamemaster. The damage modifier is +2 and there are certain other compensations.
First, the character using the trick shot declares the “trick” part of the shot just as if it were a trick action. “I’m going to shoot the gun out of his hand” and “I want to get him right between the eyes” are two of the most extreme cases. The character uses his fire combat, energy weapons, missile weapons, melee combat, or other appropriate skill to generate a total, and that is read versus the target’s dodge or agility normally.
Then, the gamemaster decides whether or not the trick part of the shot was for causing more damage (in many cases, it may be for both damage and additional effects). If it was and the character hit, then the gamemaster should apply any modifiers he sees fit. In the case of attacking “between armor,” the fact that the character bypassed the armor bonus should be enough—but, if the character performed a particularly vicious attack, add one or two more points.
Next, the result points of the trick shot’s “to hit” are also read on the Trick column of the
Interaction and Combat Results Table. The target undergoes the effects as if tricked (the gamemaster describes how the effect worked), and the character using the trick shot should have a suitable “Player’s Call” ready. Here’s an example to clarify the usage of trick shot:
Example: Veris, an unarmed combat expert is confronted by two goons. One goon has a gun and the other has a knife. Veris gets initiative, and she decides to take the goon with the gun first.
She has an unarmed combat value of 17. He has an unarmed combat of 12 (though she doesn’t know this, naturally). In the first round, she declares that she’ll try to disarm him by kicking across his wrist—the trick shot is to disarm him, but she wouldn’t mind breaking his arm as well. The goon does not actively resist the attack.
Veris generates a skill total of 20. The gamemaster adds +6 to the DN (the goon’s skill value of 12), making the total DN an 18. Veris got two result points. Because she did want to hurt the goon, the gamemaster tells her to add the two result points to her strength to determine damage, and he tells her to add in the +2 modifier for the trick shot as well. That’s four result points added to her damage.
On the Trick column, the gamemaster reads the two result points (from Veris’ “to hit” attempt) and gets a stymied result. He determines that Veris did not disarm her foe, but he is stymied because she just smashed her foot into his wrist.
Next round, Veris decides to go after the same guy, but she wants to incapacitate him this time. She decides to bypass his torso armor and go right for a “sensitive area”—right between his legs. She generates a skill total of 22 this time, giving her four result points (remember, the goon’s defenses are increased by +6 for the trick shot). The gamemaster tells her to add the four result points, plus the +2 modifier (for the trick shot), plus an additional +2 because he says she hit him squarely where he did not want to be hit. That’s a total of +8 to her damage (a net gain of two points). In addition, the gamemaster still reads the four original result points on the Trick column—the goon is stymied again and Veris prepares for the next round.
By replacing vital blow with trick shot, you have a much more interesting attack option with a lot more roleplaying possibilities.
Surprise!
Everyone knows what surprise is—it’s when a character attacks and the other character is totally unaware of the attack, or at least is caught off guard. The modifiers for surprise are listed on
page 37 of
The Rule Book. They should be applied to the appropriate defensive maneuver of the target and the damage value (meaning surprise is very nasty).
If a character is surprised, however, how can he react? Granted, if a character is partially surprised, or if the attack is only a blindside attack, some reaction should be allowed—the character can even generate a bonus number and add it to his or her defensive skill. If the character is completely surprised, though, there should be no agility involved. The character is a sitting duck (unless he is moving already, etc.). In the case of complete surprise, simply assign a DN as if the character were an object. Use the
Difficulty Number Chart on
page 11 of
The Rule Book to determine how hard it would be to hit a standing target. In general, without range, cover, or other modifiers (which should be applied), hitting a man-sized target would have a DN of about 5 (
Below Average difficulty) with a missile or other ranged weapon, and about 3 (
Easy) with a melee weapon. Apply all other modifiers normally, but that’s about all there is to it.
