Difference between revisions of "Attacking"

Revision as of 08:27, 22 November 2016

When a character has spent an action and an attack to strike out at a foe, they are said to be Attacking.

To-Hit

At the heart of attacking is the character's ability to hit their foe. To determine this, the character must know one thing immediately - their character's THAC0. This stands for To-Hit Armour Class 0, or the number that Character would need to hit someone with AC 0. A character with THAC0 20 needs to roll 20 to hit AC 0, a character with THAC0 10 needs to only roll 10! A lower THAC0 is better as it means the character needs to roll a lower number on the dice itself to successfully hit.

To-Hit Roll

The To-Hit Roll is defined by a straightforward formula - it seems awkward at first due to the fact that AC counts down from 10 by default, but people get used to it.

To determine what AC the character can hit with their attack, roll the following:

thac0 - 1d20 - To-Hit Bonuses + To-Hit Penalties.

Effective thac0

To simplify this matter, a player can quickly adjust their Effective THAC0 and then roll something based on that. This is simplified significantly by using Dice Macro.

For example, a character has a thac0 of 14 and is wielding a +1 Longbow against an enemy who is behind 50% cover (-4 to hit). This means that the To-Hit Roll looks something like this:

14 - 1d20 - 1 + 4

Which simplifies down to:

17 - 1d20.

In short, they have an effective THAC0 of 17.

Making The Roll

When the dice is rolled, if the To-Hit roll comes up with the AC of the target or lower the attack is a hit! To continue the above example, the character with the effective THAC0 of 17 rolls 11, this gives them a To-Hit Roll of 6!

If the target has AC 6 or worse, that'd be a hit! If the target has AC 5 or lower, however, that would miss! Say the target has AC 5 - in their current position they'd need to roll 12 or better to hit the target. On a d20, 12 or more is only a 45% chance. If they move to a place where they are behind the target, they lose the -4 penalty and gain a +2 for a back attack. Their effective THAC0 of 17 becomes 11! Now to hit the target, all they need is 6 or more! Their chance to hit when up from 45% to 75%!

Results

If the attack misses, nothing happens - usually. In the case of enormous throwing weapons or grenades, the location where the projectile does land is often important.

If the attack hits, the character may roll Damage.

Fumbles and Criticals

A roll of 1 is considered a Fumble. This means that, almost always, the attack has failed.

To determine if a Fumble misses, make a new attack roll with -20 To-Hit. If this attack would hit the target, it is not a Fumble but deals minimum damage. If the character would be incapable of this on a re-roll, they do not make a new roll - it is a miss. A re-roll from a Fumble cannot be a Critical or a Critical Hit.

A roll of 20 is considered a Critical. This means, almost always, the attack is a hit and may be a Critical Hit.

To determine if a Critical hits, compare the effective AC hit to the target's AC and roll damage. If you could lower the effective AC hit by 10 or less and still hit, the attack automatically hits. For every 5 points you would need to decrease the To-Hit Roll's value by, after the first 10, half the effective damage done. The first time this is done will deal 1/2 damage, then 1/4 damage, then 1/8 damage and so on. If reduced to between 1 and half a point of damage, 1 point of damage is still dealt. If this would reduce it below half a point of damage, then no damage is dealt and the attack probably misses.

For example, a character has an effective THAC0 of 18 and rolls 20 on the dice. 18 - 20 gives them a To-Hit roll of -2. Their target is a shadow dragon with AC -12. This is exactly 10 lower than their attack and so it hits normally! If, however, it was darker and the effective THAC0 were 20, this means they would hit AC 0. With the target's AC being 12 points below this, the attack will only do half damage.

This range of values where the character may get a successful hit on a Critical is to prevent situations where a character may somehow achieve a hit from the other side of the planet on a 1 in 20 chance.

Note, Critical Range effects only when Critical Hits can occur, not the automatic hit qualities of a Critical roll.

Critical Hits

When a Critical is rolled, or if an attack roll falls within the Critical Range of an attack, it may be a Critical Hit.

If the attack qualifies for the above and would successfully hit by 5 or more, the attack is a Critical Hit and the character may roll for Severity. In the interest of speed of play, a player may opt to instead roll damage twice or do maximum normal weapon damage without rolling for Severity.

For example, a character has an effective THAC0 of 16 and rolls 20. This gives them a To-Hit Roll of -4. As their target has an AC of 2, they successfully hit by 6. This constitutes a Critical Hit.

The Hit-By-5 rule is to prevent situations where a target with a high AC may only be missed 95% of the time or hit and a Critical Hit is scored automatically.

Modifiers

There are many situations and conditions that can modify the ability of an attack to hit.

Enhancement

Enhancement refers to a bonus or penalty tied to the weapon itself, effectively unchangable. This is usually magical but it could be technological or otherwise.

A Weapon will almost always have Enhancement (To-Hit) and Enhancement (Damage) of equal value; if it is a +1 Weapon, assume it does unless stated otherwise.

An Enhancement modifier applies to both To-Hit and Damage - these do not normally stack and only the highest Enhancement modifier is considered.

The only exception comes when using Ranged Weapons and Ammunition - the Enhancement modifier of ammunition and ranged weapons stack; thus a +1 Longbow firing +2 Arrows has a +3 To-Hit bonus. If the character has an Enhancement modifier from other items, it is only considered for Ranged attacks if it is higher than the Ranged Weapon's Enhancement, not the Ammunition.

When determining the ability to penetrate Special Defence, the highest Enhancement Modifier across ranged weapon and ammunition is used in Heroic and Epic games. In Traditional Games, only the Enhancement modifier of the ammunition is considered.

If Magical Ammunition is retrieved after successfully hitting a target, its Enhancement bonus decreases by 1, until it becomes 0. Some Ammunition lose all Enhancement bonus immediately on a successful hit. Enhancement penalties are not lost or gained in this manner.

Circumstantial Modifiers

Unless specifically stated otherwise, To-Hit modifiers are considered Circumstantial. They may be listed on a Stats Sheet as from Strength or Dexterity but they are circumstantial and, unless obviously unable to interact, they stack.

The table below lists a large number of standard To-Hit modifiers that may come up in play, based on the circumstances characters find themselves in. Modifiers that come from attributes, specializations, conditions and so forth are generally not listed here.

Some modifiers stack - a prone target attacking with a crossbow who is able to fire at a target below them has a +5 To-Hit bonus. Other modifiers replace each other - an attacker who is climbing does not gain a +1 bonus To-Hit from being above their opponent, nor does an attacker in Visibility 25% suffer both the penalty for Visibility 25% and Visibility 50% at the same time. A DM decides if multiple modifiers stack or not.

Special Circumstances

A few specific circumstances need to be defined when making attack rolls.

Two-Weapon and Multi-Weapon Fighting

A character may split the normal complement of their attacks between all weapons they are equipped with, though they must suffer the Off-Hand penalty where appropriate. Two-Weapon Fighting penalties only begin to apply as bonus attacks are gained. By default, a character making an Unarmed Attack may only gain one bonus attack from their offhand, headbutts, slams and kicks - all of these are considered Offhands for purposes of use.

A character can increase their number of attacks in a round by using more than one weapon - or by attacking with their other hand. A character can gain a bonus attack using the weapon in their off-hand. They must use at least one of their attacks on the off-hand weapon - it does not need to be the bonus attack, however. The character may gain a bonus attack for each 'hand' they have, as defined by Main-Hand vs Off-Hand and each 'hand' that grants a bonus must be used at least once.

Wielding weapons in this manner causes a penalty To-Hit - each attack suffers the penalty listed below. If half (or more) of the Weapons used are defined as Light Weapons, it is uses the Light column - it does not matter if more base attacks are used on non-Light weapons, only that half of the Weapons that will attack are Light.

Every Bonus attack gained whilst the character qualifies for Light Two-Weapon/Multi-Weapon Fighting causes all attacks to suffer a -2 penalty. Every Bonus attack gained whilst the character does not qualify for Light Two-Weapon/Multi-Weapon Fighting causes all attacks to suffer a -4 penalty.

Two Hands may be used to wield a Two-Handed weapon - this lowers the amount of attacks due to the available number of hands, however.

The first table lists attacks made without Off-Hand penalties, including for weapons that are smaller than the character by two sizes or more. After One Size Category larger, penalties continue to increase by 4 points per Size Category.

The Multi-Weapon Style of Combat Styles allows the character to reduce these penalties.

Mixing Attack Types

Sometimes a character may be able to attack both in Melee and at Range - for example, a character may have a gun in one hand and a rapier in the other. More complicatedly, a character may have throwing knives in their right hand and have their other hand be open but want to know if they can slash an opponent with their Throwing Knives after throwing one.

In these instances, consider every attack used with ROF, regardless of how many the character may make in a round, to reduce their total number of Attacks by 1 - an ROF of 4 or of 1/4 both remove one Melee attack per ROF spent. Conversely, any Attacks used on melee decrease the effective RoF by 1. Thus, a character armed with a musket that fires a shot but only has 1 attack would not be able to use the bayonet attached to it immediately after this. If a character is wielding a sword in their off-hand and a pistol in their main hand but is not gaining bonus attacks from Two-Weapon Fighting and has 3 attacks per round, firing a shot with the pistol only consumed one attack, allowing them to use their sword for two more attacks.

This does not, however, have an effect on bonus attacks received from Two-Weapon or Multi-Weapon Fighting BUT the character must account for these - if the character did not initially state they would be using Two-Weapon Fighting and suffer the penalties on their Ranged attacks, Melee attacks later in the round from Two-Weapon fighting would not be possible.

Firing Into Melee and Precision Attacks

If characters become clustered together during a fight, it becomes hard to draw a bead on their target.

If a character attacks an enemy who has other characters within 5 feet of them, roll a dice to determine which is being hit before the To-Hit roll is made. Use the smallest character in the melee to represent 1 side of a dice; double the value for every larger character involved.

For instance, an orc bandit fires an arrow at a goblin whilst two other orc bandits are attacking them. The goblin's Small size gives them a value of 1 in this, whilst each orc bandit is Medium - one size category larger. This means that each Orc has 2 points, bringing the total value of the group to 5. To roll this, we would roll 1d10 and halve it, rounding up. On a 1-2, one orc is hit, on a 3-4, the other orc is hit and on a 5, the original target is hit.

In this instance, the archer gets a 3 - hitting one of their allies! With their back turned away from the archer, they are flatfooted against the attack and give the archer a +1 bonus they didn't even want to have on hitting a friend!

To avoid the risk of Shooting Into A Melee, the character may consider their attack to be a Precision Attack with a -4 penalty. If this misses, no one is harmed (unless, for instance, the attack was with a grenade).

If a character has the Precision Combat Style, they have an easier time with this. The first level decreases the Precision Attack penalty by 2 points to -2 by default. The second level makes all Precision Attacks have no penalty, though the character is free to roll to see who they hit if they wish.

Automatic Hits

Some attacks or actions have an Automatic Hit effect, meaning that no matter what AC they would hit, they hit their target. In these instances, an Attack Roll is only made to determine if it is a Critical Hit or a Fumble.

If an Automatic Hit would be a Fumble, make a new attack roll. If this would hit AC 0, it is not a Fumble.

Attacking An Area

Also known as "attacking the floor" or "shooting the broadside of a barn", a character can attempt to attack an area or tile.

For all intents and purposes, a specific tile has an AC of 10 whilst a general area has an AC of 15 against Ranged Attacks. Either is considered an Automatic Hit against Melee attacks. This does NOT include the capacity to damage what is being targeted - an attack against a stone wall with a sword is not apt to penetrate it when rolling against AC 15. This only refers to the ability to hit the target by throwing or striking it.

This is typically used when a character is throwing a grenade at a tile, rather than at a given character.

Grenade-like Missiles