Hey gang,
As those of you on the listserve know, we’re updating a few
combat mechanics in our Law Dogs sourcebook (which is currently
available—by the way). Here’s the latest revision after
some very useful discussions on the listserve. We’ve cleaned
them up a bit since last week and taken out any confusing references
from the Law Dogs book itself, so try these on and let
us know what you think.
Combat Changes
Brawlin'
Certain kinds of attacks, like
fightin': brawlin' can be used to put someone down without
killing them. When one fellow hits another with his bare hands
or a light club such as a chair leg or a bottle, he rolls his
damage dice (usually Strength, plus 1d4 if he's using a
light club). The target then makes a Vigor roll. If the
attacker wins, the victim takes the difference in Wind.
Heavy clubs like pistol butts, ax handles, or entire chairs allow the attacker to chose whether she would like to cause lethal or nonlethal damage. If she just wants to cause Wind and try to knock her opponent out without causing serious injury, she can do so. Or she can bash the other fellow's brains out to her heart's content using the normal combat and damage system.
Automatic Weapons
Automatic weapons like Gatling guns fire bursts to fill the air
with lead at the expense of accuracy—much like a shotgun.
Each burst is 3 bullets, so automatic weapons have Rates of Fire
of 3, 6, 9, 12, and so on. A character must fire all 3 shots of
each burst—he can’t choose to fire only 1 or 2 shots
(unless the weapon description says otherwise).
A character can fire up to the weapon’s rate of fire each action, he just has to resolve each 3 round burst as a separate attack. A character firing a steam Gatling with a ROF of 6, for instance, would roll twice, once for each burst of 3 rounds. With a ROF of 9, you'd roll 3 attacks, and so on.
The character’s shootin’ roll determines how many rounds from each burst actually hit a target. Make one shootin’ roll per burst. Every success and raise means one of the three bullets hits its target. Additional raises are lost.
Hit location for each round is always
rolled randomly.
Multiple Targets
Multiple targets can be hit by a single burst. Choose a primary
target. The first bullet hits this unfortunate sodbuster. A raise
could hit a second victim up to 2 yards away, and another raise
could hit a target 2 yards away from the second.
To hit targets further than 2 yards from
the primary target requires a second burst. (Though others may
be hit by the "Innocent Bystander" rules later in this
chapter.)
Determine each round’s hit location and damage separately.
The player must assign his hits before rolling damage or resolving a second burst. In other words, roll all your attacks, assign hits to targets, then go back and roll hit location and damage for each. That way you can’t see if the first bullet in a burst kills some poor fool before assigning your second or third.
A character firing on automatic can never
"draw a bead." The first shot of each burst can be a
called shot, however. Simply figure any raises from the adjusted
TN.
Recoil
Firing off a hail of automatic fire is hard to control. Each burst
fired after the first in a single round suffers a –2
recoil modifier. This is cumulative, so the third burst in a round
suffers a –4, and so on, to a maximum of –6 should a
weapon ever have such a high rate of fire. Don't carry over recoil
modifiers from round to round, even if one burst if fired on the
Deuce of Clubs and the Ace of Spades in the following round--that's
just the way it works.
A good brace such as a sling or a bipod reduces the recoil penalty to -1 or even 0 (Marshal’s call). Gatlings come mounted on a bipod that ignores all recoil penalties.
Shotguns
Shotguns and scatterguns work a little differently than most weapons.
The benefit of either is that one shell unleashes a half-dozen
or so balls. This makes them ideal for unskilled shooters, since
they can make up for their lack of talent by filling the air with
lead. Even better, the closer the shooter is to her target, the
more balls are likely to hit and the more damage they can cause.
Shotguns add +2 to the firer's shootin': shotguns roll.
Shot from a shotgun scatters as it travels,
so closer targets get hit with more pellets than those farther
away. For this reason, shotguns do more damage to close targets,
as shown on the table.
Shotguns & Scatterguns
Table
| Range | Damage |
| Touching | 6d6 |
| 1-10 | 5d6 |
| 11-20 | 4d6 |
| 21-30 | 3d6 |
| 31+ | 2d6 |
Touching means the shotgun is smack up against a person’s body so that there’s no chance any of the buck shot balls will miss. At this range, it’s assumed the victim is "under guard" and can’t move. At ranges of 1 yard and further, it’s assumed the target can move enough that some of the balls might miss, hence the decreasing damage.
Fanning the Hammer
Note:
Fanning is no longer an Aptitude, it's a maneuver a gunslinger
can perform with the shootin': pistol skill. See below.
Veteran gunslingers sometimes "fan" their sidearms. Fanning simply means holding the trigger down on a single-action revolver and slapping the hammer repeatedly with the palm of the other hand. This puts a lot of lead in the air fast, though it isn’t very accurate.
Fanning requires the shootin': pistol Aptitude. The fanner needs one free hand and a sinble-action revolveer in the other.
The rate of fire is 1 to 6, your choice on how many bullets you want to waste. Even if a gun holds more than 6 rounds, that’s the most a fellow can fan in one action. Fanning one shot isn’t really worth while, but it can be done.
To resolve the attack, pick a target and figure out the TN based on the range and any other modifiers. Fanning a pistol isn’t very accurate, so the shooter has to subtract –2 from his roll (this is on top of the "shooting from the hip" modifier, so the total penalty is -4).
A success and each raise thereafter causes a bullet to hit. The firer chooses what targets he hits, though any besides the original target must be within 2 yards of the last target hit.
A shooter can’t draw a bead when fanning, though he can make a called shot on the first bullet only. Figure the TN for the first shot. Any raises after that hit random locations as normal.
Fanning is very difficult, and that’s
why only the best gunslingers do it. Even then, it’s only
used in an emergency. Use this maneuver wisely, or you’ll
find yourself out of bullets with a bunch of angry bad guys around
you.
Quick Draw
Drawing a weapon takes an action,
as does cocking and firing. What if you don’t have that kind
of time?
Easy. The quick draw skill not only lets you draw a weapon as
a simple task, it also lets you cock it if needed as well. The
TN to draw or draw and/or cock a weapon as a simple task is shown
on the table below.
Quick Draw Table
| Task | TN |
| Draw | 5 |
| Cock | 5 |
| Draw & Cock | 7 |
Armor Reducing Damage
When bullets, knives, or anything else go through an obstacle, they lose some of their energy. The thicker and tougher the obstacle, the more damage is absorbed.
Some obstacles and targets have "armor ratings." Each level of Armor reduces the die type of damage by one step. An attack that uses d20s (like dynamite) is reduced to d12s by a single level of Armor. Two levels of Armor drops the damage to d10s, and so on. If the die type is dropped below a d4, drop the number of dice instead. An attack reduced to 0d4 does no damage.
A 3d6 bullet that goes through something
with an Armor value of 1, for instance, is reduced to 3d4. A 3d6
bullet that hits something with an Armor of 2 is reduced to 2d4.
Armor in Hand-to-Hand
Against hand-to-hand attacks, reduce the weapon's die type (not
the character's Strength) when determining armor effects.
If a character or critter isn't using a weapon, reduce the damage
dice of its claws or teeth just as if they were weapons.
In the rare cases a critter has no additional damage dice besides its Strength, it simply cannot penetrate anything with an Armor value of 1 or more. Occasionally, the Marshal may rule big creatures can cause nonlethal brawlin' damage, even to heavily armored targets, however.
Stunning
As you know, stunned characters
cannot take any offensive action against their opponents. They
are also at a disadvantage when it comes to defending themselves.
Someone who is seeing stars cannot vamoose and does not add her
fightin' level to her opponent's TN in hand-to-hand combat.
Prone Characters in Hand-to-Hand
Prone combatants suffer a –4 penalty to fightin' attacks,
and if they do happen to connect, they subtract –4 from the
hit location roll.
Standing
Going prone is a simple task. Standing up requires an action.
Marshal
Shortcuts
Sometimes there’s a lot of bad guys. You don’t want
to keep track of fifteen banditos’ Quickness totals, wounds,
Wind, and wound modifiers when you’re trying to describe
the scene and help the heroes resolve their actions. You’ve
got better things to do. We’ve got something for you here,
too.
Actions
Of all the tricks we give you, the Action Deck is the niftiest.
You don’t have to roll an "initiative" number for
each bad guy and then try to remember it. You just lay down a
few cards behind your screen and wait until they come up in the
round. Then the bad guy takes his action, and you move on.
Roll Quickness totals for major
bad guys and critters. For numerous extras, deal one card for
the whole lot. The down side (for them) is that they only get
one card. The up side is that they all get to go together like
one big happy, inbred family. It all balances out in the end.
Wounds
We promised you an easy way to keep track of wounds for lots of
bad guys with no bookkeeping. Our momma told us not to lie, so
here’s an easy way for you to keep track of wounds for tens
or even hundreds of bad guys—without ever touching a piece
of paper. You will have to use miniature figures, however, or
something else to represent the heroes and the bad guys. Besides
letting you use this Marshal’s "cheat," minis help
your players understand the scene better—especially important
in a big fight. This gives everyone a good tactical sense of what’s
going on and encourages them to visualize and use the environment
instead of just saying "I shoot it" every action.
Pinnacle makes a bunch of minis for just this purpose (go to the Products Page if your store isn't smart enough to carry them). If you’re gunshy about minis, you can use dice, coins, tokens from a game ("I’m the shoe!") or counters with your posse’s names written on them. Place the minis on a map or a piece of paper with the terrain sketched in. Big sketch pads work great, and good hobby shops have erasable "battle mats" as well.
There’s the pitch for using minis. We won’t ram it down your throat. We’ll give you the cheat in the next paragraph. Promise. But first a disclaimer. Don’t use this shortcut for important bad guys or really unique monsters—you should use the more detailed "wound" system for anything that spectacular. You should also use the regular wound system if there’s only a few thugs involved in a fight.
Okay. Enough disclaimers and preaching
about miniatures. Here’s the shortcut.
Whenever a player character makes a successful attack, go ahead
and let her roll hit location to see if she gets any extra dice
for a hit to the gizzards or noggin. Use the damage total to determine
how many wounds the opponent takes, then place a chip under the
miniature’s base to mark its wound levels (assume all the
hits go to the thug’s guts area). The chip also tells you
what kind of penalty to assess the bad guy when it makes an attack
as well.
The best part? You can even tell the players their opponent’s size and let them "chip" your bad guys for you. That way you can keep even a really huge combat moving faster than a three-legged toad.
We think you can probably figure this
out, but here’s a quick table to sum up the wound levels,
the corresponding color of chip to mark it, and the wound penalty
to the unfortunate victim’s actions.
Wound Table
| Wound | Chip | Penalty |
| Light | White | –1 |
| Heavy | Red | –2 |
| Serious | Blue | –3 |
| Critical | Blue+ White (or other colored chip if you have them) | –4 |
Wind
So you’re thinking, "Okay, smart guys. But some weapons
only do Wind damage. What about that?" We got you covered,
partner. Treat Wind just like damage. Every increment of the bad
guy’s Size in Wind raises the Wound level a notch just like
any other damage. It all balances out when taken together with
the Wind the victim should be taking with any "real"
wounds.
Stun
You might not want to keep track of stun for all the bad guys.
Don’t worry—the rules are as complete as we could make
them so you can dig into the details when it matters. Of course
you may not always need this much detail. When you do, however,
this cheat will help you keep track of stunning as well. Place
a stunned opponent’s figure on its back on top of its wound
chip. That will remind you to have the creature make a stun check
on its next action. If it makes the roll, stand the sucker back
up on top of its wound chip.
How do you tell the stunned figures from
the dead ones? Take the chip off the dead ones, silly.
Deadlands
is a Trademark of Pinnacle Entertainment Group
Copyright 1996-1998, Pinnacle Entertainment Group, Inc.
All rights reserved.
Web Contact: Matthew
Tice
Other Questions: Deadlands@aol.com