Quote:
Originally Posted by kilemall
I got a smidgen of an idea what combat is like from stats context, but a quick summary would be helpful.
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Combat in
T4 is, not surprisingly, tied very closely with
T4's Task system. I feel it was innovative because it turned the Task systems in the previous editions on their heads.
Instead of having to roll a target number or greater, in
T4 you had to roll a target number
or less on a set of dice.
Furthermore, the harder a Task was to complete, the more dice were added to the dice pool you rolled, thus making it harder to get your target number
or less.
The target number you had to roll to succeed with a Task was based on an appropriate attribute plus the skill level the character possessed. For example, to shoot someone with a handgun, the target number was a character's Dexterity + Handgun skill. Say they had a Dexterity of 8, and a Handgun-2, the target number would be 8+2 = 10 or less.
In combat the further a target was away from you, the harder it was to hit, because you had to roll a dice pool with more dice as the range increased.
T4 used range bands like previous editions, with the following dice pools assigned to them:
Contact (0-3m) = 1.5d6
Very Short (4-15m) = 2d6
Short (16-45m) = 2.5d6
Medium (46-150m) = 3d6
Long (151-450m) = 3.5d6, and so on.
Also, if you were wearing armor, or a vacc suit, there was (usually) a negative DM applied to your Dexterity, (often -2.)
So, for example, to hit a target at Short range with the Handgun skill above, while wearing Flex armor, your Target number would be 8 (Dexterity) - 2 (Dex modifier for the armor) + 2 (Handgun skill) = 8 or less on 2.5d6.
For the same character to hit the same target but at Medium range instead, it would take an 8 or less on
3d6, which is harder to roll a low number because there are more dice involved.
Armor and damage was handled a little differently than previous editions. Armor was divided up into "flexible" armor, and "rigid" armor. Armor was given a value. For Flex armor, that value was 5, and was "flexable," not "rigid."
A cP003 Pistol had a damage rating of 5, so that translated to dealing 5d6 damage to an unarmored target.
However, if a target was wearing "rigid" armor with an armor value of 5, then 1d6 of damage would be subtracted for every point of armor value. In this case the 5d6 of a Snub Pistol would be reduced to (5d6 damage - 5 armor) = 0d6.
But if a target was wearing "flexable" armor with an armor value of 5, some of the damage would leak through. 1d6 was still subtracted from the damage for every armor point, but 1
point of damage would "leak" through for every dice of damage the armor protected against. So if a character was shot with a cP003 Pistol wearing Flex armor, the damage would be (5d6 damage - 5 armor) = 0d6 + 5 points.
Damage points were taken off the physical characteristics, Strength, Dexterity, and Endurance, as per previous editions. If one characteristic dropped to 0, then the character was unconscious. If all three characteristics dropped to 0, then the character was dead.
QED.
