Chapter 5 - Combat

This chapter details the various systems involved in playing the game. Below are rules for combat, and other such enjoyable subjects.

Attributes, Abilities, and Actions
Here is the section that everybody has been waiting for. This is where everything is explained. How do you attack/defend/run like hell? All of those are explained below. I’m sure everybody wanted to know how to perform attacks when there aren’t any dice or abilities or anything. Here’s how it breaks down. I’ll present it in table format with a few of the more common actions that will be performed in a combat scenario. Though most of the actions and combinations can be left up to the game master, these are the ones that will occur most frequently.

Strike Numbers, Initiative, and Dodging
The above table needs a LOT of context before it would make much sense. All of the actions and stat combinations on the table above are indicative of most of the actions that you'd most likely be making in the game. The first things that will need to be explained will be Strike Numbers.

Strike Numbers
Strike numbers are, very plainly, the number that you have in order to make your attack. The first three actions listed on the chart are Melee Attack, Weaponless Attack, and Projectile Attack. These three numbers are your Strike Numbers for those types of attacks. For example if you were making an attack with a sword you would combine your Fighting Ability and your Agility to get your Strike Number for your sword attack.

For Example:

''Bjorn has a Fighting Ability of 4 and an Agility of 2. He wants to make an attack with his battle axe. His strike number would be determined by adding his Fighting Ability (4) and his Agility (2) to come up with a Melee Attack strike number of 6.''

It's pretty straight forward.

Dodging and Acrobatic Dodging
Much like the Strike Number, your ability to Dodge is dictated by the combination of several stats. In order to Dodge in an area that is relatively safe or not entirely hazardous you would combine your Fighting Ability and your Agility and add an additional 2 points to the number. For example:

''Dominick is engaged in a furious swordfight with a group of Mooks. The Mook in front of him swings his sword, trying to take off Dominick's head. Dominick has a Fighting Ability of 5 and an Agility of 3. The Mook's Melee Strike Number is 6. Dominick adds his stats and comes up with a total of 10 (4 Fighting Ability + 3 Agility + 2) and dodges the Mook's swing easily.''

Pretty simple stuff, eh?

Another form of dodging is the Acrobatic Dodge. This is a more complex Dodge that may be used to dodge and move to safety or to dodge in order to make a bit of space. This still takes up the same number of actions as a common Dodge but is normally much cooler and involves a bit of difficulty. In order to pull off an Acrobatic Dodge you add your Fighting Ability to your Agility and add your Accuracy. This will give you your Acrobatic Dodge number. This number is treated more like an Unopposed Action (which will be described below). An example of an Acrobatic Dodge would be:

''Dominick finds himself surrounded by three more Mooks with swords. He decides that he needs a bit of space to reassess the situation. So he uses an Acrobatic Dodge and backflips to a catwalk above and behind him. This is a tough feat. Using the table later on the GM decides that this would be a Difficult action. As we found earlier Dominick has a Fighting Ability of 5 and an Agility of 3. He also has an accuracy of 3 as well. With the difficulty number of 6, for a difficult feat, Dominick ends up with an Acrobatic Dodge number of 11, well above the difficulty and so he manages his Acrobatic Dodge.''

Blocking and Parrying
Other examples of defensive actions that can be taken are blocking and parrying. Blocking and parrying is using an object to block or deflect an attack. Not every action can be blocked or parried. Likewise not everyone can block or parry attacks. Blocking attacks requires an object that would be able to withstand the attack. Unless you're nigh invulnerable you're not going to be blocking bullets without some sort of shield or armor. Likewise you're not going to be able to parry an attack with your bare hands either.

So blocking or parrying requires a shield, armor, or some sort of weapon capable of absorbing or deflecting incoming attacks. Things like punches or kicks are able to be parried or blocked without extra equipment, though super strong punches and kicks may still do damage to those blocking or parrying them without some form of armor or other item.

So with all these words what does blocking and parrying do? Blocking or Parrying takes place after you've failed your dodge. It's your last chance to mitigate damage coming in. If successful the damage you would receive is cut in half. You can only do one of these actions per failed dodge and they DO consume an action so you'd need to have actions available this round in order to block or parry. So here is the brief rundown:


 * Blocking or Parrying requires a way to block or parry such as a weapon, armor, or a shield.
 * Blocking or Parrying is done after the Dodge roll fails
 * Blocking or Parrying uses one action to perform. The next available attack is consumed to perform the block/parry
 * Successfully Blocking or Parrying reduces incoming damage by half and is calculated after damage resist has been figured into the damage. For example if you have a 14 point attack coming at you and you have 4 points of damage resist you subtract those from the damage before you apply the half attack damage from successfully blocking.
 * You can only block OR parry after a failed dodge. You can't block, and then if that fails, attempt to parry.

Initiative
Initiative in Ironbound is quite unique from other systems in that the highest number doesn’t necessarily act first. Here’s how it breaks down. Both combatants add together their Reflexes + Awareness score + any modifiers. The lower number declares his attack first. However at any point before the character finishes his action the player with the higher number can interrupt the other and declare his action before that other player acts. This allows for a character to either react to the other characters action if it’s a non-lethal action or pre-empt it if it is a combat action. That explain it?

Schticks
Schtick is an incredibly odd word for incredibly cool maneuvers. A schtick is an action, though not necessarily useful in itself, adds to the overall action of this scene merely with its “coolness”. Schticks are acrobatic, gorgeous moves that seem to be taken right out of an action movie. An example of a Schtick would be your character being in the heat of battle, swords are clanging. You pull a beautiful spin maneuver, cutting your opponent open, suddenly you pull out a dagger and throw it, hitting the guy who is trying to sneak up behind you in the throat. They add to the overall scene, rather than just a thrust, parry, counterstrike and then dodge.

Players are encouraged to make the scene as thrilling and cinematic as possible to keep interest high. The bonus numbers you get for performing a Schtick help keep the players looking for new ways to liven things up. Though be warned, using the same schtick over and over again takes away from its interest factor and after repeated use the GM is well within his right to disallow you to use the Schtick bonus for that action.

=Your Reflexes Stat and Attacks Per Round= Your Reflexes stat is a rather curious and unusual stat in regards to most games. Your Reflexes stat dictates how many attacks per round your character gets. It also has an unusual attribute in that after initiative is rolled, for every point your Reflexes are higher than your opponent's, you get to take one of your attacks first. An example:

''Ashley's Super has a Reflexes stat of 5. She's put 5 points into Reflexes (It starts naturally at 10) and so she gets 5 attacks per round. Ashley is facing off against a Villain with Reflexes of 8. The Villain only gets 2 attacks per round. They both determine Initiative. Ashley ends up with 12 and the Villain has an Initiative of 8. As determined above the Villain declares his action first but Ashley decides to interrupt and take her actions. Because her Reflexes is also 3 levels better than his she can take 3 of her actions before the Villain can if she so chooses.''

Hopefully that helps to clarify the stat a bit better. It sounds confusing actually looking at it but once you get the point of playing a bit it'll become much easier to grasp.

=A Touch of Chaos and Chance= Everything in this chapter has been fairly cut and dry so far. I'm sure everyone is sitting back and wondering where the chance for failure comes in. Once you've determined that your abilities are better than your opponents' it just becomes a matter of doing the same thing over and over again since you're guaranteed victory. There is an element of chance though. There are several things that a player can do to change the outcomes of things. The first is their Luck stat.

Luck
I don't want to understate the importance of Luck. Luck can give you a much better chance at success when you really need it. But Luck isn't an infinite resource. If you rely on your Luck too often you may find yourself out of Luck at an inopportune moment. The Luck stat can be used to give your character bonuses for every point in it above 3. For every point in Luck above 3 you can give yourself +1 to something that round. For Example:

''Kaylie's Super has a Luck of 7. She wanted her Super to be incredibly lucky. She's finding herself in a tough situation. She is outclassed by a villain she's facing off with. Just a couple points shy she uses 3 Luck. Since her Luck is 4 points above average she has 4 total modifier dice to apply this round. She puts +3 into her Projectile Strike Number to ensure that she hits the Villain. She hits them and decides to apply her final Luck to a +1 to Damage, hitting the Villain with a huge fire attack. Unfortunately she's used her luck for that round and will have to rely on herself to make it to the end of the round where her Luck will replenish itself for the next combat round.''

The Dice
There is another aspect of the Number determination that I've been leaving out until this point: The Dice. While I would have loved to make this game entirely diceless, I'll have to rely on a dice rolling script to take their place. There needed to be an aspect of chance to the game otherwise what should be fun and exciting would end up being totally one sided and a bit dull. So I've introduced a bit of chance in the form of modifier dice. Here is how the system will work.

There will be two six-sided dice rolled. One will be a Positive Die and the other will be a Negative Die. You will add the two together and the result, positive or negative, will be added to your Outcome Numbers ie your Strike Numbers, Contested Actions, Dodges, Blocks, Parry, Skills and such. For Example:

''Kaylie's Strike Number with her Projection: Fireball is 8. Her opponent's Dodge number is 4. This should be a snap. However the matter of the dice still needs to be figured in. So she rolls the dice and her positive die is 3 and her negative die is 6 for a result of a -3 modifier to her Strike Number leaving her with a Strike Number of 5. Unfortunately her opponent has dice to roll as well and they rolled a bit better than she did. Their positive die was 6 and their negative die was 3, for a result of a +3 modifier to their Dodge number. This brings their Dodge up to 7, more than enough to dodge Kaylie's modified Strike Number of 5.''

There will be a Die Rolling script added to the wiki that will record the dice rolls for everyone to see.

=Taking Action=

There are several types of actions that can be taken. Most of them will revolve around combat. We'll go into a bit of detail below to help understand the different kinds of actions.

Uncontested Actions
Not all actions are taken against another person. Some actions such as hacking a network, basket weaving, or even breaking down a wall are based against a Difficulty table. The action is assigned a number based on the inherent difficulty of the action. Most actions will range from 1-8 points, much like your Attributes. Some actions may require a higher difficulty but these should be reserved for nigh impossible feats. Once the GM assigns the difficulty for the action they will give you the stats needed to determine the outcome. Your number is compared to the given Difficulty on the table and you must  score equal or above the difficulty number. For example:

''Joshua's Super needs to break through a Titanium wall. His Super has Super Strength, bringing his Strength up to 10. the GM decides that the difficulty for the action is normally Monumental so he assigns the Action a difficulty of 8. His character uses his Strength attribute for for his deciding number. After rolling the dice he ends up with a Modifier of +2, bringing his number up to 12, well above the needed number to break through the wall. So the Super easily beats his way through the wall to find a group of frightened Mooks on the other side on the verge of surrender at the sight of such a feat of strength.''

Contested Actions
Contested Actions are any actions which are taken against another character or NPC. The target has their own stats and ability to retaliate if need be and so the action will become contested. Attacking, Dodging, Mind Controlling, Interrogating, etc would all be examples of contested actions. For example:

''Derek's Super is attacking a Mook with a sword. Derek's Super has a Strike Number of 8 with his sword. The Mook has the option to dodge the attack or block/parry with his own sword. The Mook decides to dodge and so Derek's modified Strike Number must be higher than the Mook's modified Dodge number in order to hit.''

Skill Rolls
Skill rolls are a bit different. They also differ a bit depending on the type of skill.

Craftsmanship and Arts
Your ability to build, repair, and modify items are dictated by this skill. For every level that the character has in this skill they can craft one level of quality higher as shown at the beginning of Chapter 6 - Equipment. The Build/Repair difficulty is based on twice the quality of the item the player is trying to craft. The Skill number is the player's Skill level + Intelligence. The player rolls the Modifier Dice with each attempt. Generally to build a new item the player needs to accumulate the number of successes equal to the Quality of the item that they're trying to craft. They have Skill Level + 3 chances to accumulate these successes. For Example:

''Axel has Craftsmanship: Sword at level 4. This would allow him to craft Exquisite swords given the time and materials. He settles in to craft an Exquisite sword. The difficulty of the action is 8, twice the quality level of the item he's trying to craft. His skill check number is 7 (Craftsmanship: Swords + Intelligence) plus/minus any modifiers that he will get from the dice. He has 7 chances to accumulate 4 successes. He gets 5 successes after the dice alternate being kind and cruel to him. He successfully crafts his Exquisite sword.''

You are able to craft at a lower level than you're fully capable of. For instance if you're skilled enough to craft Mastercraft weapons you can craft Exquisite weapons more easily. This has several advantages. First of all your materials are much cheaper as shown on the table at the beginning of Chapter 6. For each level that you craft below your capability you get +1 to you skill check. Let's take the last example for instance:

''Instead of attempting to craft an Exquisite sword, Axel decides that he simply wants to craft an Inspired blade. His difficulty is now only 6 (twice the level of the quality that he's trying to craft). His skill number stays unchanged except for the +1 modifier for crafting below his level. So now instead of a 7 base skill check number, it's now 8. The item is easier to craft in several ways, is cheaper to craft as the materials to craft an Inspired blade are 40% cheaper. He now has much more leeway with the dice since his base skill number is +2 to the difficulty of crafting the item. Axel easily crafts the Inspired blade.''

Thievery
Thievery depends mostly on the actions being taken. Hiding/Stealth checks are based around Subterfuge + Thievery. These sustained rolls are made against a difficulty determined by the GM. The GM determines how often these rolls need to be made. Stealing or picking the pocket of a person is a contested check of your Subterfuge + Thievery versus their Awareness + Intelligence+1. A success means that you managed to steal without the victim being aware of it. Various other uses of this skill will be determined as the need arises and this will be amended.

=A Normal Combat Round= So now that we've got all of these nice friendly paragraphs and tables and numbers and stats and all that, how do we use these? In this section we're going to go through a typical combat round and what happens when and all that fun stuff. So, the order of combat will normally go:

1. Determine Initiative (Reflexes + Awareness + any modifiers) 2. Determine How many attacks per round and in which order they occur. 3. Declare your Action. 4. Go through actions and initiative until everybody's actions are exhausted for the round. 5. Determine Initiative for the new round.

For Example:

''Dominick is fighting another group of Mooks. With a Reflexes score of 4 and an Awareness score of 3 he ends up with an Initiative score of 7. He rolls the two dice and ends up with a modifier of 0. He has no other modifiers through powers or equipment or skills so this is his initiative number. The Mooks end up with a modified Initiative of 3, 6, and 5. The Mook with 3 takes their action first and decides that he's going to shoot Dominick. Dominick decides to interrupt the Mook's action since his Initiative was actually higher and makes an Acrobatic Dodge behind the Mook. He beats the difficulty number and sticks the landing, leaving the Mook to fire into empty air. Initiative falls to the Mook with initiative 5. But Dominick has a higher Reflexes score than the Mook does by 2, so he decides to take an action before he can and attacks him with his sword. With his 4 Fighting Ability and his 3 Agility, Dominick has an unmodified Strike Number of 7. after the dice his Strike Number is unfortunately -2 and drops to 5. Dominick Decides to use some of his Luck and increase that number by 2, bringing it back up to 7. Dominick attacks the Mook that he's behind and does Strength + Weapon Damage to the Mook. With his 5 strength and the sword's damage of 5 that's 10 damage to the Mook. The bad guy misses on the dodge and so takes 10 damage. He quickly turns his attention to the Mook that he just interrupted and slices at him with his sword, repeating the previous result.''

Combat would continue on until everyone's actions had been taken their turns and the round would end. Initiative would be redetermined and the combat order would reflect the new numbers. A word of clarification on initiative and Reflexes and orders of turns.

The person with the lowest Initiative score goes first. People with higher initiative scores can interrupt him, the highest initiative score overriding everyone else in the "interrupt chain".

for example:

''In the previous example with the initiative totals of 7, 6, 5, 3, the person with the 3 would have declared their actions first. However anyone higher up could interrupt them. However the person with the highest initiative would act before anyone else trying to interrupt. So in this example, the person with 6 Initiative could interrupt the 3, but if the person with 7 initiative decided to, he could interrupt the both of them.''

Reflexes may make this a bit trickier but bear with me here. Let's return to the previous example.

''3 Initiative declares an action. He's going to attack Dominick. Dominick decides that he's going to act first and attacks first. Now we take reflexes into account. Dominick's Reflexes is 4, giving him 4 attacks per round. The Mook with 3 Initiative's Reflexes is only 2. According to the stat description DOminick can take 2 actions before the Mook can act. Remember for every point of Reflexes above your opponent, you can take an action before them. So Dominick decides that he's going to attack the mook first with an upward slash and for his second action cutting him horizontally.''

That would be an example of how Reflexes and the Initiative Chain would interact. In that example Dominick isn't forced to interrupt the action or take all of his actions before the other person. Having the advantage of the higher initiative, it would be up to Dominick as to whether he wanted to let the action happen and rely on his dodge or block, or to interrupt the action and take one, or more actions before the other Mook. Having only a set number of attacks per round, this could leave Dominick without any actions for the last half of the round. It's all a delicate dance.