Ranged Combat

Melee VS. Ranged

The advantage with melee is that your single offensive combat roll can inflict injury to several opponents that did not match your combat roll.   The advantage with ranged fighting, is that no combat maneuver can be performed against you so long as your opponent it not is adjacent to you. Melee combatants, no matter how high their combat roll, cannot inflict injury unless they are close enough. One common disadvantage with many ranged weapons however, is that no matter how high your combat roll, you can only inflict injury to one opponent each round.   Guns and bows are meant to be used at range and don’t perform well in melee combat. If a character using melee weapons wants to engage in combat against an opponent using ranged, the character with the ranged weapon will incur the standard penalty as described in weapon modifiers, but not right away. The character using the melee weapon must close the distance and the narrator will determine how many rounds this will take (it might not take any rounds if the character is close enough.) In the first round where the Melee combatant gets to attack, the ranged combatant might still not receive the ascribed penalty, if they have higher reflex.   If the melee combatant has higher reflex and is close enough they can close the distance to a combatant using a ranged weapon before they can fire. In this instance the ranged combatant received the appropriate penalty for using ranged weapons in melee combat. Also the combatant using the ranged weapon can only injure the melee combatant attacking them if they declared that they were aiming for that combatant in the declaration phase (they might have been aiming for another person), for ranged weapons can only achieve victories against one opponent in a round.   If ranged combatant was aiming for someone else, their attack can still hit whoever they were aiming for with no reduction to their roll, but when comparing their roll against anyone attacking them in melee combat, their combat roll is reduced by the weapon type.  

Hardcore Ranged Rules

There’s a difference in how ranged weapons operate when comparing things like guns to bows. To reflect this we have added an optional rule system that can be used when employing ballistic weapons. WARNING, these rules are called hardcore for a reason. It is VERY easy to die when using these rules, just like in real life when dealing with ballistic weapons. If these rules are not used when employing ballistic weapons the players will have an active chance to defend against ballistic attacks, such as dodging. While this isn’t realistic it does convey a superhuman level of combative skill and if that is the campaign you want to play, the regular rule system will work perfectly. Indeed both these rule systems can be used, the regular people having to follow the hardcore rules while the exceptionally skilled/superhuman/scientifically advanced people get to follow the regular combat rules.   The key difference in the hardcore rules is that ranged combat rolls are done against static Challenge Levels determined by distance and size of the target. Their total combat roll is calculated exactly the same, except that they are not trying to beat another player’s roll. Every win over the CL stands as a level of victory the player achieves against their opponent. Those attacked by weapons that use the hardcore rules cannot make any defense roll at all. Ballistic weapons (or other similar weapons like laser guns) work differently to, say, bows, because one cannot actively defend against a fired bullet. They can prepare before the gun is fired such as ducking behind cover or wearing armor, but once the gun is fired and it’s aim was true, you’ll get hit.  

RANGE	TARGET   Stationary*	Stationary up to 50% cover	Stationary up to 90% cover	Moving Target**, Human speed	Moving Target**, Car speed
Adjacent	1	Any target under these conditionsis not considered adjacent
Close Range   5 to 10 Meters	2	4	6	4	8
Medium Range   10 to 50 Meters	4	6	8	6	8
Long Range   50 to 100 Meters	6	10	14	8	10
Sniper Range   100 meters to a kilometer	6	10	14	8	10

  *Sniper range can only be attempted if the weapon has a scope.   *The CL’s for sniper range are doubled if one of the following conditions are not met   1. You don’t have at least one proficiency in sniper.   2. You are not kneeling or lying down.  

Ballistic weapon types

  Hand ballistic   +2d   Shoulder stocked ballistic   +4d   Fully automatic   Fully automatic weapons can be used to hit more than one person if they’re close enough to each other (narrators discretion as to how close is close enough.) For every dice they exceed the CL they can hit another person but the dice result doesn’t determine the level of injury to anyone hit. All persons hit roll to see what level of injury they receive.   Scoped weapons   When using the scope on a weapon every CL for close medium and long range targets are determined according to the close range category.     The CL for moving targets is increased by 2