Unknown Armies - Combat Practice

Started by Kythia, August 09, 2013, 07:57:52 PM

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Kythia

Talking and laughing amongst yourselves as you enter the pub soon stops as you see the group at the table.  At your table.  Five of them, sat bold as brass, at the table  you normally sit at.  They don't notice you immediately, just sit and chat amongst themselves about how Rachel is the best one in Friends.  Well.  Stealing your table you could maybe have forgiven, but thinking that trollop was the best one?  In a world where Chandler exists?  They must pay for their stupidity.  Pay for it IN BLOOD!




So.  You're gonna smack them down with their stupid layered hair and their ridiculous refusal to accept that they were on a break.  There'll be two types of fight in this game, and this is type one.  There's no map, no grid, nothing like that.  What's around you is what you can reasonably expect to find in a bar.  The other type I will have a more formal map and will want to know roughly where you all are.  I don't expect that to come up a lot, I much prefer this more freeform cinematic battle, but if there's a suspicious looking pentagram on the floor you're trying to push them in to without going in yourself or whatever it may become relevant where everyone is.

For this, though, just use your imaginations.  Is there a chair nearby you can grab?  Decide.  I trust you all.  If I feel you're abusing it I'll step in but I don't imagine I'll need to.

This fight is gonna be a bit chaotic because I want to try to touch on as many points as I can, by the way.

Combat proceeds in rounds, each round everyone gets an action.  What can you do with an action?  Well, the three main things are:
1) Draw a weapon (or pick one up, or whatever.)
2) Attack
3) Defend.
But the general rule is that you can do anything that takes roughly five seconds. If you're not sure, check with me but once again I trust you to be reasonable.

The first step on combat is setting the initiative order.  Here you have two options.
1) You can take the numerical value of your "initiative" skill.  For example, Blythe has an initiative of 25 so he could take that as his value.
2) You can roll a d100.  You're trying to get under your speed.

The initiative order is the set as successful rolls high to low, unsuccessful rolls low to high.  Taking your initiative skill counts as a successful roll.  So realistically, if you choose to roll you are aiming for not only under your speed but also over your initiative - because otherwise you would have been better off using you initiative.

I'm gonna use the "Stock Thug" template from the book for them.  2 of them take their initiative (25), three of them feel lucky and roll: 23, 83, 72 (in case you don't trust me).  But Im changing the 23 to a 26 to make a point.  So that means one of them was right to roll, two stupid to do so.

At the moment the initiative order is:

The one who is a waitress (26 successful)
The one who dated Ross/The one who dated Barry (both on 25 successful)
The one who moves to Paris (72 unsuccessful)
The one who gatecrashed a wedding (83 unsuccessful)

There's one more thing, though.  People can't be tied.  Because I have a tie on 25, I roll a dice.  1-5 the first one drops a point of initiative, 6-10 the second does.  It was a 7.  So the final initiative order before your actions is:

The one who is a waitress (26 successful)
The one who dated Ross (25 successful)
The one who dated Barry (24 successful)
The one who moves to Paris (72 unsuccessful)
The one who gatecrashed a wedding (83 unsuccessful)

Normally I'd do all of this simultaneously with your choices so you didn't get an advantage by seeing when they would move.  But in this case I wanted to lay it all out.

So.  Go ahead and decide whether you want to roll or just take your value.  My dicebot ID is 39076 if you wanna send me them.
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Blythe

#1
Miyo glares, angry that her normal table at the pub is being taken by these cheap Rachel fans, and she decides to do something to get her table back. The bar is a little smoky and has the odor of a hint of cheap beer to her.  She calls out, "Hey! If you're going to steal someone's table, could you at least have good taste in the right characters in a show?" She approaches with the intention of making at least one of them move.

Initiative

Decided to roll and try it out so I ca see how this all works instead of copping out and taking my Initiative stat.

Miyo rolls for Initiative and rolls a 14 here.
.

Kythia

They turn their bouncy haired heads to face you, wine glasses hit the table in almost perfect unison.  Two of them had just lit a cigarette and are now hurrying to squish them out in the overfilling ashtray but the other three - non-smokers or faster smokers, you're not sure - rise to their feet.

The leader, or the one with the bounciest hair at least, starts to say something but before she gets a chance Chris has moved up to face her.




OK.  I'm not doing this in a spoiler here, but I generally will.  The full initiative order, taking in mind your rolls, is:

Chris (31 successful)
The one who is a waitress (26 successful)
The one who dated Ross (25 successful)
The one who dated Barry (24 successful)
Miyo (14 successful)
The one who moves to Paris (72 unsuccessful)
The one who gatecrashed a wedding (83 unsuccessful)

So Chris/demigod is up first.

You have a few possibilities. 
1)You can pick up a chair or beer bottle or something.  This is the equivalent to drawing a weapon.
2)You can punch one of them.  This is done with a "Major Struggle Check".  What that means is that you need to roll under your struggle skill on a d100 to hit them.  However, two of them are still sat down, making it harder for them to dodge.  So you'll get a "shift" on your action if you want to hit either of them.  10% in this case.  In general shifts are numbers added to or subtracted from your skill to reflect things being easier or harder than average.

So you have a struggle of 25.  If you want to hit one of the three standing ones, you need to roll under 25.  If you want to hit one of the two seated ones, you need to roll under 35.

3) You can try to avoid being hit.  At this stage all you need to say is "I'm dodging this round.  Until your next action comes up, you'll have an additional chance to dodge being hit.  They will need to roll under their struggle to hit you still, and then you'll have a chance to dodge it.  I'll explain how that works when it comes up.

4) The ever present "something else".  Draw a weapon, attack or dodge are the three kinda default combat actions but its a roleplaying game.  Do you wanna do something else?  Flee?  Leap on to the table so you'll have the advantage of higher ground next time?  Grab one of the other patrons and use them as a human shield?  Don't feel at all constrained by the draw/attack/dodge list.  If you wanna do something else just say "Kythia, I wanna try<whatever>

So what you up to?  Include your roll and who you're attacking if it's attacking.
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Demigod1945

The fact that someone would take their table at the pub, especially when everyone knew that it was their's and their's alone, infuriated Chris. He walked up behind Miyo as she yelled at the table thieves, and over come with anger stepped up to the apparent leader of the group and got right in her face. Her breath stank of cigarette smoke and alcohol. He thought that in this case actions spoke louder than words, and with that he drew his right arm back in attempt to clock her in the side of the jaw.
Struggle

I rolled for struggle which is 25 and I got a 66... yeah.

Kythia

The women whips her head back, snakelike, meaning Chris's punch glances off her.  Barely connecting with enough force to be "noticeable" let alone "damaging".  She grins nastily at him and narrows her eyes.  It's clear to all concerned she's totally ignoring Miyo for the moment to focus on the presumably stronger and certainly faster male.  Aiming directly for the squishiest parts of his male-ness she brings a knee up sharply.

OK.  Just to try to use a few different combat rules, she is taking something called a focus shift.  Don't worry about the name, it's not at all important.  What she's doing is ignoring everyone else in the fight in favour of concentrating on a single opponent.  This gives her a bonus to hit that one opponent - she gets to choose whether it's 10, 20 or 30 but because she's not particularly paying attention to Miyo, Miyo (and anyone else in the fight) gets that same bonus to hit her. 

It's a way of taking down the most dangerous targets first.

She has a struggle of 35% and is taking a 10% shift meaning she needs to roll under 45 to hit.  She gets a 50 though, so misses.


Sadly though, for her at least if not for Chris' future babies, dodging his punch has left her off balance and her knee slams harmlessly into the thick muscle of his leg.  Before she's really had time to growl in annoyance though her friend is at her side aiming a clawd fist - french nails outwards like talons - at Miyo's face.

This one is just a regular attack.  Needs a 35, got a 61.  As you can see, amongst unskilled opponents its pretty hard to land a blow.  Thats a good thing, though.  A very good one.  Combat is brutal in UA as you'll see shortly

Miyo manages to get a hand up, though, blocking the scything claws by knocking the girl's arm away.  No time to celebrate as the final one on her feet glares at Chris for a moment and then picks the chair up by its back, hefting it menacingly as she advances.

So instead of an attack action, she'd drawn a weapon (effectively).  Being hit with that chair is gonna do more damage than a fist, that's for sure.

Miyo is now up. There are two girls standing unarmed, one standing with a chair and two seating.  Hitting a seated one still gets that 10% shift in her favour.  Because one of the standing ones has been focusing on Chris, she also gets a ten per cent shift in her favour against one of the two unarmed girls as well.

Let me know


242037

Blythe

Miyo lets out a girlish and high-pitched cry of anger, and she decides to let her tiny punches of fury fly at the first seated girl, knowing that it's important she stay away from that chick with the chair. Miyo isn't the hardiest person, but she's smart enough to take advantage of a situation. She lashes out with her balled up hands, ready to fight and crack the first seated person in the face. She knows that she's outnumbered and only has Chris to help her as the other bar-goers watch the struggle, so she wants to see if she can down one quickly.

Struggle

Miyo has a struggle at 35%, and she's attacking a seated person, preferably the one right after her in the initiative order. She rolled a 99. Argh. And here is the link to the roll.

Kythia

#6
I'm moving to spoilers

99 is a matched roll, obviously.  Being over Miyo's struggle skill it is a failure.  Hence a matched failure.  In this particular case its no worse than a regular failure.  However, if Miyo had been using a weapon, she'd have just hit herself with it and would take the weapon's damage.

Miyo's fist swings by the girl on the chair, connecting nothing but hair.  Her hair was bigger than Miyo had expected, and what was a perfectly aimed blow at what seemed to be a part of her head served only to part her hair.  She snarls at Miyo and begins climbing on to the table.

Comment
Draw a weapon, attack, dodge are the combat moves.  Anything else is a non-combat move. Non combat moves in combat take two actions.  You declare what you're doing in the first round and the action resolves in the second.  However, in that first round you can still attack or dodge as usual so long as it makes sense.  In this case I'm ruling that climbing on to the table prevents her attacking properly so she will simply dodge.  Next round her action will complete.

The remaining girl watches the whirl of combat with a vague look of panic.  It's clear to her that everyone else is moving substantially faster than her so she spends a moment watching the ebb and flow, looking for an opening.

Comment
Last girl is changing her initiative.  By doing nothing for a round she can change her initiative to equal to her speed stat.  Obviously its a pretty pointless move in this particular case, but I wanted to illustrate the mechanic.  So she does nothing.

End of round one.

There's a crash from the window and the scent of patchouli wafts in.  A women has just burst in through the large plate glass windows at the front of the bar.  She's wearing a tie-dye dress and a T-Shirt reading "Give Peace a Chance".  She obviously either didn't or it;s run out of chances, though, as she's swinging a large antique broadsword while screaming incoherantly that you're all wrong and Phoebe is the best.  With a bestial roar she charges at the girl distracted by attacking Chris.

Comment
This is an ambush.  A surprise, effectively.  If you can ambush an opponent then your initiative is automatically equal to your speed score


Start of round two

Phoebe Lover
The one who gatecrashed a wedding
Chris
The one who is a waitress (10 focus shift on Chris)
The one who dated Ross
The one who dated Barry (Carrying a chair)
Miyo
The one who moves to Paris (Climbing on to the table)

The hippy with the greatsword swings at her opponent, a wild slash aimed at her stomach.

Comment
She has a "disembowel capitalists" score of 50, and the Rachel fan has a focus shift on Chris so she needs to roll under 60.  She gets a 21 and so hits.

It's important to remember that, even if she had missed, she would still do one point of damage.  To quote from the book:

QuoteAny hand to hand attack with a penetrating weapon does a minimum of one wound point damage even if you miss.  This does not apply to thrown weapons, only weapons used directly in close-quarters combat.
<snip>
Why is this?  Knives cut. Imagine you are wearing a white suit with white gloves, and you are facing an angry child waving a black magic marker.  Imagine trying to take the marker away from the child, or grabbing the child, or doing anything to the child except running away from it.  You're going to be covered in black marks in a matter of seconds.  That's why. Knives cut

However, that's not relevant.  She hit anyway.  She does normal damage, which is equal to the sum of her dice.  2+1=3.  However, the weapon is also heavy, which adds 3, big which adds 3 and sharp which adds three.  Those are the only three modifiers to a weapon.  The chair, for example, is big and heavy so would add 6.  A baton is just heavy.  Just plus 3.  A switchblade is just sharp, just plus 3.  This is big, heavy and sharp so plus 9, for a total of 12.

Is there anyone in the room with you?  How many times could they survive a punch?  A blow from a sword?  No idea have you.  But in most roleplaying games you can do that sort of maths.  You know how many hitpoints they have, see the damage they have taken, know how much more they can take.  Not in UA.  The girl has taken 12, but you don't know how many she has left.

It's not the most solid of blows, but with the weight of the huge greatsword behind it it didn't really have to be.  It cuts into the girls stomach and she staggers back with blood gushing.

Comment
Remember the madness meter that I told you not to worry about in character creation?  Well, it just came up for this girl.  She made a roll and passed it, I'll go in to more details when it comes up for a PC

Phoebe Lover
The one who gatecrashed a wedding
Chris
The one who is a waitress (10 focus shift on Chris, taken 12 damage)
The one who dated Ross
The one who dated Barry (Carrying a chair)
Miyo
The one who moves to Paris (Climbing on to the table)

The girl who had been watching the fight carefully uses the time while the deranged hippy is recovering her balance to hurl herself at her, nails striking for the eyes.  An unwillingness to get too close to the huge weapon, though, makes her too cautious in her blow and Phoebe's Number One Fan is able to avoid it.

Comment
Swing and a miss from her

Phoebe Lover
The one who gatecrashed a wedding
Chris
The one who is a waitress (10 focus shift on Chris, taken 12 damage)
The one who dated Ross
The one who dated Barry (Carrying a chair)
Miyo
The one who moves to Paris (Climbing on to the table)

This is how I'll signify its your turn.  For the avoidance of doubt, Chris you're up.
242037