Sample Fight

[MuensterCheese]

I am still really, really new to Champions and the whole Hero system.  I have read much of Champions Complete and it's a lot to try and keep in my head.

 

But I still don't understand how combat is actually DONE.  Between powers, combat maneuvers, skills, talents, protections, adders, limitations, OCV, DCV, BODY, STUN, END, REC, and other acronyms, I can't wrap my head around how two characters fight!  Would someone kindly take the time and show me like one or two phases, or segments, or a whole turn, on a sample fight between Sapphire and Arrowhead from the book?  It would help me a lot.

[Nothere]

Well as I don't have a book with Arrowhead. No. However I can do a bit of Sapphire vs Scorpia 5th edition style

 

O.k. Sapphire is dex 23 speed 6 Scorpia is dex 24 spd 5

 

Now if they moved at the same time Scorpia would always go first for having the higher dex but even is their dexs were reverse she would still always go first because she bought lighting reflexes. But as they are the only ones there and have different speeds it will only matter on phases 8,10, and 12. Sapphire will act on phases 2,4,6,8,10, and 12 Scorpia on phases 3,5,8,10,12

 

Combat begins

combat always starts on phase 12.

 

Scorpia has an ocv and dcv of 8 Sapphire has them at 8 as well. Now combat levels come into play. Scorpia has martial arts and combat levels. We'll say Sapphire starts off flying so Scorpia's martial arts don't come into play. She has 3 levels with her thrown weapons and 2 with all combat so each turn she can decide to be anything from ocv 13/dcv8 to ocv 8 to dcv 13. Sapphire has no levels

As Scorpia is a vicious terrorist who hates inferior women thinking their beauty compares and Sapphire is a world reknowned celebrity lets say Scorpis is being aggressive and go with an Ocv 13/ dcv 8

 

Anyone want to take over?

[drunkonduty]

Okily dokily, I'll give it a shot.

 

I should note I have the 5th Ed rules. There will be some differences - the main one that occurs to me is that different scale is used for hexes. This might make my range modifiers different from the ones you're using.

 

I'll just go over the 2 characters again - I don't have the stats handy so I will use what was mentioned above and make up the rest (like powers and damage they do.)

 

Sapphire:                                                      Scorpia     

SPD 6; Dex 23.                                             SPD:5; Dex 24

Offensive CV: 8; Defensive CV: 8                 Offensive CV: 8; Defensive CV: 8

No combat Skill levels.                                  3 Offensive (ranged only); 2 All Combat (Defensive & Offensive)

Base Defences: 5 PD, 10 ED                        Base Defences: 8 PD; 5 ED

Forcefield: 10 rPD; 10 rED                            Armoured Body Suit: 8 rPD; 8 rED              the lower case "r" refers to Resistant defences - those defences that apply against Killing Attacks.

Total Defences:15 PD; 20ED                         Total Defences: 16 PD; 13 ED -                  Derived by adding all defences, resistant and non-resistant, together.

Resistant Defences: 10 rPD; 10 rED             Resistant Defences: 8 rPD; 8 rED               Derived by adding all Resistant Defences together

Blast:12d6 Normal                                        Thrown Knives: 1d6 (2d6 w/ STR) Killing    (We will use the optional "Standard STUN" rule for Killing Attacks - Stun damage = 3x BOD damage.)

Punch: 3d6 Normal                                       Punch: 3d6 (5d6 w/ Martial Arts) Normal

                                                                     Scorpia has some martial arts training, so some her actions in the action description below will have the descriptor "Martial" in front of them. Martial manouevres are based on basic manouevres, are better than the basic but cost points.

 

That's enough to start with. I might bring up some other powers in the combat description, I will explain them as I do.

 

Combat is split up into Turns made up of 12 Segments each. Any Segment on which a character acts is called a Phase for that (the acting) character. The number of Phases a character gets and what Segment they take place on is determined by the character's SPD. So by looking at Sapphire's and Scorpia's SPD and looking at the Speed chart (somewhere in the combat section of the rules and which I have printed out and put into a GM Screen) we get the following array of character actions:

 

Seg   Acting Character (in DEX order)

1       none

2       Sapphire

3       Scorpia

4       Sapphire

5       Scorpia

6       Sapphire

7       none

8       Scorpia, Sapphire

9       None

10     Scorpia, Sapphire

11     none

12     Scorpia, Sapphire

 

You might be asking yourself: if Sapphire has better SPD why does Scorpia go before her every time they have a Phase in the same Segment?

This because Scorpia has a higher DEX. DEX determines the order of Phases within the same Segment.

 

SO... let the battle commence!

 

Combat always starts on Seg 12 of Turn 1. (This is intentional design. It lets everyone go at the start of combat and lets characters get a post-set 12 recovery immediately after.)

 

Checking our impromptu SPD chart we see Scorpia goes first.

 

As Nothere mentioned she is the aggressive type so let's do as he suggested and have her put her "All Combat" Skill Levels into OCV. Her Ranged Skill levels are of the type that MUST be OCV. So that's a total of 5 Skill Levels in OCV.

 

Seg 12

Scorpia declares her attack - she will throw a knife at Sapphire. Her OCV = 8 (base) + 3 Ranged Skill Levels + 2 All Combat Skill Levels = 13.

Sapphire decides to Abort to raising her forcefield.*

Sapphire is 8 hexes away, this gives Scorpia a -2 OCV as a range penalty. Scorpia rolls with OCV 11 vs. DCV 8. So she will hit on a roll of 14 and down. She hits. 

Scorpia rolls damage. This 2d6 Killing Attack. She rolls 8 on the dice. This gives us 8 BOD and 24 STUN. (Remember we are using the standardised 3x rule for STUN caused by Killing Attacks.)

We now reduce the Damage by Sapphire's Defences. As this is a Killing Attack there are 2 types of defences to consider - Resistant, that applies to the BOD damage done, and Total Defences that applies to the STUN damage done.

Sapphire's rPD is 10. 8 (BOD damage) -10 (rPD) = -2 (effectively 0. You can't do less damage than nothing.) We used rPD because this was a Physical Attack (PD is short for Physical Defence.)

Sapphire's total PD is 15. 24 (STUN damage) - 15 (PD) = 9. Sapphire takes 9 STUN.

 

Sapphire's Phase.

She has already used her Phase because she Aborted to raising her forcefield earlier in the Segment.

 

End of Seg 12.

 

Post 12 RECOVERY. At the end of the Turn everyone gets a free RECOVERY (here after called REC). I shall assume both combatants have REC 6. They each get back 6 STUN AND 6 END (both) up to but not exceeding their starting value. Sapphire is now down 3 STUN and I will say that both of them have recovered all the END they used in that last Phase.

 

Turn 2

Seg 1 - no-one has a Phase.

 

Seg 2 - Sapphire's Phase.

Sapphire takes a Half Move toward Scorpia. A Half Move allows the character to move up to Half their Movement (pretty obvious really.) Sapphire has Flight of 15 Hexes so she can move up to 8 Hexes. She decides she will Move 6 and end up 2 Hexes from Scorpia. This is because 2 Hexes has no range penalty.

At the end of her Move Sapphire fires off her Energy Blast. She chooses to use only 8 dice of her Blast as she doesn't want to kill Scorpia and 8 "feels" about right to the player.

Scorpia Aborts to a Martial Dodge.* As she has Aborted she is effectively having her Phase now and thus she may rearrange her Combat Skill Levels to any legal combination. Not being silly she puts both her "All Combat" Skill Levels into Defence. Her other ones can't be used for defence and are left where they were.

Sapphire has an OCV of 8; Scorpia's DCV is now 15. (8 base + 2 Skill Levels + 5 for Martial Dodge.) Sapphire needs a 4 to hit. She misses and says "Nimble little minx, aintchya?" Scopria says something filthy in an Irish accent. Sapphire notes she has used 8 END from all her Move, Forcefield and Energy Blast.

 

Seg 3 - Scorpia's Phase.

She has already used her Phase Aborting in Seg 2. On the plus side - Scorpia's Dodge is in effect until her next Phase (the Phase after the one she Aborted, in this case her Phase in Segment 5.) So her DCV is still 15.

 

Seg 4 - Sapphire's Phase

Realising that she isn't likely to hit Scorpia at this rate Sapphire tries something new. She fires of all 12d6 of her Blast BUT she "spreads her blast." What this means is she can trade dice for OCV at 1 for 1. So she trades 5 dice damage for +5 OCV. She still pays END for all 12d6. Now she has an OCV of 12 vs. Scorpia's DCV of 15 - she needs to roll an 8. Not great but better. She rolls and actually hits! She rolls 7d6 Damage and gets 24 STUN and 7 BOD of Energy Damage.

 

As this is a Normal Attack Scorpia applies her Total Defences of 13 ED to both the STUN and BOD damage. She takes 11 STUN and 0 BOD. Next we check for Knock Back. Sapphire rolls 2d6 (getting 7) and minuses that roll from the BOD she did with her attack (also 7.) This gets 0, so Scorpia is not Knocked Back.

 

Sapphire notes that she used 9 End this phase (6 for the Blast, 3 for the Forcefield, none for movement as she didn't Move even though she is still hovering in mid-air.)

 

Seg 5 - Scorpia's Phase

She takes out her dreaded Scorpion Sting and swings it. It has 2" of Stretching so she doesn't even need to move. As it is her Phase again she rearranges her All Combat Skill Levels putting them both into OCV. Her Ranged skill levels cannot be used as this is not a ranged attack. Her OCV is 10.

Sapphire decides it's time to Dodge herself. That Sting has a nasty reputation. Unfortunately she doesn't have Martial Arts training - she only has the ordinary Dodge that is available to all characters. This is +3 DCV. Still 11DCV is better than nothing.

Scorpia rolls looking for a 10. She gets 11 and misses. She notes down that she has used 4 END for her Scorpion Sting attack.

 

Seg 6 - Sapphire's Phase.

Sapphire aborted in Seg 5 so she has already used this Phase. She notes down 3 END for her forcefield.

 

Seg 7 No-one.

 

Seg 8 - Scorpia and Sapphire both have phases

Scorpia gnashes her teeth villainously and takes another swing at Sapphire. Sapphire is still Dodging as she has not yet had her action after the Aborted one (that is her action in Seg 8. Even though this is Seg 8, Sapphire's action has not yet come up.) So Scorpia still needs a 10 to hit. Scorpia rolls and gets a 10, a hit! Next Scorpia rolls her damage. Her Scorpion's Sting attack does 1d6+1 AP. "AP" stands for "Armour Piercing" and it means that defences are halved versus this attack. This applies to Sapphire's Forcefield, even though it's not armour in the literal sense it is in a game mechanics sense. Scorpia rolls well and gets 6 BOD and 18 STUN. Sapphire applies half her defences. As this is a Killing Attack Sapphire needs to think about both Resistant Defences (applied to the BOD damage) and Total Defences (applied to the STUN damage.) Half her rPD is 5 so Sapphire takes 1 Bod. Her Total PD is 15, halved because of AP, goes to 8** so Sapphire takes 10 Stun.

 

"It's only a scratch," says Sapphire.

"An' that's all it needs to be," says Scorpia with a nasty smile. And she notes down she used another 4 END.

 

Of course the really bad news is that Scorpia puts poison on her Scorpion Sting. There's a reason it's the "dreaded scorpion sting." The poison is a 1d6 NND*** Killing attack with a Continuing Charge that lasts 1 turn. Continuing charge means it does damage immediately and then every time Scorpia gets a Phase for 1 full turn. So this phase it does 3 BOD and 9 STUN. The wound in Sapphire's arm begins to burn.

 

Sapphire is worried, real worried. BOD damage can kill you. She decides she has to get away from Scorpia and her sting. Fast! She flies straight up for her full movement. Flying up costs twice as much Movement allowance as flying level. So Sapphire can move 8 hexes straight up. This puts her out of reach of the sting. It also uses her full phase so Sapphire is done. She notes down that she used 3 END for the flight and 3 END for forcefield.

 

Seg 9 No-one

 

Seg 10 Scorpia and Sapphire

Scorpia goes first. First thing to do is roll this Phase's poison damage. Scorpia rolls 1d6 and gets 2. 2 BOD and 6 STUN.

Scorpia can't fly so she takes out her throwing knives and hurls one at Sapphire. She keeps all her Skill Levels in OCV. She hits and does 6 BOD and 18 STUN. No BOD gets through the Forcefield but 3 STUN does. Sapphire notes this down. Scorpia notes she has used 3 END for the thrown knife.

 

Sapphire is worried, the fight is going against her. But she notes that Scorpia has acted this segment. This means Scorpia cannot Abort this segment. (You cannot Abort in the same Segment in which you have already acted.) Sapphire has a good shot here. So she decides to Push**** her Energy Blast for +2d6 damage, spread it for +2 OCV and take her best shot. Sapphire has a base OCV of 8, -2 for range, +2 for spreading, total of 8. She needs an 11 and hits! She does 12d6 damage (12d6 base, +2d6 for pushing, -2d6 for Spreading.) Sapphire rolls her damage and she rolls well! 14 BOD and 46 STUN!***** Scorpia applies her defences (13ED) to both the BOD and the STUN and takes 1 BOD and 33 STUN. Next Sapphire checks for Knock Back she rolls 2d6, gets 8 and does 6 inches of Knock Back. Sapphire picks the direction for the knock back and chooses "straight down." So Scorpia goes 6 hexes into the ground. Effectively this does 6d6 damage to Scorpia.****** Sapphire rolls 21 STUN. Scorpia applies her Total PD to this and takes 7 STUN.

 

Sapphire notes down that she has used 20 END. (17 for the Blast: 10 for Pushing + 7 for all 14d6 of Energy Blast, yes even though 2d6 worth of that comes from pushing for which we already paid 10 End. And 3 for the forcefield.)

 

Okay, now we need to slow down a little.

 

33 STUN is more than Scorpia's CON stat. (which I shall say is 18.) Doing more than a character's CON in STUN in one attack "CON Stuns"******* that character. A "CON stunned" character is 1/2 DCV and can take no actions until they recover. Also we should have a look at how much STUN Scorpia has taken in total across the fight. 51 STUN. Ouch, that's a lot. I'm going to say that Scorpia only has 42 STUN (a not bad amount for a martial artist type.) So Scorpia is also at -9 STUN and is "Stunned" as well as being "CON Stunned." Also her END is reduced to 0 for being at negative stun. Also she is at 1/4 DCV. (DCV is halved for seeing the birdies and halved again for being below 0 STUN.)

 

What all this means is the fight is pretty much over. But let's play it out so you can see what's going on.

 

Seg 11 No-one.

 

Seg 12 Scorpia and Sapphire

Scorpia goes first. First thing we do is check for that poison damage. Scorpia rolls 3 BOD and 9 STUN. Next she uses her action to "Recover from being Stunned" or, as I would say "recover from seeing birdies." While doing this she puts her Combat Skill Levels into DCV. That's her action done. She used no END and Recovered no STUN or END. But her DCV is now 1/2 instead of 1/4 giving a total of 5. ( {base + skill levels} divided by 2)

 

The GM decides this is a good time to find out how much STUN Sapphire has taken in total. It comes to 37. Let's say she has 40 STUN. Sapphire is feeling bruised but still has 3 STUN in hand. Her END use is much higher - 46 END used. Unluckily she only has 45 END. This means she had to use 1 STUN in place of 1 END. So she has 0 END and now only 2 STUN.

 

Sapphire decides this is a good time to take a Recovery. She takes a deep breath, steadies herself and gets back 6 END and 6 STUN. She now has 6 END and 8 STUN. She is at 1/2 DCV for taking a REC. Her phase is done.

 

POST PHASE 12

At the end of Phase 12 everyone gets a free REC. Both Scorpia and Sapphire get back 6 END and STUN. Scorpia is still at negative STUN (-1 total) and her END stays at 0. Sapphire is up to 12 END and 14 STUN.

 

Turn 2

Seg 1 No-one.

 

Seg 2

Sapphire decides to end this before Scorpia gets back on her feet. She takes a half move down (moving down is at 1/2 cost to move allowance so moving down 8 hexes only costs 4) to be hovering right above Scorpia and blasts her with 12d6 damage. She needs a 14 to hit. She hits, does 42 STUN and 12 BOD. With knock back this is enough to put Scorpia below -30 STUN which is officially unconscious ofr as long as the GM says, with a minimum of "a long time."

 

Of course Sapphire still has to survive Scorpia's poison which will hit her again on Segs 3 & 5. On average Sapphire will take 15-16 BOD  in total from the poison. This won't be enough to kill her but it will put her intensive care for a few weeks.

 

 

And that's where I'll call it a day.

 

*Aborting. It's one of the things new players have trouble getting their heads around. Basically the character is allowed to use one of their actions out of order but only for DEFENSIVE actions. What is a defensive action? Well any action that has the word "Abort" in its description such as Dodge, Martial Dodge, and Blocking is defensive. Also the character is allowed to Abort to a defensive Power. A defensive Power is one that increases the character's chances of survival. Exactly what that means is a GM decision but includes things that raise Defenses e.g. Force shields and even activating a Multiform to change into a much stronger character (Billy Batson aborting to Shazam.) Once a character aborts they then don't get another action until the one AFTER the one they have already used. But if they dodged or blocked they are considered to still be doing that up until that next available action.

** Rounding off .5 is done in the character's favour. It can be up or down, which ever is better for the character. It applies to all calculations, whether movement or damage or defences. Rounding other fractions is done normally.

*** NND means "No normal Defence" so Sapphire's forcefield and inherent defences do not reduce the damage. The only way to stop this attack is with an appropriate defence, as described in the villain's character right up, usually something like "not vs. Life Support, immunity to poison."

**** The Push action is where the Hero (or villain) puts everything they've got into a desperate shot to take out the bad guy. The character pays 10 END to Push. They do an extra 2 Damage Classes. This translates into 2d6 EB or Punch, 1d6 Mental Blast, etc.

***** I have to give Sapphire a hand here as I have seriously underestimated her Defences, OCV and DCV in the stats I made up at the start.

****** Damage from Knock Back is based on distance Knocked Back less the distance actually traveled before hitting a solid object, with a maximum equal to the combined BOD and DEF of the solid object hit expressed in d6. So for our example 6 hexes KB - 0 hexes traveled (Scorpia is standing on the ground) gets 6d6 damage.

******* I hate this technical term. It's easily confused with "stunned" which means a character who has been reduced to negative stun. My group has adopted the phrase "seeing birdies" instead.

 

 

Hope all this helped.

 

Cheers.

 

edited to finish the fight

edited (again) because my addition/subtraction was terrible.

Edited October 22, 2014 by DrunkonDuty

[MuensterCheese]

Holy smack!  Thank you for providing such an in-depth walk-through.  Much, much appreciated, as I'm sure it took a lot of time to write!

[drunkonduty]

You're welcome. It was a slow day at work. ;-)

[carmachu]

As a newbie coming back almost 20 years, I haven't played since 4th. I have a couple of questions:

has OCV/DVC changed much since then? I swear we were trying to roll high hitting and the base OCV's seem lower then I recall.

 

Also, maybe its just memory or the group I use to play in.....are defenses lower then back then? I remember 20/25 standard PD/ED back then for 250pt characters. But maybe that's just the group.

 

thanks

[drunkonduty]

Hi carmachu.

 

OCV/DCV hasn't changed since 4th: the official way has been to roll low.

BUT! It is easy to make rolling to hit a "Roll High" option. Just roll 3d6, add your OCV looking for a target number of 11+DCV. So it's entirely possible you were playing it the way you recall. 

 

As for the numbers I used in the defences example above:  Note that all the numbers aren't meant to be added together. If you read the notes to the right I explain how I've derived the various numbers. The ones you want to consider are the Total Defences. As for 5th Ed (and I'm pretty sure 6th ed) defences of 20-25 are about standard as alway.

 

Cheers.

Edited June 18, 2014 by DrunkonDuty

[carmachu]

Thanks. most likely 20 years of memory foggy. But that works just as well.

[Echo3Niner]

VERY nice DoD; helped me as well...

[drunkonduty]

You're welcome. :-)