Making an Attack

The turn is planned, the maneuver is decided, and this turn involves using a weapon to damage an enemy. The card assigned to the weapon attack is referred to as the weapon card. The number on the weapon card determines the base Accuracy of the attack while the damage is determined by the weapon being used.

See the glossary below to help define the terms used during an attack.

  • Accuracy - offensive value that determines whether the attack hits or not.

  • Avoidance - defensive value that determines difficulty of a character to be hit.

  • Armor - defensive value that reduces damage taken by the character.

  • Attack value - offensive value combining the weapon base damage with the bonus from the maneuver.

  • Damage - offensive value that is the attack value minus the Armor of the character. Directly converts into a loss of Health for the character.

  • Health - defensive value. Represents how much stress and physical harm a character can take before they are knocked unconscious.

  • Round – a short time frame in which all characters in combat have had a chance to act once.

  • Turn – a short time frame in which one character in combat has time to act. Each character has one turn per round.

Weapon card

Once the weapon card has been determined, its number plus any modifiers from maneuvers or Accuracy gained from the Weapon Skill’s Skill Tree, determines the attack’s Accuracy.

This Accuracy is compared against the target’s Avoidance. If the value is higher, the attack does full damage. If the value is equal to or lower than the target’s Avoidance, the attack does half damage, rounded up.

Adding the damage from the weapon and Weapon Skill bonuses, along with any bonuses from the maneuvers, will give you the total damage being dealt.

Calculating Damage

Because Health in C22 systems is more of a representation of the accumulated stresses of battle rather than a loss of blood, damage represents more than just causing physical harm. The main cause of damage comes directly from Weapon and Attack Skills. At its very core, damage is determined from the accuracy and the damage of the weapon attack. This section will go through all the interactions that can occur in a damage calculation.

When making an attack, if the attack’s Accuracy is higher than the target’s Avoidance, the attack deals full damage. If the attack’s Accuracy is equal to or lower than the target’s Avoidance, the attack stresses or grazes the opponent and deals half damage rounded up.

Once the extent of damage the attack deals is determined, the target has a few options to reduce that damage further:

  • Armor reduces the amount of damage that a character will take by 1 for each point of Armor.

  • Some reactions can reduce the damage an attack deals. Like Block, Parry, Advance, or Dodge. See the individual Skills in Default Skills.

The order at which these reductions are as follows:

  1. Attack damage is halved by Avoidance

  2. Next a reaction reduces the attack value

  3. Finally Armor reduces the damage by a passive amount.

Example: One Tough Lizard

Jace is defending his crew from giant lizard like monster that has decided he looks tasty.

He fires his ballistic pistol to attempt to kill the lizard. He draws a 4 of spades and a 4 of hearts. He chooses the spades to be his weapon card. He then chooses the maneuver Fish in a Barrel, that grants his next attack Pierce 3.

The lizard has an Avoidance of 5 and is heavily armored with an armor of 4. It has a spiked tail that it can use to block with and add 2 Armor.

The ballistic pistol does 12 base damage, 14 because Jace is trained with it. The maneuver adds no damage. His attack has an Accuracy of 4 and gains +1 for his rank in the General skill for a total of 5 Accuracy. The attack grazes the lizard because it does not beat its Avoidance of 5, so the attack’s damage is reduced by half to 7. Next the lizard uses it tail to block and succeeds, adding 2 Armor for a total of 6 Armor.

Finally, Jace’s attack, applies Pierce 3, ignoring 3 of the 6 Armor. The Lizard’s Armor reduces the damage by 3. As a result, Jace’s attack grazes the lizard dealing 4 damage since 3 of it was reduce by the Lizard’s Armor.

Using a Grid

Combat in C22 is best played on a hex grid but can be played on a regular grid or even in a more freeform manner depending on the setting.

Each hex on a grid marks 2 meters, so a character can traverse three hexes with one movement action.

For a regular grid, each square marks 2 meters and moving diagonally can be performed once per movement action.  When moving into a new space on the grid, if a character has less movement than the required amount to move, they cannot move.