Combat

You likely never thought you'd find yourself in a life or death fight. Unfortunately, that has become all too common.

Whether you are fighting humans, mutants, or zombies, combat is now a fact of life.

Designer's Note: Combat in Super Dead is not modeled on standard tabletop roleplaying game systems that allows for heroes to make decisions on a second-by-second basis. Rather, Super Dead combat is inspired by modern tactical war games. We've chosen to do this because modern firearms and Super Powers, which are present in Super Dead, feel silly in the extended duel-like encounters of fantasy TTRPGs. Firearms and Super Powers are too deadly, from too far away -- and encourage a style of combat where engaging rarely, and on your own terms, is the best approach.

Phases of Combat

Combat in Super Dead takes place in rounds of three phases: the movement phase, the hand-to-hand phase, and the shooting phase.

The Movement Phase

During the movement phase, you declare your intent to move. You may move 30 feet with standard movement or up to 100 feet with reckless movement.

Reckless movement makes any other task very hard and makes attacks against you easy.

If you move into another character's line of sight, you are exposed to opportunity fire. If you take opportunity fire, regardless of whether or not you take damage, you must make a courage save. On a failed save, you must retreat and find cover.

Opportunity fire is a free ranged attack against a combatant who enters your line of sight. You may take one opportunity attack per target so long as you have ammunition (if necessary).

The Hand-to-Hand Phase

After the movement phase is resolved, if there are any combatants within immediate range of one another, the hand-to-hand phase of combat occurs.

The hand-to-hand phase consists of up to three exchanges of attacks. Within an exchange, each combatant declares who and how they would like to attack, and then attacks are resolved simultaneously.

Shooting a pistol or shotgun at immediate range is hard, and shooting a long-gun is very hard. Attacks with ranged powers are also hard.

Obstacles within immediate range can obstruct hand-to-hand combat. If during the hand-to-hand phase you are separated from your intended target by an obstacle, e.g., a table, a car, a chain link fence, etc., your damage from the first exchange occurs during second exchange.

After damage has been dealt, for each exchange, another exchange occurs until one side has been entirely eliminated or until three hand-to-hand exchanges have occurred.

Fighting in hand-to-hand combat when outnumbered is at least hard, but can be very hard, or extremely hard depending on the number and skill of your opponents.

Fighting

To hit in hand-to-hand combat with a handheld weapon--such as a bat, knife, axe, or even your fists--you must make a fighting check. On a successful fighting check, you deal damage to your opponent determined by the weapon you are using.

Because most characters will not be skilled in fighting, the default is a hard athletics save.

The Shooting Phase

Once the movement and hand-to-hand phases have been resolved, combatants in the ranges close, near, and far may declare one target within range of their weapon and make a ranged attack.

All successful ranged attackers roll damage, and damage is evaluated simultaneously for all combatants.

The best way to avoid enemy fire is by hiding behind cover. Cover may make you hard, very hard, or extremely hard to hit, depending on the quality and degree of cover. If you are completely shielded by cover, you may not be targeted.

Shooting

To hit a target with a firearm, you must make a successful shooting check. On a successful shooting check, you deal damage to your opponent determined by the weapon you are using.

Because most characters will not be skilled in shooting, the default is a hard athletics save.

Ranges

There are four ranges of engagement. From farthest to nearest, they are:

1. Far range
2. Near range
3. Close range, and
4. Immediate range.

Far range begins at 1,000 feet and requires the use of specialized weapons.

Near range, from 300 feet up to 1,000 feet, is the ideal range to engage with a rifle, but too far for many powers.

Close range, from 30 to 300 feet is the most typical engagement distance, and is the effective range of both handguns and ranged powers.

Immediate range, within 30 feet, is the range for hand-to-hand combat.

Shooting beyond the range of your weapon is very hard or extremely hard.

Zombies must get to immediate range to attack.

Attacks, Damage, and Wounds

When you take damage, subtract any armor you have from the damage taken. For every three points of damage remaining, you incur one wound.

If you have taken no wounds, you are healthy. If you have taken one wound you are hurt. If you have taken two wounds you are wounded. Once you have taken three wounds, you suffer from disfigurement or death.

Being hurt makes things hard. Being wounded makes things very hard.

You naturally go from hurt back to healthy as soon as combat ends.

If you are wounded, however, you need medical attention. A successful first aid save will treat the wound, but leave you with its lingering effects for 14 days. A failed first aid save will leave you with the lingering effects of the wound for 28 days.

A successful medicine save will relieve you of all effects of the wound.

Disfigurement and Death

Upon taking your third wound, you may elect to take a disfigurement, by rolling on the disfigurement table. If you choose not to take a disfigurement, or your disfigurement roll would double a disfigurement you already have, you die.

Using Powers in Combat

You will often want to use super powers in combat. When you do so, your single die pool roll will serve as both attack and damage.

So long as you achieve at least one success with your die pool, you can deal damage to one or more targets. Damage must be distributed based on whole dice rolled.

Example: Fionna Firefist is engaged in hand-to-hand combat with two bad guys. She rolls her Bravo 2 power "fire control" and gets a 3 and an 6. The 6 is above her target number (4), so she succeeds in her attack and can deal damage. She can either choose to deal 9 damage to one opponent, or 3 damage to one and 6 to the other.