Rules Q & A's

Okay, so here's a BIG rule change (still in playtest stage, as I've only just developed it) to simplify combat and reduce the number of rolls.

This is how combat would go:

Roll to Strike with Str + Close Combat Skill (Melee, Hand to Hand)
or Roll to Strike with Dex + Ranged Combat Skill (Ranged: Firearms, Ranged: Simple).

The defender can roll to Defend (Dodge, Block, Parry, Hiding or being a hard target with Athletics).
Defender's successes subtract from Attacker's.

Any successes left are added to with the weapon's Damage stat (it would be +2, +4, +5, +7 or something like that).
Defender's armour (or Constitution) now subtracts from the damage automatically.

(Need to work on how much Constitution can Absorb...because it could be too unbalanced if you had a Constitution of 7, so Absorbed 7 every time you were punched. That would, of course, have no effect against knives, and limited effect against blunt weapons... but against hand to hand strikes the character could be practically invincible, which doesn't necessarily add up).

Whatever's left is subtracted from the defender's Health.

Here's an example:
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Joe shoots an oncoming Infected with a handgun (one shot).
He roll Dex + Ranged: Firearms and gets 6 successes.

The Infected tries to dive aside, and gets 3 successes.
So Joe hits with 3 successes.

His gun does 4 Damage, so adding this to his 3 successes to Strike, he now he has done 7 damage to the Infected. Pop. The thing goes down hard.

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Bill is being attacked by a burner (intent on burning him).
Bill stabs the burner with a knife (rolling Str + Melee), getting 5 successes.
The burner Dodges 4.
The knife does +3 damage, so with the 1 remaining success, Bill has now done 4 damage.
The burner can't Absorb, as he has no armour.
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Arnold fires an assault rifle into Jill, who's heavily armoured.
He gets 8 to Strike. She Dodges 3, so is hit by 5.
Arnold's rifle does 8 damage, +5 successes to Strike = 13 damage total.
Jill's armour absorbs 6 (13 - 6 = 7), so she takes 7 total, and is crippled, bleeding out on the ground.

How does that sit with you? Let me know if it all makes sense, and simplifies the rules. This should remove the complicated maths of Carryover Damage rolling.

I like the new damage rules, though ive not actually played Infected yet. We are gathering on Wednesday! to start!

You're most welcome Epyk! I'm glad that helps.
The thing is with stats at 10, you are certainly deadly and massively powerful, though you should be at that level. However, the real problem with rolling in RPGs comes when the bonus gets higher than the possible bonus of the die! So in D&D you could get a +30 to hit, but your die is only variable from 0-20...! What happens when you get a +40, or +50! It makes the die roll almost irrelevant.
You're right too - multiple actions balance that out. Taking on multiple opponents can be brutal, and still very dangerous, even if they're just low level, because you still have to use an action to Defend (even if it is a multi-action).
One rule we use for that, by the by, is when Defending against multiple attackers, we just make one Defensive roll in the combat, and that applies against all incoming attacks, with a -1 for each beyond the first.
So if Stuart is being attacked by 3 people, he rolls Dex + Dodge and gets 6 successes, and this counts against the first attacker, against the second it's 5 successes, and the third it's 4.

However, you can also roll for "thugs" or a pack of lesser NPCs all in one roll, if they're doing basically the same thing, like mobbing someone. You roll this by rolling 2 dice for the first attacker, and +1 die at the Skill level for each attacker beyond the first. So if you were rolling a Melee attack of 6 thugs with poles and knives, you would roll Str/Mel/Mel/Mel/Mel/Mel/Mel.
It's a lot of dice. But it makes it just one attack rather than 6.
Let's say they roll to Strike and get 7 successes.
In this case Stuart would make one Defensive roll. Let's say he got 4 successes - that would subtract from the 7 successes of the mob, meaning he got hit with 3 successes.


Garage, glad you like it mate!

adrick, I agree funny enough, I prefer to roll! I think having optional methods of rolling in there would be good, you're right. I'd like to test out rolling to Absorb with this new system, seeing if it works as a standard rule, or whether it should be optional.

Sounds interesting Epyk!

I'd be curious to see how you find those various tweaks

Couple of questions:

1. Is there any mechanics in play for delaying initiative?

2. Any movement speed? I have seen you said infected are at the same speed as normal people. However if your were to play a combat out turn by turn on a squared board. Is there a movement speed. E.g. Each square is 5ft and a player can move 30ft in a round and attack or run a full 60ft in a round?

Hi nails, yeah movement is pretty much GM discretion. That's really because we see this more as a storytelling game for drama, rather than hex-based tactics.
You could probably adjudicate that people can move freely about 5ft without it costing an action, and move about 30ft and attack in a round (maybe as a multi-action), or sprint 60ft - and add on an extra foot or 2 feet perhaps for each success gotten in a Dex/Athletics roll.

On delaying Initiative... you could totally do that. Just wait until you want to make your action. Though if you're waiting for someone else to "maybe" do something (like, "I wait to see whether the bandit shoots at Eleanor or not, and if he does I shoot him first"), then at the GM discretion the waiting player should make a roll to see if their reflexes are good enough to a) see the action is actually what he was watching for and b) take action in time. Quite often in real life when something like that happens it's really, really fast. But as I say, GM discretion on that! If they were to make a roll, it would probably be Awareness/Observation or Awareness/Deduction - should probably make as many successes as the target's Dexterity to see it in time.

How does that sound?