Skip to Content
   Home   Books | Music | Comics | Humor | Podcasts & Shows | Articles | Fun & Games | FAQs

The Witch and the Rose by Trae Dorn - on sale now!

Back to Super Awesome Action Heroes
Posted: 8/14/2008 15:54
Last Updated: 1/13/2023 8:12

Appendix: Advanced Combat Rules

These are a work in progress

Critical Successes and Failures
Rolling gets mundane I guess, so these rules add Critical Successes and Failures. While the mechanics of combat are overall unchanged, there are some key differences -- at that is the introduction of Critical rolls.

Critical Successes
A "Critical Success" is when the player rolls a 10 on their d10. This functions differently depending on the roll.

If the player rolls a 10 on their attack roll, they will succeed in hitting their target regardless of the target's dodge score.

If the player rolls a 10 on their damage roll, the target's soak will be considered 1/2 of its score (rounded down). So, for example, if the target normally has a Soak of five, on a critical success the soak will be considered a 2.

Whether additional bonuses are given to rolls on d10 challenges or ability rolls is up to the GM. These do not affect rolls on Sweet Move damage.

Critical Failures
A "Critical Failure" is when a player rolls a 1 on their d10. Like successes, this functions differently.

If a player rolls a 1 on their attack, they will fail in hitting their target regardless of the target's dodge score. Additionally, your character looks dumb.

If a player rolls a 1 on their damage roll, regardless of stats, they do no damage to their target. Also your character looks really, super dumb.

Whether or not critical failures occur on d10 challenges or ability rolls are up to the GM. These do not affect rolls on Sweet Move damage.

Fall Damage
By default SAAH does not have any fall damage rules. This is fun if you're recreating a ridiculous action movie one shot, but maybe a little less fulfilling than a more grounded campaign based on, say, a television series. With that in mind, this is an optional fall damage rule a GM can choose to implement.

For every three stories (approx 42 feet) a character falls, they will take 1d6 damage.  So, for shorthand:

HeightDamage
< 3 StoriesNo Damage
3-5 Stories1d6
6-8 Stories2d6
9-11 Stories3d6

Obviously continue to scale as heights get taller. Fall damage can be obviously be avoided by a character choosing to do a Sweet Move to slow their descent.

Notes on Swiftness and Fitness
These aren't additional rules, just clarifications on the Swiftness (Sweetness in first edition) and Fitness stats. Swiftness is a character's speed, while Fitness is the character's physical strength.

How fast a character can move is determined by Swiftness. In combat this has a couple of different meanings. A character's "Moving while doing" speed (or regular movement) is how fast they can move while still taking an action that round. This is a simplified number, but characters with a Swiftness between 1-3 can move 30 feet per round, and characters with a Swiftness of 4 or higher can move 50 feet per round.

A character's running speed is their swiftness times 20 feet per round of combat (6 seconds). This is in addition to the 30 (or 50)feet of free movement they get. Sweet moves can allow a character to move faster than this, and the context of the sweet move is more important than the Swiftness statistic in those situations.

Fitness is pretty simple in that a character's "carry weight" is roughly 50 lbs times their Fitness. It's likely they can't lift that over their head normally, but could transport that weight for their normal movement in a combat round (without running). Sweet moves, of course, allow characters to do things of super human strength, and are not confined to this statistic -- though it should be used as a reference before a character tries to, like, lift a car or something.




Trae Dorn
Become a Patron
Facebook
Tumblr
Twitter
The Chronicles of Crosarth - a webcomic of Steampunk Adventure, updated Mon & Wed
UnCONventional - A Webcomic about Conventions, Updated Tuesdays and Thursdays
Read Trae's Blog!   Nerd & Tie       


 
Site Search | Blog Search | Forum Search | Who is TRH?