Combat General

Combat General

Combat in Shadowrun is a deadly and often chaotic affair. In order to keep track of what is going on combat rules have been created. All types of combats share certain similarities but each sort of combat has it's own specifics.

Combat Rounds

In order to keep things orderly and easily tracked, all combat is divided into discrete units of time called 'Rounds', each round represents three seconds of time and is broken up into one or more combat phases. Each person gets one turn starting with the character with the highest initiative and finishing with the character with the lowest initiative.

Combat Phases

Combat Phases are subjective units of time with no set length. The number of phases in a particular round is determined by the individual initiative scores of each participant in the combat. For each overall increment of 10 on the highest initiative score a character in the combat has rolled there is a combat phase. If the highest initiative is 22, then there are two total combat phases.

Initiative

At the beginning of each combat everyone involved rolls their initiative score [[footnote]]Use the +init command1[[/footnote] adding the character's Reaction score and subtracting for wounds or other penalties.

The character with the highest total initiative score announces and plays out his action first, with each player following in the order of their initiative score from highest to lowest. Once all combatants have had one action, increment the initiative scores by subtracting 10 from them. Anyone who still has a positive score may act again, in the order of initiative from highest to lowest.

Pools

In most types of combat the character taking an action rolls a primary set of dice, for example their Firearms(Pistols) skill. A character pay add a number of his appropriate pool dice up the number of his primary dice. As these dice are used, they are taken out of the pool until the beginning of the next combat round when all die pools refresh.

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