PART TWO: COMBAT

NOTE: For combat you will need to bookmark http://www.irony.com/mailroll.html. It's an on-line die roller. If you don't have this, you won't be able to fight. Using the dice roller will prevent people from saying, "Bang you are dead." "No. You missed." It is an important part of combat, and since the ref is mailed a copy of your roll, he will know if you are cheating or not.

Now for what people want: blowing people away....

1. Opening combat

This is obvious. Autobot+Decepticon=bloodbath. Now there are two ways of starting combat: Military attack and suprise attack.

1a: Military attack:
Every Transformer goes by Speed. The higher your speed, the sooner you attack and the LATER you declare attack. (This will be explained later as to why.) If there is a tie in Speed, skill breaks the tie. If Skill is tied, Rank breaks that tie.

1b: Suprise attack:
If you want to suprise your opponent, EVERY member of your team that is attacking must roll (using the dice roller) their skill # or less on a ten sided die. If TerrorTank has a skill of six, he must roll a 1-6 to suprise attack his opponent. If the suprise attack is a sucess, all members of that team get to attack in the first round (see below) and their opponents get NO attacks that first round.

2. STARTING COMBAT
As mentioned earlier, We go by speed. Whoever has the higher speed has the higher INTIATIVE. As mentioned earlier The highest speed attacks first, and declares his attack last. This may sound odd to one who has never played a role playing game before. If you Declare your attack last, you knwo what all the other players are going to do, and thus tailor your attack around it. Let's show an example.

EXP: The Autobot Punch is being attacked by Decepticons Triggerhappy and Ransack.

Everyone tells their speed. Punch has a speed of 4, Triggerhappy has a speed of 7 and Ransack has a speed of 3. Thus Ransack must declare his attack first, then Punch, then Triggerhappy. Whoever has to say what they are doing first is at a disadvantage since everyone else knows what they are doing. Whoever has highest speed is at an advantage because by declaring last, he or she knows what everyone else is doing and can plan the best possible strategy.

3. Attacking and defending.
To attack, one must use their SKILL. to Defend, one must use their SPEED. (As said earlier, speed is the combat maker and breaker.) Both attacker and defender must roll a ten sided die and add their SKILL of SPEED to the roll (Skill for attack, speed for defense.) If the attacker has the higher # than the attack hits. If the defender has the higher #, than the attack misses. VERY SIMPLE, right?

3a. Defending against more than one attack.
Let us say that one person is unlucky enough to be the target of more than one attack. For each attack after the first than one defends against in the SAME ROUND (see below) he or she must subtract an extra 1 from their dice roll.

So if Bob is attacked once, he rolls the 10 sided die and adds his speed to it normally. If he is attacked by different autotbot that same round he must again roll a 10 sided die and added speed -1 to it. If he is attacked by a THIRD autobot he rolls a ten sided die and adds speed -2 to it. You get the picture. Lets's look at an example.

Earlier we saw Autobot Punch fighting Ransack and Triggerhappy. Let's watch combat in action.

Referee: Okay...declare actions.

Ransack (Since he has lowest speed): I will fire by concussion rifle at the Autobot piece of scum.

Punch: I will fire my Gun at Ransack in an attempt to take him out before he hits me!

Triggerhappy: I will fire Blowpipe at Punch.

Referee: Alright. Triggerhappy's attack goes first. PUnch roll and add Speed. TH, roll and add Skill:

(Punch rolls a 3 and adds his speed which is 4. He has a total of 7. Not looking good for Punch. Triggerhappy laughs and rolls a 10 (!) and adds his skill which is 6. he has a total of 16!!! Punch is blasted by Tiggerhappy's weapon!

4. DAMAGING YOUR OPPONENT

Very similar to hitting you opponent. The attacker rolls and adds FIREPOWER (if using a gun) or STRENGTH (if using fists). Defender rolls and adds ENDURANCE. Unlike attacking, You do not have to subtract 1 from each roll if attacked by more than one person. Again higher rolls wins. If attacker wins roll, damage has happened. If Defender wins, his armoured body prevented damage.

Example: We last saw Punch being shot by the Evil Triggerhappy. He was hit by the blast and so we check is damage has occured. Punch rolls a 6 and adds his endurance which is also 6 for a total of 12. Triggerhappy rolls a 2 and adds his firepower which is 8 for a total of 10. No damage is taken. The shot merely stunned Punch.

If damage DOES occur you take the winning attacking roll and subtract the defending roll. The leftover # is the amount of damage taken.

EXAMPLE: Let's see what would have happened if Punch had LOST the damage roll. Lets say punch rolled a 4 and added his Endurance of 6 to it and had a total of 10. Then lets say tiggerhappy rolled a 4 and added his firepower of 8 to it for a total of 12. Punch would then take damage. the defending roll of 10 is subtracted from the attack of 12 and Punch takes two points of damage. His hit points drop to 4. He can take 4 more points of damage before going unconcious. (Remember your endurance # also decides your hit point total.)

5. Special combat situations.

5.1: Retreating.
If you are hit in combat you must make a courage roll at the end of the round. You must roll your courage # or lower to pass. if you pass, you can choose to fight on. If you roll higher than your courage #, you must retreat. Of course, you may always retreat even if you are not hit as well.

5.2 Rank Bonus.

Rank is very important in combat as a great leader can turn the tide of battle in an instant. Your rank allows you to change the total of an ally dice roll, if that ally has a lower rank than you. If you choose to help your ally with your rank, that is the ONLY action you can do that round. Then you may add up to your rank to your friends dice roll. However, once you have spent all rank points, you DO NOT get them back until the battle is over.

Example: Bob's total attack roll is 10. His opponent's total defense roll is 11. Bob's rank is two. MEgatron's rank is ten. Megatron can say that he will use his rank to help Bob. Megatron spends 2 points to raise Bob's roll up to 12. Bob now hits thanks to Megatron's great leadership. Megatron has 8 rank points left to spend this battle. 5.3 assorted rolls.
Sometimes you may not be attacking, retreating or using rank in the round. In this case, you must say what you want to do, such as pick up a boulder for a shield, reload you gun or something else. The Referee will decide what you need to roll in order to suceed (normally it will be skill.)

6. What the hell do ROUND AND TURN MEAN?

Allright. A turn is one specific action in combat. A round is EVERYONE's run combined.

Example: in the previous examples we saw Punch fighting Ransack and Triggerhappy.

The first ROUND of combat starts.

Triggerhappy has his TURN.
Then it is Punch's TURN
Then finally it is Ransack's TURN

Once everyone has had their turn, a new round begins.

7. DEATH

Okay...death should RARELY ever happen in a TF game. Decepticons normally place autobots in elaborate but easy to escape deathtraps. Autbots normally capture Decepticons or let them retreat. DEATH is rare. Rarer than Bumbleebee beating Omega Supreme in arm wrestling, okay?

However, death may happen. Here are the two ways someone can die.

#1. If you get take twice as much damage as you have endurance. At 0 endurance you are unconcious. If you take another point of damage you are at -1. if you take another point of damage you are at -2. And so on and so on. One you reach the negative # that is the same as your Endurance, you are DEAD. So if your Endurance is 6 like Punch's, you die when you reach -6.

#2. When an attacker rolls both a 10 on his aiming to hit and damage dealing rolls and the defender rolls a 1 on both dodging and resisting damage. If attacker gets both 10's and defender gets both 1's....the defender is instantly killed. No way around it.

8. Anything else?
This is the very basics. I have not mentioned the advanced rules. This is the very basic stuff. Whoever wants to play with us shall try the basic rules first and then work their way up to the adavanced rules that lets you have a lot more options with your character and with combat. if you have any questions or comments leave them here or email me at alexanderlucard@usa.net. Hope you join us in the fourth Cybertronian War!

NOTE: All characters not made by players, the words Transformers, autobot, decepticon, the autobot and decepticon symbols, cybertron and anything related to the Transformers cartoon and toy line are properties of Hasbro and Takara Inc. This RPG is made by Alexander Lucard and has a copyright on it (C/1995). Any use of this game or of Transformer properties without the express permission of the authors will lead to due course of legal action. It's not nice to steal and plagarize!