This now Part 8 of my series on things I made for my now-completed Stars Without Number campaign. If you want to see everything from all the posts at once, there’s a large google doc with it all.
Additional Combat Actions
Shove: Can use as a move or action. Make a Punch attack against AC equal to 9+ the target’s HD. If you are shoving with something significantly stronger than your opponent, such as someone in power armor shoving a normal person, gain +3 to the roll. On a hit, force them to move 3m backwards in a direction of your choice.
Charge (Person): Use your entire body to shove someone. Uses both Move and Action. You move up to your movement limit in 3m hexes, making only soft turns or straight lines. Once you reach them, make an attack roll against their AC using your Punch or Exert skill, or stab if you’re using a melee weapon as part of the charge. On a hit, your target takes 1d6 damage or your weapon damage, whichever is higher, and is knocked prone. If you are not using a weapon, make a Evasion saving throw. On a failure, you are also knocked prone next to them.
Charge (Vehicle/Mech): Crash head-on into a target with your chassis. Uses both Move and Action. You move up to your Speed in 3m hexes, making only soft turns or straight lines. Once you reach them, make an attack roll against their AC using your Pilot skill. On a hit, for each 3m hex you moved as part of the charge they take 1d6 damage (suit mechs, ordinary vehicles), 2d6 damage (light mechs, gravtanks), or 4d6 damage (heavy mechs). Additionally, make a Pilot skill roll with difficulty equal to 6 plus the number of hexes you moved. On a success you take half the damage dealt to the target, and if your target is your size or smaller and capable of it, they are knocked prone. On a failure you take the same amount damage as your target and are knocked prone.
Disarm: Make a melee attack roll against an adjacent target. On a hit, instead of dealing damage, you and your target make opposed skill rolls using the appropriate weapon skill and either Dex or Str. The defender gains a +3 bonus to this roll. If you win the roll by 3 or more, you decide what happens to the weapon, including gaining possession of it. If you win the roll by 1 or 2, the weapon drops 1 hex away in a random direction. If you tie, both of your weapons drop 1 hex away in a random direction. On a failure, nothing happens.
Protect (Person): As an action, redirect an attack from an adjacent ally to yourself. This may be used as a snap-action if you haven’t used your action yet this round.
Protect (Mech): Spend your Move and Action protecting those around and behind you. Until the start of your next turn you provide minor concealment of +2 AC and your Armor rating to allies adjacent to you. Like most cover, this is directional. Additionally, once before the start of your next turn you may redirect a single attack from an adjacent ally to yourself – this ally does not have to be behind you.
Jump: Move in a straight line up to half your movement speed, rounded up in 3m hexes. Ignore any ground terrain inbetween your starting and ending hex.
Overwatch: Aim in a particular direction and wait for the enemy. Uses your Action. Choose what 60 degree direction you’re facing – it’s advised but not required to use a single hex direction. Until the start of your next turn, you may make a single attack with a -2 penalty as an instant action against a target within that area. This attack ignores armor (not concealment) granted from cover.
Intimidate: As an action during a fight, target a single enemy side and make a Lead/Cha check (or another stat if you can narratively justify it) with a difficulty equal to your enemy’s current Morale. On a failure, nothing happens. On a success, your enemy loses 1 Morale and cannot be affected by Intimidate for the rest of this round.
Read Morale: As a Move during a fight, make a Notice/Wis or Cha check with difficulty 6. On a success, the GM will tell you the exact Morale of all sides you can see in it.
Aimed Shot: As an action, make an attack with a -4 penalty. On a hit, you ignore armor from your target’s cover. (Some rare types of cover such as a pretech forcefield might be immune to aimed shots).
Morale
RAW Morale was absolutely terrible in my game. Between dozens of fights, we had maybe a single failed morale roll, and maybe not even then. It was a lot of rolls that resulted in ‘nothing changes, they keep fighting’. So I changed Morale from a roll to a flat number that can be pushed up or down.
Morale ranges from 6 to 11 in the SWN Xenobestiary. This new Morale system is meant to fit into those numbers. Not all creatures are susceptible to morale. Robots, certain creatures, and people not in their right mind might be resistant or immune to Morale entirely.
Each side in a fight has a Morale score (except the PCs), which typically starts between 6 and 10. When certain events happen in a fight, Morale score can be reduced or increased.
Morale Factors
| Leader is Present at Start of Fight | +1 for Ordinary Leaders,+2 for Great Leaders |
| Leader is Incapacitated | -2 for Ordinary Leaders, -4 for Great Leaders |
| A side is surprised or ill-prepared for the fight | -1 |
| This side loses 20% (rounded up) of its forces or HP | -1 per instance |
| One side is outgunned compared to their enemies, such as being outnumbered, lacking as heavy duty weaponry, obvious psychic power usage | -1 per negative factor, +1 per positive factor |
| Is the side in their territory, such as a base, nest, or home | +2 |
| An Intimidation action is successfully used against this side. | -1, once per round max |
Morale Threshold
| Morale Level | Morale | Effects |
| Panicked Fleeing | 2- | Retreating, likely not shooting at all. -4 Atk. +1 AC. |
| Tactical Retreat | 3-5 | Retreating carefully. using cover, tactics, and tools, and still returning fire. -2 Atk. |
| Careful | 6-9 | Fighting ordinarily, with a regular amount of caution, aggression, and tactics. |
| Bold | 10-12 | Fighting especially well, targeting weak points and openings more often. +2 Atk. |
| Fearless | 13+ | Fights ruthlessly and relentlessly. +4 Atk. -1 AC. |
Cover and Concealment
This sub-system was meant to differentiate cover and concealment, expanding the Armor system to more people and things, and make infantry more durable by making them more easily able to take good cover. This was built to work in both theatre of the mind and a 3m hex grid battle map.
Concealment
Some cover obscures sight of a target but doesn’t otherwise help protect you. A simple tree won’t stop railgun fire after all. While most types of cover also provide concealment, some forcefields or other semi-transparent protections may provide armor instead of AC.
| Cover Type | Effect | Examples |
| Partly Obscured | +2 AC | Light dust, lying prone from a distance, hiding behind cover smaller than you, moving when well-hidden. |
| Mostly Obscured | +4 AC | Heavy smoke, severe darkness, stationary when well hidden, moving with active camouflage, hiding behind cover at larger than you. |
| Totally Obscured | +6 AC | Arrow slits, bunker windows, stationary with active camouflage. |
Hard Cover
Cover also grants armor against attacks. Armor never stacks, only the highest source of armor is used against attacks. Heavy Weapons count as 1 TL higher for the purposes of armor.
| Material | Armor |
| Thin wood (a few inches of wall, shelves, wooden furniture) | 2 vs TL1 |
| Thick wood (full-sized logs, trees big enough to hide a person behind) | 4 vs TL2 |
| 21st Century Drywall | 1 vs TL1 |
| Thin Stone (brick walls, marble statue, cement blocks) | 6 vs TL 2 |
| Thick Stone (concrete pillar, stone bunker) | 8 vs TL 3 |
| Ordinary Metal (shipping containers, ordinary vehicles, thin walls or sheets, computer servers) | 6 vs TL 2 |
| Reinforced Postech Materials (deployable barriers, reinforced walls, armored vehicles, armored doors) | 8 vs TL 4 |
| Pretech Materials (forcefields, forgotten Metals, psitech Crystals) | 12 vs TL5 |
| Significant liquid (submerged underwater) | 6 vs TL3 10 vs TL4 Energy Weapons |
| Dust storm, heavy smoke, or other particulates | 5 vs Laser Weapons |
Grenades & Cover
Targeting someone behind cover with a frag grenade or other area explosive is a bit more complex – add your target’s concealment bonus to the base AC of 10. On a success, you hit and ignore any armor from cover. On a failure, the grenade lands 1d3 hexes (1d3x3 meters) away in a random direction and explodes as normal. If the cover is between the landing point and the target, they can apply its armor to the damage.
Squads
One of my PCs wanted to be an officer in charge of a squad. I wanted to facilitate that without changing too much from the base SWN rules, so I made a spreadsheet to allow them to group multiple NPCs into one ‘unit’ that should be more easily manageable.
Management of a squad is shared between the PC in charge of them and the GM. The PC generally portrays and describes the squad, but the GM may sometimes take the wheel if they have reason to stop listening to orders or otherwise act differently.
Generally a squad will consist of the same type of NPC (military soldier, skilled civilian, etc) and equipped with the same weapons. A squad has the following statistics.
Units: The number of NPCs that make up the squad. Whenever a squad takes damage its Unit number may decrease, and whenever it deals damage the amount is based on its Units.
HP: The total HP of the NPCs. Squad NPCs don’t have rolled hit points, but instead have 4.5 HP per hit dice. The total is rounded up after it’s all added together for the squad.
Attacks: Single attack roll vs AC. Result is 3+ below AC – zero damage. Result is within 2 above or below AC – half damage. Result is 3+ above AC (or nat 20): full damage. If the target AC is 10, then getting a 7 or lower is no damage, an 8-12 is half damage, and a 12+ is full damage.
Morale: Based on the standard NPC number. Squads will utilize the new morale rules.
Damage: A flat number based on the average damage of the equipped weapon, multiplied by Squad Strength. A target’s armor, and a weapon’s AP, are also multiplied this way as well.
Saving Throw: The same basic number as for a single NPC.
Squad Size: When on a detailed hex battle, the squad is treated as a single NPC with a size of 1 hex per 3 units. Whenever the squad Moves it can rearrange its shape, but all units must be adjacent to at least one other. This size may shrink and grow as casualties are taken and healed.
Squad Combat Notes
When psychically healing a squad you can only restore 1 Unit at a time. When using Tissue Integrity Field, you can multiply the healing by max units.
Cover: A squad must all be behind cover or concealment to benefit from it.
New downtime action: Recruit. Choose an NPC type (page 195 in the book) and make a Connect skill roll. Difficulty is equal to the type’s HD + Morale -2, so a Veteran Fighter’s HD would be 2+9-2=9. On a failure, you recruit 1 NPC. If you succeed you recruit a number of NPCs equal to your crew’s Tier+1. If you succeed by 2 or more you recruit Tier+3 NPCs. Any NPCs can create a new squad or be added to a squad of the same NPC type.
Authority Focus: The focus buffs those being ‘directly lead by you’ so it can only extend to a single squad at a time. You can switch who gets the buff as a free on-turn action.
Meat Shields. While squad members are between you and someone hostile, you cannot be directly targeted by a non-area attack.
Suppression and area attacks. The damage of these attacks are multiplied by units in the squad that it’s capable of hitting. Some area attacks can target everyone in a squad, while others might just be able to hit a few out of several.