WthC - Combat Damage Armor

Combat in Welcome to the City is much more a 'theater of the mind' style than any sort of mapped out set up. A simple hand drawn map just so players and the GM know where things are in relationship to each other. There are no movement squares, no rigid rules on facing, it is meant to be simple, fast and loose.

At the beginning of a round of combat each player announces what they intend for their characters to do. Then all actions take place at the same time unless one of two things happen. First a player can chose to 'opt out' and take not offensive action at all, then they may roll to defend themselves against an attack or to move out of the way. Second is they may lose a die out of their Traits die pool for the remainder of combat to take their action before everyone else this one round. Earning a bonus die during combat is done the same way as earning them while performing normal abilities.

Please note that the NPCs perform their actions at the same time as the players.

Combat order will be along the lines of: Describe your action - Roll to perform that action - Roll for any damage done. Keep it quick and fast paced if you can. While combat is an entertaining, and often important, part of the session it shouldn't take up a huge section of the game time.

Damage

Each character has six ranks of damage. The first rank being minor scrapes and bruising with the sixth and final rank being death or near death depending on how you want your games to run.

When rolling for damage the weapon or hand to hand damage chart will tell you what rank of damage was caused. On your sheet you tick that rank and all ranks below it. However ranks are not cumulative you only go up another rank when you take another hit equal to or higher than the highest damage tick. If it's equal to you go up one tick, if it's more than you go up to that new rank and tick those below it.

Example: If you are getting beat down in a fist fight and are at Rank Two and three guys hit you, each doing Rank One damage then you don't record anymore damage. Now when characters do get hit with attacks that don't raise their damage still roleplay it out a bit, get descriptive but it doesn't add up in numbers.

Example: You have taken a Rank Two of damage so far and get hit for another Rank Two then you raise your damage track up to Rank Three.

Example: You have taken Rank Two of damage and a then one of the thugs shoots you for Rank Four damage then you go to Rank Four immediately.

Armor

Body armor has two stats Absorption and Coverage. When a character is hit their player rolls a single D12 and tries to roll under, or equal to, the Coverage rating. If it fails the character takes the full amount of damage. If successful the Absorption amount reduces the amount of damage by that many ranks.

Stacking armor. A character my wear up to two sets of body armor. However when they do so they much choose taking the highest Absorption and the lowest Coverage to form their Armor stats. Or the lowest Absorption and the highest Coverage.