Section Four: Combat
48. Can werewolves hurt other werewolves/monsters
that are resistant to normal attacks?
49. Can I buy off more than one wound/three
shock points of damage when I use a Possibility to negate damage?
50. Can I 'save up' my damage and
buy it off all at once?
51. What is stun damage? How is it
different from normal damage?
52. How long does a K result last?
How long does an O result last?
53. How long does a Stymie result
last? Can you have multiple Stymies?
54. Does a shield act like armor
and add to your Toughness?
55. How does Aggressive Defense work?
56. Can I use my Dodge skill to defend
against Unarmed/Melee attacks?
57. Is the maximum damage value of
a melee weapon the maximum damage I can do?
58. Where are the rules for falling
damage?
59. My character has a really high
defensive skill value, which means if he ever gets hit, applying the big
bonus number that was necessary to hit him to the damage is going to cream
him! Is there a way to fix this problem?
60. If I get a card for an Approved Action when can I put
it into my card pool?
48. Can werewolves hurt other werewolves/monsters that are immune to normal attacks?
According to WEG werewolves and other Horrors do not possess any special innate ability to inflict damage on other Horrors. However, it is possible that the creature may be aware of the other's weaknesses (such as being hurt by silver) and can use that against him (such as the'silver claws' used by the weretiger that Kurst fought in the third Torg novel). There is also a special power that Orrorshan Horrors may possess that will allow them to hurt other Horrors that are resistant to normal forms of attack.
49. Can I buy off more than one wound/three shock points of damage when I use a Possibility to negate damage?
Yes. To review, spending a Possibility to negate damage will enable you to remove three of the following four things and you can double (or triple) up on what you remove:
Some GMs have ruled (and WEG runs it this way in Masterbook) that a KO condition is really two Knockout conditions, not one, and so it would use up two packets to negate a KO result.
50. Can I 'save up' my damage and buy it off all at once?
No. Damage must be negated immediately after it is taken. If you are being attacked by three opponents you cannot wait until after each one has hit you and then remove damage based off of the final total; you would have to remove the damage done by each opponent right after the GM tells you how much damage you take from each one.
51. What is "stun damage"? How is it different from normal damage?
Stunning damage is caused by "non-lethal" attack forms. Examples are blows from clubs, rubber bullets, fistfights, and knockout gas. While it is still possible to be killed by these non-lethal attacks it is less likely to happen. Shock points and KO results are taken as normal, but a Knockdown result is ignored, a Wound is reduced to a Knockdown, and successive Wound levels are reduced by one (two wounds become one, three wounds become two, etc).
Some GMs have come up with house rules to make some knockout attacks less lethal and more likely to make people unconscious. For example, a knockout gas may not do any wound damage at all, each wound result is treated as extra shock damage instead. This way characters can be rendered unconscious long enough to be captured rather than waking up before much time has elapsed.
In the module "No Quarter Given" a knockout poison uses the following mechanic - the subject makes a Toughness roll against the strength of the poison; failure means the victim passes out. When the victim awakens, to simulate the aftereffects of the poison he has a small amount of shock damage and a K result.
52. How long does a K result last? How long does an O result last?
According to the rules an O result will only last for one minute. A K result lasts for thirty minutes. The implication is that a character will only be KO'd for one minute and then wake up (unless the shock damage keeps the character unconscious.) Some people on the list have suggested changing things to keep people unconscious for longer periods of time such as making the O's last for a longer period of time or having the character remain unconscious until the K also goes away.
53. How long does a Stymie result last? Can you have multiple stymies?
According to WEG (Infiniverse v1 #13) a Stymie lasts for only one round and you cannot be affected by multiple Stymies in that round. Some GMs have expressed the opinion that this isn't severe enough of a penalty and have ruled that a Stymie lasts until the character's next reroll opportunity (rolling a 10 or a 20, the character is Up, the character spends a Possibility) or the end of the scene.
It has been pointed out that a Stymie result is not as harmful as an Unskilled result (which takes away the skill adds and the skilled use reroll) so some GMs have decided that on the Interaction Result Table a Stymie result also counts as an Unskilled result and some GMs have reversed the positions of the Unskilled and Stymie results on the Interaction table. Shatterzone and Masterbook have made this switch on their Interaction Result Tables.
54. Does a shield act like armor and add to your Toughness?
No. The adds that a shield gives you are added to your defensive value if (and only if) you are actively defending (an Aggressive Defense counts). The shield bonus is added to the bonus value before you apply it to the defense value (and then if it is less than +1 you increase it to that minimum value). If the attack overcomes the modified defense value you get hit. If the attack fails but by less than the amount of the shield bonus then the shield is hit and takes damage (figure damage normally using the Toughness value given in the equipment description for the shield.)
55. How does Aggressive Defense work?
An Aggressive Defense allows the character to actively defend and attack at the same time. Only one bonus value is generated and is added to both the attack and defense value. Basically it is a normal Multi-Action with defending automatically assumed to be the first action. Because the first action is an active defense the minimum bonus to the defense skill that you can get from the roll is a +1, but because of the -2 multi-action penalty this is actually a minimum bonus of -1. The rolled bonus value is also applied to the appropriate attack skill, but with a -4 penalty.
That is the official WEG ruling on how Aggressive Defense works; some GMs feel that an active defense should always have a minimum +1 bonus modifier. The -2 multi-action penalty is applied to the rolled bonus value and THEN if the bonus value is less than +1 it is bumped up to a +1.
56. Can I use my Dodge skill to defend against Unarmed/Melee attacks?
No. Dodge can only be used against Fire Combat, Energy Weapons, and Missle Weapons attacks.
On a related note, Melee Weapons skill can be used to defend against Unarmed Combat if the defender is using a melee weapon. Unarmed Combat can be used to defend against Melee Weapons attacks if the skill represents a martial art form. (This is different from the actual skill Martial Arts though, which is a philosophy as well as a combat skill.)
Also somewhat related, an unskilled person cannot actively defend with the Melee Weapons skill. All other defensive skills can be actively defended with even if the character doesn't have the skill
57. Is the maximum damage value of a melee weapon the maximum damage I can do?
No, the maximum damage value given for melee weapons is the maximum _base_ damage that the weapon can do. Any bonus to damage gained through cards or die rolls are not considered when figuring the maximum damage value of a weapon. For example, if a weapon is listed as being +3/17 (where 17 is the maximum damage value) any character who has a Strength of 15 or greater will have a base damage value of 17, but if he were to roll a bonus value of +4 the damage he does would be 21, not 17. And a character with a Strength of 9 who uses cards and/or a good die roll to get a bonus of +7 has a damage value of 19, he doesn't stop at 17.
58. Where are the rules for falling damage?
They are hidden in the description of the Climbing skill on page 52 of the rulebook. The falling damage value is found by adding the character's weight value (60 kg = value 9, etc) to the value of the height the character fell from (60m = value 9, etc) with a fall from a height greater than a value of 14 treated as a value of 14 (due to terminal velocity). A bonus value is generated by the GM and the damage value is applied to the fallen character.
Some GMs have decided that a fall should always have a minimum bonus value of +1 (much like Point Blank range) since the ground "always hits", but this is not actually stated in the rules anywhere. If a character falls and for some reason or another gravity is not the only force acting upon him (for example, flying due to a Pulp Power or magic spell into the ground, being thrown at the ground by someone, etc) the speed value is used instead of distance to determine damage.
It has been pointed out that weight and mass are not the same thing and that since the value table gives the mass value of a character, gravitational acceleration must be accounted for to find the weight of the character. This is done by adding five to the mass value. Not everyone agrees that this is necessary or correct however so it is up to the GM to determine if he wishes to use this or not.
59. My character has a really high defensive skill value, which means if he ever gets hit, applying the big bonus number that was necessary to hit him to the damage is going to cream him! Is there a way to fix this problem?
This is generally considered one of the main problems with TORG by some people, including WEG who changed the mechanic for Shatterzone and Masterbook. Two solutions have been suggested on the list/newsgroup, the first one being the method WEG uses in Shatterzone/Masterbook:
- use the result points of the attack in place of the rolled bonus number as the bonus added to damage. A variant limits this by using either the result points or the generated bonus value, whichever is less. One important thing to do when using this method is to change all of the combat modifiers (Vital Blow, Blindside, etc) to reflect this change otherwise they won't work correctly (Shatterzone did not make this correction but Masterbook did.) The variant slightly complicates matters because you need both sets of combat modifiers and then have to apply the appropriate one based on which number gets used.
- a slightly more complicated method is to use the difference between the base skill values as a modifier to the generated bonus value. These methods favor whoever has the higher base skill by either lowering or raising the damage value in accordance with whoever has the higher skill; if the offensive character has the higher skill, damage will be higher. If the defensive character has the higher skill, damage is reduced. Variants depend on whether or not modifiers (such as an Active Dodge) are considered or just the base skill values are used and how the damage modifier is determined (most suggest either running the difference through the Power Push Table or dividing by some number.) One method adopts the Vital Blow maneuver by allowing characters to lower their attack skill value by increments of two and increase their damage value by increments of one. (Defending characters would get to do the same thing to increase their resistance to damage.)
60. If I get a card for an Approved Action when can I put it into my card pool?
The card you gain from an Approved Action can be the one that you put into your card pool for that round of action. Quoting from the rulebook, "If your character succeeds at an Approved Action, you draw a card from the drama deck; you can then add a card from your hand to the character's pool as usual." (p23)
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