3D6 Stats Combat — Table How-To

Rules: 3D6 Stats · Status: Rules-as-written reference · House-rule changes: None

This is a table procedure, not a replacement rulebook. It puts the ordinary 3D6 Stats combat cycle in one place so we can resolve a fight without hunting through six tabs while somebody’s sandwich goes cold.

Primary references: Basic Set pp. B363–B426, combat modifier tables pp. B547–B550, and the free 3D6 Stats Lite combat summary.

> First correction: 3D6 Stats does not normally roll initiative. Turn order comes from Basic Speed and stays fixed for the fight.

The whole cycle

For each combatant, in turn order:

1. Resolve start-of-turn conditions.
2. Choose one maneuver.
3. Declare movement, target, attack mode, and options.
4. Calculate effective skill.
5. Roll the attack.
6. If the attack succeeds, resolve the target’s active defense.
7. If defense fails, roll basic damage.
8. Apply range effects, DR, penetration, wounding modifiers, and hit-location effects.
9. Record injury and its immediate consequences.
10. Finish movement or minor bookkeeping allowed by the maneuver.

After everyone has acted, one second has passed. Start again at the top of the same order.

1. Start combat: order, awareness, and surprise

Establish the scene first

Before the first turn, the GM should establish:

• Where everyone is.
• Who can see or otherwise detect whom.
• Distance and facing.
• Posture: standing, crouching, kneeling, prone, and so on.
• Cover and concealment.
• What each person already has ready.
• Whether either side is surprised.

Turn order

Order all active combatants from highest Basic Speed to lowest.

Ties:

1. Higher Basic Speed before rounding.
2. For PCs, higher DX.
3. If still tied, roll once to establish their order.
4. Keep that order for the rest of the fight.

NPCs tied with one another can simply act in whatever order the GM finds easiest.

Surprise

Resolve surprise before ordinary turns. A surprised or mentally stunned combatant generally Does Nothing and attempts the appropriate recovery roll on their turn. Once recovered, they rejoin their normal place in the established order.

What a “turn” means

A turn runs from the moment a combatant chooses a maneuver until that combatant chooses again on their next turn. Maneuver effects do not all vanish when the last person in the order acts.

That matters. All-Out Attack leaves you defenseless until your next turn. All-Out Defense protects you until your next turn. 3D6 Stats turns overlap; they are not little sealed boxes.

2. Start-of-turn checks

Before choosing a maneuver, check:

Then choose a maneuver.

3. Choose one maneuver

Free actions include short speech, dropping a ready object, and certain posture adjustments such as crouching. “Free” does not mean “deliver a TED Talk while firing a plasma rifle.”

4. If attacking, make the declaration before rolling

State all of this before touching the dice:

1. Target.
2. Weapon or unarmed attack.
3. Attack mode: swing, thrust, punch, kick, burst, and so on.
4. Hit location, if not attacking the torso.
5. Maneuver option: Determined, Strong, Double, etc.
6. Special option: Deceptive Attack, Rapid Strike, off-hand attack, and so on.
7. Movement taken before or after the attack.
8. Ammunition and number of shots, for ranged weapons.

You cannot wait to see the roll and then announce that, actually, the shot was aimed at the eye. Nice try, Spielberg.

5. Calculate effective attack skill

Start with the relevant weapon or unarmed combat skill. Apply every modifier that fits. Modifiers are cumulative unless a rule says otherwise.

Common modifiers to any attack

Poor visibility penalties do not stack forever. Use the worst applicable visibility condition, up to the system’s normal cap.

Posture

The target penalty assumes the attacker is not directly above or extremely close. Cover and exposed body parts can change matters.

6. Melee attack modifiers

The target must be within the attack’s Reach. Reach C means close combat; Reach 1 means roughly one yard; longer weapons may reach farther but can become awkward up close.

Trained by a Master does not add damage. It grants access to cinematic abilities and improves penalties such as Rapid Strike and repeated parries. Do not quietly staple Weapon Master’s damage bonus onto it.

Common hit-location penalties

Not every damage type can exploit every location. If the attack could not physically produce the listed special effect, use the ordinary result.

7. Ranged attack modifiers

The target must be within Max range. Range affects the attack roll. Crossing 1/2D range also reduces basic damage.

Build the ranged attack number

Start with weapon skill, then apply:

1. Target Size Modifier.
2. Speed/range modifier.
3. Aim and equipment bonuses.
4. Maneuver modifier.
5. Visibility, posture, cover, movement, and situational modifiers.
6. Hit-location penalty.
7. Rapid-fire bonus, if any.

Common range penalties

Use the Size and Speed/Range Table when precision matters. These are the common human-scale entries:

For a fast target, add speed in yards/second to range before consulting the table. Human movement on foot is commonly ignored unless unusually fast or tactically important.

Aim and ranged options

Target size

Add the target’s Size Modifier:

• Ordinary adult human: SM 0.
• Larger target: bonus.
• Smaller target: penalty.

Do not apply both Size Modifier and a second made-up “small target” penalty for the same thing.

Rapid fire and recoil

On a successful rapid-fire attack, the margin of success and the weapon’s Recoil (Rcl) determine additional hits. Each hit normally gets its own damage roll and DR application.

Rapid fire improves the chance of landing one or more hits. It does not add the rate-of-fire bonus to damage.

8. Roll the attack

Roll 3d against effective skill.

• Roll equal to or below effective skill: potential hit.
• Roll above effective skill: miss.
• 3 or 4: always a critical hit.
• 5 is critical at effective skill 15+.
• 6 is critical at effective skill 16+.
• 17 or 18: always a miss; often a critical miss depending on effective skill.

A critical hit normally denies an active defense and uses the appropriate critical-hit rule. Otherwise, the defender may attempt one legal active defense.

9. Defender chooses an active defense

The defender must be aware of the attack and physically able to react.

Add shield or cloak DB when the attack comes from a protected direction and the attack permits it.

Common defense modifiers

Roll 3d. Equal to or below effective defense means the attack is avoided. Failure means the attack hits.

10. Determine the weapon’s basic damage

Firearms, beams, and self-powered weapons

Use the damage printed in the weapon’s stat line, then apply ammunition, firing-mode, quality, or equipment rules that explicitly change it.

The shooter’s ST normally does not increase firearm damage.

Muscle-powered melee and thrown weapons

1. Find the attacker’s thrust (thr) or swing (sw) damage from ST.
2. Use the mode listed for the attack.
3. Apply the weapon’s listed add or subtraction.
4. Apply any legitimate damage bonuses.

Example structure: sw+1 cut means swing damage from ST, plus one, causing cutting damage.

What can alter the damage number?

What does not normally add damage?

• Trained by a Master by itself.
• Aim or Acc.
• Range penalties to hit.
• Rapid-fire bonus to hit.
• Evaluate.
• Deceptive Attack.
• Feint.
• Margin of success on an ordinary attack.
• A high weapon skill unless a specific advantage or skill rule converts it into damage.
• Being below a weapon’s minimum ST. That penalizes use and may affect readiness; it does not invent a new damage subtraction unless the weapon rule says so.

11. Convert basic damage into injury

Do this in order. Do not jumble the steps; that is how a 9mm round somehow becomes a naval gun.

Step A: apply pre-DR changes

• Apply the attack’s damage additions or subtractions.
• At this stage, a negative modifier cannot reduce crushing damage below 0 or most other damaging attacks below 1.
• Then apply 1/2D range if relevant: halve basic damage and round down. This halving can reduce an already small result further.

Step B: determine effective DR

Use DR protecting the actual hit location.

• Add compatible layers when permitted.
• Include cover DR if the attack passed through cover.
• Apply the attack’s armor divisor to DR, not to damage.
• A divisor below 1 increases effective DR.

Step C: subtract DR

Basic damage - effective DR = penetrating damage

If penetrating damage is 0 or less, the attack did not penetrate. Check whether flexible armor, blunt trauma, knockback, or another special rule still matters.

Step D: apply the wounding modifier

Some hit locations replace these multipliers. Round fractions down. Any attack that penetrates normally causes at least 1 HP of injury.

Step E: apply hit-location effects

Check:

• Changed wounding multiplier.
• Extra DR, especially the skull.
• Crippling thresholds for limbs and extremities.
• Maximum injury caps.
• Eye injury and blindness.
• Knockdown penalties.
• Vitals or neck effects.

The final number after these steps is injury. Subtract it from HP.

12. Resolve immediate injury effects

Work through this checklist after every damaging hit:

Shock

On the victim’s next turn, DX and IQ are reduced by injury from that hit, to a maximum of -4. Shock does not reduce active defenses.

High Pain Threshold removes ordinary shock penalties and improves several resistance rolls; it does not reduce injury.

Major wound

A single injury greater than half the victim’s HP is a major wound. Make the required HT roll for knockdown and stunning. Certain hit locations or damage types apply additional penalties.

On failure, the victim falls prone and is stunned. On the victim’s turns, use Do Nothing and roll to recover.

Crippling

Check limb, hand, foot, eye, and other location thresholds. Excess injury to a limb or extremity can be discarded after reaching its cap; it does not spill into the torso unless a specific rule says otherwise.

Knockback

Crushing attacks and certain other effects can cause knockback even when injury is modest. Compare the applicable damage to the target’s ST/HP threshold, move the target, and check for falling or collisions as required.

HP thresholds

Other consequences

Depending on the attack, also check:

• Bleeding.
• Fire or continuing damage.
• Poison or follow-up damage.
• Explosion and fragmentation.
• Electrical stunning or surge effects.
• Knockdown from a head, face, vitals, or groin hit.
• Weapon breakage, dropping an item, or loss of readiness.
• Fright Checks or morale when the fiction warrants them.

13. Finish the acting character’s turn

After resolving the attack:

1. Finish any movement still permitted by the maneuver.
2. Mark ammunition spent.
3. Mark an unready weapon, empty chamber, changed grip, lost Aim, or expended FP.
4. Record ongoing maneuver effects.
5. Record Wait triggers, concentration, suppression, or other continuing actions.
6. Move to the next combatant in the fixed order.

Remember:

• An active defense happens during the attacker’s turn, but counts against the defender’s limits until the defender’s next turn.
• Maneuver restrictions last until the combatant chooses a new maneuver.
• A Wait can interrupt the ordinary order.
• Shock applies on the injured character’s next turn, not at some universal “end of round.”

14. End of the one-second cycle

After the last combatant acts:

• One second has elapsed.
• Advance durations that count whole seconds.
• Resolve any effect specifically timed for the end or start of that second.
• Do not erase every bonus, penalty, defense use, or maneuver automatically.
• Return to the first surviving, conscious, active combatant in the established order.

The GM can leave combat time when second-by-second resolution no longer matters. Chasing a fleeing dock clerk through three empty corridors does not require 180 consecutive Move maneuvers unless somebody at the table has committed a terrible sin.

Fast table script

When somebody attacks, call it in this order:

1. Maneuver?
2. Movement?
3. Target and hit location?
4. Attack mode and special options?
5. Effective skill after modifiers?
6. Attack roll.
7. Defense choice and modifiers.
8. Defense roll.
9. Basic damage.
10. 1/2D or other pre-DR changes.
11. Effective DR and armor divisor.
12. Penetrating damage.
13. Wounding and hit-location multiplier.
14. Final injury.
15. Shock, major wound, stun, crippling, knockback, consciousness, or death checks.
16. Ammo, FP, posture, readiness, and continuing effects.

Then call the next name in the order.

Rules intentionally not added here

This guide does not introduce:

• Committed Attack.
• Defensive Attack.
• Telegraphic Attack.
• Expanded Rapid Strike.
• Technical Grappling.
• New hit locations.
• Custom critical tables.
• Alternate initiative.
• Action points.
• Any Khesret-specific damage bonus.

Those are optional expansions, later-book rules, or house rules. If we use one, it should be named explicitly rather than smuggled into an ordinary Attack maneuver wearing a fake mustache.