The Background

I was working on a scenario for some 350 point Psi-Wars characters involving some Imperial Knights infiltrating Denjuku and wanted to have a simple introduction with some local terrorists causing trouble. After making some henchmen, it became apparent that the Action 2 Sneaky Fighting rules could turn a simple fight against some minor henchmen into a massacre of 350 point heroes.

Sneaky Fighting Rules

The big problem with the Sneaky Fighting rules (Action 2, p. 37) is that they are designed largely for PCs to use mostly on generic foes. Some parts break down when named henchmen are involved. Psi-Wars also has a potential issue where a dedicated Stealth expert will always have much higher Steathh than a dedicated Per expert.

Equipment heavily favors Stealth. Syntech “Shadow” Armor give at least +4 to Stealth, and Syntech “Catspaw” Slippers give +2. Imperial Space Knight armor and ninja armor also have ways of granting Stealth bonuses. The main detection bonus comes from gear that grant Hyperspectral Vision.

The stealthy templates such as Assassin get Stealth 18 and can go much higher easily. Scavenger gets Per 17, and Security Agent gets Observation 15. They can go higher, but there are far more talents and other advantages that boost Stealth than the ability to detect steathyy foes.

Death from the Shadows

As written, Death from the Shadows allows a character to hide with an unopposed Steathh check with some listed modifiers. On a success, the hidden character can attack the nearest foe, and the target cannot defend. An attacker who wishes to kill the target will nearly always make an aimed or evaluated and telegraphic attack against some high value hit location such as vitals, neck or skull. The attack will nearly always succeed and will be debilitating if not fatal. The target must be invulnerable, hope for an attack roll of 17+, have Danger Sense or die with no possibility to defend nor detect the attacker. Do not save, just die.

Sniping

The sniping rules do allow detecting the sniper after the first shot. The initial victim dies, but the survivors can attempt to detect the sniper after each shot. The sniper’s stealth is likely much higher than the defender’s Per/Observation, and the sniper will try to take out the character with Hyperspectral Vision first, so a skilled sniper should be able to take down multiple characters before getting discovered. Even if discovered, the sniper will have high Stealth and can simply Disappear before the characters can get close enough to do anything unless they have long ranged rifles of their own.

The Combats

To test the various rules, we had a few combats that happened throughout the course of the adventure. There were other things like gathering intelligence, selecting victims, planning to attack or defend, etc., but today’s post focuses mostly on the combat aspect and specifically on the Sneaky Fighting rules in action (pun intended).

Action Vehicular Ambush

We tested the Action Vehicular Combat stealth rules. Wan-Wen Warp wanted to sneak attack Princess Tae Grimshaw with a missile while flying on her Banshee. She almost succeeded and rolled a 4 on her Electronics Operation (Electronic Warfare) roll for a success by 7, but Julius Enthir’s and Kēþa’s robots detected her with MoS 8 and 12 respectively.

Having been warned, Tae managed to shoot first and left Wan-Wen within 2 HP of instadeath.

Alexa’s Abduction

“Princess” Alexa Harrow was taking a stroll in a shady part of town with the charming Lord Dun Wellspring (a false identity for the terrorist leader Jiwoo Song). Alexa was too entranced to notice that she and Dun were ambushed by criminals. Dun was “subdued” easily and surrendered right away. Alexa was was attacked by An-Ko Switch. An-Ko managed to land a garbage move on Alexa while she could not defend by making an unopposed Stealth check and succeeding on the risky attack and eventually managed to subdue Alexa. This proved that the Death from the Shadows rules could turn a garbage technique into one that was possible to pull off.

A vibro knife to the vitals would have been quicker, more effective and all around better, but even the useless move proved effective enough when An-Ko’s victim could not defend. See below for a more detailed explanation of An-Ko and why she is highly suboptimal.

Yuan-Jai’s Assassination/Rescue Attempt

One of the terrorists, Wan-Wen Warp, was captured and in the hospital after a bad Banshee fight. Super Stealthy Assassin, Yuan-Jai, was tasked with making sure Wan-Wen would not talk. She had the Stealth to bypass all sentries with no problem. Her biggest weakness was that she lacked sufficient Observation and got caught by proximity sensors that needed to be avoided rather than bypassed with Stealth.

Zen Grimshaw suspected that Wan-Wen would be targeted and asked Reina Sabine to use Prognostication to give some insights. Between Reina’s Prognostication and Zen’s planning, Zen Grimshaw and Anastasia Siberiana set an ambush for Yuan-Jai. Because Zen and Anastasia succeeded at an unopposed Stealth check (and becoming invisible thanks to Zen’s Photorefraction), they were able to make unopposed attacks against Yuan-Jai. Anastasia tried and failed with a Kayo, and Zen cut Yuan-Jai’s legs off.

In this particular case, Yuan-Jai would have had little chance at detecting Anastasia and Zen even if given an opposed Per/Observation check.

Yuan-Jai may have had better luck if she brought a companion with better Per/Observation along. Using Team Efforts from Ten for Ten (Pyramid 3/70), she could have helped Pi-Ko Pixel sneak past all of the sentries with no problem despite Pi-Ko’s low Stealth. Pi-Ko may have been able to detect the proximity sensors or located them through hacking.

The Big Battle

After interrogating various mooks, Wan-Wen and Yuan-Jai, the heroes learned the location of the terrorist base and prepared themselves for the big showdown. Since the heroes knew their enemies included ninjas and a sniper, they asked the friendly neighborhood Chiva to buff them with Fateful Protection. Vasillia Mivigefra did so. They also brought several allies to avoid getting overwhelmed by mooks.

Before the battle, Julius won the Quick Contest of Tactics and gained 6 rerolls. That also proved useful. We did not use BATTLE for this because we wanted to test the Sneaky Fighting rules, but it could have been appropriate for the situation. It would have bypassed the instakills and resulted in an easy victory for Julius.

Chase With Fateful Protection

Action 3 suggests using chase rules to handle fights between melee and ranged combatants (see the box on page 24). We decided to try it, but the chase rules and Death from the Shadows didn’t seem to work well together. If the attackers are already hidden and undetectable, why is there a chase?

We did resolve the battle as a chase clumsily and learned that Fateful Protection was a very effective anti ninja/sniper buff. The main problem was that the heroes were chasing foes they could not fully detect their quarry, and no one did anything until everyone got close due to quarry being untargetable and not wanting to reveal their locations.

We did have a breakaway chase where some pursuers went to rescue Alexa and fought some mooks. That seemed to work fairly well. It was more straightforward than the main chase.

Since there were no rules for spotting hidden people in the chase, we decided to allow QC of Stealth vs Per/Observation each turn for anyone in close range. Most of the chase was the heroes chasing hidden foes somehow.

Princess Wen-Rey Blitz/Shinjurai was caught in an explosive trap set by Huochen Blaze and survived thanks to the Cinematic Explosions rule.

Fateful Protection shut down most of the 150/175 point henchmen. They were not able to do much.

Gridless Fight With Fateful Protection

After that, we decided to redo the fight not as a chase. The Stealthy Fighting rules don’t seem to work with a battlemap, and Action/Psi-Wars is supposed to work well without one, so we used the Psi-Wars combat rules.

The scenario was that the terrorists were caught somewhat off guard, and their sniper, Sho-Li Serpentine, was unable to get to an optimal location for sniping. They did have enough time to set an ambush and all succeeded at their unopposed Stealth check to become invisible. We rolled randomly to decide which targets were “nearest.”

The terrorists were much more active this time and all went for the kill (or Stun in the case of the Journalist hacker, Pi-Ko Pixel). Fateful Protection shut down all of the attacks. Since each “use” of Fateful Protection lasts a second and since it has No Signature, the terrorists kept attacking the same targets without knowing why they could not hit.

The battle was pretty one sided in favor of the heroes. The biggest problem with the heroes team is that many of the sidekicks lacked Combat Reflexes, and some spent much of the battle recovering. Hana Stone and Muffin Bloodfang both did nothing at all for the entire fight.

Gridless Fight Without Fateful Protection

Since Fateful Protection saved the day, we decided to see what would happen if the heroes were unprepared. It was a massacre. The heroes had no possible defense and could be one shot easily. Tai-Wen died immediately after getting shot through the eye. Wen-Rey got shot through the vitals and received a mortal injury immediately. Even the Journalist Hacker nearly took Gaius down with her stunner, but he managed to survive on Luck.

Zen Grimshaw was essentially blaster proof, but he could not withstand a blow to the skull from a Seven Vector Swordsman wielding a ceramic katana.

Anastasia managed to hide successfully, and she and Gaius Enthir could have defeated terrorists once they revealed themselves (though Shado-Win Knight purchased the Vanish technique and could simply hide and assassinate either with no possibility for defense), but it was not likely. The heroes only got to make death saves if even that. For the most part, no defense was allowed.

Sniper + Mooks Without Fateful Protection

We wanted to test the sniping rules. Since we knew that Fateful Protection would stop the sniper’s rifle, we went straight to the sniper with mook support vs the heroes.

This battle turned out unexpectedly. The sniper was actually not very good at even rifle range, and the heroes took out the mooks incredibly quickly. The sniper knew two of the heroes, Wen-Rey and Zen had the best chance at spotting her, so she took Wen-Rey out with her first shot. Zen rolled poorly and had a lower Per than Sho-Li’s Stealth, so he was unable to detect her location.

Sho-Li needed to aim between shots to hit and thus could not kill her targets quickly enough to save herself. Gaius went to treat Wen-Rey and used his shield as cover (held by TK Grab). Zen got lucky and spotted Sho-Li after her next shot, and Gaius caught her with TK Grab (using Far Grasp)). Since ranged attacks are impossible while grappled and because Sho-Li could not break free, she was defeated shortly after getting caught.

Lessons Learned

The unopposed Stealth rolls leading to instakills may be fine for use against mooks, but they are not so fun when used against PCs. “Save or die” is one thing. “Don’t save, just die” is another thing entirely.

Fateful Protection is great against sneak attacks. Never fight ninjas and snipers without it.

Improvements

One obvious thing to improve the situation is to allow an opposed Per vs Stealth check to allow a defense. A dedicated ninja will always win against all but the best detection experts since there are far more ways to boost Stealth than Per/Observation, but at least it is “save or die” rather than “don’t save, just die.” For mook ninjas, make a BAD penalized Per check. On a success, the heroes detect the ninjas.

“Rocks fall, everyone dies” is not necessarily wrong. If the PCs have a chance to learn in advance that rocks may fall and do nothing about it, they die. Likewise, if the PCs learn that they may encounter ninjas and snipers and decide they have no need to prepare, they die. That said, having some way to deal with ninjas and snipers instakilling everyone is important, and the PCs should know how stealth works in the world, so it may be a good idea to warn the players about rule oddities so the PCs don’t die out of a rule misunderstanding rather than poor tactics.

Addenda

We did some other things besides ambushes and stealth and had some interesting observations.

An-Ko

I created An-Ko Switch entirely to test to see if Flying Scissor Snap is viable. It is not. There are several problems:

  1. It requires a heavy investment including Trained by a Master, high enough Acrobatics to land the attack, high enough grappling skill to hit, Acrobatic Stand and Ground Fighting to avoid dying after a success or failure, etc.
  2. It requires a successful Acrobatics roll (at -1) and a successful attack roll. If either fails, the would be assassin is in a bad situation.
  3. Neck Snap requires grappling on one turn and waiting until the next turn to attempt to deal damage. This means the would be assassin is vulnerable to others. Also, the bonus Striking ST that Space Ninjutsu teaches does not apply to Neck Snap damage since the target can defend on the turn after the initial attack.

A vibro knife to the vitals or skull is far easier, more effective and point efficient.

Wan-Wen

I believe Wan-Wen was created as a Banshee pilot meant to challenge Julius and Tae and also to be able to instakill Zen with portable missiles. She was equipped with a dirt cheap Startrodder ML-707 Missile Launcher with enough firepower to kill any human-like character in any sort of armor instantly. She had the Skipjacking technique which means any target would need to dodge at -5 or be vaporized instantly. Range is 4k with no range modifiers, so she could hit anyone not obstructed by buildings far out of retaliation range.

If the Sniping rules apply to missiles, she could kill anyone without the benefit of a dodge at -5. Wearing heavy armor is a bad idea when faced with missiles since no personal armor is strong enough to provide any real degree of protection. Also, the missiles are not explosive, so the Cinematic Explosions rule does not apply. It is “dodge at -5 or be vaporized” or “don’t save, be vaporized” if the Sniping rules apply.