Main Combat Article

Combat in Armada is designed to be quick, deadly, and often leaves lasting injury to even an

experienced character. The system is designed this way in order to inspire players to consider all

options before engaging in violence. The world of Armada is a wild place, and there is no shortage

of violence, or death.

The Armada combat system is very easy to learn. There are a few terms that it helps to know before

beginning combat.


  Initiative. Initiative is determined by making a contested initiative roll amongst all combatants. The

winner of this roll gains a few advantages in the first round of combat. The first benefit that winning

initiative conveys is an addition five foot increment on all movement actions. The second benefit is a

plus one bonus to both attack and defense. Initiative is held by the player each round unless one of

the following happens. The player's character is injured and their opponent is not, experiences a

change in mental state, or both combatants experience an injury, in which case, initiative is rolled

again with the new injury modifiers.


   Round. A round is the most common increment  of time used in combat.  A round is six seconds

long. Each round is broken up into segments.


   Segment. A round is broken up into segments, Each segment represents one standard action that

can be perform in a round. The default amount of segments in a round is three, although particularly

skilled or fast beings may have four or even five segments per round.


   Attack value.  The sum of a character's Fitness, Combat Proficiency, and a die roll that is based on

the weapon used to attack. This sum is reduced by the opponent's Defense value and the number that

remains is the damage that is applied to the health chart.


   Defense value. The sum of a character's Fitness and any armor or dodge modifier that the character

possesses. It reduces the opponents Attack value.


   Action cards. These are used declare the actions taken during a round. Typically there is one action

card per segment, however, some actions take longer than one segment. There is typically one action

card for each attack type, each body location and each guard position, as well as movement and any

specialized action that a character may possess.