Rules

## Combat Rules

### **A Few Words About Violence**

If you've played combat-based RPGs or video games for a while, it's easy to forget that in the kind of world where superheroes operate, **most people aren't accustomed to violence**. When someone starts shooting or crashes through a brick wall, most people are going to scream and run. You're different, of course. You run *towards* the smashing and gunfire, but that's part of what makes you a hero. Likewise, even those who might put themselves in the middle of violence, such as street criminals, are only rarely capable of actually killing anyone. Beating them up, maybe, but not killing. **Most people do non-lethal damage in combat because they hold back**, not just because they don't know how.

The superhero genre is distinctly different than other RPG genres, such as mediaeval fantasy or espionage or war. **Superheroes constantly have to work around innocent bystanders and pull their punches with street thugs.** It's just part of the genre; your characters will be so powerful that they have to pull their punches with regular humans in order to avoid killing them. You and your gaming group will have to decide how much of that kind of thing is expected in your game world, and how much the police, the government, and the public will be comfortable with heroes who actually kill the bad guys. As always, it's ultimately up to you, but it is something to think about.

Should you want a game where death is hard to come by you can make it that all hits are non leathal, unless up against a foe immune to nonlethal of course. Should you want a game where knocking people out is hard then all attacks done by leathal weapons (swords, guns, the like. Not fists.) take a -4 penality to hit.

### **Hero Points**

When using *Phoenix*, the Hero Points rules are automatically in play, along with Antiheroes, though the maximum number of Hero Points a character can have increases.

At character creation, Heroes get 6HeP, and then, at every level, you get a number of **Hero Points (HePs) equal to 2 plus one half your character level**, rounded down. Heroes can have up to 6HeP total. Antiheroes, along with gaining a bonus feat, start with 2HeP, gain 1 when they level, and can have up to 2 total. These limits can be increased using the Hero Points feats, as normal.

### **Building Damage**

You can do **damage to a building by simply attacking it.** It's hard to miss a building, but your GM might insist on an attack roll under special circumstances (e.g., you're falling through the air, you've been drugged, etc.).

**Buildings have Hardness ratings** based on what they're made of (wood, stone, steel, concrete, etc.), and they take only ¼ damage from piercing or ballistic attacks. **Buildings are unaffected by NL and are not vulnerable to critical hits or sneak attacks**, but the Demolitions skills and Craft Structural do grant damage multipliers when attacking buildings. If you manage to do sufficient damage to a building, you can trigger its Fortitude save.

GMs should exercise their judgement when it comes to damaging parts of a building that are purely decorative or do not bare any weight. Smashing a building's windows will not ever bring it down, for example, nor will tearing off all the gargoyles.

If your ranged attacks **miss someone who is standing in front of a building**, then the attack strikes the building. If you are **knocked back into a building**, it can take cascading damage. If you and your opponent are both **standing adjacent to a building and either of you misses with a melee attack,** then that attack has a 50% chance of striking the building. Finally, if the **reach of your melee attacks overlaps with a building and you miss** someone who is standing adjacent to or in front of a building, then your attack has a 50% chance of hitting the building. You can avoid hitting buildings for with the feat Precise Strike (see Chapter 4: Feats). Ranged damage, however, is unavoidable. GMs should *not* calculate building damage unless it's necessary, unless there's some chance that the building could actually come down the players, and even then, a little fudged math for the sake of dramatic danger is sometimes part of the GM's job.

Buildings can take damage two ways: by floor or as a whole. If your GM prefers one of these systems over the other, she can choose to use just one. Both is the most accurate, the building might take a bad hit and topple, but it might also have to be pounded until there's nothing left, but either one will do the job.

**By Floor**

Average HPs per floor of various kinds of buildings are indicated on the table below. A two-floor house, for example, has 100 HP. A building with a larger area can have more HPs, at the GM's discretion. Buildings can also have Hardness, as indicated by what they're made of (wood, stone, steel, etc.).

When a single floor's HPs are reduced to zero, then that floor collapses. **If you are inside the building and on a floor that collapses, you take Debris Damage** (see Table 8-1). You get a Reflex save for half that damage (DC 15). If you are within a five-foot step of an exit (door, window, etc.) that takes you out of the building entirely, passing the Reflex save indicates that you leapt out of the building, so you take no damage at all.

If you are **on a floor other than the top** and a higher floor falls on you, then your Reflex save also indicates whether you are **pinned in the rubble**. If you fail, you're pinned. For every round that you're pinned, you take 1d6 NL. If you are rendered unconscious by this NL, you must make a DC 15 Constitution check or start taking 1d6 damage per round. If you die, then at least you're already buried.

If you have **Improved Evasion and save for no damage**, then you managed to find a pocket in the debris. If you are under more than one floor of a building, you have enough breathable air for about 4 hours (see suffocation rules).

When a floor collapses, it and all the floors above it, if any, come crashing down on the floor below. Thus **the Debris Damage of *all* the falling floors is applied to the floor below** the collapsed floor.

**As a Whole**

When a building takes damage as a whole, it has several Failure Thresholds. **Every time the HPs are reduced by the equivalent of one floor's worth of HPs, the building has to roll a Fortitude save** (DC 5, see Table 8-1 for Fort bonuses). If the building fails this check, the whole building falls. The DC for the Fortitude save increases by +2 every time the building has to make this check.

### **Super Attacks**

**"Super" is the *Phoenix* equivalent of "magic."** It's the catch-all term for anything outside of the normal range of human ability. Any in-game effect that has an origin is automatically super. Any attack or effect that comes from an item (mystical, psionic, or supertech) is super. Enhancements granted by mastercraft tools or weapons are not super.

Like magic in standard d20 games, super attacks in *Phoenix* automatically **bypass any DR except DR/- and DR/epic**. Similarly, anything or anyone normally only **hit by magic effects** or attacks can be hit by super attacks. A vampire, for example, can be damaged by a super attack.

**Strength scores of 25 or above are super**, and 24 and below are not. Super Strength also **automatically does lethal damage**, whereas scores of 24 and below do not. Therefore an attack aided by one of those scores, usually Strength or Dexterity, is super as well. A rock (or a car) thrown by someone with a Dexterity of 27 is super. A punch from someone with a Strength of 32 is super.

#### **Super Strength**

Super Strength mostly speaks for itself. You have a higher Strength score and your bonuses go up accordingly.

##### **Slowing a Moving Object**

If you are in the path of a moving object, such as a runaway streetcar or a driverless truck, and you have Super Strength, then you can try to hasten its deceleration. As a full-round action, you can plant your feet on the ground and your hands or shoulders on the object. For every full-round action you spend doing this, you roll a Strength check and reduce the object's remaining HP/feet by that number. The power Mighty Lifting multiplies your Strength bonus for the purposes of making this roll.

If you you are flying, you can use a full-round action to reduce the object's remaining HP/feet by 1d6 per 100 pounds that you can lift. Be sure to take into account the Air Lift enhancement when you calculate your maximum weight.

### **Grapple**

**If you have Super Strength (25+), you are not reduced to half speed if you try to move someone while grappling** because you can just drag them with you. The GM might rule that a particular opponent is simply too heavy for your Super Strength to make a difference (e.g., if you were to try to resist a robot made of gold for example), but in such cases, you can simply consult your Encumbrance stats for your Strength score and resolve the issue that way, if necessary.

### **Knockback**

Knockback happens when you get hit by something big and blunt that sends you flying instead of *just* doing damage to you. **If you make a blunt attack with Super Strength, and it inflicts damage equal to your greater than your target's Knockback Threshold, then that target may be Knocked Back.** Unless you have the Light Knockback feat, you provoke Knockback whether you want to or not. Your Knockback Threshold is a fairly simply formula:

**10 + Strength modifier + Fortitude save + size modifier**

GMs might rule that a slashing attack with a particularly large weapon, such as an over-sized axe, might provoke Knockback.

If you are Knocked Back, you take damage normally, and your enemy (or you, if you're making an attack), may make a Bull Rush attempt as a free action against you that doesn't provoke attack of opportunity. The creature making the bull rush attempt cannot move with the creature being Knocked Back. The resultant distance travelled as part of this bull rush is called the Knockback Distance.

**Size modifiers** apply to your Knockback Threshold, as above.

If you **provoke knockback as part of an iterative attack**, you make your full attack regardless of where in the sequence the knockback occurred, and make your bull rush attempt after the iterative attacks have finished.

You may treat any Bull Rush attempts made normally as Knockback (though you don't need to beat an opponent's Knockback Threshold) if it would be beneficial.

### **Mercy Blow**

Any time that you deal so much damage that you would outright kill your opponent, you can instead choose to bring the opponent to HP -1 and stabilised: unconscious and down, but not losing HP.

### **Staple**

Stapling is when you pin someone to a wall or other surface by their clothes using a piercing weapon or a projectile that is more than a few inches long (i.e., arrow, bolt, throwing knife, etc.). The target must be wearing clothes that reasonably have some spare cloth to pin (i.e., no skin tights or form-fitting armour), and they must be standing in front of and adjacent to a surface that your weapon can pierce. **To perform the Staple, you must be either in mêlée range or, with a projectile, within one range increment or 30 feet (whichever is less), and you must hit the target's Touch AC.** If you succeed, the target is Stapled to the wall or surface and has to either **rip their clothes as a move action** (to free themselves), or **take a move action to remove the staple, which requires a DC 10 Strength check,** but results in them having the staple in hand. GMs might raise the DC of the Strength check if the clothing in question is particularly tough, like a biker jacket. Increase the DC of the Strength check by +2 for every additional staple. **For example**, if you use three attacks to throw three daggers at a target and Staple her to a wall, the Strength DC is 16. See the feat Improved Stapling for more options with this combat manoeuvre.

### **Sunder and Disarm**

These manoeuvres are not different in *Phoenix*, but we think it's important to remember all the things you can do with them other than just destroying someone's weapon or taking it away.

Never forget that you can **target items** that someone is holding or wearing, so you can snatch a mobile phone or slash someone's belt off, for example. Superheroes do this kind of thing all the time. So do gunslingers (shooting things out of people's hands) and swashbucklers (slicing off clothing), and superheroes are closely related to both of those other kinds of heroes. You can also snatch away the detonator for the C4 that's been planted on the city dam, or you can smash the bottle of mystic potion that a villain drinks to gain her powers.

**Attacking the enemy and doing damage directly is not your only option.** Destroying and/or taking props away can often resolve a fight.

**Zero-Gravity Combat**

There are no new manoeuvres for Zero-G combat, but a few rule changes do apply. In Zero-G, you do not need Super Strength to provoke Knockback, everyone's Knockback Threshold is 10, and Knockback distance applies to both your target and yourself (because of Newton's Second Law... look it up). If you can fly or otherwise maintain your position in space, you do not incur Knockback on yourself.

## Movement

### **Falling Speed**

When a body falls, its speed increases until it reaches terminal velocity (i.e., the fastest it can fall). We've split the difference between simplicity and realism by saying that you fall speed starts at 200 ft. / round and increases by 200 ft. each round until you reach 1000 ft. / round, which is your terminal velocity. Falling damage applies just as before: 1d6 / 10 ft.. If for some insane reason, you want to fall *faster* (or slower, which would actually be a great idea), you can use a Acrobatics check.

### **Races and Chases**

Racing and chasing happens a lot in comics and action movies, but under standard *d20* rules, chases are pretty boring. If the racers have the same speed, then there's no contest. All involved characters take their movement and nobody catches anyone. If the racers have different speeds, then the faster one is guaranteed to eventually catch up. There are factors that can make chases more interesting however, specifically obstacles.

**Obstacles include anything that keep the characters from moving their maximum speed** , either double-moves or Running, and you use the Climb and Acrobatics skills to overcome those obstacles. The rules do not essentially change, except that the GM will have to know those skills very well and have DCs readied before the game or just get comfortable with estimating them on the fly. If and when GMs set up a chase in a game, or if one just breaks out, they must remember to place lots of interesting things in the racer's way: cars (both moving and stationary), baby carriages, pets, bike messengers, gates, stairwells, locked doors, plate-glass windows, fire escapes, anything and everything that slows the characters down and makes them use their skills. The more the characters use their skills, the more the chase is decided by those skills and not just by their base speeds. Of course, someone with Super Speed is probably going to catch someone without it, but even a speedster can trip and fall down an open sewer. It's not the same as trashing the scenery, but **remember that the environment is half the fun of any good action sequence in a film, so fill that environment with *stuff***.

For straight-out chases, the Sprint feat creates the ability to have slightly different running speeds, and therefore stage chases that are potentially quite close, and therefore more exciting. **Any players who have characters who use this feat will have to keep track of exactly how many feet in excess of a full square they are, per round.** For example, a character who Sprints 38 feet per round needs to keep that floating extra 3 feet in mind and add a square of movement every second round. As long as each individual player (including the GM) keeps track, and they all compare notes, you can tell *exactly* where people are during a chase, in which a few feet (i.e., arm's length) can decide the outcome of the scene.

#### **Super-Speed Chases**

Such encounters can present a practical problem when it comes to mapping. If a chase breaks out between characters who can move fast enough that a standard battlemat will no longer be big enough, **it's best to move to a relative map instead of a fixed map**. On a relative map, you **place your racers/chasers in positions relative to each other** based on their respective speeds and resolve the chase with the assumption they are continuously on the move.

**For example**, if you have two characters moving at speeds of 120 ft. and 150 ft. respectively, the slower character will be 30 ft. behind at the end of the first round, 60 ft. behind at the end of the second, and so on (assuming both are moving at maximum speed). Alternatively, if the chasers are moving at a Run, then you'll want to change the map's scale. Instead of 5-ft. squares, you can move to 10-ft. or even 20-ft.

When speedsters Run, they can easily cover hundreds of clicks over the course of a combat. If you're math-fu is strong, **you can figure the lowest-common denominator of their two speeds and set the map's scale to that number**. For example, if two characters were moving at 360 ft. and 400 ft. per round respectively, you could set a scale of 40-ft. squares because both of their speeds are evenly divisible by 40. On that scale, the faster character could move up to 10 squares, and the slower only 9 squares. Of course, each square still represents 40 feet of space, but now you can depict the chase more easily.

**If you have a chase in which the characters move at a Run, then don't sweat small amounts of lateral movement.** Technically, you can Run only in straight lines, but over the course of several hundred feet, a little drift is acceptable, so the chasers might Run along a curved freeway or weave in and around traffic. If it's just for flavour, this kind of thing can help to make a chase more dramatic. This requires a certain amount of improvisation on the part of the GM and a willingness to rearrange the map on the fly in order to simulate the new environments that your chasers might end up in over the course of the Chase itself. If you run your game in a real city that you know well, you can even estimate how many blocks your characters traverse and the neighbourhoods that they run through, from a downtown core, to outlying residential areas, to suburbs, even out into the hinterlands, and then all the way back.

If the participants have **Additional Actions**, then they can of course keep attacking each other or interfering with/saving innocent bystanders the whole time. In fact, that kind of thing is encouraged! The name of the game is *danger* after all (the name is actually "phoenix," but you know what we mean). The important thing in this kind of Chase, for the GM, is to *keep describing the scenery in detail*. Just switching positions relative to each other on the battlemap isn't nearly as fun as knowing that the wake from your chase just set off a whole block of car alarms, or that you've just passed through Edmonton when you started in Seattle.

### **Size Categories**

The size column indicates the height of a biped or the length of a quadruped, from nose to rump. The weight column assumes a flesh-and-bone creature. These are all standard d20 numbers with the exception of the new category "ginormous," which we added because colossal wasn't big enough. Note, though, that any creature/object that is a certain size doesn't mean that it fills every centimetre of the space it takes up. It means that a living creature needs that much space in order to *fight* in it.

A creatures size modifier applies to its attacks and Armor Class.

A creatures special size modifier applies to it’s Combat Maneuver Bonus (CMB) and Combat Maneuver Defense (CMD).

### Super Speed

**Before you even do the math**, ask yourself if this is information you actually need to know because if it's not, then don't bother. If you intend to use your flight or running speed to actually travel from place to place, especially during a game, then you'll want to know how fast you can move, but if you're concerned only with movement during combat, then just use your speed in feet per round.

The table itself bears some explanation. First, all speeds are listed in both miles per hour (**mph**) for our American friends and then in kilometres per hour for the rest of us (**kph**).

**If you take levels in Speed Multiplier you need to find your new base speed and cross-reference it to your Running Multiplier, if any.** If you start with a Base Speed of 30 feet, for example, and then purchase 3 levels of Speed Multiplier (x4), then your Base Speed would be 120 feet (30 ft. x4). If you also purchased a Running Multiplier of x12, then your full Running speed would be 1,440 feet per round, which works out to 175kph (109mph). You'd zoom past highway traffic.

All of these calculations apply regardless of whether you're running, flying, driving, or swinging on a web-line. If you can go 120 feet as a move action while riding your bicycle, then you can travel at 22kph (16mph), for example.

To get some real-world perspective, a Speed of 2880 ft. (90 ft. Move, x32 Run) is 524 kph/327 mph, which is just shy of the speed of sound, or Mach 1. So Mach 2, twice the speed of sound, is about 1047kph/655mph (90 ft. Move, x64 Run). Finally, 891,709kph/557,318mph (300 ft. Hustle, x16348 Run) is creeping up on 0.1 C, or 1/10th the speed of light. The idea that someone can move at these kinds of speeds by slapping their feet against the ground is, of course, ridiculous, but ridiculousness is sort of the point of a superhero game, so just enjoy.

Use the following **formulas**:

**MPH = (Base Speed x Running Speed) / 8.8**

**KPH = MPH x 1.6**

If you have a non-standard base speed or you can sometimes move at different Base Speeds (for example if you can Size Shift), then please do all these calculations before you get to the gaming table. It's only polite.

### **Zero-G Movement**

In Zero-G, all your attacks and Acrobatics checks are at -4, unless you have Astrobatics. You cannot perform a Run action in space, but if you can fly, then you can move freely as if every direction were "lateral" movement (i.e., there is no up or down). However, if your ability to fly relies on being in an atmosphere (i.e., Wings) and you're in the vacuum of space, then you're out of luck.

If you can't fly, you move in zero-G environments by pushing off of one fixed point and "landing" on another. For mundane movement, just floating around inside a ship for example, there's no need to make any rolls. In combat or other dangerous situations in which timing is important, however, you must essentially **throw yourself** from one place to another, which requires either a **ranged touch attack or Acrobatics check** (player's choice). You have a **range increment of 30 feet** and the **DC for the attack/Acrobatics** check equals the  AC of the square you want to arrive on. An object or surface that takes up a five-foot square area has a  AC of 10, but a medium-sized object is AC 14, a small object is AC 18, and so on.

However, you do not automatically stop on a square. Instead, you have to land on a large surface or grab a fixed object to arrest your movement, which you can automatically do at the end of a single move action. If you take a double-move, however, you must make a **Reflex save (DC equals 10 +2 per 10 feet of Acrobatics distance)** to arrest your movement.

If there is nothing to grab on to in that square, then you keep moving, involuntarily, at your movement rate. Moving in this manner does not count as a move action because you expend no effort on maintaining your speed or manoeuvring around objects. You can, of course, use actions to try to arrest your movement.

### **Low-Gravity Movement**

If you find yourself in a low-gravity environment, as opposed to a zero-G environment, the easiest thing to do is **apply the same -4 to Jump and Acrobatics** checks. Assuming 0.5G (half of Earth's gravity), you would Jump twice as high and you take half-damage from falling. You cannot Run unless you take the Astrobatics feet because you have to learn to travel with half of your weight, and **thrown weapons and projectiles take a -4** penalty because they do not arc through the air in the same way, although firearms are basically unaffected.

If you want to get very specific about it, you can actually calculate all of these bonuses/penalties based on the amount of gravity present. For example, the Moon has 1/5th the gravity of Earth (0.2G), so your Jumps would be five times longer/higher (i.e., multiply by 5), and falling damage would be five times less (divide by 5). In addition, if you want to be precise, instead of applying a flat -4 penalty, you could apply a -1 for every 0.1G different from Earth, so the Moon (0.2G) would be a -8. Once you get lower than 0.1G, you are effectively in a zero-gravity environment, and those rules would apply.

### **High-Gravity Movement**

If you find yourself in a high-gravity environment, you take a **-8 to Acrobatics checks**. Assuming 2G (double Earth's gravity), you would **Jump half as high and take twice as much damage from falling**. You would have to calculate your speed based on adjusted encumbrance, as well. Thrown weapons and projectiles take a -4 penalty because they do not arc through the air the same way. **High-gravity also halves the range increments** of all ranged weapons, including firearms (e.g., if it's normally 100 ft., in high-G it's 50 ft.).

If you want to get very specific about it, you can calculate all of these bonuses/penalties based on the amount of gravity present. On a planet that has three times Earth's gravity (3G), your jumps would be 1/3 as high and falling damage would triple. In addition, if you want to precise, instead of applying a flat -4 penalty, you could apply a -4 for every 1G different from Earth, so 2G would be a -4, 3G -8, 4G -12, etc. Range increments would, likewise, be divided by the G-rating of the environment: divide by 2 for a 2G environment, by 3 for 3G, etc. At a certain point, increased gravity makes you unable to move at all (i.e., when your weight exceeds your maximum lift), but well before that point, your own limbs would be so heavy that even lifting them to aim a weapon would be nigh impossible. If and when that happens, the GM is entirely within her rights to declare that you cannot make attacks at all any more.