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 Quick-Play Inquisitor Combat- Jack Vogel

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Quick-Play Inquisitor Combat

While Inquisitor was originally intended for small combats involving less than half a dozen figures on the tabletop, like most gaming groups, mine has a tendency to overdo things a bit.

Thus, it is not uncommon for our noble war-band to be facing a dozen slavering chaos-cultists, or twenty skittering, tyranid horrors in a single encounter. When this happens, games of Inquisitor tend to get painfully slow, as a system originally intended for an "O.K. Corral in spacesuits" gunfight is simply too complex to handle such a massed battle.

However, Inquisitor is pretty flexible, and with a very few rule changes, it can easily be adapted to handle larger combats.

The Cannon Fodder Theory

For starters, let's consider cinematic, "movie theater" combat. While the stars and the major villains tend to take a lot of wounds, and only gradually lose their combat effectiveness, this is not so for the "cannon fodder" villains, guards, thugs, etc. These guys tend to get shot once and bite the dust. It just is not as important to carve them up in loving detail, as is the case with player characters.

For this reason, when a minor non-player character takes damage in a large battle situation (large is defined as any number the game master thinks would give him a headache) roll for damage on the table below, rather than rolling for normal damage as per the Inquisitor rules:


  Cannon Fodder Damage Table (1d6 or 2d6, see below)
1-2 Glancing Blow: Counts as a hit for all purposes (such as pinning), but the character takes no damage from the wound.
3-4 Reeling Blow: The character takes a serious hit. He is knocked prone and incapacitated (can take no action) for 3 rounds. After this he recovers and can fight on normally.
5-6 Killing Blow: The character is slain.

The damage caused may be lessened or increased as below:

Damage Lessening Factors:
Target has Toughness 60+,
Target is wearing powered armor,
Target is using a force field (not in close combat),
or
Attacker is fighting unarmed or using an improvised weapon.

Damage Increasing Factors:
Attack is by lascannon, heavy bolter, plasma, melta, inferno, power, frost or daemon weapon,
Attacker is using a force weapon AND is a psyker,
Attacker has Strength 80+,
Target has Toughness 30-,
Attacker in close combat has the Blademaster talent,
Attacker in ranged combat has the Deadeye Shot talent,
or
Target is completely unarmored.

If the number of damage lessening factors is greater than the number of damage increasing factors, then roll two dice for damage, and count only the LOWER die. If the number of damage increasing factors is greater than the number of damage lessening factors, then roll two dice for damage, and count only the HIGHER die. If both balance out, then just roll a single die for damage.

Bear in mind that this table is used for bottom level "cannon fodder" characters only. Important villains (even if they are not particularly powerful) and player characters always use the full Inquisitor damage system.


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