Awareness

 

A character shouldn’t do anything concerning other characters including friendly ones unless they are aware of them and what they are doing.

 

Vision

A character will be aware of everything in the open and that they have a line of sight to, unless he is otherwise engaged in some activity (like combat or shooting) which requires all of their attention.

A)     A character may be aware of a character in line of sight not in the open depending how much the other character is moving and whether you are specifically looking around. A character can spend one or more actions looking around in which case he can take an initiative test. They are assumed to do this as part of a pause for breath action. If the initiative test is passed then, they will be aware of characters in cover nearby and so forth. He may see some characters and not others. For example a character crouching in cover will be harder to spot than a character sprinting through the woods. The more actions they spend looking the more likely they are to see someone.

B)      Cover – apply a –5% modifier to the initiative test for every location of a character behind cover.

C)      Speed – Add 2% to a characters chance of spotting for every yard the character moved last turn.

D)      Range – For every full 10 yards over 20 yards apply a –5% modifier to the initiative test.

E)       Looking – A character looking at a particular feature has a +20% chance to see anyone inside/behind it. Be sure the character has reason to do this to avoid the “I’m looking into those woods with the inquisitor in” routine.

F)       Looking can be made into a combined action but chances will be halved (or –2% for every yard moved walking, sneaking or running).

G)      Conditions – Nighttime, all line of sight is reduced to 1/10th of character initiative.

                                                               i.      Weather, range modifiers should be doubled, tripled or quadrupled depending on the conditions. Light rain- doubled, heavy rain- tripled, thunderstorm- quadrupled.

H)      Aiming – A character aiming is only aware of things between him and his target or within 2yards of the target.

I)        Characters in close combat are only aware of their opponent(s).

J)        A character becomes immediately aware if any character fires within their line of sight unless the gun is fitted with a flash suppressant.

 

Hearing

These are the ranges at which the character can determine where they came from. At longer range they will hear them but not know which direction they came from. As with seeing, hearing is affected by other factors. A character firing on full auto is unlikely to hear someone running behind them, a thunderstorm will halve all hearing distances, and so on. Similarly a character running across a metal decking will make more noise than one sneaking through a snowdrift. If the spend an action listening, hearing ranges increase by 50%.

Pistol shot

100 yards

Basic weapon shot

150 yards

Heavy weapon shot

200 yards

Sneaking

1 yard

Walking/crawling

5 yards

Running

10 yards

Sprinting/evading

15 yards

Smashing glass

50 yards

Door banging

30 yards

Shouting heard

30 yards

Shouting understood

20 yards

Conversation

Distance between talking characters

 

Helmets – For all helmets deduct ¼ to all hearing distances (rounding to the nearest yard).

Open helm

-15% to vision based tests

-25% to hearing based tests

 

Closed helm

-25% to vision based tests

-35% to hearing based tests

Other senses

Characters can also feel and smell other characters but these won’t be used very often. The GM should adjudicate if and when these are appropriate.

 

Other types of awareness.

If using a comm-link one action might let you say, “there’s one up the tower”, whilst two would be needed to say “there’s a cultist with a missile launcher up on the third storey of tower”.

 

Backstabbing

If a character can sneak into combat with a character outside their arc of vision then they can backstab. Roll to hit with the attackers Ws with no modifiers. If the character misses then they just do normal damage, etc. If they hit they automatically get a critical hit and can add or deduct up to 20% from the location roll. Backstab attacks cant be parried! If the defender survives the backstab and is still standing then they automatically turn to face the attacker and normal close combat ensues.