This skill includes the entire spectrum of fighting from smacking somebody with your bare hands (or tentacles or whatever) to firing a blaster or hurling a grenade up to operating a starship's weapons systems.

Professional Marines wear red uniforms.

Use Combat for:

• Attacking with Personal Weapons or unarmed
• Attacking with Ship's Weapons – Cannon, Missile Bay (see pages 103, or 136)
• Grappling
• Hurling Grenades
• Shooting a Fighter Gun (see page 122)

If you find yourself on the same ship as a hostile, you might want to take an action to reduce their readiness. This is what personal combat is for.

These are dealt with exactly as per ranged attacks except that you must be adjacent to your target to make a melee attack.

The most basic and obvious type of personal combat is shooting your weapon at an enemy that you have in your line of sight. To do so, make a Combat skill check against the target number of your target. If you succeed, consult the weapon to see what effect you have. Most deal damage.

There is a list of modifiers to the difficulty to shoot on page 299. Butted weapons have a range band of 10. Most other weapons have a range band of 5 but grenades and rocket launchers have special rules.

If you can draw a straight uninterrupted line from the center of your square to the center of your target's square, you have line of sight. If the line passes through any illustration (including corners) it is blocked. See illustration on the right.

If your target is not within 5 squares, you are at a penalty to shoot them of +1. The range band is 5 squares and each complete range band you are beyond adds an additional penalty of +1 to shoot. Note that butts add +5 to the range band, a scope halves the distance while an upgraded scope divides it by 3. So a character shooting a ranged weapon with a butt and a scope would have no penalty up to 20 squares away and then a +1 penalty up to 40 squares away.

If you miss everything with a ranged attack, you roll damage anyway to see if your errant shot breaks the module the target is in. Add a damage marker to the module and score one point of hull damage for each 6 that comes up. This damage does not cause OOC. It is not subject to rerolls for luck or special abilities such as “Brutal”, or “Cutthroat”. See page 108 for broken modules.

Add +1 to the difficulty to shoot your target if there is a conscious character along the line of sight. If you miss by exactly one, you might hit the first intervening character. If there are two or more intervening characters, each adds one to the difficulty and you assign the possible chance to hit them in order. If you miss by exactly two you might hit the second and so forth. To see if you hit an indicated target by accident, roll an attack against their target number without applying any other factors. You do not add or subtract for skill or any modifiers or apply professional reroll. Simply roll 2 dice and compare the result to their target number. You may spend Luck but no other rerolls. If you roll their target number or higher, they are hit.

If you are diagonally adjacent to a target, you are considered to have line of sight and can target or assist them at no penalty.

If the target is Peeking and you can't trace line of sight to both squares they are straddling, your shoot will be at a penalty of +3.

(Against a ship's module or personal equipment)

If you want to attack a personal item or a ship's module, you are going to make an attack just as if you were attacking a person, with the following differences.

The target number for a module is 3. You do not get the “prone target” bonus against a module. The target number for personal equipment is 11. You will get the “prone target” +3 bonus to shoot personal equipment if it is not carried, or if it is carried by a prone person.

If you hit a module, roll the damage dice and add a damage marker to the module for each 6 and score a point of hull damage. If you hit a personal item, roll the damage dice and break it on a 6. A personal item that is doubly broken is destroyed.

Weapons indicated as “Dangerous” in their descriptions generate their damage against the user when the skill check to operate them is doubles (both dice of the skill check match). For explosives, this includes skill checks to quickdraw them.

If it is an area effect weapon, it will harm the operator and those in the operator's square. This is in addition to harming the intended target if the skill check was high enough to indicate success (box cars on our skill check hurts you with your enemy blade in addition to harming your target).

Example: An attack with an Energy Blade is a 3,3 after resolving professional rerolls and Luck if any. That is doubles, so the attacker will take damage. If the attacker also has sufficient skill to make this roll a hit (they have at least a 2 skill and their target's target number is 8 ), they also deal damage to their target.

Area effect personal weapons ignore the target numbers of their intended victims. Instead, you'll have a target number of 8 for the Combat skill check to generate an effect.

Some area effect weapons (Sonic Beam, Plasma Pistol, Grenades) affect all adjacent squares, in line of sight, or a line of squares as specified.

Sonic Beams and Plasma Guns affect an area specified in their description. For other Area Effect weapons, count the amount by which your skill check exceeded the target number of 8 then designate a number of contiguous squares in line of sight to affect based on that amount. For a plasma projector, the first of these squares must be adjacent to the weapon operator. Note that succeeding by zero doesn't affect anybody.

Since area effect weapons aren't directly targeted, they don't trigger or allow such effects such as but not limited to: Dirty Fighter, Brutal, Cutthroat, Stunner, etc.

Any weapon can be modified with an upgrade action to deal one less point of damage per die but the lowest die of damage cannot be healed until the end of the campaign turn. This is not standard UREF equipment as the practice was outlawed by the Zoallan Compromise. Characters will not earn pay from the UREF when they use a dirty weapon on a mission.

Weapons that deal fire damage put the target on fire on an even damage result. See page 150 for fire details.

(Combat vs. 11)

Attack a piece of personal equipment. Roll damage. Any 6 breaks it. The character holding the object makes an Athletics check vs. 11 or drops it. Broken personal equipment can be repaired with a Science skill check action of 11. Doubly broken personal equipment is destroyed.

Pushing, holding, and grabbing fall under the umbrella of grappling.

To make a grappling attack, declare an adjacent target who may take a free melee attack on you, then you both make a Combat skill check against your own respective target numbers. Note that your check takes place in your own square and your target's check takes place in their square for purposes of penalties, assistance, etc.

The character with the most successes chooses one of the following to do to his opponent: damage, take, throw, or hinder. Note that this means you might initiate an attack and find yourself getting the worst of it. A defenseless opponent makes your check 3 easier.

Deal one die of damage with a maximum equal to your Athletics skill, or deal damage with your natural weapons (if any).

Take one object from your opponent. The object can be from the opponent's hand or on their person. It goes into your hand or you may drop it as a free action. (Technically, you could also “give” here to apply a flare or electrocuffs or administer drugs to an unwilling target).

You could also “take” the pin on any grenade they are carrying and arm it as if it were in your hand.

Move the opponent a number of squares in line of sight equal to the amount your successes exceeded your opponent's successes. If they would go through an airlock, they get a passive Athletics check of 8 to catch themselves in the doorway.

Add the amount by which your successes exceeded those of your opponent to the difficulty of all the opponent's Actions (active skill checks) and subtract it from their Move value until the end of their next turn. If their move value is reduced to zero or below, they cannot move.

1. Declare Target.
2. Free Attack – Target may take a free melee attack against you.
3. Grapple – Make a Combat skill check against your own target number. Reroll with professional reroll if any, and Luck. Count your successes.
4. Target makes a Combat skill check against their own target number with professional rerolls and Luck as available. Count their successes.

If either character has more successes, they get to choose whether to Damage, Take, Throw or Hinder their opponent.

You may hurl a melee weapon as a ranged attack. The range band is your Athletics. This can not be combined with a multi-weapon attack unless you are hurling two objects.

You may land a devastating blow on an adjacent target that is unresisting (stunned, unconscious, or willing).

You must take a Prepare action first. The target may not move or be moved between the time you take your Prepare action and the time you deliver your coup de grace. Make an attack (with a single weapon). Roll for damage twice but ignore any damage reduction.

Explosives can be placed this way against a single target (like a character or a door) or the module. In this case, all other objects are considered not in line of sight, or around one corner.

Note that a Grenadier cannot place explosives as a free action. They may arm, throw or drop them as a free action but must take an action to place them in addition to the Prepare action for the Coup of Grace.

This is a special kind of double attack action. Whenever you are making an attack as an action (not a free attack for somebody entering your square) you may take the double attack action and choose to attack with two weapons of like type (two melee weapons or two ranged weapons or two hurled weapons) but both attacks will be at a penalty of +6 difficulty.

You may never attack with two weapons that are area effect weapons, or the Voltrex.

These attacks are simultaneous so they don't benefit or suffer from advantages or penalties imposed by one another (i.e. a hit with a stunner will not make the second attack at +3 to hit for a stunned target) but you may choose the resolution order (your stunner hit lands last so your blaster shot doesn't wake the target up). Note that hitting with two ion weapons allows the second weapon to gain the benefit of increased ionization.

On the action when you could deliver the Coup de Grace action, you may go on overwatch to do so. This allows you to be on overwatch to deliver the Coup de Grace.

You may deliver it at any time as long as your target is adjacent. If the target attempts to take an action or move, your Coup de Grace will take precedence.

ANY ATTACK WITH TWO WEAPONS IS DANGEROUS!

Treat the weapons as if they are dangerous (page 38). Rolling doubles in your skill check will cause them to damage you. If either weapon is already dangerous, doubles on either shot will cause both to damage you.

Note that you cannot use a double attack in conjunction with Charger, Dervish, Shock Trooper, Trampler, etc. or when people move into your square because these abilities give you free attacks and you may only take a double attack with an action. You can use this ability with Nimble and Battle Frenzied because they give you full actions (even though the actions may be restricted).