Rule 1: When unconscious, a PC may make a CON roll at -1 per 5 points of Stun below 0 on his phase to try and make a recovery. Every failed roll adds a cumulative +1 to the next opportunity.
Rule 2: A roll of an 18 is a critical fumble. Something unusually bad will happen. A roll of a 3 is a critical success. Something unusually good will happen. In combat, a 3 on the attack roll indicates that the attack will do the maximum amount of damage possible.
Rule 3: Knockback and superheroic Endurance + damage addition are in effect.
Rule 4: Every 20 STUN from a single attack (after defenses) = 1 BODY of additional damage.
Rule 5: Combat Luck stacks with any other defenses, which is why there is a limit of 3 PD & 3 ED on it. Combat Luck counts as Hardened defense.
Rule 6: The Piercing rules from page 96 of Dark Champions will be used in this campaign with the following modification in regard to how it interacts with hardened defenses: Each level of Hardened Defenses negates 3-Points of Piercing.
Rule 7: Combining Armor, see page 34 for how this works.
Rule 8: Any attack that hits its target and rolls triples on the to-hit roll, will hit a piece of equipment being carried or worn by the target.
Rule 9: Any Force Wall or Force Field generated by using magic or through the use of esper abilities will count as having the Hardened advantage for free. This specific instance of Hardening will negate any amount of Piercing.
House Rules On Skill Use
Flying Dodge: If a character aborts to the Flying Dodge and uses it in place of a Dive for Cover the character must make a normal dive for cover roll. The Flying Dodge maneuver cannot be used out of combat. In other words characters should not use Flying Dodge to enter a room on the off-chance that an enemy might be there. When you perform a Flying Dodge you have to move at least one hex. The GM may disallow any use of Flying Dodge that he considers an abuse of the rules.
Paramedics: A successful Paramedics roll will heal 1 point of BODY damage on a victim. In the event of multiple separate wounds the point healed is assumed to come from the highest BODY wound. In case of a tie, the person using the skill gets to determine which wound receives the healing.
Resistant Piercing vs. Hardened Defenses
According to the rules as written any amount of Hardening negates any amount of Resistant Piercing. I like the Piercing rules since they allow more precision when creating attacks. Standard Armor Piercing is not as good for modeling this since standard AP simply halves the defenses of the target, because of this you end up with odd results that say a .22-caliber bullet with AP will halve the armor of a battleship.
The odd problem you have with Piercing is this: If I buy a canon that does 4d6 RKA with 6-Points of Resistant Piercing and hit a target with 10 DEF covered by a cloak that adds 2 points of Hardened Defense, it negates all 6-points of Piercing. This is not very realistic either.
Piercing is an Adder, which means that its cost is added to an attack before any Advantage Multipliers are applied. For instance if you have a 10d6 Energy Blast with 3-Points of Resistant Piercing added the Active cost is 59 (50 for the EB plus 9 for the Piercing). If you apply a +1 Advantage to that attack the cost becomes 118 Active Points, essentially each point of Piercing is now costing you 6 points.
My remedy to this situation is this: Each level of Hardened Defenses negates 3-Points of Resistant Piercing. This is what I have chosen for this particular campaign. In other campaigns, for instance a higer-powered Champions game, the Level of Hardening to Piercing ratio may need to be adjusted upward.
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