TROUBLE IN AKITON (Inactive)

Game Master Vrog Skyreaver

Chase Rules:

Chases take place in three Phases. Just as in Spaceship combat, all participants complete each phase before going onto the next one. At the start of a chase, roll initiative checks:

Phase One: Piloting

Each Pilot chooses a maneuver and then makes the required check. The maneuvers are listed below:

Break Free (Move):

Check: 5 + Enemy Vehicle's KAC

You attempt a Piloting check to disengage from an engagement with other vehicles.

If the engagement includes multiple enemy vehicles, the DC equals the highest KAC among the enemy vehicles + 5 per enemy vehicle beyond the first.

If all parties are willing to end the engagement, no Piloting check is required to break free.

Double Maneuver (Full-Round Action):

Check: Varies (Special: Each at -4)

You can take two of the aforementioned pilot actions, but take a –4 penalty to each Piloting check or other skill check.

You take the pilot actions in succession, but can choose your second action after taking the first one and can take an action more than once.

If you don’t want to use your second action, you forfeit it but still take the penalty to your first check.

Unlike other pilot actions, a double maneuver takes your full action.

If your vehicle is significantly faster than the other vehicles in the chase, you have an advantage when performing a double maneuver.

If your vehicle’s full speed is at least 50 feet faster than the fastest enemy vehicle, you take only a –2 penalty when performing a double maneuver.

Regardless of how many pilot actions you take as part of a double maneuver, you move forward at most one zone during the chase progress phase.

Engage Another Vehicle (Move):

Check: Enemy Vehicle's KAC

You attempt a Piloting check to engage your vehicle with an enemy vehicle in the same zone.

Two allied vehicles can engage freely; this is useful to allow people on one vehicle to board the other.

In both cases, your vehicle then automatically becomes engaged with all other vehicles in the engagement.

You can make melee attacks against those on another vehicle only if your vehicle is engaged with it (see Combat phase below for more information).

Evade (Move):

Check: 10 + Vehicle's Item Level

You can attempt a Piloting check to grant your vehicle a +2 circumstance bonus to its AC for 1 round.

If you evade twice, the bonuses aren’t cumulative.

Keep Pace (Move):

Check: 10 + Vehicle's Item Level

You attempt a Piloting check to stay in the same position in the chase.

If you’re successful, your vehicle moves forward during the chase progress phase.

If you fail, your vehicle falls back one zone during that phase.

Many other pilot actions can also result in a vehicle moving forward one zone during the chase progress phase, but they have a higher DC, increasing the chance the pilot will fail.

Slow Down (Move):

Check: None

The Vehicle does not advance in the Chase Progress Phase.

Speed Up (Move):

Check: 17 + Vehicle's Item Level

You attempt a Piloting check to get ahead, moving forward one zone immediately on a success.

If the vehicle encounters any hazards or similar effects that occur upon entering a zone, they trigger immediately.

The vehicle later moves forward one additional zone in the chase progress phase, even on a failed heck, unless you failed the check by 5 or more.

Trick (Move):

Check: 15 + Vehicle's Item Level

You can try a risky maneuver, use the terrain, or take an unconventional route to foil pursuers.

You attempt a skill check; this skill check could be a Piloting check if the ploy requires intricate maneuvering, but it might instead be a Bluff, Stealth, or other skill check at the GM’s discretion.

If you succeed, the Piloting checks of all vehicles behind you take a –2 penalty for 1 round.

You can attempt multiple tricks with the double maneuver action, but the penalties imposed on the vehicles behind you aren’t cumulative.

Penalties from multiple different pilots who are ahead and successfully perform tricks, however, are cumulative.

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Phase Two: Chase Progress

Rules:

Advance Vehicles

The GM moves forward by one zone all vehicles whose pilots succeeded at a minimum of one required check. If a vehicle’s pilot deliberately slowed down or she failed all the Piloting checks attempted, her vehicle doesn’t move forward.

If a pilot attempted to keep pace and failed, her vehicle instead moves back one zone.

If a pilot attempted to speed up and failed by less than 5, her vehicle still moves forward one zone now. Because a pilot has to fail all checks to stay put, a pilot who tried to speed up twice would stay put only if she failed both checks by 5 or more.

The slow down action supersedes the forward movement from other successful Piloting checks, so if the pilot succeeded at the evade and slow down actions, she’d get the bonus to her vehicle’s AC but wouldn’t move forward. Treat uncontrolled vehicles as if their pilots had failed all Piloting checks.

If a vehicle is engaged with another and fails all its checks, it still moves forward along with another engaged vehicle, provided that vehicle would be advanced by the GM. However, the opposing vehicle gains all bonuses from being a zone ahead (even though it’s in the same zone). If all the vehicles in an engagement fail all their checks, none move.

Hazards and other effects of moving into a zone trigger immediately (see Chase Environments below).

Escaping and Getting Left Behind

You leave a chase if you escape or get left behind. During the chase progress phase, you escape if you end up two zones ahead of all adversaries, and you get left behind if you end up two zones behind. If you would escape from a chase but don’t want to do so, you can voluntarily move back to being only one zone ahead in the chase progress phase.

It’s possible for you to rejoin a chase if you’ve been left behind (or if you already escaped and want to later support allies with an ambush), but it requires extraordinary circumstances and happens at the GM’s discretion.

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Phase Three: Combat

Rules:

The final phase of each round is combat.

This happens in initiative order, and characters can take the usual actions they can in combat, with the following adjustments:

Pilots can also act during the combat phase, as long as they have any actions remaining to spend. Because of the motion involved in a chase, all attacks take the penalty listed in the vehicle’s Modifiers entry; However, because the vehicles are all moving at high speed, the differences in speed cancel out somewhat, so combatants take the normal penalty instead of the higher penalty for full speed.

Ranged Attacks:

Passengers on and pilots of vehicles can attempt ranged attacks against other vehicles or their passengers in the same zone or one zone away. Unless otherwise specified, these ranged attacks follow the normal rules for attacking from vehicles (see Attacking from Vehicles below). To determine the range between two vehicles, (see Relative Positioning below).

As a passenger, you can attack with your ranged weapons or abilities.

If you’re a gunner, you can attack with the vehicle’s mounted weapons, as described in Firing Vehicle Weapons below.

As a pilot, you can attack only if you have a standard action left and can make a full attack only if you left the vehicle uncontrolled in the pilot actions phase.

Passengers can attack an enemy vehicle directly, but targeting riders or pilots can be difficult. Vehicles (except for entirely open vehicles) usually grant their passengers some degree of cover.

Due to high speeds, wind, and other factors that may or may not be part of the environment (see Chase Environments below), some weapons might not work effectively during a chase. For example, it’s nearly impossible to throw a grenade from one vehicle to another while moving at high speeds. The GM has final say on what can and can’t be used during a chase and the penalties incurred for difficult attacks.

Melee Attacks:

Anyone in a vehicle can make melee attacks against those on an enemy vehicle with which their own vehicle is engaged. You can make melee attacks against those in an enemy vehicle only with reach weapons, and such targets typically have some cover provided by their vehicle. Even when your vehicles are engaged and you’re using a reach weapon, you do not threaten any squares of the other vehicle.

Boarding:

If two vehicles are engaged and you are a passenger, you can attempt to move from one vehicle to the other as a move action that provokes attacks of opportunity.

This is like boarding a vehicle in normal combat, but it also requires a successful Acrobatics or Athletics check with a DC equal to 5 + the KAC of the vehicle you’re boarding.

Failure by less than 5 means that you are unable to board the other vehicle and remain on your vehicle. If you fail by 5 or more, you fall from the vehicle and land prone.

You take double the normal falling damage for the distance of your fall or 1d6 falling damage if you fall less than 10 feet. Once you have boarded an enemy vehicle, you take the attack penalty from that vehicle, not your former one.

Collisions:

When piloting a vehicle, you can attempt a Piloting check (DC = the enemy vehicle’s KAC) as a standard action to smash into another vehicle you’re engaged with.

If you’re successful, your vehicle deals its collision damage to the enemy vehicle, and takes half that much damage itself. A vehicle’s collision damage is listed in the Attack (Collision) entry of its statistics.

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Game Terms

Zones:

Chases take place in a minimum of two zones: the first zone is the zone the leader(s) of the chase are in; the second and subsequent zones are for the pack following the leader. See Escaping and Getting Left Behind (above) for more information.

Attacking From Vehicles:

The vehicle imposes these modifiers on the attack rolls and listed skill checks of its pilot and passengers. The attack roll penalty worsens at full speed, as indicated in parentheses.

Chase Environments:

Where a chase occurs can dramatically influence how it plays out.

Heavy traffic, obstacles, and winding paths could all impede a chase or add strategic options for the vehicles involved.

The GM decides the environment’s effects on the chase, and the sample chase environments can give the GM some ideas.

The environment might affect the entire chase or only some zones—whatever makes the most sense for the scene.

Designating Environmental Zones: The GM should reveal an environmental zone once it comes into view of the foremost vehicle in the chase.

Types of Environments

Environments can affect vehicles in a chase in five main ways.

Active Hazards:

Hazards can directly impede or damage the vehicles in a chase. They ight be persistent or temporary.

Some hazards make one attack against a vehicle when that vehicle enters the hazard’s zone. The hazard might trigger only once, or it might attack every vehicle that enters the zone.

Decide whether a hazard deals damage, knocks a vehicle off course, or both. The hazard’s CR should be close to the item levels of the vehicles involved in the chase, and should use the corresponding attack bonus and damage amount.

If a hazard knocks vehicles off course, the pilot of any vehicle it hits takes a –4 penalty to Piloting checks (in addition to its normal modifiers) for 1 round. If a hazard both deals damage and knocks the target off course, reduce the attack bonus by 2 and halve the damage.

Altered Attacks:
Attacks might be more difficult due to bad weather or barriers that block lines of sight.

Use the normal rules for concealment, cover, and line of sight when implementing environments that alter attacks.

It’s rare for the environment to improve attacks, but if it somehow would, you can reduce the normal penalties for attacking during a chase.

Altered Movement:
Some environments make it easier, more difficult, or more complicated to move.

This might come up in a chase through a space station where some zones lack artificial gravity or on a muddy plain where vehicles could get bogged down.

Altered movement usually causes a +2 bonus or –2 penalty to skill checks attempted during pilot actions.

The environment can work differently on different vehicle types; a wheeled transport might take a penalty when artificial gravity goes out, while a hover vehicle wouldn’t, for example.

Likewise, the effects can change how certain actions work. A massive downhill slope might make it easier to speed up but harder to keep pace, or it could even require a check to slow down.

New Tricks:
Environments can provide new tricks that pilots can use with the trick action during the pilot actions phase.

These could include clipping precarious rocks in a canyon so they fall in your enemies’ paths or diverting oncoming traffic toward your enemies.

These tricks usually have a DC of 2 to 4 higher than the normal trick action, but their effects should also be more impressive.

In terms of game rules, the effect might be a bigger penalty for enemies’ Piloting checks (–4 to –6), or the trick might create a new active hazard in the zone directly behind the vehicle.

Split Routes:
It’s possible for chase participants to take slightly different routes through a zone to gain some other tactical advantage. A split route works much like having two parallel zones in a single zone, one of which has a different environment: usually altered movement (for a shortcut) or an active hazard (for a dangerous zone).

The pilot decides which route to pursue when taking his pilot action.

Even if two vehicles are in the same zone, they can’t interact with each other if they’re on different parts of a split route.

A split route usually lasts for only one zone before converging.

If vehicles that are engaged pursue different routes, their engagement is automatically broken off.

When the route converges again, any vehicles that had been engaged and are still in the same zone automatically become engaged again.

Relative Positioning:

In a vehicle chase, you monitor only the relative positions of the vehicles.

The easiest way to do this is by using a series of horizontal lines called zones (see above). You can use a battle map for this and simply ignore the vertical lines.

As a default, vehicles in the same zone are considered to be about 50 feet apart.

If they’re engaged (see Engage Another Vehicle above), they are considered adjacent, but they normally don’t touch, leaving room for creatures trying to hop between them to fall.

Vehicles one zone apart are about 200 feet apart.

Being Ahead:

Being ahead of an opponent is advantageous.

You get a +2 bonus to Piloting checks against enemies that are behind you, or you get a +2 bonus to all Piloting checks if you’re ahead of all your enemies.

When attacking, you get a +2 bonus to attack rolls against enemies and vehicles that are behind you.