Combat and Ship Combat Walkthrough

PDF Download the Void Drifters GM Guide 26.8 MB

This chapter is about how to run fights, not how to participate in them. The Player's Guide covers what players do on their turns. This chapter covers what you are doing in parallel: setting up encounters, making NPC decisions, managing the environment as a tactical element, handling damage and consequences, and running full ship combat from the GM seat.

Both halves of this chapter include fully worked examples. Read through them at least once before your first session. The decision points are the important part, not the specific numbers.

Part One: Personal Combat

Setup: Before the First Roll

Combat begins before Initiative. It begins the moment you decide a conflict is going to happen.

Frame the encounter. Before any dice roll, answer three questions:

1. What does each side want, beyond winning? The crew may want to escape with the cargo. The Irnan checkpoint guards want to detain the crew, not kill them. The pirates want the ship intact and the crew as leverage. Knowing what each side wants beyond a victory condition lets you make NPC decisions that feel intelligent and lets you identify what a “win” actually looks like for each party.

2. What is the physical space? You do not need a map, but you need enough spatial clarity to answer “where is cover?” and “what can someone do besides stand there and shoot?” A docking bay has cargo containers, loading equipment, conduit columns, and at least one exit. A station corridor has recessed equipment bays and pressure doors. An open landing pad has almost no cover. Establish this before Initiative.

3. What happens if combat ends without a clear winner? If the guards call for backup, who comes? If the pirates take one heavy casualty, do they break off? Knowing the exit conditions for each side prevents combats from running until someone rolls a death spiral.

Establish positions. Place characters and enemies at their opening range bands. This does not need to be precise. “Two of the guards are at Short range near the checkpoint. One is behind the heavy door, effectively at Medium. The fourth guard is behind the desk at Short but with heavy cover” is enough.

Decide what the enemies know. If the NPCs had any warning (an alarm, the crew's body language, a contact who tipped them off), they have prepared positions. If they are reacting to something the crew initiated, they are still catching up. This affects where they start, what equipment is drawn, and which Initiative check they roll.

Initiative

Call for Initiative once the conflict is clear and irrevocable. Do not call for it the moment someone draws a weapon; call for it when it is established that this situation is a fight.

Prepared (Savvy + Perception): The crew set up the ambush. They were on watch. The meeting turned but they saw it coming. The crew had time to draw and position.

Surprise (Willpower + Readiness): The ambush landed on them. The friendly contact pulled a weapon. The firefight started from the other side of the room before anyone saw it coming.

Mixed groups: Each character rolls the check appropriate to their individual situation. A character who was watching the door uses Savvy + Perception. Their crewmate who was busy with the contact and never looked up uses Willpower + Readiness. Slot them into the initiative order from their respective results.

Running the slot system:

• Rank all results by net Successes, highest to lowest
• Label each slot “player” or “GM”
• Alternate: highest player slot, highest GM slot, next player slot, next GM slot, and so on
• Ties between a player slot and a GM slot favor the players
• Ties within the same side are resolved freely by that side: the players pick which character acts, the GM picks which NPC acts

Initiative order is fixed for the encounter. Write it down.

Turn Order Management

Keep a visible list of the initiative order. At a physical table, a row of name cards or a piece of paper works. Online, a shared document or initiative tracker.

On each slot, prompt quickly: “It's your turn: what do you do?” Do not wait for players to ask if it is their turn.

Track what has happened this round: Who has acted, who has not. At the end of each round, announce “new round, same order” and start again from the top.

Handling delays: If a player's character deliberately holds their action, note it. They can interrupt later in the round on a trigger they name (“I wait to see if anyone enters through the main door”). If the trigger does not occur before the end of the round, the held action is lost. This is intentionally simple; do not complicate it.

Running NPC Turns

This is where most new GMs struggle. NPC decision-making should feel intelligent and purposeful without making enemies seem like they have perfect information or optimal tactical AI.

The “what would this character actually do” test: Before announcing an NPC's action, ask what that character's goal is, what they know, and what their training or instinct tells them. A pirate crew does not have military discipline; they go for the weakest-looking target. Irnan guards follow protocols: one calls for backup while the others maintain positions. A Funtari enforcer advances; they do not hide behind cover and wait.

Vary behavior by adversary tier:

• Minion groups do the obvious thing: move toward the enemy and attack, or hold a position and fire. They do not execute flanking maneuvers or make clever tactical choices. They are numerous, not smart.
• Elites have training. They use cover. They target isolated characters. They break off when badly injured. They may try to disarm, capture, or delay rather than kill if that serves their goal. Give each Elite one clear tactical preference: always fires from cover, always goes for the medic, always tries to flank.
• Nemeses adapt. They read the situation and change their approach mid-fight. They spend Peril Points. They make the players feel like they are fighting someone who is trying to win, not just rolling attacks.

Making NPC choices fast: You do not have time to deliberate on every NPC turn. Have a default action ready for each NPC at the start of the encounter (“this guard fires from behind the desk; this one advances”). Change from the default only when something significant happened. This keeps NPC turns snappy and the table moving.

Telegraphing intent: When an NPC does something with a setup to it (an Elite taking cover to line up a better shot next turn, a guard moving toward the comm terminal), say what they are doing out loud. “The guard falls back toward the emergency comm. She is not attacking this turn.” Players should be able to read what is happening and react. Hidden intentions make for unpleasant surprises; telegraphed intentions make for interesting decisions.

Environment and Terrain in VD

The environment is a free resource. Use it.

Zero-gravity corridors: Run microgravity with the Player's Guide, Chapter Ten, Microgravity. A character without mag boots or a handhold spends 1 extra Maneuver to move. Melee attacks and any action that needs a stable stance add 2 Bane Dice unless the character is anchored. Ranged attacks take no gravity penalty, so in a zero-gravity fight the shooters hold the advantage over anyone trying to close to Engaged.

After a strenuous physical action without mag boots, a character spends a Maneuver to re-anchor. A Calamity on a physical action leaves the character drifting until an Average Athletics check succeeds or an ally reaches them. Use the drift when it creates interesting decisions: who goes after the drifting crew member, and what that costs.

Vacuum and hull sections: Suit integrity is a soft countdown. Establish the current state of the environment at the start of the encounter (“this section was breached six hours ago; suits required”). Every time a significant negative result lands on a player character, consider whether it includes a suit complication: a Calamity on an attack could tear a suit seal. Track the suit's condition narratively; once a suit is breached, the character makes Fortitude checks at intervals set by severity (Chapter Twelve, Cover and Environment in VD).

Tight ship corridors: Restrict bands to Engaged and Short in most corridor fights. Medium is a long corridor straight shot. Long and Extreme are effectively impossible without line-of-sight to an open area. This makes melee and close-range weapons more viable and changes which characters are effective. A Dhoran crew member with a mono-blade becomes dangerous in a corridor where the enemy's carbines are cramped and difficult to aim.

Active ship decks during ship combat: When the personal fight is happening while the ship is taking hits, treat significant ship combat results as environmental events that interrupt personal combat. The ship takes a critical hit on the hull; the pressure door between the crew and the pirates slams shut (bulkhead seals automatically). A weapon impact knocks out the artificial gravity in the port cargo section for two rounds. Use these as Bane spends or Calamity consequences to blur the two scales into one coherent chaos.

Damage, Wounds, and the Critical Injury Decision

Damage application:

• Attack succeeds: deal weapon base damage plus 1 per additional Success
• Apply target's Resistance: Wounds = Damage minus Resistance (minimum 0)
• Apply Wounds to the character's Wound track

When to trigger Critical Injuries:

A Critical Injury is triggered in three ways:

1. The target is already incapacitated by Wounds and takes another hit
2. The attacker spends a Breakthrough on the attack
3. The attacker spends net Boons equal to or exceeding the weapon's Crit rating

The third option is the one with the most GM discretion. When a player announces they are spending Boons for a Critical Injury, verify the Boon count meets the weapon's Crit rating and apply it. Do not invent reasons to deny it; that is what the Crit rating is there for.

How to make Critical Injuries matter without killing the session: Roll the d100 promptly, add the applicable bonus, announce the result. The injury is a complication, not an execution. Most entries give the table time to respond before the consequence fully lands: Deep Wound says the character is Bleeding for 2 Wounds at the start of each turn, and the character can still act. Flatlining says the character dies at the start of their next turn without immediate aid: their allies have exactly one turn and a reason to move fast.

Frame Critical Injuries as urgency, not as verdicts. “Kael's leg is torn open; she can still act, but she is Bleeding for 2 Wounds at the start of each turn. Someone is going to need to deal with that Deep Wound before it puts her down.”

The incapacitation decision: When a character goes to zero Wounds (or over Wound Points), they are out of the encounter. They do not die automatically from Wounds alone. After the encounter ends, they stabilize unless a Critical Injury says otherwise (Failing, or an untreated Bleeding injury such as Deep Wound). This is intentional: Void Drifters combat is designed to be costly and consequential rather than lethal by math alone.

Closing the Encounter

Structured play ends when the conflict resolves. Make this clean and deliberate.

Announce the end: “The last guard goes down. The bay is quiet. You have about three minutes before whatever called that patrol checks in.” Giving a time pressure at the end of a fight transitions directly into the next scene and prevents the table from treating the aftermath as a pause.

Track what changes:

• Wounded characters: Who is at what Wound level? Who has Critical Injuries? This is the fuel for the next scene.
• Consumed resources: Ammunition for Limited Ammo weapons, charges on special equipment, Strain (which recovers), Fortune Points spent.
• Noise: A firefight in a station is loud. Even with suppressors, dead guards, a wrecked cargo loader, and a bloodstained floor tell a story to whoever finds it next.
• Faction observation: Who saw this happen? A station camera, a bystander, a contact watching from across the bay. Combat in Void Drifters has political consequences, not just physical ones.
• Scene-level changes: If the crew accessed something (a terminal, a cargo container, a prisoner), what did they get? This is the moment to resolve the reason the fight happened, not the combat result itself.

Recovery at end of encounter:

• Characters recover Strain equal to Willpower
• Critical Injuries persist and still add +10 to future injury rolls
• Medicine checks to treat injuries can happen in the post-combat scene

Worked Example: The Cargo Container Clearance

The situation: Three crew members are assigned to clear a hijacked cargo container in Station Docking Bay 7. The hijackers, a small gang of independent operators who grabbed an Antaean League cargo in transit, have locked the container and are using it as a defensive position. Four hostiles are inside and around the container: two are Minions (hired hands), one is an Elite (the gang's lieutenant), and one is an observer who has not drawn a weapon yet and is positioned near the bay's secondary exit.

The crew: the pregenerated crew from the Player's Guide, Chapter Fifteen. Senna Vael (Ossen pilot: Might 2, Agility 4, Savvy 2, Willpower 2, Perception 2, Ranged 0; Resistance 2 with her flight suit; standard sidearm, Damage 6); Davan Kel (Human engineer: Agility 2, Intellect 4, Savvy 2, Willpower 2, Perception 1, Ranged 0; he owns no weapon and has drawn a standard sidearm for this job); Yessica Morn (Zosa gunner: Might 2, Agility 4, Savvy 2, Willpower 2, Ranged 2, Readiness 1, Perception 1; Resistance 2 with her flight suit; standard sidearm and combat knife).

The enemies:

• Two Minions (group, 2 wounds each): MIG 2 / AGI 2. Ranged 1. Sidearms, no armor. Resistance 1. 4 Wounds total.
• Elite — Gang Lieutenant “Brek”: MIG 3 / AGI 3 / INT 2 / SAV 2 / WIL 2 / CHA 2. Resistance 3, Wound Points 14. Ranged Defense 1. Skills: Ranged 2, Intimidation 2, Streetwise 2. Abilities: once per encounter, add 1 Boon Die to the Minion group's first action by shouting orders. Equipment: carbine, leather work coat.
• Observer: Not engaging unless attacked or unless Brek is incapacitated. Rolls Willpower + Readiness for Initiative (he was watching); treat him as a Minion with Savvy 3 if the crew tries to apprehend him.

Opening setup (GM pre-fight decisions):

• Minion group is at Short range from the bay entrance, using a cargo loader for light cover (+1 Ranged Defense)
• Brek is at Short range but behind the container edge: heavy cover (+2 Ranged Defense; total Ranged Defense 3: 1 from stats + 2 from cover)
• Observer is at Medium range near the secondary exit, unarmed and watching
• Crew enters from the bay's main access point

What does each side want? The crew wants the container cleared and the hijackers detained or neutralized. The gang wants the cargo and to avoid losing people to a fight that was not supposed to go violent. Brek wants to intimidate the crew into leaving or delay them until a contact with transport arrives.

INITIATIVE

Senna was told about the situation in advance and came in ready: Savvy + Perception (2 net Successes). Davan did not fully brief on the threat level and was still working out the logistics: Willpower + Readiness (1 net Success). Yessica was watching the door: Savvy + Perception, plus 1 Boon Die from her Zosa Predator Reflexes because she is reading a stalking threat (1 net Success, ties favor players over GM slots).

Minion group (watching the entrance): Willpower + Readiness: GM rolls 1 net Success. Brek (behind the container): Willpower + Readiness: GM rolls 2 net Successes. Observer: Willpower + Readiness: GM rolls 0 net Successes.

Ranked initiative slots:

1. Senna (player, 2 successes), tied with Brek (GM, 2 successes); player wins ties on player/GM ties
2. Brek (GM, 2 successes)
3. Yessica (player, 1 success), tied with Davan (player, 1 success) and Minion group (GM, 1 success); player wins, players choose order
4. Davan (player, 1 success): players choose this second after Yessica
5. Minion group (GM, 1 success)
6. Observer (GM, 0 successes)

ROUND ONE

Senna's turn (player slot 1): Senna's player uses a Maneuver to step to the right behind a structural pillar: heavy cover (+2 Ranged Defense). Action: fire at the Minion group at Short range.

Pool: Agility 4 + Ranged 0. Higher is Agility 4, so 4 dice total; no upgrade (Senna has no Ranged ranks). Final pool: 4 Ability Dice. Difficulty: Easy (Short range) = 1 Trial Die. Minion group has +1 Ranged Defense from the cargo loader = 1 Bane Die.

Total pool: vs + .

Roll result: 2 net Successes, 2 net Boons.

The first Success hits. The second adds +1 damage. Senna's sidearm deals Damage 6 + 1 = 7. Minion Resistance 1: the group suffers 6 Wounds. Minion group had 4 total Wounds; they are eliminated (6 > 4). Both Minions are down.

Senna's player proposes spending 2 Boons: she spots a gap in Brek's cover where his left side is exposed. GM approves: Brek's Ranged Defense is reduced to 2 for the rest of the round (one side of the cover is partially broken by Senna's position).

GM internal note: The Minion group is gone. Brek still has Ranged Defense 2 this round (reduced from 3). The observer has not moved.

Brek's turn (GM slot 1): Brek has Ranged Defense 2 now instead of 3. He was going to take cover and command the Minions, but the Minions are gone. His ability to boost them is now worthless. The GM adjusts: Brek fires at Senna, who has heavy cover (+2 Ranged Defense) and is behind a pillar.

Pool: AGI 3 + Ranged 2. 3 dice, upgrade 2: 2 Mastery Dice + 1 Ability Die. Difficulty for Short range: Easy (1 Trial Die). Senna's Ranged Defense: 2 (from heavy cover). Add 2 Bane Dice.

Roll result: 1 net Success, 1 net Bane.

The shot hits. Carbine damage 7. Senna's Resistance: half Might (2) rounded up = 1, plus 1 from her flight suit = 2. Senna suffers 5 Wounds (out of Wound Points 12).

GM spends the Bane: Brek's shot cracks part of the pillar; Senna's cover is now light cover (+1 Ranged Defense) instead of heavy cover.

Yessica's turn (player slot 2): Yessica's player wants to close distance and get behind the container. Action: move from Short to Engaged (1 Maneuver). Second Maneuver: costs 2 Strain (or her Action). She pays 2 Strain and takes a second Maneuver to move again but cannot: she is already at Engaged after one Maneuver. She has her Action free. She draws her sidearm (a Quick Action as she moved) and prepares to engage Brek if he moves from cover, but he has not moved yet and she is now Engaged with the container, not directly with Brek.

Yessica's player reconsiders and uses the Action to aid Davan: she shouts the position of the gap in the container's left panel. GM accepts this as an assist on Davan's next attack. The relevant skill is Ranged, the skill Davan will roll. Yessica has more Ranged ranks (2) than Davan (0), so her assist adds 1 Ability Die instead of a Boon Die.

Davan's turn (player slot 3): Davan is still at Short range. He has a sidearm and 1 Ability Die from Yessica's assist. He fires at Brek.

Pool: AGI 2 + Ranged 0. 2 dice, no upgrade: 2 Ability Dice, plus 1 Ability Die from the assist. Difficulty: Easy at Short range (1 Trial Die). Brek has Ranged Defense 2 (2 Bane Dice).

Total pool: vs .

Roll result: 1 net Success, 0 net Boons or Banes.

The shot hits Brek for base damage: Davan's sidearm deals Damage 6. Brek's Resistance 3: Brek suffers 3 Wounds (out of 14).

Minion group turn: The Minion group was eliminated in Round 1. No action.

Observer's turn: The observer has not drawn a weapon and did not initiate anything. The GM decides: the observer has watched the Minion group go down in one shot and Brek take two hits. The observer moves toward the secondary exit as a Maneuver (no action taken). He is now at the exit.

End of Round 1: Senna at 5 Wounds, light cover. Brek at 3 Wounds, behind heavy cover, Ranged Defense 3 restored (no longer partially broken; the gap was a moment-to-moment positioning thing). Yessica at Engaged range near the container. Davan at Short. Observer at the exit.

ROUND TWO

Senna's turn: Senna's cover is now light (+1 Ranged Defense). She uses a Maneuver to advance from Short to Engaged with the container, reaching Brek's side. At Engaged range, Brek's cover no longer helps him against Senna; she is beside him. His Ranged Defense from cover drops to 0 (only his stat-based Defense applies, and he has 1 there). His total Ranged Defense at Engaged is 1 for attacks from Senna's direction.

Senna fires at Engaged range. Difficulty: Easy + 1 Bane Die (Brek's Ranged Defense 1).

Pool: 4 Ability. Difficulty: 1 Trial Die + 1 Bane Die.

Roll result: 3 net Successes, 1 net Bane.

First Success hits. Two additional Successes add +2 damage. Sidearm Damage 6 + 2 = 8. Brek's Resistance 3: Brek suffers 5 Wounds. Total Wounds: 8 out of 14.

GM spends the Bane: Senna's close-range fire draws the attention of a station security camera that had been in power-save mode. This will surface later.

Brek's turn: Brek is at 8 Wounds. He is not incapacitated but he is hurting and has a Zosa gunner at close range behind him and an armed engineer at Short. The GM asks: what would Brek actually do? He is not suicidal. He has the cargo but losing his crew does not serve him. The GM has Brek do something surprising: he shouts “Enough. Take the cargo. Take it.” He holsters the carbine (Maneuver) and raises his hands (Quick Action).

He is not surrendering formally. He is buying time. The observer has the secondary exit; Brek is hoping for a negotiated exit.

This is the GM making an NPC decision based on that character's goal (keeping the cargo or at least getting out alive) rather than running combat math to the end.

Yessica's turn: Yessica is at Engaged range near the container. The situation has suddenly become non-combat. Yessica's player wants to cover Brek and prevent him from moving. The GM accepts this as a Maneuver to take a ready position (Yessica levels her sidearm), and Yessica uses her Action to make an Intimidation check: she is holding Brek at Engaged range with a weapon.

Pool: WIL 2 + Intimidation (Yessica has no ranks): 2 dice, no upgrade: 2 Ability Dice. Opposed by Brek's Willpower + Readiness (2 + 0 untrained).

Yessica: 2 net Successes. Brek: 1 net Success. Yessica wins. Brek is rattled; he stays put.

Davan's turn: Davan assesses the observer at the exit. The observer is clearly considering running. Davan uses his Action to make a Perception check at Medium range to get a better read on what the observer is carrying or doing.

Hard difficulty (Medium range, quick assessment). Pool: SAV 2 + Perception 1: 2 dice, upgrade 1: 1 Mastery + 1 Ability. Roll: 2 net Successes, 1 Boon.

Davan can see the observer has no visible weapon and is carrying a data-chip in his left hand. Player spends the Boon: Davan recognizes the chip's size and markings as a Slipstream nav-code card.

That nav-code is now a scene objective. The observer has the route data: probably the dropoff coordinates for the hijacked cargo.

Observer's turn: The GM had the observer watching events unfold. With Brek standing down and the crew clearly in control, the observer makes a break for the secondary exit. As a full turn Action: run to the exit and try to open it (Electronics check at Average to override the lock from inside).

Roll: INT 2 + Electronics 1 = 1 Mastery + 1 Ability. Average difficulty (2 Trial Dice). 1 net Success. The door opens. The observer is at the threshold.

End of Round 2: Brek is standing down but not formally captured. The observer is about to escape with a nav-code. Two rounds of clear consequence.

GM NOTES ON THE EXAMPLE:

• Senna's single volley eliminating the Minion group is intended. A character with a good pool against low-tier opponents should produce dramatic early results. It compressed the encounter toward the more interesting Elite confrontation.
• Brek's de-escalation mid-fight is a legitimate NPC decision. It creates a more interesting scene than running combat math to the end.
• The observer's nav-code emergence from a Perception Boon spend is how Boon economy creates story hooks mid-encounter.
• The “station camera noticed the fight” Bane spend is a consequence that has no mechanical effect right now but will surface later as a social or logistical complication.

Part Two: Ship Combat

This part is GM advice for running a ship fight. The rules are in the Vehicles Manual: Chapter Fifteen (the procedure), Chapter Fourteen (stations and crew size), Chapter Eight (weapons and defenses), Chapter Three (damage and ship states), and Chapter Six (Power and Heat). Where this chapter summarizes a rule, the Manual governs.

Setup: Transitioning to Ship Combat

Ship combat uses the same structured play frame as personal combat: rounds, turns, Actions, and Maneuvers. Call for it when a ship fires on another, when a hostile ship catches the crew in weapon range, or when the crew refuses an order to heave to and the other side means to enforce it.

1. Set the range band and facings. "The patrol cutter is at Short range, in your forward arc. There is a collector array at Medium to port." This gives the pilot a choice at once.
2. Call stations. Each player names a station or none. A character who cannot reach a station in time (fighting boarders, treating someone in the medical bay) is not out of the fight; that character acts on a personal Initiative slot.
3. Roll Initiative, one check per ship.

What the crew needs to know at once: the range and facing of each enemy ship, whether the crew is aboard or running to the ship, and whether the enemy is already engaging.

Range, Speed, and Facing

Ship combat uses the six range bands, Engaged to Extreme, at ship scale. A weapon fires at the bands its range lists. Keep a verbal map: "You are at Medium from the cutter; it is in your forward arc. Debris at Short to starboard." Update it after every move.

Speed sets how many bands one Advance or Break Maneuver covers: 1 band at Speed 1 to 4, 2 at Speed 5 or 6, 3 at Speed 7 or more. A Speed 1 or 2 ship spends 2 Maneuvers per band beyond Long. In a chase the faster ship gains Successes, so tell the players the enemy's Speed when their sensors could read it.

Facing. A ship has four facings: Fore, Port, Starboard, and Aft. A fixed forward weapon fires only into the Fore facing and adds the ship's Handling to the attack; a turret fires into all four. Change Facing is a Maneuver (one facing); Hard Turn is an Action (up to 180 degrees). Before each enemy turn, say which of the crew's arcs the enemy is in.

Elevation is optional. Use it only when a ship dives on another, when dorsal and ventral mounts matter, or when the fight is around a station or an asteroid.

Initiative

Each ship makes one Initiative check, rolled by the crew member at the Helm: Savvy + Perception when the crew is on watch, Willpower + Readiness when surprised. Order the slots by net Successes; a tie between a player slot and a GM slot goes to the player. On its slot, every crew member aboard acts. A character away from a station rolls personal Initiative and acts on that slot.

The Crew's Turn

Each crew member at a station takes one Action and one Maneuver there; a second Maneuver costs the Action or 2 Strain. The whole crew declares together. Resolve movement first, then attacks (arcs and range are checked after movement), then everything else. Chapter Fourteen of the Vehicles Manual lists every station's actions.

Short crews. A crew member may also act at one second station that nobody else holds: one Action there, at 1 Bane Die. Nobody covers more than two. An empty station takes no Actions; Chapter Fourteen says what each empty station still does on automation.

Directive AI. An AI Core assists one check per Active Channel per round, for a station whose task its installed Directive Package covers: it removes 1 Trial Die, or adds 1 Boon Die to an opposed check. It never takes a station Action. A stock Model 20 or KR-41 has Basic Automation, which assists nothing; most patrol and security hulls carry a Professional Directive AI with two channels. That difference shows on every roll, so run it honestly for the enemy ship.

Attacking

• Pool: the gunner's Agility + Gunnery.
• Difficulty by range: Engaged Easy, Short or Medium Average, Long Hard, Extra Long or Extreme Severe.
• Bane Dice: the target's Deflection for the facing attacked, its screens and ECM against the weapons they name, either ship's Evasive Maneuver, negative Handling on a fixed weapon, Heat penalties, and Scale.
• Boon Dice: positive Handling on a fixed weapon, weapon tags such as Accurate, components, the sensor operator's Target Lock, the captain's Direct Focus, assistance, and allies. These free Boon Dice are capped at 2 per attack (the Boon Limit). Talents add their dice in full outside the limit, and dice rolled on the attack are never limited.
• One weapon per gunner. Each gunner fires one weapon, or one battery of identical weapons, per Action, and each weapon fires once a round. A ship with one gunner fires one weapon a round. Crew size drives firepower; make sure the players see that before they hire.

A hit deals the weapon's listed damage plus 1 for each Success beyond the first. Boons do not add damage; two Boons ignore 1 more point of Armor, trigger a tag, or (with Boons equal to the weapon's Crit) inflict a Critical Hit. Two Banes add Heat or a Bane Die to the firing ship's next attack; three Banes jam the weapon.

Defending

• Deflection adds Bane Dice to every attack from the matching facing. Most commercial hulls have 0.
• Screens add Bane Dice to the weapon types they name (usually Beam and Plasma), subtract their Damage Reduction, and add Heat for each hit they stop.
• Point defense rolls: a Gunnery check (or a suite's own pool) as a reaction, once a round, Average against missiles, Hard against torpedoes. Each net Success stops one incoming attack.
• ECM works against locks and guided weapons, and is what the Jam action needs.
• Evasive Maneuver adds 1 Bane Die to every attack on the ship until its next turn, and 1 to its own attacks this round.
• Armor reduces each hit, less the weapon's Pierce. It also halves System Damage from Ion weapons.

Damage and Ship States

Damage counts up on two tracks. Hull Damage counts toward Hull Points; System Damage counts toward System Points. When you place System Damage on a named system (Target Systems, Precision, a Critical Hit, or your call for what the hit struck), choose the one that hands the crew a decision: the engines give the pilot a problem, the weapons give the gunner one, and life support gives everyone one.

• Out of control: System Damage reaches System Points. The ship drifts, its weapons, screens, and drive are offline, and only Emergency Repair and personal actions are possible. Any hit on it is a Critical Hit, and it can be boarded or taken as a prize. This is the state a customs cutter, a pirate, or a salvager wants the crew's ship in, and Ion weapons are how they get it there.
• Destroyed: Hull Damage reaches Hull Points. The ship breaks up at the end of the next round. That round is the crew's chance to reach the pods.

Describe damage as it lands: "The port cargo section is venting slowly" tells the crew what to protect better than "4 Hull Damage." Fires, breaches, and spreading cascades are ongoing effects that the engineer's Damage Control action stops.

Power and Heat

The engineer answers an overload at once (shut a system down, accept 1 System Damage, convert it to 2 Heat, or make an Average Craft check to hold it a round), and Heat above the Heat Threshold escalates in bands (Vehicles Manual, Chapter Six).

As a GM running enemy ships: do not track full escalation for minor ships. Note the enemy's Heat Threshold and current Heat. At Threshold + 3, add 1 Bane Die to its attacks. At Threshold + 6 it is in trouble and starts making bad choices: pushing harder, or breaking off. For a Nemesis ship or the encounter's main opponent, run the full ladder so the players can watch the enemy's heat problem build.

Critical Hits on Ships

Roll d100 on the ship Critical Hit table in the Vehicles Manual, Chapter Fifteen, adding 10 for each Critical Hit the ship already has. Frame each result as the next problem: a knocked-out weapon means a crew member spends an Action to reset it or fights without it; a Defensive Control hit drops the ship's Deflection and takes a screen offline; a Coolant Rupture hands the engineer 3 Heat at the worst moment.

Boarding and Personal Combat Aboard Ships

When a hostile crew boards, or the crew boards a hostile ship, the two scales run together on one Initiative order. Crew at stations act on the ship's slot; characters fighting in the corridors act on their own slots. Every crew member is either at a station or in the fight, and a ship that is being boarded while still under fire has a crew that cannot cover both.

Range inside a ship is Engaged or Short in corridors, Medium in a cargo bay or engineering space. Cover is everywhere: bulkheads, equipment racks, pressure doors. Melee weapons and short-range arms gain value. A Dhoran crew member with a heavy baton is very dangerous in a corridor where an opponent's carbine cannot be swung into line.

Name the split at the table. "Senna and Yessica are on the bridge with the cutter. Davan is in the port access corridor holding the hatch. We resolve both on the same order." The boarding procedure (getting across, opening the hatch, holding the collar, taking the ship) is in the Vehicles Manual, Chapter Fifteen.

Disengagement and Chases

A ship leaves a fight with Disengage: a Helm Action that needs Long range or farther, at Average, one step harder or easier when one ship's Handling is 2 or more higher. A pursuer that follows starts a chase, an extended check on net Successes (3 for a quick chase, 5 across a system, 8 on a frontier run). The faster ship adds Successes to its chase checks, and every other station keeps working: gunners fire at the chase range, engineers boost the drives, sensor operators jam the pursuer's navigation.

When to break off. End a fight when continuing means destruction, when one side has what it came for, or when a ship runs out of something it cannot fight without (ammunition, Power, crew at stations). An enemy crew that is losing should try to leave.

Slipstream escape. A fleeing ship whose astrogator has plotted a course, with a seam within reach, needs 2 fewer Successes to escape the chase. An interdiction weapon or a well-placed hit on the drive at the wrong moment is a good complication.

Worked Example: The Freighter and the Customs Cutter

The situation. The crew's freighter, the Wayward Margin, is transiting a disputed corridor in the Meridian Verge when an Irnan customs cutter, the IRNS Ardent, orders it to heave to for inspection. The crew has illegal cargo. The bluff fails, and the Ardent moves to block the route at Short range.

The ships.

Wayward Margin (Model 20, stock factory hull, player ship):

• Scale 4, Speed 3, Handling +0, Armor 1, Deflection 0 / 0, Hull Points 18, System Points 13
• Power Capacity 8, Heat Dissipation 2, Heat Threshold 10
• AI Support: Basic Automation. No directive AI assists anyone aboard; every check is made on crew skill alone.
• Weapons fitted after purchase: an Autocannon (Light, Fixed Forward; Damage 4, Short to Medium, Crit 4, Pierce 1, 1 Heat) and a Light Laser Cannon (Light, Turret; Damage 3, Short to Medium, Crit 3, 2 Heat, Accurate 1, Linked 1). No screens.

Crew: Senna Vael at the Helm (Agility 4, Pilot 2). Yessica Morn at Gunnery (Agility 4, Gunnery 2, the Fire Control talent), firing the laser turret. Davan Kel at Engineering (Intellect 4, Craft 2, ship-rated engineer's kit). Nobody is at Sensors and Comms, and the fixed autocannon has no gunner. Brekkan, a passenger, is secured in the cargo bay.

IRNS Ardent (CM-440, Irnan customs fit):

• Scale 4, Speed 4, Handling +0, Armor 3, Deflection 0 / 0, Hull Points 22, System Points 14
• Power Capacity 9, Heat Dissipation 2, Heat Threshold 11
• AI Support: Professional Directive AI, two Active Channels, with the Fire Control, Sensors, Flight Operations, and Defensive Control packages
• Weapons: an Ion Pulse Emitter (Standard, Turret; 1 Hull and 4 System Damage, Short to Medium, Crit 4, 2 Heat, Ion, Disable) and two Autocannons, Fixed Forward, fired as a battery (Linked 1; 1 Heat)
• Crew: pilot (Agility 3, Pilot 2), sensor operator (Intellect 3, Electronics 2), ion gunner and battery gunner (each Agility 3, Gunnery 2), engineer

The customs crew wants the Margin out of control and boardable, not destroyed: the cargo is evidence. That is why the Ardent carries an ion weapon and why its gunners aim at the Margin's systems.

Initiative. Senna rolls Savvy + Perception for the Margin: 2 net Successes. The Ardent's pilot rolls Savvy + Perception: 1. The Margin acts first.

Round 1

The Margin.

• Senna (Helm). Her Maneuver is Hold Position, keeping the cutter at Short range in the forward arc. Her Action is an Evasive Maneuver: an Average Pilot check, 2 Mastery and 2 Ability Dice against 2 Trial Dice. Net result: 1 Success. Attacks on the Margin add 1 Bane Die until its next turn, and its own attacks this round add 1.
• Davan (Engineering). Boost Power, Boost Weapons: an Average Craft check with his kit's Boon Die. Net result: 1 Success. One attack this round deals +2 damage; the crew cannot boost weapons again this encounter. The boost adds 2 Heat.
• Yessica (Gunnery). Aimed Fire with the laser turret at Short: Average. Pool: 2 Mastery and 2 Ability Dice. Boon Dice: Accurate 1 (within the Boon Limit) and her Fire Control talent on her first Gunnery check (outside it). Bane Dice: 1, from the Margin's own evasion. Net result: 2 Successes, 2 Boons. Damage is 3, plus 1 for the second Success, plus 2 from the boost: 6. Armor 3 stops 3. Yessica spends the 2 Boons on Linked for a second hit of 3 (no boost on the extra hit), which Armor stops entirely. The Ardent takes 3 Hull Damage (3 of 22). The laser makes 2 Heat for each hit (4) and the boost 2: the Margin is at 6 Heat.

GM note: the players will ask why they did not spend the Boons to ignore a point of Armor instead. They should have: that would have made it 4. Let them learn it; Armor 3 eats light weapons.

The Ardent.

• Pilot. Hold Position as the Maneuver. No Action: the cutter has nowhere it needs to go.
• Sensor operator. Target Lock: Hard, because the Margin evaded this round. The AI's Sensors package (channel 1) removes 1 Trial Die. Pool: 2 Mastery and 1 Ability Die against 2 Trial Dice. Net result: 1 Success. Each gunner adds 1 Boon Die to the next attack on the Margin this round.
• Ion gunner. Aimed Fire with the Ion Pulse Emitter at Short: Average, less 1 Trial Die from the AI's Fire Control package (channel 2). Pool: 2 Mastery and 1 Ability Die, plus 1 Boon Die from the lock, against 1 Trial Die and 1 Bane Die. Net result: 2 Successes. Hull Damage is 1, plus 1 for the second Success: 2, less Armor 1: 1 Hull Damage. System Damage is 4; Ion damage is reduced by half the Margin's Armor, rounded down, which is 0: 4 System Damage. The Margin is at 1 of 18 Hull and 4 of 13 System.
• Battery gunner. The battery's fixed mounts face the Margin. Average, with both AI channels already used: 2 Mastery and 1 Ability Die, plus 1 Boon Die from the lock, against 2 Trial Dice and 1 Bane Die. Net result: 1 Success. Damage 4, less Armor 1 less Pierce 1, which is 0: 4 Hull Damage (5 of 18).

End of round 1. The Margin drops from 6 Heat to 4. The Ardent made 2 Heat for the ion shot and 1 for the battery: 3, dropping to 1.

Round 2

Senna sees the System Damage and knows what the cutter is doing. She runs.

The Margin.

• Senna. Break as her Maneuver: at Speed 3 the Margin moves one band, to Medium. The cutter is now off the stern, in the Margin's Aft facing. Her Action is another Evasive Maneuver: 1 Success.
• Davan. Emergency Repair on the systems the ion burst scrambled: Average for a system put out of action with standard access, with his kit's Boon Die. Net result: 1 Success. 1 System Damage removed (3 of 13).
• Yessica. The laser turret still bears at Medium: Average, Accurate 1, 1 Bane Die for the evasion. Net result: 1 Success, 2 Boons. She spends the Boons to ignore 1 point of Armor this time: Damage 3, less Armor 2, is 1 Hull Damage (4 of 22). The Margin is at 6 Heat.

The Ardent.

• Pilot. Advance as the Maneuver: at Speed 4, one band, back to Short. The Margin is again in its fixed battery's arc.
• Sensor operator. Target Lock, Hard with the AI's Sensors package: net 1 Success.
• Ion gunner. Average less the AI's Trial Die, 1 Boon Die from the lock, 1 Bane Die for the evasion. Net result: 3 Successes. Hull Damage 1 + 2 = 3, less Armor 1: 2 Hull Damage (7 of 18). 4 System Damage (7 of 13). With 3 net Successes, the Disable tag names the Margin's drive: it shuts down until the end of the Margin's next turn.
• Battery gunner. Net result: 0 Successes. A miss.

End of round 2. The Margin drops from 6 Heat to 4. The Ardent drops from 4 to 2.

Round 3

The Margin's drive is down for this turn. Senna cannot Advance or Break.

The Margin.

• Senna. Evasive Maneuver on thrusters alone: net 0 Successes. A failure still evades, but the ship drifts a band; the GM drifts it toward the cutter, to Engaged.
• Davan. Emergency Repair: net 2 Successes, 1 Boon. 1 System Damage removed (6 of 13). He keeps the reactor off the edge.
• Yessica. The laser turret at Engaged: Easy. Net result: 1 Success. Damage 3 less Armor 3: nothing.

The Ardent. The customs captain hails: "Cut your drive, open your hatches, stand by for boarding." The players refuse.

• Sensor operator. Target Lock: net 1 Success.
• Ion gunner. At Engaged, Easy, and the AI removes the only Trial Die. Net result: 2 Successes. 1 Hull Damage after Armor (8 of 18) and 4 System Damage (10 of 13).
• Battery gunner. Net result: 1 Success, 2 Banes. 4 Hull Damage (12 of 18). The GM spends the Banes so the battery's next attack adds 1 Bane Die.

End of round 3. The Margin is at 12 of 18 Hull and 10 of 13 System. One more ion hit puts it out of control. Davan can remove at most 1 or 2 System Damage a round; the cutter's ion emitter adds 4. The Margin has 4 Heat; the cutter has 3.

What happens next. The fight has reached the decision point the GM wants to put in front of the players. They can surrender now, with a ship that is intact and a cargo hold that is going to be searched. They can take one more round: Senna gets her drive back after this turn, the Margin is Engaged, and a ram (the Margin's Scale 4 plus Speed 3, less the cutter's Armor 3, is 4 Hull Damage; the Margin takes 2) or a dash for Long range and a Disengage is still possible. Or they can prepare to repel boarders and try to take the Ardent instead.

GM notes on the example.

• Basic Automation against a Professional AI. Every one of the cutter's ion shots rolled 1 fewer Trial Die than the Margin's matching rolls, and its sensor operator's lock was assisted too. A stock freighter starts every exchange behind. Basic Automation holds no Directive Packages at all: before a Model 20 can run even one package, the crew must upgrade to a Civilian Directive AI or better (Vehicles Manual, Chapters Seven and Ten), and that upgrade is one of the first things a crew should save for.
• Ion is the capture tool. Armor 1 halved is 0, so every ion hit landed 4 System Damage. The cutter never needed to threaten the Margin's hull. A crew facing customs, pirates, or salvagers should fear the System track more than the Hull track.
• One gunner, one weapon. The Margin carried two weapons and fired one a round, because only Yessica was at Gunnery. Davan's repairs were the only thing slowing the cutter, so he could not take the autocannon.
• The Boon Limit. Yessica's talent die is outside the limit, so her round 1 shot carried 2 Boon Dice (Accurate and Fire Control); with a Target Lock from a sensor operator and the captain's Direct Focus she would have hit the limit of 2 plus the talent.
• Light weapons against Armor 3. The laser dealt 4 damage in three rounds. Recommend Boons on Armor, a Standard weapon, or a sensor operator.
• The crew may lose. A clean escape is not owed. What the players do with an intact, boarded ship is more interesting than a destroyed one.

Running the Scales Together

When a session has both personal combat and ship combat, one technique keeps things clear:

Name the scale explicitly when transitioning. “We are in ship combat now” and “boarding has started; we are running personal combat in the port airlock” prevents confusion about which rules apply to which check.

Let the two scales create pressure on each other. A ship that takes a critical hit while the crew is fighting off boarders has to decide: does the engineer leave the boarding fight to deal with the critical? Does the pilot try to maneuver while their usual assistant is unavailable? These decisions are the texture of Void Drifters.

End scenes cleanly. When ship combat ends, say so and take a breath before transitioning to personal consequences. When personal combat ends on a ship mid-fight, acknowledge that and move immediately back to the ship combat frame. Keep the two scales distinct even when they are running in parallel.