Questions on how combat works

[genuwine21]

Hi,

I have read through the Heroic RPG book, and plan to start running sessions, but I want to understand how things work in these situations:

Attacker has higher roll but lower effect die.
Ex: Attacker 6 effect:D6 Reaction 4 effect:D8
Also I assume if the defender has a higher roll he simply blocks/dodges the attack.

Also how does damage work exactly, once I go over my stress of D12 I am immobilized and it goes to trauma, so do I simply take the value off the top that exceeds and put it in trauma?

Ex: I took D8 previous stress but now take a D10 stress again, does this give me simply d6 trauma and I am stressed out.

[GabrielK]

Yes if you roll higher than the attacker, you manage to avoid/resist the attack in some appropriate fashion.

As far as taking stress goes, your example isn't quite right. If you're at d8 stress, and you take additional stress, your new stress level would be either whatever you just took (if it's higher), or the d8 gets stepped up (if the stress you just took is lower).

Edit to add an example: you have d8 stress currently. You get hit with a d12...your stress is now a d12. If you had gotten hit instead with either a d6, d8, or d4, your stress would now be d10 (d8 stepped up by 1).

After your stress is stepped up past d12 is when you start gaining trauma.

Edit: if you're already stressed out and take additional stress, you gain trauma as well.

[genuwine21]

Thanks

[EldritchFire]

Another thing to note is that once your stress exceeds d12, your trauma is d6, no matter how many steps past d12 your stress would be.

Once you take trauma, any additional stress becomes trauma and gets stepped up like normal.

-EF

[MidnightBlue]

Hi,

I have read through the Heroic RPG book, and plan to start running sessions, but I want to understand how things work in these situations:

Attacker has higher roll but lower effect die.
Ex: Attacker 6 effect:D6 Reaction 4 effect:D8 Also I assume if the defender has a higher roll he simply blocks/dodges the attack.

It looks like your Stress question has been well answered, but this part got missed.

In your example:

1. The attacker succeeded in the attack. (Attacker has higher Total.)

2. The defender failed to completely avoid the attack. (Defender has lower Total.)

3. However, the defender does manage to "block/dodge/parry" some of the attacker's effect. The attacker's effect die of D6 is stepped back -1 to a D4. (Defender's effect die is larger than the attacker's effect die.)

4. Side note - in this same example, if the attacker's starting effect die had been a D4, then it would have been stepped back -1 to nothingness. The attacker would no longer have an effect die and the attack would hit with no effect. So there are a couple of ways that a reaction can succeed.

Hope that helps.