Starship Hit Locations and Damage Effects

Characters in Starship Combat

Player characters aboard spacecraft in combat are in danger. There are many ways to get hurt, irradiated, or left floating in space during a space battle.

Whenever a ship gets a Personnel/Cargo result on the Starship Hit Location Table (and sometimes other results), or a crew casualties result on an optional effects roll, or loses more than half its BODY, the characters aboard are endangered. Each character in an affected area of the ship must make a DEX Roll to avoid harm. (Characters with Luck or Unluck should roll that as well.) If the roll succeeds, the character remains unharmed - a panel shorts out nearby, a pipe bursts across the room, or the like, but the PC takes no damage.

If his roll fails, a character must roll on the accompanying Character Damage Table to determine what happens to him or her. The results are not intended to be fatal to characters in good health, but rather to add colour, drama, and a personal touch to the battle. Gamemasters should be merciful; it's not fun for characters to suffer fatal (or frequent) injuries in a situation they don't have significant control over.

Effect Of Crew Casualties

The optional effects rules provide a way for the GM to determine what percentage of the crew becomes casualties during a battle. A "casualty" is a crewmember killed or so badly injured that he can no longer perform his combat duties.

The more crewmembers that become casualties, the harder it is to keep the ship functioning efficiently. In game terms, the GM can represent this abstractly by imposing penalties to all Skill Rolls the ship or other crewmembers make - without a full crew to man all the duty stations, keep things running efficiently, relay messages, interpret data, and so forth, everyone else's ability to do his job becomes impaired. The Crew Casualties Table describes this effect.