Combat

Firearm rules adapted from Weapon Law: Firearms (RMSS #5524) to the RMU action point economy. Weapon attack tables live in the Attack Tables section; the action economy and situational rules below are in play.

Firearm Actions

Costs are in action points (AP). Where a modifier range is given, the penalty depends on how many action points are spent: the minimum spend takes the worst penalty, the full spend the best. A shot fired without preparation suffers the normal recoil penalty of -30; a Prep shot removes it.

Emptying the Gun

Rapid fire puts the magazine into one target. It needs a weapon that will fire automatically — a semiautomatic pistol or rifle cannot do it at all RMUWeapon Law: Firearms 3.4.2 (p. 10) resolves aimed rapid fire as an aimed burst action, and 3.3.4 allows an aimed burst only to a weapon whose listed action type is automatic - so the restriction carries through. Of the site's guns only the Zastava M85 is selective fire; the Glock 17 and SKS-46 are semiautomatic and the Shotgun page lists no automatic gun either, so all of them are shut out of this action, at least 5 rounds in the magazine to be worth the action, and it is spent over two rounds: one preparing, one firing (Fig. 1).

Preparing is a Percentage Maneuver on Rapid Fire, rolled Self Discipline-based, at Hard, costing 2 to 4 AP — -25 for each point under 4, which Fire Discipline reduces. What the maneuver returns is how much of the volume of fire you actually brought to bear: a 70% result carries 70% of the bullet bonus below into the attack, so a thirty-round burst brings +49 of its +70 RMUCore Law Table 5-1 (p. 125) for the percentage ladder and the difficulty column; 8.1 for -25 an action point under an action's maximum. Reading the percentage as the share of the bonus carried is this conversion's, and it is the same device Moving to Cover already uses, where the result sets how much of the barrier's protection is gained. RAW instead resolves aimed rapid fire on a pass/fail static maneuver - a burst on success, a single shot on failure - which is a cliff where this is a slope, and which switched the critical table on a coin flip. The share is of the fire you sent, so it stops at 100% however well the roll goes RMUCore Law Table 5-1's percentage column does not end at 100: it reads 110 at a total of 131-160, climbing to 150 at 251-280, and 281 or better is Exceptional with no percentage printed at all. Capping the carried share at 100% is this conversion's, and it is how Moving to Cover on this page already reads its own result - the percentage is gained up to the full value of the thing and no further.

Firing takes the whole of the next round — 4 AP — and sends the lesser of the weapon class's rate or what is left in the magazine, for one attack roll. A belt keeps going: another round's worth, another roll, every round until it runs out, all of them at the percentage the one preparation earned RMUThe per-class rates are this conversion's, taken from real cyclic rates at RMU's five-second round - neither rulebook carries one. Ninety a round for a machine pistol, sixty for a submachine gun, fifty for an assault rifle, seventy-five for a belt-fed; Single-fire's fifteen is a trigger finger, not a cycle. For everything but the belt-fed the magazine empties before the rate matters, which is the point rather than an oversight. The shot always resolves as a Burst — Shrapnel criticals — however the maneuver went. The percentage decides how hard it lands, not what kind of wound it is.

+5 a bullet for the first five, then +3, +2 and +1 as the burst lengthens — the thirtieth round on one man is not worth what the third was RMUWeapon Law 3.3.5 replaces the spread burst's fixed +25 with +5 per bullet, and a spread burst is five bullets - so five bullets at +25 is the book's own figure and the anchor this ladder is built on. Everything past five is this conversion's: the book never contemplates the rule reaching a magazine, and run linearly to thirty rounds it pays +150 against an attack table whose entire roll axis is 110 points wide.

A heavier weapon is harder to hold on one man, and that is all this column says. What each of them does to a body is its own attack table's business — a rifle deals better than twice a 9mm's hits at every band — so a heavy class can afford the worse modifier and still be the more frightening thing to stand in front of RMUThis conversion's. The modifiers are calibrated against the bullet ladder above and against the published attack tables together: measured over the two tables this site ships, 7.62 deals about 2.7 times 9mm's hits band for band and reaches F where the 9mm stops at E..

What else the burst hits. A magazine does not all arrive in one place. Everyone else inside a 5° cone on the line of fire — about 5.2' across at 60' — faces the same fire at OB +0 — the roll stripped of the shooter's skill, carrying the same bullet bonus at the same percentage — exactly as a suppression sweep is faced, and rolled separately for each of them. Any part of you in the cone is in it, and a body in front of you is cover the same as any other — the cone is about one person wide, so a second person on the line is standing behind the first (Fig. 2) RMUWeapon Law 3.3.4 describes an aimed burst as putting a great many rounds into one tight patch of the target, so the book already thinks of it as an area rather than as a single point; what neither book does is give that area a width. Five degrees is this conversion's, sized to a person and a shoulder at medium range rather than derived from another rule. Resolving bystanders at +0 OB follows the suppression sweep rather than the shotgun's option 1, which reuses the original roll - a burst is a spray, not one bullet that happened to miss.

Read how much of them the body in front blocks and take it off the cover table above. A person is hard cover, so use the Hard column for the gun being fired, exactly as a barrier would be. Two people in front of you is not two bonuses — it is more of you blocked, which is one grade further up that same table. That includes the one you aimed at: a bystander between you and them shields them too. Whoever is doing the shielding gets none of their own — they are the front rank RMUCore Law 9.6 (p. 168) for a combatant counting as hard cover by position, and p. 172 for the shielding body itself gaining no cover from the others. Applying both inside the burst cone is this conversion's, and it needs no new mechanic: the cone is narrow enough that being behind someone on the line is the same situation as an archer shooting past an ally, which is the case the book writes the rule for.

One trigger pull, one set of rolls. The body doing the shielding is not rolled for a second time as cover — everyone in the cone already has an attack of their own — and none of the cone's rolls can fumble. Whether the gun went wrong was settled by the preparation RMUCore Law p. 172 ignores fumbles on the roll it sends at a body that provided cover, and the cone's per-person attacks already are that roll, so it is not made a second time. Extending the same treatment to every attack the cone generates is this conversion's: one trigger pull produces one malfunction check, and the preparation maneuver already carries it.

A botched preparation is a malfunction. A percentage maneuver that comes out at -20 or worse sends the shooter to the Firearm Fumble table on its Full Automatics column, and the severity the maneuver earned pushes the roll: +10 for an A, up to +50 for an E. Between -19 and 0 the round is simply wasted RMUCore Law Table 5-1's percentage column already ends in a critical ladder against the character - A at -20 through E at -100 - and names no table to roll it on. Weapon Law 6.8 (p. 126) supplies one, built on RMU's own fumble chassis: its bands are identical to Core Law's Ranged Fumbles from 21 upward, gap at 66 and all, and it splits 1-20 finer. Its Full Automatics column already speaks in jams, half-effect bursts and actions that drop to semiautomatic. Converting the critical ladder into a push on the fumble roll is this conversion's. Note also Core Law p. 163: a weapon's fumble number falls by 1 for every 5 ranks in the skill, to a minimum of 1.

Two skills, two jobs. Rapid Fire is the marksmanship of sustained fire and rolls the preparation above. Fire Discipline is the handling of it and rolls the suppression sweep below. Each reduces the haste penalty on the other's action, never on its own roll RMUWeapon Law carries both skills: Rapid Fire adds to the aimed rapid fire maneuver (p. 10) and Suppression Fire to the suppression maneuver (p. 11), the latter an Everyman skill. Renaming the second to Fire Discipline is this conversion's, and so is the cross-reduction - each skill offsets the other's haste penalty and never the one on its own roll. The shape is Core Law's own, where Combat Expertise: Footwork reduces the pace penalty on an attack made with a different skill entirely (p. 156).

Suppression Fire

Hosing an area with bullets to make it deadly to move through RMUSuppression fire (Weapon Law: Firearms pp. 10-11, section 3.4.3); the book's options for extra ammunition, wider arcs, and targets between the shooter and the declared range are adopted as standard. Name the ground — how far out and how wide (Fig. 3) — and make the maneuver with Fire Discipline, rolled Agility-based. The bullets fly whatever the result: the maneuver decides the modifier every target in that ground then faces RMUWeapon Law prices this twice and not the same way: 3.4.3 asks for a flat 30% activity, while the Firearm Actions activity chart on the facing page leaves suppression variable and to the GM, as it does rapid fire. The 2-4 AP window here follows the chart, and takes its penalty from Core Law 8.1 - -25 an action point under the maximum. A round of four action points therefore holds two sweeps at most.

What it spends. The gun must hold at least 5 rounds and the sweep spends 5, plus any extras committed for the volume bonus — never more than the weapon's class rate in a round, however the fire is divided, so two sweeps share one round's worth between them. It costs 2 to 4 AP, at -25 for each point under 4, which Rapid Fire reduces.

How far out. Read the distance on the weapon's own range ladder, exactly as an aimed shot reads it — Short +0, then -10, -25, -50, -100 by band. There is no suppressing at point blank: inside ten feet you are not making ground dangerous, you are shooting someone RMUWeapon Law 3.4.3 allows suppression at point blank, short and medium and forbids it past medium. Reading the distance on the weapon's own ladder instead of on three fixed bands is this conversion's, and so is letting a sweep reach past medium at the ladder's own penalties - stating the sweep in feet is what makes both follow: a band is a distance, and the ladder already prices every one of them. Dropping the point-blank case is also this conversion's - at ten feet the geometry below allows a five-foot frontage, which is one person.

How wide. Frontage, in feet, and every weapon sweeps some of it for nothing: half its short range — 15' for a Glock 17, 25' for a Zastava with the stock out, 100' for an SKS-46. What the cone can actually reach caps it at half the distance you named, so the rifle's 100' is all there at 200' and 15' at 30'. Past whichever of those bites first, widening costs -10 for each quarter of that free width you add — so a quarter wider is -10, half again -20, and double the ground is always -40, whatever the weapon and however far out. Widths are measured across the whole sweep, not added to each flank RMUWeapon Law 3.4.3 declares the sweep as an arc - 45 degrees at point blank, 30 at short, 15 at medium - and charges -10 for each extra 5 degrees added to the arc, which is the whole arc rather than each side. Those arcs cover the same WIDTH of ground for any one weapon, because chord(30 degrees, d) is 0.52d and its medium band is twice its short, so stating the rule in feet is a change of unit rather than of rule, and half the distance is that same 30-degree arc read as a ceiling. Pricing the widening in quarters of the free width is this conversion's: a fixed number of feet holds the ground constant and lets the traverse it buys swing tenfold with range, which is the mirror of the book's own problem.

The area attack: Everyone in the cone, at or short of the declared distance, first chooses: dive for cover, or stand and take it. Then each faces an OB +0 attack (the roll without the attacker's skill bonus), modified by the maneuver result above, on the weapon's attack table. Targets short of the declared distance are caught only incidentally: the attack against them takes -20. Roll the attack separately for each person in the cone — one roll shared out would give everyone the same cover and the same DB, which is the one thing an area attack is not. Any part of you in the cone is in it — a sweep is not a blast band, so standing across its edge costs you nothing and buys you nothing. Bodies in the arc shield the bodies behind them on the same reading as a burst cone, and the sweep does not roll them for twice either RMUNeither book rules on a target only partly inside a suppression arc. Weapon Law 3.4.3 resolves the sweep as an ordinary attack roll at +0 OB, taken separately against each person caught, and an ordinary attack has no notion of partial coverage - you are a target or you are not - so treating any part inside as inside follows the mechanic rather than adding to it. Deliberately NOT the blast rules' straddling penalty for a body not wholly inside a band: that belongs to RMU Core Law 9.3, whose area attacks resolve with no attack roll at all, and importing it would price a cone as though it were a band.

It is an area attack in the plain sense and not in RMU's: the shooter's roll is an ordinary attack, so a sweep is defended like any other gunfire — armor alone in the open; Quickness DB, half a dodge and the cover itself behind something. The explosives under Grenades & Explosives are the RMU kind, and dodging does not touch those at any distance or behind anything RMUWeapon Law 3.4.3 makes the sweep an ordinary +0 OB attack roll rather than Core Law 9.3's skill-less resolution, so it defends like any other shot. Core Law 9.6 allows no dodge whatever against an area attack, which is why the explosives differ.

Diving for cover: Cover within reach — the wall you stand at, the car beside you — is simply dropped behind: its protection counts double under suppression. Cover that must be reached takes the moving to cover maneuver (below) at its suppression difficulty, the % result scaling the doubled protection. Either way the diver forfeits their remaining AP this round and has 2 AP (of the round's four) on the next.

Standing it: Act normally this round and take the attack as it comes. Cover already held counts at its normal value — but ducking behind it under the hail costs concentration: 3 AP on the next round. A target in the open pays nothing further.

Situational Rules

Point Blank

Inside 10' — 20' for a rifle or longer — the fight is about getting the muzzle onto someone before they move, and what that is worth depends on how much gun there is to swing. The bonus is by class, not flat RMUCore Law p. 183 gives Point Blank as a flat +20 and only to crossbows; Weapon Law's firearm actions chart gives firearms a flat +20 as well. Grading it by the weapon's bulk is this conversion's - neither book was built around a weapon that fits under a jacket. The distance bands are the book's:

It is paid for at the other end of the ladder. The pistol that swings fastest in a doorway is the first weapon to run out of range altogether, and a weapon that can change its bulk changes both at once: the Zastava M85 folded is a compact long arm on its shorter ladder, and shouldered it trades that bonus down a step to reach half again as far.

Dodging a Gun

A bullet is too fast to react to, so what a dodge buys against a gun is not stepping aside — it is being somewhere the fire is not. In the open, only armor answers a firearm: no Quickness DB, no dodge, no shield. Behind cover the defender gets their Quickness DB and half their Dodge DB, and the cover itself on top VTMV5 p. 301 resolves defence against a ranged attack as Dexterity + Athletics 'using any and all available cover', so in V5 the defence against a gun IS cover and the open is the penalty case; Celerity 1 (p. 253) exists to remove that penalty. Core Law p. 168 supplies the fraction - a dodge counts half against ranged attacks, the projectile being too fast to focus on. Denying Quickness DB in the open as well is this conversion's, and follows the same reasoning one step further. Other missiles are gentler: an arrow, a thrown blade or a spat venom takes the same half a dodge, but needs no cover to get it — only gunfire demands a wall.

Kindred with Celerity read the shot instead of the ground. Rapid Reflexes keeps a growing share of the dodge against any missile, from the same half everyone else gets up to the whole of it — and against firearms it waives the cover requirement as well. It is still a share of a dodge and never more than one; the DB itself comes from Fleetness, and costs blood.

Tripods

A mounted gun shoots flatter at distance: +25 against the range penalty, though never past 0 — point blank and short range, which carry no penalty, gain nothing RMUTripods (Weapon Law: Firearms p. 12, 3.7.2): +25 to all range modifications, capped at zero. A gun that requires a tripod (the weapon listing says so) fires unbraced at -50 — and the recoil itself attacks the shooter first: a +0 Large attack on the Fall/Crush table at +5 per ME of the gun's attack table, defended with triple Strength bonus in place of DB; every hit taken is -1 and every critical severity -10 off the shot's own roll RMUDisadvantages of tripods (Weapon Law: Firearms p. 12, 3.7.1) — the book's example: an M2HB (ME 29) fired from the hip is a +145 Fall/Crush attack on the shooter.

Shotguns

A shotgun throws a pattern rather than a bullet, so it can catch more than the person aimed at, and how wide that pattern is decides everything else about the gun. The spread, what a barrel with the choke sawn off it does differently, and the point-blank case where the shot is still one mass are on Shotgun, with the weapon.

Hunting-Class Guns

Heavy hunting weapons carry a Hunting Classification of I, II, or III in the weapon listing: +10, +25, or +50 on any attack against a Large or Huge target RMUHunting Classification (Weapon Law: Firearms p. 12, 3.6). The Ballistic Puncture criticals key some results to class II or greater.

Moving to Cover

With no one shooting, no roll is needed — just move. Under fire, reaching cover is a moving maneuver — a dash, a tumble, a vault, the move itself paid as ordinary movement AP — at -20, or at -40 when a suppression sweep is up or several guns are firing at once. The maneuver's percentage result sets how much of the cover's protection is gained that round, up to the full value (70% behind full soft cover's +100 grants +70) RMUMoving to cover (Weapon Law: Firearms p. 13); the book raises the maneuver's difficulty by two or four levels — priced flat at -20/-40, exact for the book's own Light-base example. RAW: a character who does not gain a failure result gains the cover's protection multiplied by the maneuver's percentage, and its worked example has the successful diver get behind the log and take 100% of its cover THIS ROUND, a 70% result taking 70% of it this round - so the fraction belongs to the round of arrival and not to every round after. The book does not say where a failed maneuver leaves the character; leaving them exposed for that round and in cover from the next is this conversion's, and follows from the move being paid in AP separately from the maneuver.

The fraction is the price of arriving, not a rate you keep paying. The move is paid in AP and happens either way; what the maneuver decides is how much of the barrier you got yourself behind before the shooting caught up. A failure buys none of it and leaves you in the open for that round — you are at the wall without being behind it. From the next round on you are simply in cover and have its full value, with no further roll. It is the same principle the impenetrable column already states from the other end: its number matters only while you are getting there, because once you are there you are not a target at all.

What Counts as Cover

How much of the defender the shooter cannot see (Fig. 4) — a quarter blocked is partial cover, half is half cover, 90% or more is full cover RMUCover (RMU Core Law 9.6, p. 168): amount by view blocked; soft obscures vision, hard stops or deflects the attack; other combatants count as cover by position. Soft cover is anything that merely obscures vision — fog, darkness, curtains, and any wall a bullet punches straight through (drywall, a car door); hard cover stops or deflects the shot, graded by sturdiness: hard (brick, an engine block), hardened (reinforced against weapon fire), impenetrable (nothing the gun fires gets through). Soft is the floor and impenetrable the ceiling, and neither cares what gun is firing — obscured vision costs the same at any caliber, a full stop likewise. They are RMU's own ranged cover values, the ceiling double the floor RMUTable 9-5 (RMU Core Law p. 167), ranged cover: partial/half/full +20/+40/+100, x2 for hard cover — adopted as the soft floor and the impenetrable ceiling. Between them, hard cover falls off with the weight of the incoming gun — the heavier the attack table, the more the barrier behaves like mere concealment — and hardened cover lags one weapon class behind the fall-off RMUThe per-weapon fall-off follows the Cover Chart's idea (Weapon Law: Firearms p. 13); the values are re-derived inside the RMU floor-to-ceiling envelope, hand-tuned at the ME 19-24 step. Someone standing between the muzzle and the target is hard cover by position. The protection adds to DB against shots from the covered side:

A miss can hit whoever was in the way. When the cover was a person and the shot misses, roll a second attack against them at OB +0 — picked at random if more than one shielded the target. They count none of their own cover from other bodies, and that roll cannot fumble RMUFiring into melee (Core Law p. 172): a ranged attack that misses its intended target may instead land on one of the bodies it was fired past, picked at random; the shot is rolled again against them with none of the shooter's skill behind it, they count no cover from anyone else standing near, and that roll cannot fumble. Core Law 9.6 (p. 168) is what makes a body cover in the first place - another combatant, friend or enemy, counts as hard cover when a shot is taken past them, graded by position and relative size.

Fig. 4 What the shooter can still see

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Partial

A poured-concrete block standing between the shooter and the camera, its top edge crossing him at the thighs; almost all of him stands clear above it.

Partial

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Half

The same block risen to his waist, hiding everything below it while his chest, arms and head stand clear.

Half

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Full

The block risen to his shoulders, leaving only his head and the pistol in his hands showing above the concrete.

Full

Three photographs of the same man in a long dark coat on a wet Helsinki street at night, a pistol held out in both hands and aimed at the camera, with a poured-concrete block standing between him and the lens. Only the block changes between them. At partial cover its top edge crosses him at the thighs and almost all of him stands clear above it. At half cover the block has risen to his waist, hiding everything below. At full cover it reaches his shoulders, leaving only his head and the pistol in his hands showing above the concrete. What the tier counts is how much of him is hidden, not how tall the barrier is - a body is wider at the chest than at the shins, so hiding half of someone takes a barrier well past half their height.

The Soft / Impenetrable column is the flat floor and ceiling; the gun columns price hard cover. The Hardened row names which gun reads each column as hardened cover — against SG and ME 1-6, hardened counts as impenetrable. Against melee, cover is +10/+20/+50 for partial/half/full, doubled when hard RMUCover DB in Table 9-5 (RMU Core Law p. 167): melee partial/half/full +10/+20/+50, x2 for hard cover; ranged doubles melee. Fully behind impenetrable cover a character cannot be hit at all — its value matters only while moving to it. Divers under suppression fire count their cover's protection double.

Ammunition

Ammunition is a tactical choice, and the right answer changes with what the target is wearing: hollowpoint against bare flesh, armor piercing against body armor, and ball when you do not know which you will meet. The full rules live with ballistic body armor below, since every one of them is a statement about armor.

Ballistic Body Armor

Modern vests come in four classes, from the concealable liner to full tactical plate — the table below names them. A gun fires against the armor's own column on its attack table (the BA I-IV columns), and the vest decides which critical table the hit rolls on RMUBody Armor (Weapon Law: Firearms p. 9, section 3.2): the Modern Armor Types table and the critical-table selection rules; the optional re-roll-on-AT-1 rule for uncovered locations is not adopted. Class descriptions follow the real-world protection classes - the book does not describe them. COVERAGE is this conversion's: the book (3.1.2) runs torso / +shoulders / +thighs / entire body; ours is restated in the five location bands the critical tables use, and head and legs stay exposed until BA IV:

Classes I-II (soft armor): criticals roll on Ballistic Puncture as usual — but if the location rolled is covered by the armor, read the same roll on Ballistic Impact instead: the vest catches the bullet, and the wound is blunt trauma. Classes III-IV (hard armor): criticals roll on Ballistic Impact by default, and only a location the armor does not cover reads the same roll on Ballistic Puncture. Never roll twice — one roll, read on the table the armor dictates. What each class actually covers is the Covers column below, photographed in Fig. 5.

Armor piercing rounds trade tissue damage for penetration: a hard core that will not deform, punching through armor — and through flesh — in a narrow channel. Every caliber has a penetration rating, the highest armor class it defeats outright: BA II for the 9mm pistols and SMGs, BA III for the 7.62mm rifles. Nothing defeats BA IV, which is built against exactly this round. Resolve it the way the rules above already do — the column by the armor as a whole, the critical table by whether the round reached flesh:

• Defeated or absent (bare target, or armor at or under the rating): fire against the naked AT column as if the vest weren't there, deal half concussion hits rounded up — the round over-penetrates instead of dumping its energy — and roll criticals on Armor Piercing.
• Stopped (armor above the rating): the armor wins this exchange. Fire the BA column for full hits. Criticals read Ballistic Impact where the armor covers — a round that did not penetrate is blunt trauma, the same as any other stopped bullet — and Armor Piercing where it does not. A rifle plate is no help to the head above it.

Either way the armor takes punishment, and both critical tables carry the breakage check in the cell — every Armor Piercing result calls for one, and the Ballistic Impact results do too, so there is nothing extra to remember and nothing to roll twice. Read it off the result and resolve it under Wearing Armor Down below. AP's modifiers run a tier deeper than Impact's at every band: a hardened core cracks and delaminates a plate even when it fails to pass through, so sustained AP fire strips protection off a target the way nothing else in the arsenal does. That is the round's real purpose: it is the answer to armor at every class — bypassing what it out-rates, and grinding down what it does not RMUWeapon Law: Firearms 3.10.1 (p. 13) supplies direction only - AP uses the Armor Piercing critical table even against body armor, with half concussion vs unarmored as an option. That book is not RAW here (see DECISIONS.md, source hierarchy), and its two-sentence rule predates these breaking-point BA columns and carries no penetration ratings. This conversion keeps the half-concussion trade and the AP table for penetrating hits, routes stopped rounds to blunt trauma to match the armor doctrine above, and adds the breakage check. The breakage mechanic itself is RMU Core Law 6.1, inlined below..

Wearing Armor Down

Armor is consumable. A vest that stops a bullet is a vest with a hole starting in it, and the next round through the same weave finds less in its way. Whenever a rule calls for a breakage check on armor — a critical result demanding one (every Armor Piercing result, and most Ballistic Impact results), or a natural 33 or 77 on a maneuver using it — roll d100 open-ended, add the armor's strength for design and materials, add any quality bonus, and subtract every breakage penalty it has already taken. Damaged armor breaks more easily than new, which is what makes sustained fire tell RMUBreakage (RMU Core Law 6.1, p. 134-135 and Table 6-1): the d100OE roll, the ST/quality/prior-damage modifiers, the result bands, and the armor-specific rule that it lands as an armor maneuver penalty, and that an area losing more than -50 is no longer protected:

Breakage penalties apply as an armor maneuver penalty, stacking with the class penalty in the table above — damaged armor is heavier to fight in as well as thinner. Track one running total per piece of armor, and once it passes -50 the armor is beaten open and no longer protects: from the next shot on, fire the naked AT column and resolve criticals as though the target wore nothing. Two or three AP rounds into the same plate will do it. Repair is a workshop job between sessions, not something done in a doorway with the shooting still going on RMUCore Law 6.1 phrases the threshold per area - 'if the location stops counting as protected once its accumulated penalty passes -50' - which suits full plate harness. A modern vest is one garment, so this conversion tracks the total on the piece rather than per location. Sequence matters when applying it: the attack column is chosen before the attack roll, while location only emerges from the critical roll afterwards.

Hollowpoint rounds are the opposite trade: soft expanding noses that mushroom and fragment in flesh — devastating against bare targets, helpless against armor. Against an unarmored target, criticals roll on the Ballistic Hollowpoint table. Against body armor the selection rules above apply with one substitution: a location the armor does not catch reads Ballistic Hollowpoint instead of Ballistic Puncture, while covered locations stay on Ballistic Impact. And because an expanding round sheds its energy in whatever it touches first, all cover bonuses are doubled against hollowpoint fire RMUHollowpoint Rounds (Weapon Law: Firearms 3.10.2, p. 13): the unarmored-targets critical rule and the doubled-cover option, both adopted; the covered/uncovered substitution is this conversion's wiring into the body-armor selection rules.

The maneuver penalty runs from fully trained in the armor to untrained. The missile penalty applies to the wearer's own ranged attacks (armored arms), and the Quickness penalty reduces the wearer's Quickness bonus to DB — never below what a zero Quickness bonus would give.

Fig. 5 What each class covers

Soft armor

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BA I

A man in shirtsleeves on a wet night street with nothing worn over his clothes, a flat panel showing through the shirt across his chest the only sign he is armored; his abdomen, arms and legs read as ordinary clothing.

BA I

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BA II

The same man in a bulky dark vest worn over the shirt, covering his chest and continuing down over his abdomen to the waistline; his arms are in shirtsleeves and his legs in ordinary trousers.

BA II

Hard armor

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BA III

A plate carrier over his chest and abdomen with hard guards on the shoulders and arms running past the elbow; his head is bare and his legs are in ordinary trousers.

BA III

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BA IV

Full tactical armor with no part of him in ordinary clothing: a helmet over the head, throat and shoulder protection, plates over chest and abdomen, armored sleeves to the gloves, and leg armor running to the boot.

BA IV

Four photographs of the same man standing on a wet Helsinki street at night, arms at his sides, one for each ballistic armor class. Wearing class I he looks unarmored: nothing sits over his clothes, and only a flat panel showing through the shirt across his chest gives it away. Class II is a bulky vest worn over the shirt, covering the chest and continuing down over the abdomen to the waistline, with the arms in shirtsleeves and the legs in ordinary trousers. Class III adds a plate carrier and hard guards on the shoulders and arms past the elbow, while the head stays bare and the legs stay in trousers. Class IV leaves no part of him in ordinary clothing - helmet, throat and shoulder protection, plates over chest and abdomen, armored sleeves to the gloves, and leg armor to the boot. What falls away across the four is the number of places a bullet can find flesh instead of armor.

On the attack table, every class has a breaking point. Below it the vest eats the shot — no criticals, only plain concussion hits that climb as the shot lands harder: bruises under the weave, cracked ribs under a hammered plate. Past it the round defeats the armor, damage jumps, and criticals arrive and escalate. Even then the armor keeps its worth: no vest ever deals as many hits as bare clothes would, and soft armor's (I-II) worst criticals top out one severity step below the unarmored column's. Against the Glock 17 the breaking points sit at attack totals of 101 (BA I), 113 (BA II), 128 (BA III) and 161 (BA IV) — the heavier the armor, the more exceptional the shot must be. The thresholds are caliber-relative, set per weapon: a hotter round pulls the lighter classes' breaking points down toward the bottom of the table — while a badly outmatched round caps out entirely (a 9mm never rolls worse than a B critical against tactical plate) RMUThe threshold pacing is modeled on RMU's spell attack tables (e.g. Bolt, Ice - Core Law p. 193), where criticals against heavy armor arrive late and stack up fast; the top-end values anchor to the body-armor table on the weapon page's back (Weapon Law: Firearms).

Bite Attacks

Every Kindred carries a weapon in their mouth. A bite rolls with the Unarmed: Bite skill (every character has 1 rank from creation — their life as Kindred) on the RMU core Bite attack table. Fangs are an aggravated source against Kindred: resolve the bite at full value, without the one-level severity reduction, per the aggravated-damage rule (Core Concepts) VTMBite Attacks VTM p. 213 and grappling p. 301: declare the bite before rolling; fangs deal exactly two Aggravated; feeding slakes 1 Hunger and deals 1 Aggravated per turn.

Reaching a resisting victim: Fangs need control — or daring. Land a grapple (a Strength-based Unarmed hold): the round the hold lands you may bite immediately as a secondary attack at -20, and on later rounds, while the hold persists, the bite rolls at full OB. Alternatively, lunge with a direct bite at -20 without any hold — exposed flesh is hard to find on a fighting victim VTMVTM p. 213: a direct Strength + Brawl bite takes a 1-success penalty, and after a successful grapple the bite carries none. A success prices at 20 points (Core Concepts, Difficulty & Modifiers), giving the -20. The -20 on the same-round bite is NOT the book's - the book's grapple bite is free - it is RMU's cost for a second attack in the round; from the next round on, the book's free bite is what this page publishes. Unaware, helpless, or unresisting victims — feeding, the Kiss — need no grapple and no penalty.

Lodged fangs: A bite that deals damage sinks the fangs in: the victim counts as grappled by the bite itself and escapes only by winning a grapple contest (conflicting Strength-based Unarmed rolls). While the fangs stay lodged, further bites and feeding take no penalty.

Feeding in combat: Each turn the fangs stay lodged, slake 1 HungerVTM need for blood sustenance; a mortal victim takes \(10 + 1d10\)aggravated concussion hits, while a vampire victim's own Hunger rises by 1 instead. Brutal Feed (Potence 3) compresses several slakes into a single turn.

Feral Weapons (Protean 2) waives the -20 bite penalty — the secondary and the direct bite alike. Only vampiric bites work this way — an animal's bite is a regular attack.

Staking & Decapitation

Two blows matter more than any amount of ordinary damage to a vampire: the one that pins the heart and the one that takes the head. Both are called shots — declare the target before rolling — and both take -20 on the attack VTMCalled shots for staking and decapitation, VTM pp. 221 and 302; the -2 dice penalty converts at the standard 1 die = 10 points.

Staking: A wooden stake, or a wooden bolt from a crossbow or similar stake-thrower. The blow must reach the heart, not merely land: it takes a critical of severity C or higher to the chest. Wood is poor material for stabbing and carries its usual -10 (see Weapon Materials below).

Outside combat — a sleeper, a torpid body, a vampire in chains — the stake needs no attack roll at all when there is time enough and nothing to interfere. Where haste, darkness, an unsteady target, or something guarding the heart makes it a real question, roll the maneuver below VTMVTM p. 221 requires no roll to stake an incapacitated or sleeping vampire "in circumstances where time and disturbance is not a factor"; this maneuver covers the circumstances where they are. Bands and modifiers are this conversion's own.

Decapitation: An edged weapon heavy enough to behead — axe, scimitar, broadsword. It takes a critical of severity D or higher to the head or neck. A successful beheading destroys a vampire on the spot, torpid or standing, and it is Final Death VTMVTM prices these as raw damage thresholds (10+ for beheading, 5+ for a stake, before halving) - unreachable at this system's scale, where one V5 health level is 15 hits. Converted instead to RMU's own measure of a devastating blow, critical severity: D+ for the head, C+ for the heart.

What a stake does once it is in — paralysis, the slow slide into torpor — is on Core Concepts, with the rest of the dangers to the Blood.

Grenades & Explosives

An explosive is not aimed at anyone. It is put somewhere, and everything near it takes what it gets. There is no attack skill — no Offensive Bonus reaches the blast, only the bare count of your ranks — but there is still one attack roll, made once for the detonation and read by every target against their own armor RMUCore Law 9.3, Area Attacks (p. 164): area attacks have no corresponding skill, and the attack roll takes no modifier but the rank count in the originating list - which presupposes a roll, and Quickness DB is subtracted from it. Spell Law's Fire Ball resolves on the Fire Ball Table. RMU encodes the missing OB as a lower ceiling: all three Ball tables run 15-17 to 123-125 against a weapon table's 65-67 to 173-175:

\(d100_{OE} + ThrownRanks - QuicknessDB - Cover + BandModifier\)

Ranks, not the skill bonus. Your whole Ranged Weapon: Thrown bonus decides where it lands, on the placement maneuver below; only your ranks ride the blast itself. Once it is on the ground, being good at throwing does not make the fragments fly harder. Criticals are rolled separately for each target — one burst opens one man's arm and another's leg RMUCore Law 9.3 (p. 164) for the ranks term; p. 175 for per-target criticals - criticals from one area effect are rolled per target rather than once for the group, so a Fire Ball can burn one target's arm and another's foot. The GM may roll once for a large group to save time.

What is rolled is where it lands. Throwing takes a maneuver, at a difficulty the GM sets from how precise the throw needs to be; a result of 100 or more puts it where you meant it. Anything less and it scatters: take half the distance you threw, and it lands off target by the percentage of that you fell short of 100, in a direction rolled on a d12 read as a clock face (Fig. 6). Twelve is downrange — straight on past what you aimed at — so a six drops it short, back toward you, and three and nine throw it wide. Throwing is a ranged attack like any other — 1 to 3 AP, at -25 for each point under the three it wants — and an explosive fumbles on an unmodified 01-04. A fumbled throw never leaves your hand: the grenade is on the ground at your feet, and its fuse has been running since you pulled the pin RMUCore Law 9.3 (p. 164): placement is a Percentage Maneuver with Ranged Weapon: Thrown at a difficulty set by the precision wanted; 100 or more places it, and a miss is displaced by (100 - result)% of half the distance. RAW offers a d6 for hex facings, a d8 for a square grid and a d12 for a clock face - this conversion uses no grid, so the clock is the only one of the three that applies. Its worked example orients the clock as 12 due behind the target and 6 directly ahead of them, and a rolled 6 duly drops the bomb short; stating that as the line of the THROW is this conversion's, so it still works when you are aiming at a doorway rather than at someone with a facing. Thrown area weapons fumble on 01-04, spells on 01-02. Table 8-1 (p. 154) prices a Ranged Attack at 1-3 AP, and 8.1 costs -25 for each AP under an action's maximum. RAW states the fumble range and gives no result for it, so the grenade landing at the thrower's feet is this conversion's, matched to the throw-back's fumble a section below.

You throw a fragmentation grenade through an open door 45' away, at a spot just inside it. That is the second band, so -10, and the GM asks nothing more of a throw at a door you can see. Your Ranged Weapon: Thrown is +40 and the d100 comes up 42: 42 + 40 - 10 = 72, 28 short of 100. Half of 45' is 22.5', and 28% of that is 6.3': the grenade lands 6.3' from where you meant it, in a direction the d12 decides. Whether that is still inside the room is the whole question.

The Three Bands

An explosive that wounds carries up to three radii. Not every one carries all three: a thermate grenade has no fringe worth the name, and smoke and gas do not wound at all. Where you stood is a modifier to the one attack roll RMUCore Law 9.3 (p. 164): for ball attacks one target may be named as the primary target and centre point, taken at +1 size; targets straddling an edge take it at -1 size. Splitting that into three named radii, and stating the step in roll points rather than size categories, is this conversion's extension. For scale: a severity step on the fragmentation table averages 15.5 points, so +20 is about a step and -40 about two:

A target is in the innermost band any part of it occupies, and takes a further -20 if it does not fit entirely inside (Fig. 7) RMUCore Law 9.3 (p. 164): a target overlapping the boundary of an area effect is attacked one size category down. Applying it at every band edge rather than only the outer one is this conversion's: straddling the kill edge is +20 -20, the casualty result exactly.

Dodging never applies — there is nowhere to dodge to and no incoming line to read. Quickness DB does. Cover and shields count only when they stand between the burst and the body: a wall you are behind stops fragments, a wall behind you does nothing (Fig. 8) RMUCore Law 9.3 (p. 164): Quickness DB applies, the book reasoning that there is an instant in which to flinch away, while dodging does not; shields and cover apply only where they lie between the attack's centre point and the defender.

Going to ground. A character who is prone when it goes off is treated as one band further out — the fringe of a blast they were standing in the middle of, and out of it altogether if they were on the fringe already. That is about presenting less of yourself, so it is the one thing a body can do that a barrier cannot.

Cover subtracts, it does not shift. A barrier between you and the burst is priced exactly as it is against a gun, off the cover table — and fragments read its SG & ME 1-6 column, the same one shot uses, because that is what they are RMUCore Law 9.3 (p. 164) has shields and cover apply to an area attack where they lie between its centre point and the defender, but never as a change of size band - the band shift for cover was this conversion's and is withdrawn (user, 2026-07-29). The column choice is this conversion's too: the cover table grades hard cover by the weight of the incoming gun and a grenade carries no ME rating, so fragmentation reads the shotgun column, the most protective. Half a brick wall is +70 off the roll whether the thing on the other side is a shotgun or a grenade.

Only material cover. The soft column covers two different things — a curtain of fog and a sheet of drywall — and against a blast only the second is worth anything. Smoke, darkness and a drawn curtain are priced against a gun because they spoil the aim, and a blast has no aim to spoil: the fragments do not need to see you. Anything with a thickness still subtracts, however thin; anything that merely obscures subtracts nothing.

Armor is read off the attack table's own BA columns, exactly as it is for a gun. Those columns price whether the vest stops a fragment. Whether it was standing in front of the part that got hit is a separate question, and Ballistic Shrapnel answers it per area with its own covered and bare clauses: a covered area takes more hits and no bleeding and no lasting injury, a bare one takes fewer hits and all of the damage that stays.

The Fuse Is a Round

A hand grenade's fuse burns four to five seconds FM 23-30US Army FM 23-30, Grenades and Pyrotechnic Signals: the standard fuze delay is 4 to 5 seconds. A RMU round is 5 seconds (Core Law, Combat), so the two are the same beat — one round. It lands at the end of the round it was thrown and detonates at the end of the next. Everyone who acts in between has that round to spend, and the price list is the ordinary one: going prone is 2 AP, a move is 1, getting it off the ground is 3, and throwing it is 1 to 3 RMUCore Law Table 8-1 (p. 154): 4 AP a round; Drop Prone / Stand Up 2, Move your BMR 1, Get item from ground 3, Ranged Attack 1-3, Perception 0-2, Drop item 0. An action with an AP range taken faster costs -25 for each AP under its maximum. So throwing it back costs the whole round — 3 AP to pick it up and the last one to throw, at -50 for a throw made in a quarter of the time it wants, against a fuse nobody can see. A failed throw-back still leaves the hand and scatters from wherever it was aimed; a fumbled one does not, and goes off where it is.

Noticing It in Time

All of that assumes you saw it land. A grenade burns its fuse whether or not anyone is looking at it, and in a firefight a small object bouncing to a stop is not what anyone is watching for. Looking is itself an action: Perception costs 0 to 2 AP, and every point short of the full two costs -25 — so a glance thrown sideways is at -50, and a proper look spends half the round you were going to react in RMUCore Law 8.1 (p. 154) for the -25 per AP under an action's maximum, and Perception (p. 155): a Perception action at 0 AP is at -50, two AP less than normal, and is instantaneous. RAW also fixes what a combatant sees without asking - everything within a 10' hemisphere to the front and sides, and nothing to the rear or flanks unless it is large or spectacular - which is where this table's placement rows come from.

The look comes out of the same four points. What you may spend on reacting is the band's figure or whatever is left of the round, whichever is smaller — so a proper look buys the roll and costs the reaction, and only someone who caught it on a glance has the four points a throw-back needs.

What the AP buys (Fig. 9). Going flat is 2 AP and reads one band further out. Reaching cover is a move and then whatever the moving maneuver grants — at -20 under fire, -40 under suppression — and the fraction it grants is the fraction of the barrier's value you subtract. There is no threshold to clear: a dash that only half arrives still puts half a wall between you and the fragments.

What They Are Loaded With

Distances are the real ones FM 23-30M67 fragmentation: thrown 35 m, effective casualty radius 15 m, killing radius 5 m. MK3A2 concussion: thrown 40 m, effective casualty radius 2 m in the open, greater in enclosed spaces. AN-M14 TH3 incendiary: thrown 25 m. M84 stun and M18 smoke: thrown 35-40 m. Converted to feet and rounded to the table's own steps. A fragmentation grenade's casualty radius covers most rooms and its fringe covers most buildings. Thrown badly, it does not care whose side you are on. The radii are drawn against each other at one scale in Fig. 10.

Range. The five throws are the range increments, and the last of them is as far as the grenade goes. The penalty for the band lands on the placement maneuver — there is no attack roll for it to touch — so a long throw is not weaker, it is less placed, and the scatter it earns is measured against a longer distance as well RMUCore Law p. 183: a weapon's listed range is the maximum for each increment, no modifier up to Short and a penalty per band beyond it. The 0/-10/-25/-50/-100 values are the ladder this site's firearm tables already use (Weapon Law: Firearms), and the bands are multiples of one increment exactly as the guns' are. Attaching them to the placement maneuver rather than to an attack roll is this conversion's, area attacks having no attack roll. Past the last figure the grenade simply does not arrive.

Armor answers fragments, and very little else. A vest is the answer to a fragment; against heat or overpressure it is worth almost nothing — RMU's own Fire Ball loses just 27% of its hits from bare skin to full plate, where a bullet loses more than half. So a fragmentation hit is read column by column against whatever covered the area it struck, and the other explosives never ask what the target was wearing RMUMeasured from the extracted RMU attack tables (scripts/rebalance/raw_weapons.json), bare AT 1 to plate AT 10: Ball, Fire loses 27% of its hits and 0.80 of a severity step, Ball, Cold 33%, Ball, Lightning 20% - against Bow, Long at 48%/1.27 and Broadsword at 67%/1.93. Bolt, Fire, an aimed elemental attack, shows the same 26%, so the reduced armor benefit tracks the damage TYPE rather than the attack being an area one. That extract contains no firearms, so the ballistic figure is measured on this conversion's own tables over the same span: the Glock 17 and Zastava M85 (which share its matrices) lose 58% of their hits, the SKS-46 54%.

So fragmentation resolves on its own attack table, with the burst raking several areas at once and each read against what covered it. Everything else takes the severity straight from the band, the way RMU handles a thrown incendiary: concussion on Ballistic Impact — all of the energy, none of the penetration.

A Molotov has no table and no columns at all: a flat critical over a radius, with nothing to read against armor. The throw increments, the placement maneuver and the scatter all apply as above, and everything past them is the fire — its own page gives the radius and the critical it deals.

Incendiary resolves on RMU's Heat critical table, and the concussion secondary on Subdual RMUHeat Critical Strike Table, Core Law p. 229; Subdual Critical Strike Table, p. 237. Both are RMU's own tables, read from the book. Thermate sets what it touches alight, and for the Kindred fire is Aggravated and burns as long as it burns. One incendiary grenade is a credible threat to a vampire that a room full of gunmen is not.

Smoke & Gas

Neither wounds anybody. A smoke grenade fills a 20' radius over the round it lands and holds it for 10 to 18 rounds FM 23-30M18 coloured smoke burns 50 to 90 seconds, AN-M83 white smoke 25 to 70; at five seconds to the round that is 10-18 rounds for the M18. The book gives durations but no cloud dimension for either, so the 20' radius is this conversion's. Drift and wind are the Storyteller's - the figures assume still air, less in wind and longer indoors. Inside it or through it, the cloud is soft cover — the same fog the cover rules already price, graded by how much of the target it hides. It stops nothing, and a shooter who knows where you were is still entitled to guess.

CS fills the same 20' radius but burns out far faster — 3 to 7 rounds FM 23-30ABC-M7A2 and M7A3 riot-control grenades produce their cloud for 15 to 35 seconds, a third of the M18's burn; thrown 40 m by the average soldier — and works on eyes and lungs rather than on flesh. A breathing victim in the cloud takes -30 on everything and cannot hold a coherent action on a failed Constitution maneuver; leaving it, they carry -10 for a further 2 rounds while their eyes clear. Gas masks negate it, as does holding your breath — for as long as you can, and the eyes still stream at -10.

Against the Kindred it is mostly theatre. A vampire who is not breathing takes the eye irritation and nothing else — the -10, never the -30, and no Constitution maneuver VTMVampires never need to breathe (VTM p. 202); the undead body lacks breath except to speak (p. 218). Blush of Life restores breathing along with heartbeat and body temperature (p. 218), which is what puts a vampire back inside the full effect. A vampire running Blush of LifeVTM: a Rouse Check that lends the dead body a night of heartbeat, warmth and breath is breathing like anyone else, and catches all of it — which is the sort of thing a mortal police line never plans for and a Sheriff does.

Flash-Bang

A stun grenade does no injury and rolls on no critical table. It is a contest: the blast of light and sound against the body's capacity to shrug it off. Every target in the radius resists separately.

Resistance (the victim rolls first, as the passive side):

\(Resistance = d100_{OE} + 40 + {2}\times{(Co_{bonus} + SD_{bonus})} + BP\)BPBP is the Blood Potency power bonus: +5 per point of Blood Potency — for example +5 at BP 1 and +30 at BP 6. In a victim’s Resistance formula, use the victim’s own.

A flash-bang goes through the window of a room where a ghoul is watching the door, unaware. He has Co +5 and SD +0 and no Blood Potency, so he resists with d100_OE + 40 + 10 — a roll of 62 for 112. The grenade rolls 88 + 50 + (100 - 112) = 126, +20 for the room and +20 for the surprise: 166. That is six full steps above 101 — six rounds blind and deaf, and 12 concussion hits he will never be able to account for.

Weapon Materials