Hordes of enemies...

[dragonfett]

Got a question here. Say you have a bunch of enemies all targeting the same character (say 20 enemies attacking one of your players) and they want to dodge, would they have to roll one dodge roll for each attack roll or could they just roll one dodge roll and any attack that doesn't exceed it just fails?

The reason I am asking is because one of the characters in my group is a full conversion 'borg that is armored to the max and I am having a hard time trying to throw a challenge that wouldn't also kill one of the other characters by accident. I could have one of the enemies each target one of the other players while all of the rest target my 'borg player and each time one of the others kill one of the enemy, another takes their place.

[Johnathan]

It's possible. However, if you look at N&SS they say that only four attackers can target any given individual at a time. However if you post 20 snipers on this guy with plasma rifles... He's gonna be fairly screwed since he's the big target...

Let's ignore the ridiculousness of having twenty snipers on one guy...

[dragonfett]

I was thinking more along the lines of C-10 rifles because of the low damage. While one or two is hardly a threat to heavily armored foes like 'borgs, having 20 could wind becoming deadly quite fast. If you consider that it takes an 8 or higher to hit ranged targets that are not trying to dodge, about 10 to 12 should hit the 'borg, so let's just say that 10 hit for the sake of simplicity. That means that the damage is going to be 20d6 (2d6 x 10 if you are rolling by hand) MD. With 4 attacks per melee, that would average out to 240 MD per melee round, assuming that the 'borg doesn't try to dodge or none of the enemies are killed in the melee round.

[Cinos]

I was thinking more along the lines of C-10 rifles because of the low damage. While one or two is hardly a threat to heavily armored foes like 'borgs, having 20 could wind becoming deadly quite fast. If you consider that it takes an 8 or higher to hit ranged targets that are not trying to dodge, about 10 to 12 should hit the 'borg, so let's just say that 10 hit for the sake of simplicity. That means that the damage is going to be 20d6 (2d6 x 10 if you are rolling by hand) MD. With 4 attacks per melee, that would average out to 240 MD per melee round, assuming that the 'borg doesn't try to dodge or none of the enemies are killed in the melee round.

Actually your maths is off;

So, assuming there is no attempt to dodge, needing 8s on an non-dodging target. Every turn, an untrained shooter will have a 60% Chance to hit, if he has the WP, there's no reason not to make aimed shots, increasing their chance to hit by 70%, assuming they have the WP, it's up to 75% (this is level one mind you).

On 2D6, the average damage is 7, so assuming he is not attempting to avoid, he's going to take 15 hits, and suffer 105 Damage (well, 112, one of those shots are likely to be a critical, but we'll discount it for the moment), so over a round, 420 Damage. So to survive a minute of this focused fire, he'll something of the following; A frame equal or greater then a VX-370 Stopper (Blue or Red types), a shield or weapon that allows him to parry some of the shots (or force field), or to dodge about 20% of the attacks. (or offing about 2 Snipers a turn).

If you're rolling this by the book, might wanna tone down the number of shooters

EDIT:
RIGHT! You had an actual question. I've always allowed players to make a "Multi-Dodge", I recall it being listed some where, but I might be wrong. Basically, against ranged attacks, it's zig-zagging like a mad man being shot at by high powered laser weapons, making a normal dodge attempt, (Uses next action, etc) and applies the total roll against all incoming attacks until the players next turn. Gives some sporting chance when out number. (Note, they still cannot dodge attacks they are unaware of).

[dragonfett]

Well he and one of the other members of the group have the ability to 1d6 x 10 MD / attack each, with a combined attacks/round of about 10, and if each member wore Dog Pack Riot Armor, after that first melee round, there should only be about 10 left at most (taking into consideration that the other two party members would be fighting as well). If at any point it started to look like they might lose the fight, I had planned on having the bad guys order them to surrender or risk being destroyed, then present a situation later on where they could possibly escape.

I had just thought of a new question now. Say the player in question somehow also had the ability to auto-dodge. Coming under that much heavy fire, would that start giving penalties to or perhaps completely canceling out the auto-dodge. I know there is a suit of power armor from Juicer Uprising that denies a Juicer the ability to auto-dodge through a similar situation or something.

As far as the numbers, I was assuming they were all level 1 with WP: Energy Weapons (which don't give any bonuses to shoot at first level). I was also assuming that the shooters were not taking the time to aim, just taking pot shots. I did all this to try and keep the math simple for myself as I was trying to hurry up and post because I had a class that was about to start and didn't have time to figure out the numbers myself. Thank you for going ahead and doing that.

[dragonfett]

I don't think that I formed that second question right. Basically, what I was wanting to know is besides the Juicer Killer Power Armor, was there any way to negate auto dodge?

[The Beast]

I don't think that I formed that second question right. Basically, what I was wanting to know is besides the Juicer Killer Power Armor, was there any way to negate auto dodge?

Volleys of four or more missiles.

[Johnathan]

Nuke'm from orbit... it's the only way to be sure...

[dragonfett]

Any other way?

[Cinos]

Any other way?

Volume of attacks or deny mobility (Carpet, Net, etc), or penalize the target to the point their dodge is pointless to start (-10 for ranged, Blinding Flash, Blind, etc). As far as canon goes, I think that's about it.

If you're talking viable home brew options, could impose -1 for every dodge attempt, or say auto-dodge only makes the first 4 free, and after that it becomes pay to play.

Though I have to ask why the assailants wouldn't be making aimed shots if they have the superior position? (Just my nit picky ways trying to figure out the situation, originally I had assumed they where paramilitary sorts or CS, I think the use of the word Sniper threw me off into thinking higher grade soldiers? Ment to be like guerrilla fighters who just grabbed some guns and high ground?)

[dragonfett]

More like podunk town defenders is what I had in mind.

[The Beast]

PS.... isn't autododge with far less bonuses than a regular dodge?

Yup, Auto Dodge uses auto-dodge Only bonuses (which are few and far between) and PP bonuses (if any) as far as I know...

I could be wrong about the PP bonuses.

It's gone back-n-forth over the years. Right now I think the PP bonus is added in, unless you have a mutant power that says otherwise.

[The Beast]

Am I right or wrong about dodge counting against all attacks coming at you that loop around the initiative?

I didn't check last night.

Personally always played it as counting against all attacks at that moment. Say 2 people were fighting you and everyone's init was different, when they attack you roll to dodge each attack seperately, but if they had they same number for init, then you rolled once each time they attacked you.

But like I said, that's how my groups have always done it. I'm not sure if that's how it properly works or not.

[glitterboy2098]

Got a question here. Say you have a bunch of enemies all targeting the same character (say 20 enemies attacking one of your players) and they want to dodge, would they have to roll one dodge roll for each attack roll or could they just roll one dodge roll and any attack that doesn't exceed it just fails?

The reason I am asking is because one of the characters in my group is a full conversion 'borg that is armored to the max and I am having a hard time trying to throw a challenge that wouldn't also kill one of the other characters by accident. I could have one of the enemies each target one of the other players while all of the rest target my 'borg player and each time one of the others kill one of the enemy, another takes their place.

the character being targeted is basically screwed. by the rules, you have to resolve each of those 20 attacks seperately in initiative order, and the player would have to use a seperate dodge for each of those.

so your probably going to have to houserule something.

[dragonfett]

I just figured on having all of the enemies attack on the same initiative to make it easier on me.

[Shawn Merrow]

I break my NPC into groups when rolling for Initiative.

Say the PC are being attacked by a gang of thugs and their leader. I would break the group up like below.

Leader of Gang NPC
Gang Thugs

All the thugs would act at the same time but the leader gets his own role. I find that speeds up combat significantly. So basically noticeable NPC get their own role, cannon fodder gets grouped together.

[dragonfett]

That's how I usually do it as well, but I am talking about a hypothetical fight with a large group of cannon fodder, basically.

[dragonfett]

I actually want all of the bad guys to go at one time in this example because it would make it easier on me to roll attacks and damages. There are programs out there (not to mention web sites as well) that will allow for the rolling of multiple dice at one time. And as a programmer, I could easily make something that asks me for the number of attackers and the target number (in this case either 8 or the player's dodge roll, which ever is higher), then automatically tell me how many hit and for how much damage total (including critical hits).

[The Beast]

I don't think that's a realistic way to run that scenario though...

[dragonfett]

Neither is the Mega Damage, or that the Boxing skill gives you an additional attack per melee round in both melee and ranged combat or a whole bunch of stuff about Rifts. But I am not worried about it.

If you want to think about it another way, how about this then: The enemies that the player group is fighting all recognize that the 'borg is the biggest threat to them and they all are trying to pull the trigger as fast as they can. While their attacks are not happening at the very same second, they all act at roughly the same time. If this had to be explained in terms of initiative order, this is how I would explain it. All of the enemies are attacking on (pick the closest range of numbers that falls between two character's initiative rolls).

[dragonfett]

My original question was that if a bunch of enemies targeting one of the PC's, would they have to roll a dodge roll against each attack or do they just roll once for the dodge.

The second question was if there was any way to negate the auto-dodge ability, which I got some nice answers to.

Does this clear up any confusion?

[Colt47]

Well, if you use the rules from Ninja's and Super Spies the only way to dodge multiple attacks with one dodge roll is to have the multiple dodge defense option. Otherwise dodge only works against one set of attacks and I believe there is a penalty for trying to dodge a volley of attacks from, say, a group of enemies with C-10 Laser Rifles. 9/10 times if a large group of enemies are firing volleys of energy blasts at players the players are usually screwed unless they can find some concealment or, if they are in an area with MDC structures, cover.

[Cinos]

if one attack equals one dodge ... that means a group of 4 pcs when confronted with a band 12 of road bandits is screwed because they will lose all their attacks in the first exchange from dodging. That isn't very cinematic.

That's why you have cover to get behind, or have MDC armor that can just soak the hits to return fire. But I do generally agree with your point, as much as I dislike it, Rifts combat is all about aggression, you take the pain and return fire harder to win

[KillWatch]

Dodging: there is no dodging a)something you don't know is coming and b) something that is coming at you from all sides. If the Borg is physically surrounded tightly by four people in melee or even hand to hand there is no dodge, only parry with an additional penalty, say -1 per person, while they get a +1 to strike. the only caveat is a -10 hit to auto dodge where you just pretty much bobbing and weaving. A bunch of people clustering to shoot at a guy is just stupid and runs too much of a risk to shoot a friendly.
210 30 or a thousand guys with sniper rifles shooting from an elevated position negates shooting each other. And if they are trained and equipped what about radio communication that allows for everyone to be on the same target/initiative. Sgt Killemall says fire. Everyone fires.

Dodging then becomes the question of how you do attacks? are they one for one? if so then yes He only gets one dodge. If it is segmented then only those who fire on the same segment.
But ultimately it doesn't matter.
Mechanically if you really want to screw this guy using GM knowledge. Fire once, heave him dodge until he is out of attacks and then just fill him full of plasma as he just stands there. it works segmented to, fire, dodge, loses next action fire, kill

[dragonfett]

In the Glitter Boy example, you are obviously assuming just one Glitter Boy. If any Glitter Boy is traveling the wilderness by themselves with out any backup within a decent range, then they deserve to get shredded.

[Colt47]

In the Glitter Boy example, you are obviously assuming just one Glitter Boy. If any Glitter Boy is traveling the wilderness by themselves with out any backup within a decent range, then they deserve to get shredded.

Yes, well unfortunately your above example of lone glitterboy traveling through the wilderness appears to be the norm for the heroic types according to the GB lore.

[KillWatch]

it was an example C47, not an actual happenstance

[KillWatch]

The multiple dodge works with the system, but not with the segmented edit I have been using. you can not dodge more times than you have attacks, and yo can only dodge giving up your next action, and you can only give up one action at a time.

5 attacks
segments 3 6 9 12 15
You dodge on 3, you can't dodge again until 6. you can dodge any and all attacks being made on you at 3. In between segments you are readying yourself for your next action, recovering from a dodge etc