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An ALIENS/Phoenix Command Primer

ALIENS is a trademark of Twentieth-Century Fox. The ALIENS Role-Playing Game is copyrighted by Leading Edge Games 1991 and this is not intended as a challenge to its trademark.

Basic Mechanics

There are two basic game mechanics in ALIENS. For combat with firearms, percentile dice (d100) are used. Note that 00 counts as zero, not 100. For hand-to-hand and non-combat situations, three six-sided dice (3d6) are used. Occasionally, a single ten-sided die is used (d10). 0 counts as zero, not 10.

Governing these rolls are the skill levels. The skill levels (and their associated modifiers) are: Unskilled (-8), Novice(-4), Certified (+0), Professional (+4), Expert (+6), Master (+8) and Grand Master (+10).

When using 3d6, the Game Master determines the difficulty of an action:

Trivial 4

Easy 7

Average 10

Challenging 13

Difficult 16

For hand-to-hand combat, the difficulty number depends on the type of maneuver.

The Game Master (GM) adds the character's skill modifier to the difficulty number. The player rolls 3d6, trying to roll less than or equal to the difficulty number.

Combat

In combat, characters have a set number of Combat Actions (CA), which govern what they can do in a turn. Combat Actions are spent for:

movement
drawing or reloading a weapon
aiming a weapon
assuming a firing stance
going prone, kneeling or standing up
making a hand-to-hand attack

...and other actions.

When attacking with a firearm, the GM calculates the Effective Accuracy Level (EAL) as a sum of several factors:

the character's skill
range to target
the number of CA spent aiming
the target's stance (standing, kneeling or prone)
the shooter's stance (prone is best)
whether the shooter is in a Firing Stance (-6 if not)
target or shooter movement

...and other modifiers.

Once the EAL is calculated, use it to lookup the Odds of Hitting on a table. Then try to roll less than or equal to the Odds on d100.

If an attack hits, the player rolls a d10 to determine how hard they hit. Then they roll d100 on a hit location table to determine the Physical Damage (PD) points caused. As characters accumulate PD, they have to check for knockout and death. PD results vary widely; an attack might only do a few PD or it might do thousands of points. Attacks which hit an arm or leg can disable the limb, rendering it useless until the damage is healed.

For the record, Aliens don't accumulate PD; their conditions are 'Disabled' or 'Dead'.

Last Modified on 01/07/04

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