Hit Numbers and Dodge

Page 16 under Attempt to Dodge "If the result is equal to or greater than the result of the attacker's roll to strike the target mecha (including all applicable bonuses and penalties to the roll to Strike), then the attack is successfully avoided and all of the Mega Damage (MD) that the strike would have caused is avoided."

So by this wording to dodge you would need to take the roll and all modifiers into account. In my opinion anyway.

The second one. Consider a unit in cover. Is it easier or harder to dodge an attack when hiding behind something? Those modifiers are ALSO roll modifiers just like accurate and do alter the final total. If you did as they say and rolled a 5 and technically hit...would they then disregard the -2 for Cover?

I don't have the rulebook handy but isn't the point moot... if you roll a 6 you automatically succeed? So in this case they may need 8 but since the player rolled 6 they dodge.

Again I know the rule of natural 1 misses, regardless of bonuses and natural 6 hits but does this apply to dodging too?


**Okay just looked up the rulebook PDF and on page 11, top right hand column.***

It is not moot because in the example it makes a difference in the outcome.

The Tomahawk shoots and rolls a 6, so he hits.  What number do you need to roll against?  If you roll a 6, you dodge automatically.  But you might not roll a 6.

The Tomahawk has a gunnery of 2, so he adds 2 to the 6 he rolled.  That's a total of 8.  But you're in hard cover, so he has -2 to hit.  And there's an ECM suite that is active, so he has another -1.  So he's really got -3 to his roll, so after modifiers he only got a 5.  That's not enough to hit the Regult normally (Def 6).  But he rolled a 6 so he hits anyway.

Now you go to dodge.  Your Regult has a piloting of 1.  You need to roll a 4 or higher on the D6, because you need to get a total score of 5 to dodge.  You take into account all the modifiers.

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I'm glad someone brought this up, because I had been thinking it would be simpler to just add cover and ECM modifiers to your Def score.  I hadn't considered that it affected dodge rolls as well.

Ok my two cents since I know how palladium rules generally work regardless of game.

The auto hit on a 6 is much like a natural 20 in the rpg.

The point of it is to allow a "lucky hit" to happen.

As such, like a natural 20, only a natural 6 should be able to defend against it.

A natural auto success is supposed to be harder to avoid not easier and allowing the defender to only dodge on a 5 completely defeats the purpose of the auto success on a natural 6.

And thus ends the first lessen of how unclear any rules, written by palladium, can be.

There will be many more I am sure.

I agree with brian on this one. The dodge roll is based on the modified hit roll, to include all modifiers. The Destroids modified hit roll was a 5. Therefore, the regults modified dodge roll would need to be a 5 or higher. Since it is pilot skill 1 that would mean a roll of 4. Think of it this way. A lucky winging shot (on a roll of 6) is already barely a hit, and thus easier to dodge, or more properly no harder to dodge than a normal shot. Remember, you are still basing the dodge roll off of the 6 as the starting number.

If that mechanic were not in place large numbers of cheap troops (like pods) would have a huge advantage just by weight of fire.