2) Choose your talents.

3) Make a brief background for your character; height, weight, what he did before he discovered the truth about the Matrix, what he’s like as a person, etc.

4) You’re done building your character.

A discipline is a type of power that a character has over the Matrix—a way in which he can manipulate it. All of the twelve disciplines are combat-oriented. They are:

Agility

Awareness

Balance

Endurance

Energy

Evasion

Flight

Matrix Warping

Regeneration

Speed

Strength

Telekinesis

A character’s advancement in each discipline is measured from 0 to 3. All characters have at least a 0 in every discipline. Slaves (humans that don’t know that they are in the Matrix) have a -1 in each discipline. A score of -1 is equivalent to an average human’s abilities.

Characters get 12 points during creation to choose which disciplines they are more advanced in. At character creation, characters can have a maximum of only three disciplines that they may put points in. A discipline costs 1 point per level to advance. For instance, going from 0 to 1 costs one point, while advancing from 1 to 2 costs two points.

As characters advance in experience, they gain more points to spend. However, after character creation, advancing in disciplines in other than the ones you specialized in during character creation costs a little more—you have to spend 2 points to get to Level 1, rather than just one point. After you have five disciplines in which you have at least 1 Level, gaining Level 1 in a new discipline then costs 3 points.

For instance, Phobe starts the game with Speed Level 3 (which cost her 6 points), and Level 2 in both Agility and Awareness (each of which cost her 3 points).

Later on, she wants to gain a level in Strength. This is not one of the disciplines that she began the game with, so going from Level 0 to Level 1 costs her 2 points.

Eventually, Phobe has Speed, Agility, Awareness, Strength, and Endurance. However, she wants to gain Level 1 in Evasion. She already has five disciplines aside from Evasion, so it will cost her 3 points to gain Level 1 in Evasion.

Note: At character creation, you must spend all of your points. You cannot save any for later. However, when you begin advancing, you may save points however much you like.

As noted before, there are twelve disciplines—only three of which a character can begin play with at a level above 0. Furthermore, some disciplines require that you have certain levels in other disciplines before you can begin to advance in them (Energy, Evasion, Flight, Matrix Warping, Regeneration, and Telekinesis).

Make no mistake—disciplines are the most important thing about any character. You can bring all the rocket launchers and M-16s that you want—without the right disciplines, you’ll still get burned.

Keep in mind that many of the disciplines are important for getting other ones. You should decide ahead of time what you want your character to be good at—because it’ll be a long while before he’s good at everything. Having a long-term plan for your character’s development never hurts.

No sooner did Officer Johnson yell for the lady to drop the sword in her hand, than she began jumping all over the place. Johnson couldn’t believe it—where did these terrorists learn to bounce around like that? . . . But he didn’t have time to wonder about that right now. He opened fire with his service revolver, trying desperately to shoot somewhere near her—but by the time he fired one bullet, she was already on the other side of the room, ready to dodge the next.

Within moments, six bullets were lodged in the wall behind the girl, who was now just standing there in her black leather jump-suit, not even panting. She raised the katana, and smiled.

-----

Agility deals with your ability to move quickly. Characters with high agility are near-impossible to score a hit on in hand-to-hand combat, and can transcend the speed of bullets when they need to, moving with lightning reflexes and blinding speed—sometimes, they even look like they’re in two places at once. Being able to move at the speed of thought has saved more than one hacker.

LEVEL 0: -Your reflexes and ability to dodge incoming blows is roughly that of the most well-trained (but ordinary) human. Although you may not be able to beat him, a kung fu master would find your agility noteworthy.

-You can maneuver your vehicle in a car chase with some expertise, though you are not infallible by any means.

LEVEL 1: -A kung fu master would find you challenging—your agility is on an even level with his.

-Situations in a car chase that would be death for lesser people would be only a close call for you. The odds have to be really bad before you’re truly screwed.

LEVEL 2: -The kung fu master has a new master.

-You could drive down the wrong lane in a 70 mph freeway with very little difficulty.

-You can catch throwing knives and the like with very little effort.

LEVEL 3: -That’s a kung fu master? He’s so. . . Slow!

-Car chases are getting boring. Where’s the danger?

-People who whip throwing knives at you are annoying, but little else.

Lancer pulled back the safety on his MP5 while he looked at the clock on the side of the room. "Hurry up. We’re on our last two minutes, here."

Ion paused, looking up from the control panel with an intent look on his face, staring at nothing. Lancer snarled. "What are you doing? We don’t have time to think!"

Ion only looked at his partner. "We don’t have two minutes. They’re coming. . . Now."

-----

Your Awareness is your ability to augment your senses by "feeling" the Matrix code churning around you. Every action in the Matrix has a reaction, and people who become attuned to certain actions can see the reactions coming. While some might see only a brick wall, others see a plane of streaming code—and perhaps the SWAT team sneaking around behind it.

Awareness is perhaps the most important discipline for gaining the more advanced disciplines.

LEVEL 0: -Your senses are heightened—normal humans who try to sneak up on you have very little chance of success, and you miss very little of what goes on around you.

LEVEL 1: -A normal human has no chance of catching you unaware. Even if the person is perfectly silent and stealthy, you’ll simply be able to tell that someone’s behind you.

-On rare occasions, you will get mild premonitions—such as danger, do this, etc.

-Your agility is slightly raised because of your awareness. Your opponent’s chance to hit you with a melee attack is decreased by about 5% (to a minimum of 1%).

LEVEL 2: -If someone is taking out a gun to shoot you from behind, or is aiming at you with a sniper rifle, you will instantly become aware of it.

-Occasionally, you will get premonitions. These may be more specific than with 1, such as Agents are near, That girl really likes you, etc.

-Your opponent’s chance to hit you with a melee attack is decreased by 10%. His chance to hit you with a bullet is decreased by 5%.

LEVEL 3: -You are a wonder-kind. If people even consider hostile acts against you, you have a good chance of detecting their intentions (40-50%).

-Frequently, you will get premonitions. If an agent draws within six hundred feet, you will be able to feel it coming. You may a frequent dream that eventually comes true, though you may be able to alter what happens when the time comes.

-It’s all so simple now. How did you not see it before? Your opponent’s chance to hit you with a melee attack is decreased by 15%. His chance to hit you with a bullet is decreased by 10%.

-You can see the aura of other beings in the Matrix. You will be able to tell if a person or creature is a slave (someone who is unaware of the Matrix), a rebel (someone who knows he is in the Matrix), a program (like an agent), or an exile (a free-willed program). You have to concentrate for a moment to see an aura—when you are viewing auras, the world around you just looks like swirling streams of code.

Tyche looked out the window, the agent coming up right behind her. Between her and the safety of the phone in the next building over, there was only that clothesline.

She leapt as the agent closed in, and began moving. As she pranced nimbly across the one-inch thick wire, she felt the line buckle a little more as the agent tried to follow her over it. Tenacious, but stupid.

"Wrong move, numb-nuts," she said quietly, turning around on the other end of the line with a grace beyond even that of a cat.

The agent paused, a snarl on its face, betrayed only by the confusion in its eyes.

Tyche leapt straight up and came back down on the clothesline perfectly. The agent realized what was going on, and tried to move forward to get her—but it was already too late.

Tyche maintained her balance easily, but Agent Harris was not so well prepared. The tension created in the clothesline as she came back down suddenly released, and the agent lost his footing.

He had twenty stories to go before he hit bottom.

-----

Balance is a measure of a character’s ability to keep her footing, as well as her over-all grace and precision when moving. Balance can be extremely useful in combat, especially if an opponent’s balance isn’t as good as yours—if you can take his feet out from under him, the advantage is yours.

If you have a Balance of 2 and a Speed of at least 2, you can move along walls.

LEVEL 0: You have good balance, but not perfect. People cannot succeed at tripping you when you walk by.

LEVEL 1: -You never trip. Ever.

-Whenever you jump (and you can see the place you are jumping to), you always land on your feet, assuming no one hits or tackles you in mid-air.

-Combatants have no chance of tripping you.

-You can stand on top of a moving U-Haul truck at speeds of 40-60 mph with little difficulty.

LEVEL 2: -You don’t even have to see the surface you are jumping on to land on it perfectly, meaning you can jump backwards or off of walls with no difficulty.

-Even if someone hits or tackles you in mid-air, you still have an excellent chance of maintaining your balance (60-99%).

-Walking on a tight-rope would take only a bare minimum of concentration.

-Even if an explosion went off behind you, causing the earth to quake as you were fighting an agent, you’d still have a very good chance of maintaining your footing (50-70%).

-You can hang on to the ceiling of a small room as a method of hiding and getting the drop on an enemy. Your ability to hold yourself in place with very little support is impressive.

-You can stand on top of a car going 60 mph with little difficulty.

LEVEL 3: -You can land on one foot or hand without difficulty as you move.

-Being tackled or hit in mid-air usually has a less than 10% chance of messing you up.

-You can walk tight-ropes effortlessly.

-You can use moving people as stepping stones when jumping from point to point if you want to.

-An explosion going off behind you is only a bump in the road. You’d have to move and probably leap in that instance, but keep fighting, because you don’t have time for distractions.

-You can jump from moving car to moving car on a freeway with little difficulty.

The agent grabbed hold of Lancer’s throat and lifted him off the ground, a look of pure hatred on its face.

"You give me no choice, Mr. Copes."

Lancer went head-first through the car’s windshield, shattering it completely. Before he could even get his bearings, the agent grabbed him by the legs and threw him in the opposite direction, directly into a brick wall. When Lancer landed, the wall had a massive crunch mark in it.

The agent straightened his tie, and waited for its human enemy to beg for mercy.

"Do you still want to do this the hard way, Mr. Copes?"

"Hard way," Lancer repeated, in a confused tone, as he began to stand up. "You call that hard?"

-----

To put it bluntly, Endurance measures how much it takes to kill a character. Hackers, enlightened to the Matrix as they may be, are still mortal, and their enemies know it. However, to a practiced Zionist, the idea of mortality is a flexible one. After all—you’re not really being shot, are you?

Endurance also governs how much stamina a character has.

Endurance is the only discipline with 4 levels. The fourth level bestows the character with near-indestructibility, and is available only after the character becomes experienced in many other forms of Matrix manipulation.

LEVEL 0: You are over twice as hard to kill as an ordinary human.

-A blow from a burly (but ordinary) man would harm you, but your resilience would surprise the guy—you may not even be knocked down.

-You can go just as long and hard as a championship boxer, though you’ll need significantly more stamina to go head to head with an agent for any reasonable length of time.

-You can move at running speed (double normal foot-speed) for 3-5 rounds before you have to catch your breath.

LEVEL 1: You are over three times as hard to kill as an ordinary human.

-That burly guy could do some damage—but not much. He could hit you ten times, and you’d still be good for a while. At any rate, he’d probably have to hit you with a chair to put you on one knee.

-A single bullet has only a small chance of killing you, assuming it doesn’t go straight into your brain or heart.

-You could box three championship fighters in a row, or all at once, and still have some energy left over when you finish.

-You can move at running speed for 6-8 rounds in a row before you have to catch your breath.

LEVEL 2: Compared to an ordinary human, you are practically invincible.

-That burly guy’s punches are like those of a child. You could go all day with him and then some.

-An agent would probably have to hit you ten times before you finally went down.

-Bullet wounds to vital organs will still kill you, but a wound that hits only muscle and/or tissue would be mostly painful to you, and little else—after a few seconds, you could ignore it like it wasn’t there.

-Ordinary humans can barely hold a candle to your outrageous stamina. Even an agent would have a hard time wearing you down.

-You can move at running speed for 9-11 rounds before you have to catch your breath.

LEVEL 3: Your fortitude is god-like.

-That burly guy is irrelevant. It’s like he’s not even there.

-If you fought with an agent, you could take almost as many hits as he could. Only with an especially well-placed blow could an agent knock you over.

-Even bullets aren’t guaranteed to kill you. You have a 60% chance of ignoring a bullet wound that would otherwise be fatal.

-If you ever get tired, it’ll only be because you’ve been utterly pummeled in ways you never thought possible. You have completely transcended human stamina, and are far beyond any normal human.

-You can move at running speed indefinitely.

LEVEL 4 (Prerequisite: Awareness 3, Strength 3): -At level 4, you become close to indestructible. An agent had better bring his friends along, because it’ll take a brutal amount of physical punishment to even begin to wear you down.

-Falling off the top of a skyscraper and hitting the street below will harm you, but it will only be like a car running into you at about thirty miles an hour—you will be able to recover after a few minutes, though you will be hurting. If you were already badly injured when you fell, you may still die.

The sky-scraper extended well above the rest of the city, and the wind whipped Lancer’s tie into his face at times. He didn’t want to think of what it would be like to fall off.

"I know what you’re thinking," the man said, dressed in an elegant, shiny suit. "You’re thinking, how did an outdated program, of all things, defeat me?"

Lancer could just barely sit up. His pelvis and legs were broken.

"I’m not really sure either, to be honest," the man said. "Luck, maybe? . . . Naw, there’s no such thing as luck here."

"Why don’t you get it over with, and kill me? That’s what the Duke sent you up here to do, isn’t it?"

"That is correct. But I don’t get to meet people like you very often, and I like to have a nice chat before I part ways. But, as I was saying—"

Lancer kept his eyes on the man’s face as Locke moved in from behind, leaping through the air. Locke’s drop-kick struck the man right in his lower back, sending him flying.

Lancer watched the program’s body shoot over his own, twirling through the air. The top of the man’s head skipped against the edge of the building, breaking his neck horribly and cutting his angry scream short, before the body went plummeting downward, lifeless.

Locke’s kick had blown the man thirty feet out the other direction.

"That’s a shame," Locke said. "That guy didn’t live quite long enough to feel what it would be like to fall all that way."

"Get me to a phone, damn it!"

-----

Energy is a measure of your character’s ability to channel the additional reserves of power that he can get from both adrenaline and the force of his own thought in the Matrix. It is not the same thing as Strength—using Energy is to trigger a burst of power within your avatar in the Matrix.

Prerequisites For Energy 1: Awareness 2, Endurance 2, Strength 2

LEVEL 0: You can’t use Energy.

LEVEL 1: -When you spend an action on moving or running, you can move five feet farther than normal. For instance, while other characters move 15 feet with each action, you move twenty. Furthermore, you can jump five feet farther than as described in Strength. You can only move this quickly for three actions in a row before you have to move normally again for one action.

-You can inflict hand-to-hand attacks that do greater damage, if you score a clean, square hit. On such blows, you are more likely to hit, and you inflict approximately double damage. You can only do this three times for every chunk of time you spend in the Matrix—after you’ve dealt three augmented attacks, you have to leave the Matrix and come back before you can use this ability again. This ability does not work in conjunction with melee weapons.

A "clean, square hit" is defined as any such attack that the opponent was unable to adequately defend against. For instance, if Agent Smith charged you while angry, letting his guard down, you could kick him in the stomach for double damage. Furthermore, if you are in hand-to-hand combat with an opponent, and they fail to hit you over a period of three rounds, you can then use an augmented attack.

An augmented attack will also knock an opponent backward farther than a normal attack, usually one and a half times as far.

LEVEL 2: -Your running/walking speed increases to +10 feet. Your jump bonus increases to +20.

-You can use augmented attacks up to six times per visit to the Matrix.

LEVEL 3: -Your running/walking speed increases to +15 feet. Your jump bonus increases to +40. The amount of actions you can take in a row to move this fast increases to ten.

-You can use augmented attacks as many times as you have the opportunity—you never have to leave the Matrix to regain the ability.

-You gain miraculous cohesion. Your bones never break, and only people with Strength 3 and at least Energy 2 can knock you over when you are standing on level ground. A car that hits you at a speed of less than 45 mph will not knock you over—it’ll stop the car in place (although you’ll take normal damage).

Locke turned around, watching the elevator.

Pling. Pling. Floor 13, Floor 14. . .

Someone was coming to see him.

Locke drew his Glock pistols and waited.

The door opened. Out stepped the absolute nemesis of every hacker—perhaps every hacker that had ever lived.

"Mr. Locke, I presume," Smith said, smiling. "The only hacker I’ve ever met with the nerve to use his real name. I respect that, Mr. Locke." The agent’s accent on the word ‘hacker’ was one of disgust.

Locke had the pistols pointed right at him.

"Well, Mr. Smith—here’s what I think of your respect."

Locke opened fire. The barrels of the pistols exploded with yellow-orange light as the bullets sped toward his target.

And then, it was like Agent Smith was in three places at once. He didn’t even move his legs—the top half of his body simply shifted from place to place, an impossibly fast blur.

34 bullets later, and the elevator was riddled with bullet holes. Smith, however, wasn’t.

"You’re right, Mr. Locke. My respect means nothing," Smith said, cracking his fists in anticipation. "But then again. . . So it is with you, as well."

-----

Evasion is a character’s ability to simply avoid attacks—the discipline goes beyond a combination of Agility and Speed, to an ability to simply dodge and weave at unbelievable alacrity. This alacrity comes from an enhanced comprehension of the Matrix that allows a character to move at the speed of thought—far faster than a bullet will ever go.

Prerequisites for Evasion 1: Awareness 1, Speed 3

LEVEL 0: You can’t use Evasion.

LEVEL 1: -You can, to a degree, transcend normal movement and "blur" yourself. The chance of a bullet hitting you decreases by about 15% (this stacks with any bonus against bullets that you gain from Awareness). You don’t have to move around the way most people have to in order to dodge bullets—you can simply stand there, bobbing and weaving with impossible speed.

-You have to use up actions based on how many people are firing at you—1 action per enemy. For instance, if three people are shooting at you, then you have to give up three actions to apply Evasion to their attacks.

LEVEL 2: You are experienced at using Evasion, to the point where you can almost impress an agent (something that’s normally impossible, even for a hacker).

-The chance of a bullet hitting you decreases by 30%.

-You only have to use 1 action for every two people shooting at you (round up).

LEVEL 3: You can become a haze of moving shapes at the drop of a hat.

-The chance of a bullet hitting you decreases by 50%.

-You can use Evasion to help dodge physical blows as well. The chance of being hit by a body blow from a melee opponent decreases by about 15% (this stacks with any bonus against physical blows that you gain from Awareness). You give up actions normally to apply Evasion to these attacks.

-Whenever you are using Evasion, it is impossible to put a hold on you.

Ion struggled feebly under the weight of the capture net that the soldiers had shot over him.

"Don’t kill him," he heard one say. "Smith wants him alive. . . For interrogation."

All right, Ion thought. I’ve had about enough of this.

Ion, capture net and all, shot into the air. As he flew into the night sky, he could hear the M-16s going off behind him.

-----

As any Zion freedom fighter would tell you, flying is a difficult thing to master. Few can move about the Matrix so freely that not even gravity affects them. The ability to fly is the mark of a highly skilled hacker.

Prerequisites for Flight 1: Awareness 1, Endurance 2, Speed 3, Strength 2

LEVEL 0: You can’t fly at all.

LEVEL 1: -With a running start, you can leap and then take off, soaring through the air at about thirty miles an hour.

-You can keep up this flight indefinitely, though you cannot exceed an altitude over 2,000 feet.

-If you are shot or badly wounded while you are flying, you have a 30% of losing your concentration and plummeting.

-You fly like a humming bird, though you cannot float—you will begin to fall if you stop moving, though you will be able to resume flying during the fall.

-If you don’t possess a Balance of at least 1, there’s no guarantee that you won’t take a hard landing when you come down.

LEVEL 2: -If you concentrate for a moment, you can simply take off. You can fly at about a hundred miles an hour.

-You can go to an altitude of 10,000 feet.

-If shot or badly wounded while flying, you have only a 5% chance of losing your concentration.

-You are capable of floating.

-Despite the blistering speed, you don’t take heat damage from terminal velocity as long as you still have your concentration with you. However, you have to slow down before you land, or you’ll splatter.

LEVEL 3: -You can match speed with a jet if you wish, although flying this rapidly is disruptive to the world around you. At top speed, you blow out windows and create a wind-force like that of a tornado in your wake—you can exceed the speed of sound, which will obviously cause a lot of destruction if you are only flying ten feet off the ground.

-As long as you are unencumbered, you can begin flying almost at will at the rate described in 1. To fly any faster, you will have to concentrate for a short period. If you want to fly at jet-speed, you will have to concentrate for at least five seconds.

-If you want to land, you can do so at any speed, though you have to concentrate for a moment before you land at maximum speed. You can inflict heavy damage to things you land on, though you’ll have a hard time aiming at anything much smaller than a car.

-Your amazing speed does not confer invulnerability to collisions. Smashing into a building at the speed of sound will be the end of you unless you have Endurance 4, and even then, you risk death (60% chance).

They looked around. The alleyway was empty.

"Perhaps the tip was bogus."

"Impossible. I’ll contact Thomps—"

Agent Harris turned around to look at the opposite wall, and finally saw it—the words were lost in his mouth.

The Zionist was here, all right—coming right out of the wall for them, as if the concrete were made of hot, rippling butter.

The man leapt through the air before Harris could even move, leather jacket billowing in the wind, and struck outward, one boot for each agent’s face. Harris felt the mechanical equivalent of aggravation as the kick shattered his glasses and sent him flying backward through the air. First that woman on the clothesline—and now this.

-----

Matrix Warping is a highly advanced ability. Few in the history of Zion have attained any real skill in it—and those that did were often referred to as "The One." It is the most primal of abilities—the power to bend the reality of the Matrix to your will.

Prerequisites for Matrix Warping 1: Telekinesis 3

LEVEL 0: You can’t warp the Matrix.

LEVEL 1: -Your physical blows actually do serious harm to agents (or at least, the bodies they’re occupying). Instead of its usual infinite capacity for punishment, an agent is considered to have Endurance 1. This allows you to temporarily defeat agents much more quickly than usual.

-You gain the ability to pass through solid matter as if it wasn’t there. After concentrating for a moment, you can make a running start at a solid surface (usually a wall) and pass completely through to the other side, without damaging the surface at all. The thickness of the wall is irrelevant, although it will take you longer to run through it based on the thickness. You are not capable of traveling straight downward or upward with this ability; only forward.

-You gain the ability to accelerate your own movement to the point where the rest of the Matrix seems almost frozen in time. You gain 1 additional action per round. However, you can only go this fast for ten rounds; after that, you have to exit and re-enter the Matrix again to continue moving at that speed.

LEVEL 2: -You can access the back-room; the extra-dimensional hallway in the Matrix filled with doors that lead to other (usually important) places in the Matrix. By spending three rounds, you can alter any normal doorway so that opening it will lead to the back-room. The door works both ways; people on the other side of the door can also enter the back-room from that side. Once you close the door again, it will return to normal.

-Your acceleration ability increases to 2 additional actions per round, and the number of rounds that you can move like that in per visit to the Matrix increases to 12.

LEVEL 3: -You have the ability to annihilate programs, permanently wiping them from the system. You can effectively "possess" the program for a moment by moving inside of it. After about two rounds of massive instability, the program quite literally explodes. Note that this is very dangerous; there is a 50% chance that instead of being deleted, the affected program is disconnected from the Matrix and becomes free-willed, which can lead to untold chaos. The program may gain new, powerful abilities that its creator never intended.

-Your acceleration ability increases to 3 additional actions per round.

"This is Squad Foxtrot. It’s a mess down here—we have confirmation of tangos in—"

Lieutenant Franklin’s body suddenly bulged and warped in a distinctly grotesque manner, and within seconds, Agent Harris was standing in his place.

The ball-room, as Harris expected, was a war zone. Slaughtered government troops lay everywhere, amidst broken tables and chairs, bullet-ridden walls, and shattered glass.

Harris took out a cloth from his breast-pocket and rubbed his shades as he spoke.

"You don’t have to hide from me. I know you’re all in here."

Tyche came out from behind one of the marble pillars holding up the room—the pillar was pock-marked with bullet wounds. Tyche had one herself—right in the stomach.

"You’ve been shot," Harris said, as if he cared. He put his shades back on.

Tyche smirked. "Ain’t the first time."

"And it won’t be the last," Harris added, as he went for his Desert Eagle.

-----

Regeneration measures a character’s ability to miraculously recover from wounds that would be severely painful and disabling, if not fatal, to normal humans. This ability is a must for hackers who may need to spend a lot of time in the Matrix during their missions, or that expect to get beat up from time to time.

Prerequisites for Regeneration 1: Endurance 2. For Regeneration 2, you need Endurance 3, and so on.

LEVEL 0: -You gradually recover from physical blows over a sustained period of time in the Matrix. After every two hours of inaction (where combat is concerned), you are automatically considered to have recovered from any body blows that you took—you feel just like new, as far as that is concerned. However, this regeneration does not apply to bullet wounds or other forms of very serious injury. Furthermore, if you broke any bones, these take four hours to recover from.

-Even after you have actually regenerated from it, any visible physical damage you took is still visible on your body. This includes cuts, bruises, and the like—your bones mend back together normally.

LEVEL 1: Your regenerative ability is increased to a more impressive level, and you don’t need much time to recover.

-After every half hour of inaction, you are automatically considered to have recovered from body blows that you took—this also applies to broken bones. After three hours, you recover from bullet wounds.

-Once you regenerate, no visible evidence of damage is left behind on your body.

LEVEL 2: -You have the regenerative ability as described in 1, except that bullet wounds take only an hour to recover from. Furthermore, you regenerate lost limbs in three hours, although you can still bleed to death.

-You can spontaneously recover from your wounds. You can spend three actions to instantly repair the damage you took from a single bullet, or two actions to repair injury from a body blow. You can only spend 20 actions in this way for each chunk of time you spend in the Matrix—in other words, once you spend those 20 actions, you have to leave the Matrix and come back again before you can regenerate like that again (note that you will be fully healed when you leave and re-enter the Matrix, regardless).

Physical evidence from spontaneously regenerated wounds stays until it disappears as described in 1—you will still have bullet holes and the like in your body until then.

Finally, note that you cannot spend actions on spontaneous regeneration if you are in the middle of combat.

LEVEL 3: -The amount of actions you can spend on spontaneous regeneration increases to 40. You can spend five of those actions at any time, even in the middle of combat.

-If you maintain physical contact with another person in the Matrix, you can also heal them in the same way that you heal yourself. You spend actions on regenerating them just as you do, and actions that you spend in this way count towards your allowed total of 40.

-If you have all 40 of your actions remaining, you can resurrect yourself or another person from death by using all of them. In order to do this, most of the body must remain intact—if you were hit by a train or killed in a massive explosion, you are permanently dead.

You have to maintain physical contact with the person to be resurrected. The resurrection does not regenerate lost limbs or other visible physical damage, but a resurrected person will not bleed to death from wounds sustained before the resurrection. You can’t resurrect a program.

Finally, you can’t resurrect someone else while you are engaged in combat.

-You never bleed to death.

The soldiers closed in from every imaginable direction, some wielding combat knives. Ion leapt straight up, kicking two in the chest as he came down. As he landed, he slid into a crouch and tripped another before balancing himself on one hand and delivering a superhumanly powerful kick to a soldier’s groin. He rose back to his feet in an instant, backhanding a man that was coming up behind him and head-butting another that was facing him.

The seventh man almost got to within striking range before Ion’s open palm struck into his throat like a knife, sending him reeling. Ion kicked the pistol out of the eighth soldier’s hand even as he drew it, before using the same leg to pummel the man in the chest and stomach.

Ion kicked a soldier in the face as he tried to get up, and then all was done. Eight of the government’s finest lay fallen before him, incapacitated.

That was a fun five seconds, he thought.

-----

Speed is quite possibly the most important discipline—in the Matrix, you aren’t limited to physical movement. You can go just as fast as you can think to go. An exceptionally quick freedom fighter can lay waste to an entire platoon of the agents’ best minions in a matter of seconds.

LEVEL 0: You can take three actions in a round (about five seconds).

LEVEL 1: You can take five actions in a round.

LEVEL 2: -You can take seven actions in a round.

-If you have a Balance of 2 or more, you can run across walls for a length of ten feet at a time just as if you were moving on flat ground. At the end of the ten feet, you land back on the ground. You can move any direction on the wall.

LEVEL 3: -You can take ten actions in a round.

-You can move along walls just as in 2, but for a length of twenty feet.

The three agents strode forward, confident that they finally had the hacker where they wanted him. The hacker simply stood there, his hand resting on the parking meter.

"You guys just don’t get it, do you?"

The agents stopped for a moment. One even cocked his head.

"You just can’t beat me."

"Your termination is a foregone conclusion, Mr. Locke. It is inevitable."

It didn’t take long for the agents to see where this lanky, bald terrorist got his confidence from. The hacker simply grabbed the parking meter with both hands and pulled it out of the side-walk.

The first agent attacked immediately. Locke wielded the parking meter like it was made out of Styrofoam, parrying the agent’s every blow, until at last he got his chance, and speared the agent in the gut before hammering down on his head. The agent’s skull caved in like it was a ping pong ball, and the agent transformed back into a soldier—albeit a dead one.

The next two agents, irritated looks on their faces, came at him, and Locke was ready.

-----

Strong characters aren’t just mighty—they can achieve terrifyingly powerful feats of strength. With a superior strength, you can put a hurting on just about anything—from an agent, to a car door, or even a brick wall. It comes in handy.

LEVEL 0: -You can knock out a normal human with no more than three blows.

-With a deadly object in your hands, you could easily incapacitate a normal human with a couple of clean blows at the most.

-Your blows do not harm programs (such as agents) at all.

-You can leap five feet in any direction—fifteen if you concentrate or get a running start.

LEVEL 1: -You can knock out a normal human with a couple of good hits, maybe even one. A third and fourth blow could easily kill a person. It wouldn’t be very difficult to break an opponent’s arm, leg, or nose at all.

-With a deadly object in your hands, you could easily take a normal human out in one hit.

-You can punch through a car’s window almost as if it were not even there.

-An especially powerful blow might be able to temporarily stun an agent.

-You can leap ten feet in any direction—thirty if you concentrate or get a running start.

LEVEL 2: -You can knock normal humans out with a single strike—your blows can smash bricks.

-A deadly object in your hands is the bane of any normal human—if you swung a stop sign at someone, you could probably cleave them in half.

-Your blows cause mild damage to agents (equivalent to sticking them with pins).

-You can leap twenty feet in any direction—sixty if you concentrate or get a running start.

-Car windows are nothing. With a good strike, you can punch through the car’s roof or hood, and with a second strike, you could punch through a door.

-By mustering up the full force of your strength in a round, you stand a good chance of breaking through a brick wall.

LEVEL 3: -You can easily kill a normal human with a single blow to a vital area. Their bones are like brittle twigs.

-You could throw a stop sign through the air like Sammy Sosa hits baseballs—maybe even a little farther. When it comes into contact with whatever you threw it at, it’ll probably go through a car and generally cause a big mess.

-You are on an even strength level with agents.

-You can leap thirty feet in any direction.

-If you have to, you can simply rip a car door completely off. If you focus and concentrate intently during a round, you can probably pick up a car.

The two soldiers waited patiently from around the corner, the stink of the sewer all around them—why did Smith send them down here, anyway? No terrorist, no matter how insane, would have a hideout in this dump. Boley thanked God that he had a gas mask on.

And then he heard something. Making a motion with one gloved hand, he indicated to his partner that he was going around the corner to check it out.

He rounded the corner and spotted Ion immediately, who was coming straight for him. Boley fired a burst of 9mm fire, expecting to see the terrorist fall in a bloody heap.

Ion simply held his hand up, and the five bullets stopped in mid-air, as if under his command.

Lieutenant Boley couldn’t believe what he was seeing—every rule of physics had just been violated, and this guy didn’t make it look that hard.

Boley didn’t have much time to ponder it all. The bullets came shooting straight back at him, pounding his body armor. Boley fell in the water behind him, bewildered, but still alive.

He could tell his partner wasn’t sure of what was going on, and he wanted to say something—but it was all too much. Leiland rounded the corner, gun raised, and took a sharp kick to the chest.

Boley watched as Leiland flew into the wall ten feet behind him, and didn’t get up. No man, no matter how strong, could hit like that.

Within seconds, Boley came to his senses, and tried to climb out of the water, but Ion already had a Colt .45 pointed at him.

"What. . . What are you?"

"Not important. But I wouldn’t mention this to anyone, if I were you. Your boss and I don’t get along."

-----

Telekinesis is not just about moving objects with your mind—in fact, that’s only a small part of it. It’s about creating physical force where there wasn’t any before. Combined with a high Strength, a telekinetic character can cause breath-taking destruction. In addition, characters with a high Telekinesis don’t have to dodge bullets anymore—they do things with style. Why dodge it, when you can just stop it from coming altogether?

Prerequisites for Telekinesis 1: Awareness 3, Endurance 1, Speed 3

LEVEL 0: You can’t use telekinesis at all.

LEVEL 1: -If a single person is firing bullets at you, all you have to do is stand there and concentrate while they take their actions—the bullets will stop right in front of you and fall to the ground. If two people are firing, you have only a 60% chance of success. If three or more people are firing, you could stop two of them, but not the third. This ability will also affect other projectiles, such as rockets or throwing knives.

-By concentrating intently, you can cause an object as large as a car or pickup truck to lose momentum. After about three rounds, it would stop completely.

-Your blows don’t do any more damage than usual, but you can easily drive someone backward with a series of hits, even if they block, and a well-placed blow can throw them backwards 10-15 feet. This ability does not apply to weapons that you wield.

-You can make subtle alterations on the trajectory of something moving through the air with very little concentration (1 action). A volleyball would be five feet out instead of in; a Frisbee would go way off course.

LEVEL 2: -You can handle up to three different people firing at you when it comes to blocking bullets. If four to six people are firing at you, the chances of your success are reduced to about 70%. If seven or more people are firing, you could stop six of them, but not the rest.

-If only one person is firing bullets at you, not only can you block the bullets, but you can reverse their momentum back toward the origin point.

-You have the augmented physical attacks as described in 1, but any successful hit you make automatically shoves an opponent backward five feet (if you wish), while a well-placed blow can throw them 15-30 feet backward.

-If a person is willing, you can hold them in place by concentrating on them. They simply hang, suspended in the air. You can move them at the rate of about ten feet per action. You can use this ability to stop people from falling. You can also use this ability on inanimate objects that weigh no more than 400 pounds. If you want to hold anything larger than that, it will take an especially focused amount of concentration, and won’t work immediately.

LEVEL 3: -It doesn’t matter how many people are firing at you—you can stop all of the bullets by calling an invisible wall of force into being. The wall can be as large as you wish, but excessively large walls (greater than 100 square feet) take additional concentration. The wall will stop everything, regardless of size—even vehicles. However, the vehicles will simply stop in place—they won’t actually collide, meaning that a crash won’t take place. The wall of force is one way only—people firing through it from the opposite direction will not be inhibited in any way.

-You have the augmented physical attacks as described in 2, but a well-placed blow can throw an opponent back 30-60 feet.

Talents aren’t quite as important as disciplines, but everyone has talents, and they do come in handy. . . Often where disciplines do not and cannot. There are thirteen talents:

Alertness

Charisma

Craft/Profession

Driving

Education

Intimidation

Language

Matrix Lore

Medicine

Stealth

Street Smarts

Thievery

Zion Politics

You have 18 points to spend on the various talents. You may begin play with no more than two talents that are rated "Exceptional." Point costs for talents:

0 Points: Poor (-7 Modifier To Checks)

1 Point: Below Average (-3 Modifier To Checks)

2 Points: Average (+0 Modifier To Checks)

3 Points: Above Average (+3 Modifier To Checks)

5 Points: Exceptional (+7 Modifier To Checks)

Talent Checks: The GM usually sets a number that the character needs to get on a twenty-sided die roll in order to accomplish something with a particular talent. Here are some guidelines for setting difficulties:

3-6: Effortless. This is something that almost any character could do, unless they suffered from extraordinarily bad luck.

9-11: Mildly challenging. There is a chance for failure for most characters, though anyone with a reasonable talent can almost always succeed.

14-16: Challenging. Though highly talented characters can do this, even they fail around a third of the time, sometimes more.

19-21: Highly challenging. Even the most talented character stands a good chance of failure.

24-26: Near impossible. Even the best will almost always fail.

27+: All but impossible. Generally, only a natural 20 on the die roll will result in success, meaning that failure occurs 95% of the time.

A natural 1 on the die roll is always a failure, regardless of the character’s talent. A natural 20 is always a success, likewise.

If a character rolls a natural 1, and his rating in the talent is Poor, then his failure is disastrous. If the character rolls a natural 20, and his rating in the talent is Exceptional, his success is phenomenal.

And now, for the talents:

This is your ability to notice what’s going on around you in the Matrix—including things that other people don’t want you to notice. This talent can be enhanced by the Awareness discipline, though a person with Poor Alertness and Level 3 Awareness is probably just going to see lots of things that he thinks nothing of until it’s too late.

You use Alertness to detect people who are trying to avoid your notice. To make an Alertness check, you add your Alertness modifier and your Awareness modifier (+2 per level) to your roll. If your result is higher than their opposed Stealth check, you detect their presence.

Poor: "You need to snap out of it and pay attention, buddy. What is with you? I hope you know you’ve got work to do—and it pays to pay attention to what you’re doing." OK, so maybe you want to pay attention, but that Attention Deficit Disorder never seems to go away. You may not be totally unreliable for watching someone’s back, but no one in their right mind ever asks you to do it.

Below Average: You do your best, which isn’t very good, but hey, every once in a while you’ll catch something that Neo missed (he’s over-rated, anyway—or so the commander says).

Average: You’re not the sharpest nail in the wall, but you’re good enough.

Above Average: "Hey—you’re not too bad to have around, kid. Keep those eyes open, and they might see something interesting one of these days." You may be paranoid, or just careful; whatever it is, you’re observant. You commonly detect that which others miss.

Exceptional: People can’t figure out how you always see it coming before they do. It’s almost disturbing, the way you pick up on things.

Your Charisma is a measure of how likeable you are and how forceful your personality is. This carries weight among both the humans in Zion and those in the Matrix. Your Charisma is also a measure of how much control you have over what your residual self-image looks like (your avatar in the Matrix).

Poor: All around, you’re pretty much ugly and meek. No one stops to listen to what you say, and to put it bluntly, no one’s interested in having sex with you. You have no control of what your avatar looks like—it probably looks just as you do outside of the Matrix, minus the implants. It will never look attractive. Sometimes, you end up with "normal" clothing in the Matrix—a t-shirt and jeans.

Below Average: Some people pay attention to you, but not many. You’re not exactly ugly, but you’re not really fun to look at, either. Your avatar probably has the haircut of your choice, and comes standard with a fairly nice jacket. Big whoop.

Average: People listen to you, and many like you, but they’re not especially compelled to do either. You typically enter the Matrix wearing the clothing of your choice. Police officers that you meet can tell that there’s something different about you.

Above Average: You’re a smooth one. People tend to like you quite a bit more than they like other people, and somehow, you always look sharp.

Exceptional: You have a style all your own—one that sticks out, and for the better. People can’t seem to take their eyes off you, and pay you respect that you didn’t earn. If you wanted to, you could run around the Matrix and score hot dates, though you’ve got better things to do, as your captain is sure to remind you.

While you were good with computers, that may have just been a heavy secondary interest, or what you did with every spare moment. You also had a job that paid money. But how good were you at it? Having a unique profession can come in handy—you know certain people that may at times be able to help you, and you may have unusual skills.

Poor: You skipped from job to job, usually lasting no more than two weeks at a single one. You sucked at what you did for a living, or you just didn’t care.

Below Average: You did your best—but it was always the other guy who got the promotion.

Average: If you stuck it out, you might’ve made something of yourself in the profession. Or, you might not have. Who knows? It’s behind you now, anyway.

Above Average: The boss liked having you around. And you liked the money.

Exceptional: A star was born in you, as far as your day job went. You could’ve made the big money.

How good you are at driving a car, or any vehicle. In a car chase, this might come in handy. Note that you can "download" the ability to drive any vehicle, though you can’t download the ability to drive it well—nothing beats learning through experience. A high Agility also augments your driving skills.

Poor: "Have you even seen a steering wheel before? Listen, this is ridiculous. I’m hailing a cab."

Below Average: You learned how to drive—you may have had to take the driver’s test a couple of times before you passed—but you just don’t seem to be a person who was meant for the gas pedal. Before Morpheus showed you the Big Picture, you had already crashed your car a couple of times, in accidents that were your fault.

Average: You can drive. If someone doesn’t like how you drive, you usually give them the finger, because you know you’re doing it right, and they aren’t.

Above Average: You probably experimented with how fast that pickup truck could actually go a few times; and maybe you even risked your life in the process. The end result is that you’re not too terribly intimidated by the idea of three squad cars tailing you down the highway.

Exceptional: You can drive like a racer if you want to—maybe you just have a natural affinity, or maybe you have experience in that sort of thing for some reason. The point is, you’re damn good at it.

How much schooling you got, and/or how much you bothered to learn on your own. A character with a high Education may find everything he knows to suddenly be irrelevant, given the revelation that he’s been living in a fish-tank his whole life—but it pays to know what’s going on, even in a fake world.

Poor: No one seems to know how you made it out of the 1^st grade. You just don’t know a damn thing about anything.

Below Average: You may have gone through school, but you weren’t paying attention. Simple math is usually no problem—but you like to stay away from multiplying fractions and anyone who says words that end in "ology."

Average: You pulled Bs, and maybe even went to college. That being said, you generally know what you’re talking about, though there is that occasional subject that eludes your understanding.

Above Average: You graduated from college with honors. People find your superior knowledge to be both helpful and annoying—after all, no one likes a know-it-all. Anyone who bests your comprehension of a subject embarrasses you.

Exceptional: Elementary, my dear Watson. You probably went to an Ivy League school, and perhaps even further than that. Obviously, you picked something up along the way.

Your ability to get people to do things that they wouldn’t ordinarily do for you—out of fear of what you might do if they don’t. Your ability to intimidate others might come from the way you yell when you’re angry, or simply how you carry yourself.

Poor: "Seriously, is that supposed to be some kind of joke? ‘Or you’ll beat me up?’ I’ve eaten little snots like you for breakfast." People can usually tell that you mean what you say, but they see no evidence to suggest that you have any capability or actual will to follow through on your words.

Below Average: On a rare occasion, you might be a little scary. But there are scarier things than you out there, and most of them have more influence to begin with.

Average: You may have been in a few good shouting matches in your life, and perhaps you even won occasionally.

Above Average: You look nasty, you talk nasty, and you damn well mean what you say. So listen up.

Exceptional: Even agents sometimes find your bravado perplexing enough to consider for a moment, though they are generally unafraid of humanity.

This is a measure of your character’s vocabulary, his mastery of the English language, and his knowledge of other ones. Yes, there are people speaking different languages in the Matrix.

Poor: It’s a wonder you even learned to speak English, because you can’t even spell ‘articulate,’ let alone do it.

Below Average: You stay clear of spelling bees, but you know plenty of English. You avoid reading End User License Agreements, however.

Average: You know how to say what you want to say, and you may be able to say several things in other languages.

Above Average: You’re very knowledgeable in the English language, and you can probably speak one or two other ones.

Exceptional: You almost certainly know four or five languages, maybe more. Out of those, you know about three of them like the back of your hand.

There’s the fake world, the real world, and then the world within the fake world. The Matrix isn’t just about humans vs. the agents—there are many forces at work. Knowing of them and understanding them is key. Characters with a high Matrix Lore are students of the Oracle, and are well aware of the prophecy of the One, even if they don’t advocate it. Furthermore, they know about the "exiles," the outdated programs that have become free-willed, and what they’re all about. Sometimes, when the Oracle tells them things, they even understand what she’s saying.

Poor: "Holy shit! Did you see that? How did he. . .?" Most if not all of the disciplines you’re capable of came to you naturally. You have no idea how they work. Furthermore, you don’t understand how an agent can take that many blows, or why everyone places so much faith in that hokey Oracle.

Below Average: You’re not clueless, but you don’t get it yet. Blind faith in what you’re doing is probably your main motivation, because it seems like the only real thing to do at all.

Average: You know why you’re doing what you’re doing in the Matrix, but the big picture still eludes you. You know that the Oracle’s trustworthy, and that she’s worth listening to—well, maybe. But what’s the natural conclusion to all this?

Above Average: You know about all the prophecies, and have your own educated opinions about them. You are aware of forces beyond the obvious in the Matrix, though they quite often remain mysterious, despite your curiosity. Occasionally, the Oracle makes sense to you when she’s talking.

Exceptional: It’s almost all within your grasp now. The fathomless inhumanity of the Architect, the anomalies disguised as natural occurrences, and at least some of the Matrix’s history—perhaps extending back to the last version. Though you’ll likely never meet the Architect or the Keymaker, you know enough to believe that they are very real, and you have a true sense of purpose.

How skilled you are in mending injuries and curing ailments—and how much you know about that sort of thing in general.

Poor: "CPR? What’s that stand for?" If someone breaks something, they can’t count on you for help.

Below Average: You may have taken a CPR course in your life, but you don’t really remember it at all. If one of your team-mates takes a bullet, there’s very little you can do about it. . . At least, without killing them in the process.

Average: You know CPR and First Aid, though it’s not your profession at all. If someone says that they can’t feel their right leg, you can only guess why.

Above Average: You’re probably something of a physician. You may have actually learned the medical arts while in Zion, as many take training in it (there is a war on, after all), and there’s little time for such things when you’ve been busy messing around with computers for most of your life. You know what to do in a wide variety of medical emergencies.

Exceptional: The brain surgeon is in the building. Your understanding of medicine is masterful, and you’re helpful to have around when someone flat-lines.

Your ability to move about without attracting attention, and to go unseen. Having both a high Stealth and Awareness can make you virtually undetectable—even to those who may also have a high Awareness.

When rolling a Stealth check, you add both your Awareness modifier (+2 per level) and your Stealth modifier. To evade someone’s attention, you have to roll equal or higher than their opposed Alertness roll.

Poor: A deaf guy could notice you coming, and a blind guy could figure out where you are in a room.

Below Average: If you’re lucky, you can get past the night watchman. Real lucky.

Average: You know how to keep quiet and out of sight, though your talent is nothing special.

Above Average: You’re almost like a ninja—it’s a rare day when they see you coming.

Exceptional: Your team-mates like to call you "Ghost."

How many friends you’ve got down at the corner. How many drug dealers you know—and how many drug dealers you know that you don’t want to know. Where to buy guns. How to carry yourself in front of a bunch of "homies" if you want to stay out of trouble with them.

Poor: "You must’ve been raised under a rock or something, chump. And for God’s sake, you’re white; stop pretending to be a ‘gangsta.’ You make me wanna gag." You might know one drug dealer, who puts up with you, but doesn’t really like you. And no, he’s not interested in telling you anything useful, though he’s been thinking about mugging you lately.

Below Average: You may have lived near the projects as a kid, but you were smart enough to stay out of there. In dealings with real "street people," you can generally only guess about how you should conduct yourself.

Average: You were raised in the Bronx, and while you didn’t get into that whole ‘scene’ down on "Crack Avenue," you knew a couple of people who did. If you have to, you can make your way around in that kind of place.

Above Average: Maybe you were raised in the projects, but left when you were 15. You’ve generally forgotten about all those guys back there, but if you came back, they’d remember you.

Exceptional: You were the guy to go to if someone needed help getting something from somebody—drugs, guns, information.

This talent measures your ability to get into our out of things that weren’t meant for you to be in (or to escape from). A character who’s skilled in Thievery can pick locks, hot-wire cars, deactivate alarms, crack safes, and the like.

Poor: It wouldn’t take much at all to keep you in or out of a room—usually a lock and key will suffice quite well.

Below Average: Oh, you can try to pick that lock all you want; fat chance you’ll get anywhere, though.

Average: You may have done this a couple of times before, you naughty boy, you.

Above Average: You’ve been doing things you shouldn’t have, that’s for sure, because you know your way around most any security system. And if someone ties you up, they’d better do it right.

Exceptional: There may never have been anything invented that you can’t get past. Breaking and entering is second nature to you.

Though the Matrix itself is controlled by the insidious machines, Zion is in human hands. And those humans have a defined hierarchy. From the lowliest grunt in the war against the machines, to the most respected council member, there is something to be said for knowing the right people.

Poor: It’s unlikely that even the captain of your ship really knows you—he may not even like you. You’re probably a fresh recruit, and even your team-mates may seem intimidating. . . After all, they probably know a lot more about what’s going on than you do.

Below Average: You’re a more or less respected member of your team, though you probably don’t have a close affiliation with your captain. All in all, you’re still a newbie as far as most people are concerned.

Average: Your team knows that you’re trustworthy and skilled. You may even be the captain. Still, you aren’t favored among the other captains, though some may know of you. To a council-member, you’re just another face in the crowd.

Above Average: You’re quite famous. The other captains know you’re a stand-up guy, and your words carry more weight with the council than those of many other captains.

Exceptional: Not only are you famous, you’re probably downright legendary. Though you aren’t a council member, you’re practically just as important in the political hierarchy of Zion. Many of the civilians of Zion think you’re a true hero.

Keep in mind that learning about the Matrix is a highly traumatic experience. Once a character learns of it, he can never go back, and he knows it, for better or worse.

Each time a character levels, she gains 1 point to place in disciplines. Every 2 levels, the character gains a point to advance in talents (learning how to manipulate the Matrix and becoming a generally more talented person are two different things).

So, on even numbered levels, you gain only a discipline point; on odd-numbered levels, you gain both that and a point to place in a talent.

There is no set experience chart that determines when you level up; that’s completely at the discretion of your GM.

Players get a number of actions in each round according to their Speed and Matrix Warping discipline levels. This will be at least three and at most thirteen.

Any of the following qualifies as one action:

-Punching or kicking someone.

-Hitting someone with a melee weapon.

-Drawing a weapon.

-Firing a revolver, rifle, or shotgun twice.

-Firing an automatic weapon one to three times.

-Firing a heavy machine gun 5-10 times.

-Leaping somewhere (according to your Strength).

-Putting someone in a hold of some kind.

-Breaking someone else’s hold on you.

-Moving about fifteen feet.

-Running about thirty feet.

Some actions, such as reloading a weapon, may take more time.

If you use more than three actions to fire the same gun in a round, you risk damaging the gun—they were not meant to be fired any faster than that. Technically, you could spend thirteen actions on firing a rifle (and thereby fire as many as 26 rounds), but this is putting extreme wear and tear on the rifle, which was not meant for such rapid movement of its parts.

The charts below are suggestive things—no Game Master is required to use them, although they will help to define just what the odds are if a GM is unsure. On the far left column is the relevant discipline score of the attacker, and the top row is the relevant discipline score of the target.

Basically, how accurate your blows are and how well you dodge them is based on Agility. The above chart assumes that two combatants are standing in one place, trading kung fu blows with one another. If you attempt to hit a person in a specific area, the chance of hitting decreases by 20%.

Note that a character’s Awareness and Evasion (if he has Evasion 3) further reduces the chance of being hit.

Hitting someone doesn’t just have to mean you just strike them. You can also put them in a hold. If you score a successful hit, you can choose to try and put them in a hold (such as a head-lock or arm-lock). People in a hold are much easier to hit and kill.

Also:

-You roll percentile dice to hold when you attempt to disarm someone.

How accurate your bullets are, and how well you are able to dodge bullets in turn, is a function of your Agility and your Speed added together. The chart above assumes that one person is shooting another person from thirty feet away with a pistol. There are innumerable modifiers that can change this suggestive percentage chart. If you intend to shoot someone in a specific place, the chance to hit decreases by 20%.

Furthermore, characters with the Awareness and Evasion disciplines are even harder to hit with guns.

So, how many licks does it take to get to the center of your character’s blow-pop?

Let’s suppose for a minute that we’re using an annoyingly unrealistic hit point system. Assume the following things:

1 Damage: 9mm round

2 Damage: .45 round, shotgun shell fired from more than fifteen feet away.

3 Damage: .50 round, .357 round, heavy machine gun round, shotgun from 5-15 feet away

4 Damage: Point blank shot from a .50, .357, heavy machine gun, or shotgun shell.

Endurance -1: 1-4 hp (2 average)

Endurance 0: 3-5 hp (4 average)

Endurance 1: 5-7 hp (6 average)

Endurance 2: 8-10 hp (9 average)

Endurance 3: 11-13 hp (12 average)

Endurance 4: 15-17 hp (16 average)

The rules above assume that you are being shot in the chest and stomach area. If the heart or brain is hit, you will take at least quadruple damage. In addition, none of this takes into account what would happen when you start bleeding, or go into shock.

Furthermore, getting shot hurts. A seriously wounded character has a difficult time concentrating, and it probably causes them horrendous pain to move around.

As always, keep in mind that these rules are tentative. One character might drop from six rounds; another with the same Endurance may take eight. Who knows?

When two opponents are fighting to the finish, that means one of them has to drop eventually. This chart suggests when that’ll be. It assumes that both combatants are only punching and kicking each-other, or other things like that—people fighting with swords, for instance, would resolve the fight much more quickly. Furthermore, it only depicts an "average" result needed: If you were to fly down and drop-kick someone in the face, for instance, that would be much more powerful than a normal blow.

There’s a limit to how many weapons and various objects a character can hold. Even if you have the strength of a rhinoceros, you still only have tw