My Life As A Gamer: Running Through The Rifts (Pt. 5)

(Following from this post.)

There Was An Attempt

Halloway's bounty is an open offer, like bounties usually are, so there is competition to collect. In addition to the considerable monetary reward, successful collection gives the collector an opportunity to ingratiate himself with Halloway.

The reward is shared if multiple claimants collect. This has a predictable result: too many bounty hunters choose to compete when they should collaborate.

Someone attempted to compete with Alexandros.

How It Went Down

The attacker attempted to eliminate Alexandros from range with a rifle, thinking that it would be easy enough to blast his head off. As one corpse among many, no one would notice that one was not involved in the ambush on the visiting prince until it was a moot point.

But this is RIFTS, and both men and monsters tend to be a cut above the norm.

In this case, what foiled the surprise was the fact that Alexandros--neither being a moron nor being against technology--had on him a goggle set capable of going infrared and well as into nightvision. Our attacker, being a living man and underestimating Alexandros (thinking him a typical mercenary or scout), didn't try to hide very well.

Alexandros scanned about his location and spotted the shooter at the edge of his vision. Ill intent was not hard to deduce. (Detect Ambush check successful.)

Now we open RIFTS Ultimate Edition to page 339 and work through the combat rules.

The Fight Sequence

Alexandros is 1000 yards from the shooter. This is open terrain, but the shooter is shooting from the East and it's well past mid-afternoon.

Initative gets rolled. Alexandros loses 10 to 17, so the shooter goes first. As he failed to catch Alexandros unawares, he rolls to strike normally; +3 for an Aimed Shot (costs two attacks; RUE pg. 361), +2 for Sniper skill, and a roll of 8 gets him a 13 to strike. Alexandros can only dodge (costing one attack; RUE pg. 341), and with +3 to dodge he ties with a 13- defenders win all ties (ibid).

The shot just misses him. The noise tells him that it's a railgun, and the range tells him he needs to close before he can return fire so he breaks into a run; with Alex's Speed of 38 the shooter is shocked at how fast Alex can close the distance- but Alex does something strange. Alex moves to put the sun at his back as he closes, forcing the shooter to shoot with the sun coming into his eyes. It's supposition on Alex's part, but he figures if he can get an advantage this way why not take it? Of the 38 yards Alex can move in one attack, 30 goes to close the distance and 8 are spent manuevering into position. (The shooter rolled a Horror check and fails with a 2; he's shook.)

The shooter fires again. Alex is now a harder target as he's on the move, and the shooter decides for volley of fire over precision (i.e. no Aimed Shots) because he's spooked. A strike roll of 9 (+5 to strike, -2 due to movement and evasion, roll of 6) loses to Alex's Dodge of 10 (+3 to dodge, roll of 7), but because Alex is still out of range all he can do is close the distance yet again. The shooter fires one more time this round and whiffs with a 7 vs. Alex's 17. Alex still has two more attacks, which he uses to finish his manuever as he closes.

Alex remains out of range, so Initiative remains moot, and now with the sun in his eyes the shooter's railgun fire turns out even worse. The Referee rules that the shooter takes a -3 penalty due to having the sun encroaching on his sight picture, with the effect of making his shots now at just a +2 to strike. Combined with the range penalties and he's at no bonus at all, while Alex dodges at +3. The results are against him, and Alex runs right at the shooter in response confident that he'll not get put down. Rolls to strike of 5 (auto-miss; needs to be 8+, RUE 361), 14 (dodged; Alex tied), 7 (auto-miss), and 8 (dodged; Alex rolled a 10) means that he runs out of attacks again.

This doesn't go any better in the third round. Four shots, four whiffs.

Having not connected once, and seen his quarry run about 500 yards in 45 seconds, the Referee rolls another Horror Factor check; the shooter saves with a 17, but he's still rattled. (Remember, Alex is still armored and thus his Tattoos are concealed.)

The fourth round has Alex gain the initiative. He's now in range, and he returns fire. +1 for his Proficency is all he gets for bonuses, and he fires; a roll of 12 gets him a 13 to strike, and the shooter opts to dodge- a roll at +2 gets him a tie and he squeeks by as he rolls under cover. That takes his attack, so Alex shoots again at the cover; he hits with an 8 and vaporizes the rock (10 MD rolled) forcing the shooter to dodge again (done with a roll of 9). Alex rolls to strike, getting lucky with a 19; the shooter does not get lucky and rolls a 12 to dodge- he's hit! Alex rolls 3d6 and gets an 11; this gets marked off the shooter's body armor, but Alex doesn't know that yet. Alex fires one more time, getting a 14; the shooter gets run out of attacks dodging this one, and failing against with a 13. Alex does another 10 MD to the shooter's armor, doing over half of its MDC, and then rushes at him.

The shooter, having seen his armor get nearly shot to pieces, realizes that he's in well over his head; he can't outrun Alex, and he's almost out of ammo for his rifle. He surrenders. The fight is over.

Interrogation

Summarized, the shooter is a Vagabond out to make a big score- much like Halloway was decades ago. The rifle he has is a semi-automatic model patterned after the Barrett and his thrashed armor is some rebuild Urban Man set "with only one previous owner". He just wanted to eliminate competition before trying to complete and collect.

Unimpressed, Alex disarms the man and ties him up before delivering him to El Paso's militia. Murder is still a criminal offense in El Paso, on-call psychics verify Alex's account, and the shooter is condemned to death by hanging. The militia confiscate the rifle and armor, keeping the former (who wouldn't want a semi-auto railgun as a sniper rifle) and selling the latter after being patched up again.

Alex also briefs the militia on what he's found out there, pointing to the Wild Cats as one of the attacking parties and providing images of the deceased, knowing that this will get back to Halloway. He's thanked for bringing in the Vagabond, compensated for his trouble, and sent on his way.

Bookkeeping

Alex gets 25 experience points for the combat encounter. All of the various skill checks get him 10-25 apiece; this rounds to 100. Various displays of virtue and insight amount to 300 points. That comes up to 425 experience points so far, out of the 2401 he needs to hit 2nd level (as he's on the Demigod/High Elf chart; Pantheons pg. 18).

Alex spent a total of two days pursuing this lead. He's not been severely strained yet; he need only top off the battery pack for his rifle (I refuse to call them "E-Clips"; that's some abomination of Boomerism and "I don't know shit about how firearms work" crossbreed of a bad meme.) which can be done overnight. He'll be ready to continue the next day.

What Alex does not know is that the same party that put that ambush on the foreign prince together observed the one-on-one encounter, and they'll be adjusting their plans accordingly.