"Calculating fire dice in No Stars In Sight" Topic

Can someone give me an example or two of calculating how many shock and kill dice are rolled in NSIS?

Thanks!

Ps. Anyone know why scifi discussion and 28mm scifi forums aren't crosspostable for me?

Some forums just refuse to crosspost for some reason. Never figured out why.

Quick example number 1:

5 trained soldiers, 1 with SAW, 4 with assault rifles.

5 fire power as a base, +2 for the SAW is 7 fire power total.

So I get 7 shock dice and 3 (half FP) Kill dice.

Example 2:

One of the soldiers throws a grenade, instead of firing his rifle, catching 3 of the bad guys in the blast.

Base fire power is now 6 (giving me 6 shock and 3 kill)
The grenade adds 2 more Shock dice and 3 more Kill dice (in this example), giving me a total of 8 shock and 6 kill.

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So to summarize:
Add up all the fire power from guys shooting bullets.
That's how much Shock dice you get.
Half of that, is how many Kill dice you get.

Grenade dice are calculated on their own and added afterwards. They aren't connected to the firepower pool at all.

Once you have all your dice from grenades and bullets, grab a small bucket and roll them all together :-0

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Let me know if that helps. If not, ask away and I'd be happy to answer specifics.

I don't know if it helped OP but it certainly helped me – thanks!

- Nick

Awesome :-)

Thanks weasel. Another confusion on my part: What's the incentive for adding your firepower together? It's seems more beneficial to activate troopers one at a time and fire, both to possibly pin enemy and allow friends to move easier and also because you seems to get fewer kill dice when grouping shots together. What an I misunderstanding?

Thanks!

Ps. A few clarity issues aside, I think you've done some brilliant work in this space these last couple years. Myself being an amateur designer, you're a huge inspiration and I find myself constantly trying to figure out how to rip you off and apply your approaches to my systems and haven't figured out how to get them to fit! ;) keep it up!

okay, so this is a part that is harder to explain than it is to actually play, so bear with me :-)

If you split up your fire, you can never get more kill dice than if you had taken the shots together.
End of the "Target Selection and Procedures" section on page 16:
"Note that the number of kill dice received against a specific target unit is based on total fire power generated that turn".

What that means in plain talk is that if you have 6 fire power, you get 3 kill dice, no matter if you take them individually or all at once.

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Now, yes, if each of those soldiers fired at an entirely different target, you could cheese it, but realistically, that rarely seems to be an option.

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Tactically, if there's only one enemy soldier in sight, taking a single shot makes sense. If there's several, you'll risk taking far more reaction shots incoming by doing it one man at a time.

And thanks, that means a lot :-)

I'm no genius or anything but if you ever have questions or want my suggestions for something, feel free to email me.