Attack Roll

An attack roll represents one starship’s attempt to strike another on its turn in a round. Most starships are armed with ranged weapons aimed by gunners. When a starship makes an attack roll, roll 1d20 and add the appropriate modifiers (described below). If the result equals or beats the target’s Defense, the attack hits and deals damage. A starship’s attack roll is:

1d20 + gunner’s ranged attack bonus + range penalty + starship’s size modifier + targeting system’s equipment bonus

Gunner’s Ranged Attack Bonus: Unless noted otherwise, all starship gunners are assumed to have the Starship Gunnery feat. Without this feat, a starship gunner takes a –4 nonproficient penalty on attack rolls with starship weapons.

For simplicity, all gunners aboard a starship have identical ranged attack bonuses.

Range Penalty: The range penalty for a ranged weapon depends on what weapon the starship is using and the distance to the target. All ranged weapons have a range increment, as noted in Table: Starship Weapons.

As with character weapons, any attack from a distance of less than one range increment is not penalized for range. However, each full range increment causes a cumulative –2 penalty on the attack roll.

A beam weapon has a maximum range of 10 increments. A projectile weapon has an unlimited range, since projectiles don’t lose inertia in space. Starship’s Size Modifier: Starships are Huge, Gargantuan, or Colossal in size. Table: Starship Sizes notes the size modifiers for ships of different sizes. Targeting System’s Equipment Bonus: Most starships have computerized targeting systems to help gunners train weapons on targets. A standard targeting system provides an equipment bonus on the gunner’s attack roll depending on the ship’s size: Huge +1, Gargantuan +2, Colossal +3. Improved targeting systems (see Starship Sensors) grant higher bonuses. Table: Starship Sizes summarizes the targeting system equipment bonuses for ships of different sizes.

Automatic Misses and Hits: As in character combat, a natural 1 on the attack roll is always a miss. A natural 20 is always a hit. A natural 20 also always threatens a critical hit (see Critical Hits, below).

Table: Starship Sizes
Starship Size	Starship’s Size Modifier1	Targeting System’s Equipment Bonus2	Autopilot System’s Equipment Bonus3	Starship’s Length	Starship’s Weight
Colossal	–8	+3	+3	64 ft. or more	250,000 lb. or more
Gargantuan	–4	+2	+2	32–64 ft.	32,000–250,000 lb.
Huge	–2	+1	+1	Less than 32 ft. 4	,000–32,000 lb.
1A starship applies its size modifier on all attack rolls and to its Defense. 2 A starship applies its targeting system’s equipment bonus on all attack rolls. 3 A starship on autopilot applies its autopilot system’s equipment bonus to its Defense.