One of the reasons combat builds aren’t recommended in Call of Cthulhu is that the odds are pretty much always stacked against you, even in the areas you’ve specced yourself out to excel. A starting character cannot have more than 75% in any given stat, meaning even if you max yourself out in something (which, let’s be real, is a gigantic stake of skillpoints to expend on a single skill), you’re still gonna fail a quarter of the time! And nowhere is this more visible then when your “WWI veteran sniper” constantly misses more shots than a member of The A-Team.
Well, here’s the thing. There’s actually a ton of different ways you can improve your chances of hitting things with your attacks. Most of these are little-known mechanics that grant bonus dice, and they can all go a long way towards plugging that dimensional shambler in the forehead when the crucial moment comes!
1. Pick Only ONE Self-Defense Skill.
I see a lot of players (and most premade characters from official modules) grab a smattering of different weapon specialties. Going Pistol 45% Rifle 60% Melee 50% might sound logical, but it’s too bloody expensive! You get so few skillpoints to allocate in this system, you’re kinda wasting them if you make yourself slightly-less-mediocre across the board. I am an ardent believer in pumping just a few skills over trying to be a jack-of-all-trades, because the latter simply leads to your dice failing at everything most of the time. Imagine, instead of that stat spread I posted earlier, you went Pistol 75%, put nothing into the others, and bought a magnum with your starting equipment. You’re just gonna use that magnum the whole campaign! The remaining skillpoints are much more valuable going to noncombat skills over improving your performance with weapons you won’t use anyway.
2. Make That Skill “Throw”!
I’ve mentioned this before, multiple times, but I cannot overstate just how good the Throw skill is in Call of Cthulhu. Many eldritch enemies who are resistant to bullets will still take full damage from molotovs or be blinded by smoke grenades. And explosives have that nifty perk where you don’t need to hit your target, just get somewhere vaguely close to them! Many times, you’ll find that even misses with area-of-effect attacks will provide some partial benefits you certainly won’t be seeing from missed bullets. It’s just another reason I swear by this skill as probably my favorite in the system.
But what if you really want to use a gun? Okay, well, just make sure you know:
3. Firearm Attack Modifiers
Some players have no idea these exist, but they are mandatory if you regularly volunteer to be the team’s combat specialist. Page 113 of the Core Rulebook details a ton of extenuating circumstances that might change your likeliness to hit or miss a target, I recommend you memorize them. The most important for optimizing your own shots are Point-Blank Range, Aiming, and Target Size, as well as the optional rules Bracing and Prone, as all of them can add bonus dice to your attack roll. If you make use of these various mechanics for tilting the odds, you will find yourself hitting far more shots than you were before.
And even if you’re not using a gun (or if you are), there’s actually a similar mechanic that works with any type of attack:
4. Fighting Maneuvers
Fighting Maneuvers are covered in an earlier section on 106, and are one of my favorite mechanics because of their flexibility and reliance on player intent. In essence, they behave like attacks but for some sort of desired outcome other than dealing damage. These outcomes are very situation- or Keeper-dependent, but usually boil down to either applying penalty dice to targets or granting bonus dice on hitting the target until they resolve the effects of the maneuver. This is great because it’s aiding your entire team’s accuracy, not just your own.
The main drawback is that they tend to be short-lived; Keepers generally don’t want their monsters reeling from glitter in their eyes for too long, so you’re unlikely to get more than a single grace turn before they shrug off whatever maneuver you applied and the fight returns to normal. In addition, their improvisational flavor means they’re not really something you can incorporate into a permanent combat style, they’re more opportunities for creative players to do something cool on a single turn that shifts the flow of combat in a novel way. But that means you should keep an eye out for them where you can! Always ask your Keeper what sort of stuff is in the environment of a fight scene, and consider whether any of it might be usable to gain an unconventional advantage.
5. The “Bonus Die Double Tap”
This is a very specific situation that comes up commonly, and I often see other players fail to capitalize on it: if you’re wielding a weapon that can potentially fire twice in a round, and you’ve obtained a bonus die on your attacks from any of the above methods, you should always take two shots instead of just one. Sure, you’re canceling out that bonus die with your new penalty die for firing twice, but notice how you’re still rolling the dice twice, only now you have the potential to land two hits this round. Don’t let that free chance slip through your fingers!
6. Surprise Attacks
Last but not least, let’s end with a special circumstance detailed on page 106: the surprise attack. This is most useful for melee weapons because if you can pass a Stealth check (even if they’re looking right at you) the attack automatically hits. My personal favorite melee weapon is a syringe of curare (page 129), which causes paralysis and 4d10 damage in one round, great for debuffing your assailant and quickly escaping melee range. Surprise attacks let me do this even if I didn’t put skillpoints into melee!
And there you have it! Let me be clear that Call of Cthulhu still absolutely deserves its reputation of being terrible for that “grizzled gunman gangster” power fantasy. You are fighting an uphill battle by trying to play a character who doesn’t just flee in terror from every chthonic horror that shambles across their path, but that might be why I enjoy doing it so much. And even if you play one of those librarian types with no combat skills, remember these tips for earning bonus dice because they’re now your best chance of actually landing a shot in the unfortunate situation you have no other choice!
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