Basic Rules
How to Fight
Doing Damage
Power Level Overview
Using Ki
Training Methods
Experience Points
Creating Attacks
Advanced Rules

Listed below are the rules for the Official Dragon Ball Z RPG, with slight modifications by us. Please remember that while some of these rules differ from what's in the book, these rules work fairly well for us, and changing some of the rules and using others from our site is ok, but remember that changing too many rules will not balance out other rules. You've been warned:

Character Stats :

The stats that comprise a character are divided into four areas: Power, Characteristics, Skills, and Hits & Defense. Each section affects the way your character attacks, defends, and spends power

Power is comprised of Power Level and Power Up. Power Level shows you how many points of energy, or Ki, you have. Power Up shows you how many points you can gather together in one phase, or combat action.

Characteristics are the basis for your Skills. Mental shows how adept a character is at learning, Physical shows how much damage your character can do with punches and kicks. Combat shows you general skill in fighting, and is factored into many of the Skills. And Move shows you how far you can move in a single phase.

Skills are areas you have developed, and are mainly used in battle. Fighting is the Skill you use to determine if you can hit someone with a physical attack, while Evasion is used to see if you can dodge attacks. Weapon is the skill you use to determine if you hit with a weapon. Your Power Skill determines if you can hit someone with an energy attack. Body is the skill used to see how much your body can take, how much endurance you have, and your overall fitness. Mind is used primarily for escaping mental attacks or using them. And Ki control is the skill used to determine how much power you can use in one phase.

How to Fight:

Skills are used to determine if anything you attempt is succesful. To use your skills, you add the skill's value with the characteristic it is associatied with, along with the sum of three six-sided dice. Example:

Piccolo attempts to drop kick Krillin's teeth out. Piccolo would add his fighting skill to his combat skill. He would then roll 3d6 (three six-sided dice) and add that to his total. His Fighting is 30 and his Combat is 20, giving him 50. Adding his roll of 12 gives him a total of 62. Now Krillin would have to try to evade the attack. He has an Evasion of 25 and a Combat of 12. He rolls a 5 for a total 42. Piccolo hits, and it's nothing but soft food for Krillin. :)

Each time characters enter a battle, Combat Timing begins. Characters act in terms of phases. Every phase is 3 seconds long. Each phase you are allowed to perform an action, such as attacking, running, or using other skills. Every 4 phases is called a round. Each phase, the character with the highest move goes first, followed by the second highest, and so on.

(Note: one big change we did from Talsorian, is that we don't measure how far you can run, and we don't use sprint rules. We don't worry about it. If one character is running from another, the faster one catches the slow one. If someone runs from battle, and the next phase someone decides to go after them, to catch up they have to have the move of the runner. If they want to catch them they have to be faster. Simple?)

There are several options you have when it comes to what you can do in a phase. Here are some examples:

Attack:

Use any type of attack (including Powers)
Block: Stop hand to hand attacks. The number you have to beat is the attacker's Combat + Fighting Skill + 10 if it's hand to hand, and Combat + Weapon Skill + 20 if it's a weapon.
Dodge: In exchange for not attacking this phase, you can only dodge, which gives you a +5 bonus to your evasion roll.
Get Up: If knocked down, you can get up and perform one action. (If you get up you can either run or attack, but not both.)

Grab:

 You can grab an opponent, but you suffer a -10 to your attack roll. To continue to hold the person on subsequent phases, you must beat his physical check with your own.
Other Action: Any other single action the DM lets you do.
Move: You can chose to move half your move and attack, or your full move.
Power Up: Gather Power or use a non-attack power

Doing Damage:

There are a good amount of ways you can do damage to your opponent. The first would be the damage they take from physical attacks. To figure out how much damage they would take from a physical attack, use this formula:

Physical + Fighting X3

So if you posses a fighting skill of 100 and a physical characteristic of 200, then you would add those together on a succesful attack and times the result by 3. That would give you a damage total of 600 per physical attack.

You have to now figure out how much damage they actually take. After you figure out how much damage they've recieved, you subtract the defense from the damage. If you dealed 600 damage and the opponent has a defense of 400, they are only gonna take 200 damage.

Helpful Hint: It's best to right down your physical damage somewhere on your character sheet, otherwise you will have to constantly do the above math every time you hit.

There are also other ways you can take or deliver damage. We will deal with energy attacks later, but for now let's look at Knockback, Collisions, and Other Types:

Knockback

To see if you are knocked back from a successful attack, you take the damage total you suffered and subtract your physical. The result is how many move you've been knocked back. You are knocked down if the result is higher than your physical stat. Example:

Goku has landed a successful attack on Vegeta. After figuring in defense, Vegeta suffers 500 damage. His physical is 450. 500 minus 450 is 50. Vegeta is thrown back 50 move.

Collisions

If for any reason an attack results in you being smashed into an object (or person) you will also take collision damage. The figures for collision damage are:

Move
3
6
9
12
15
18
21
24
27
30+
Dice
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10

So if you are moved 12 move back into a wall, you will take 4 dice of damage. After 30+ we don't even bother. And to be honest, after you hit the higher levels such as is shown in the Frieza and Cell Saga, you may not even use this chart anymore. But I put it in for those who are starting from the beginning.

Other Kinds of Damage

Of course, there are other types of damage you can suffer. Here is a chart explaining:

Severity
Mild
Intense
Deadly
Dice per Phase
1-4
5-10
11-20
Effect
Painful, Dangerous over some time
Intense pain/ Can kill over a few phases
Can kill almost instantly

Helpful Hint: This is yet another section that we just don't use. It may be helpful to those making Brand New Characters, but once you get around even the Saiya-jin saga, this isn't needed if you use the rules of this site.

Recovery

There is a way for you to get health back. Besides special ways (such as Senzu or healing skills). For every hour you rest, you will get hits back according to your physical rating. You can't do anything else except for laying back, relaxing or something w/ low activity.

Power Level Overview:

Power Level is the bread and butter of Dragon Ball Z. With Power Level, or Ki, fighters can throw blasts of energy, they can push their bodies farther than most could dream, and they can even use it to deflect other energies. You spend points out of your Power Level to throw energy beams, to boost actions and even boosting your physical stat.

Raising Power

In order to attack or use your ki, you first must make sure you have raised enough power. You can gather as much power as your power up rate. If you do not raise power, you cannot use power at all. Example:

Krillin wants to pay Piccoo back for all the grief he's caused him. He decides to raise power so he can do more than simply punch and miss. He has a Power Up rate of 100, so he can raise up to 100 points in one phase. The next phase he raises his power again. Now he has 200 points raised.

It's fairly easy to do. If you don't have the points raised, you're only going to be punching or kicking. Or maybe running : )

Getting Energy Back

For each hour spent resting you can recover power equal to your power up rating. Of course you can again use Senzu beans to regain health, but for those of you without connections, you'll have to go this route : )

Using Ki: There are two skills critical to using Ki. Power and Ki Control. Power is the skill needed to actually hit or successfully use Ki, while Ki Control is the skill necessary to find out how much Ki you can use.

To determine whether or not you can control the power you've gathered, or to see how much energy you can use at once, you use Ki Control. It works like any other skill except after you add everything up, you times the result by 10:

Ki Control + Combat x 10

Then you see whether or not you've beaten the DV (Difficulty Value). The Difficulty Value for throwing an energy blast is the amount of points you want to throw. If you want to throw a 1,000 point blast you have to see if you can use that much energy. You have to have an end result of at least 1,000.

Helpful Hint: We don't use the 3d6 rule for Ki Control because after a bit, it's just not a factor. If you want to throw an 8,000 point blast, who cares if you roll 3d6 and get a 6. You can throw a 8,006 point blast? Woo hoo! So we just drop it, but you can put it back in if you REALLY want to.

Power is the skill to determine whether or not you can nail someone with an attack. It's the same as using the fighting skill:

Power Skill + Combat + 3d6

However many points you throw into a blast, that's how much damage you deal to that opponent. If you throw a thousand and hit, they will take a thousand damage. Of course they will have a defense score and possibly a deflection however.

Deflections

Obviously an energy blast will severly damage an opponent if they don't have any defenses. That's where Deflections come in. One of the actions you can do is to raise a deflection. It is fairly simple to do. You state how many points from your power raised you are going to put into the deflection. From that point on, as long as you are on guard (a.e: aware of the attack) you will have the deflection up. If an energy attack hits you, it must first try to go through your deflection. If it doesn't have more points in its attack than you have in your deflection, it doesn't get through. Example:

Cell and Gohan are in the heat of battle. As Cell prepares an energy blast, Gohan uses his phase to raise a 100,000 point deflection. The next round Gohan attacks Cell, and then Cell fires his blast. It hits Gohan and does 90,000 damage. It doesn't get through the deflection. The next phase Cell fires again. He throws a blast of 120,000 points. This is enough to break through the 100,000 point deflection Gohan has up. He now has to hope his Defense is high : )

If somebody hits you with a physical attack while you have your deflection up, you lose the deflection and all the points you put into it. You cannot raise a deflection out of defense. You can't use it like an evasion roll. You have to have the deflection up ahead of time. If you don't, tough cookies.

Effects

A basic energy blast only deals damage. But you can add effects on the fly to the attack that will allow the blast to do such things as bend around corners, home in, and even cut through deflections. In order to use these effects, you must add on their cost to your DV for blasts. If you throw a 100 energy blast that has one phase of homing on it, the cost is 120, because homing cost +20 for every phase it lasts. The list of effects is thus:

Homing +20 per phase of homing. (Doubles your attack roll)
Bending +5 per bend. Can bend 90 degrees per bend.
Area Effect +5 per move from attack center. (Can hit everything in area)
Delay +2 per phase delayed
Rapid Fire +10 for each additional blast
Deadly Effect +1 for every ten points of deflection negated.
After Effect +2 per dice per phase of attack. (Causes damage even after initial damage)
Immobilizing +10 per +1 immobilizing strength (Freezes opponent in place)

Here is a short description of the effects. Homing, the effect on Yamcha's energy balls, will make the attack follow the victim for however many phases you pay for, and it will double the dice roll. Bending, used by several characters, allows you to bend an energy beam so that it can reach around obstacles. Area Effect lets you do a wide area damage attack, such as when Nappa destroyed the whole city when he landed on earth. Anything in that area takes the damage of the attack. Delay lets you set an attack, and it will go off whenever you've designated it to. An example would be when Piccolo surrounds Android #17 with spheres of energy. They all have delay on them. Rapid fire is the trademark of Vegeta. Whenever you see Vegeta piss and moan and throw a thousand little blasts at someone, this is the effect he uses. Deadly Effect is the effect on the Destructo Disk. It cuts through deflections. For every 10 points of deflection it ignores, it cost an extra point. So if an attack has a deadly effect of 50, it can ignore 50 points of deflection. After Effect is an ability that lets you hit an opponent with an attack and then let it continue to do damage even after the attack. If you make a 500 point attack cause 100 points of damage for 5 phases, it would cost 1,500 points. 500 for the attack, and 1000 points for effect. (100 points of damage x 5 phases = 1,000). Immobilizing allows you to freeze opponents in their tracks. Chiatzu is the only person I can think of that used this one. It costs +10 for every 1 point of strength it has. Once the attack hits, the opponent must make a check. The opponent uses their physical + body versus the attackers immobilizing strength + Power Skill. Others can attack the Immobilizing effect. If it takes damage more than it's Strength x 10, it's gone.

Other uses for Ki

Besides killing, you can use Ki for a number of other reasons. Here are the ones we have so far.

Superspeed/Flight

This skill lets you move at lightning speeds or fly through the air. Note that you can't just stop on a dime when in superspeed. You spend the whole phase running at that speed, which is why it's a good idea to raise your move. This is bought in 10 minute increments, so to fly mach 4 for 10 minutes would be 80 points.

Mach
<1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13+
Cost
10
20
40
60
80
100
120
140
160
180
200
220
240+20 every mach after

Helpful Hint: We put a cap on how fast you can go with this skill. Until you hit a move of over 1500, you can't go faster than mach 13. This is to show a: you just aren't fast enough to handle that kind of speed, and b: that even in dragon ball z there can be game balance : )

Multiple Actions

When you see a character do twenty things in one blink of an eye in Dragon Ball Z, that is what's considered multiple actions. You can spend Ki points in order to raise the amount of attacks you can do in one phase like this:

Actions
+2
+3
+4
+5
+6
+7
+8
+9
+10
+11
+12
Cost
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
110

Enhanced Strength

In addition to flying and moving faster than the eye can trace, you can also enhance your strength for a phase (or however long you continue to pay the cost). In order to do so, the formula is as follows:

Physical
To lift a(n):
To Bend Or Break:
4
Adult Female
Wood Boards
6
Adult Male
Aluminum
8
Lion, 2 Men
Iron
10
Motorcycle, Bear
12
Small Car
Steel
14
Large Car, Elephant
Hardened Steel
16
Small Semi-Truck
18
Light Tank
20
Small Jet
Titanium
22
Battle Tank, Whale
24
Large Jet, Train
Unobtanium*
26
Small Ship, Building
28
Battleship, Large Building
Super Unobtanium
30
Aircraft Carrier
32
Mountain
Anything (basically)

*This is Talsorian's name for any superhero supermetal (a.k.a. adamantium)

Training Methods: These rules are also at the Dragma site, but they are such great rules, I wanted to make them available here as well. Experience gained through training is as follows: Minimum training: 10 exp. per year.

Training Under Multiple Gravites:

First, the character is not use to anything above what he has lived under for his life, so the player has to make a Body check to make sure that the PC can stand the strain. The player does not include his Physical Stat when doing this. The formula is: Difficulty = (Training Gravity - Starting Gravity) + 20 (base difficulty)

If he or she can't make that check, he or she cannot train under that gravity & must attempt a lower one. If he or she can though, the character must spend at least one week (8 hr. a day) of training under that gravity (no variation in gravity, or the week is reset) to gain any benefits. The exp. gain is as follows: Exp. Gain = Training Gravity * 10 per week

To master a Gravity Level you must undergo at least a weeks' worth of training, then make a body check for the Training Gravity using the following formula: Difficulty = Training Gravity - week + 20 If a Gravity is already mastered, the Exp. Gained is as followed: Exp. Gain = (Training Gravity * 10) divided by 2 per week

Hyper Training:

Sometimes, you just don't have time to bleed. You need to get better, like waaaaaaayy better, and this can be done like so: First decide how much time you want to reduce it to (i.e. 1/2, 1/4, 1/8). Then you need to see if your body can handle the new speed. Multiply the reciprocal by the base difficulty 20 (Example: if you wanted to take 1 day to complete what would be considered a week of training you would find the difficulty is 140, 20 X 7 = 140), you can power up to help. A good example of hyper training would be Goku's training on the way to Namek. How else could he have taken on the Ginyu Force when he couldn't handle Vegeta on Earth, unless you just wanna go w/ bad story telling.

Experience Points: This is the system that works for us. You may not use it, but remember that our game is based off of this, and if you don't use these rules for exp, but use our advanced rules or even some basic ones, it may not make sense.First off, there are two ways of gaining experience. And they dictate which areas you can raise. Let's start with Experience from combat. To figure out how much exp everyone gets, find the average of the group. Add all of the power levels of the group together, and divide that by four. If you have a total group power level of 4 million, and their are four people, the average power level of the group is 1 million. Then, you subtract the opponent's power level from the group's average power level. Now divide the result amongst the group. So if you beat someone who has a power level of 2 million, and there are four people, and the average group power level (AGPL) is 1 million, just subtract 1 million from 2 million. The result is 1 million. Now divide that amongst the group. They each get 500,000. Simple?

After receiving experience points from combat you have to figure out what points go where. To see how many points can go where, you take the amount of experience points you recieved, and divide it by 100. The result is how many points you can put into the skills Fighting, Evasion, Weapon, and Power. Example: If you receive 100,000 experience points, you can spend 1,000 points in the skills listed above. Why do we do this? The way we figure it, in the show they always go "he has a power level of 800,000! We can't touch him." But in this game, it doesn't matter. I could have a power level of 20, and throw all of those points I didn't put in power level into fighting and physical and kill anyone in one punch. With this system, you can fairly accurately tell how good someone is by his or her power level. Plus, stats stay a little lower, since the points you get and the points you can spend are two different things.

Training is a different matter. With training, however many points you get is how many you can spend. If you earn 5,000 points in training, that's what you can spend on the appropiate skills. However, with training points, you can only spend them on Power Level, Power Up, Hits, Defense, Physical, Move, Body, Mind, and Ki Control. You put however many points you want to into whichever of these stats you chose. It's that simple.

Applying Experience:

Listed below is how many points can go into what, and how they work.

Creating Attacks: You can't live off of other people's attacks. How original will your character be if all he does is throw Masenkos all the time. You will need to make new attacks. Making a new attack is simple. All you have to do is spend 20 exp for every 100 damage you want to make an attack. So if you want to make a 5,000 point blast, then you spend 500 exp to make it. But you usually won't want to create an attack with no effects right?

Permanently Adding Effects to Powers

Effects can always be added to an attack on the fly, but there may be a time when you want to add an effect permanently, such as Vegeta's Multi-Shot Power Blast and Krillin's Destructo Disk. The difference between adding an effect on the fly and having it permanently is that a permanent effect does not add to your difficulty rating. To do this, you must train for so many weeks and apply experience to the attack. The conditions are as followed:

Homing: when training to add this effect each phase of homing will cost 15 exp and 1 week of training for 100 points of energy, so spending 75 exp you can control a 500 pt. attack and it would be homing for 5 phases but you would need to train for 5 weeks to learn the effect for that attack.

Bending: With this effect you can turn up to 90 degrees. For each turn you will spend 10 exp and spend 1 week training. So training for 4 weeks and spending 40 exp you can turn a blast 4 times.

Area Effect: For every 10 exp and 1 week of training you can have an attack that will explode in a 1-move radius.

Delay: This will be 5 exp and 1 week of training for each phase of delay.

Rapid Fire: For each extra blast you will need to train 1 week and spend 5 exp.

Deadly Effect: this will cost 10 exp for every 100 points of energy in the blast and require 1 week of training.

After Effect: This will cost 10 exp for every 50 points of energy and 1 week training.

Immobilizing: For each five points of strength, it costs 10 exp and 1 week of training.