Like Fae Noir, but want a pulp-action feel for your game? Here are three alternate ways to reduce the danger of combat. You can either apply these rules to all the characters in your game or, to really make your game play like a pulp adventure, only to the PCs and important NPCs.

• Damage Soak – Whenever a character would take damage from an attack, roll his Toughness in a Soak attempt to reduce the final damage taken. The Soak test is applied after initial damage has been modified by armor and by any extra net successes on an attack. The target number for the Soak test is always 6. Successes on the Soak test stage down damage dealt to a character in the same way that damage is increased by extra successes on an attack roll – that is, 2 successes on the Soak roll reduce the numerical value of damage dealt by 1 and 3 successes on the Soak roll reduce the wound level of damage by one level.

For Example:
            Lord High Genuflect is shot by a Pinkerton with a heavy pistol. After applying extra successes from the attack, Genuflect would take 2C of damage. However, he’s in a game using the Soak rules, so he rolls his Toughness of 6 and gets 2 successes (reduce numerical value of damage by 1). This is enough to reduce the 2C down to 1C of final damage, which is then applied to the character.
            Had Genuflect rolled 3 successes, he would have staged the damage down by one wound level, and would have suffered 2V of damage.

• Dodging Ranged Attacks – Whenever a ranged attack is made on a character, she can make a Dodge attempt. The base target number of a Dodge test is 6, modified by wound penalties, the Actively Distracted condition, and environmental condition penalties. Successes on the Dodge test subtract one-for-one from successes on a ranged attack made against the dodging character. If a character achieves as many or more successes on a Dodge test than their attacker did on the attack roll, then the ranged attack misses and no damage is dealt.
  If the Dodge rule is being used, do not apply the normal Agility attribute modifiers as found on the Agility table.

For Example:
            Sue Danger is being shot at by a thug who scores 3 successes on his attack roll. Sue Danger makes a Dodge test and scores 2 successes. Subtracting these from the thug’s successes leaves one net success for the thug’s attack. He manages to shoot Sue, but only deals the base damage for his gun.
            Had Sue scored 3 or more successes on her Dodge test, the thug would have missed completely.

• Universal Reduced Damage – Reduce the damage code for all weapons and spells by one wound level. This will make the game significantly less deadly and, consequently, increase the amount of play time spent in combat. Gamemasters should consider very carefully whether they want to make such a sweeping change to their Fae Noir campaign before using this rule.

For Example:
            Under the default rules of Fae Noir, a light pistol deals 1V damage. By reducing the damage by one wound level, all light pistols in the game deal 1L base damage instead.