Cyberpunk RED Combat: Friday Night Firefight Basics and How It Plays

What Friday Night Firefight is#

Friday Night Firefight is the combat system of the Cyberpunk tabletop game. It emphasizes lethality. A character's survivability does not climb with experience the way it does in games with levels, so a veteran Solo is better at hitting things but not much better at being hit.

RED's core book covers movement, melee, ranged combat, explosives, autofire, martial arts, fire, electricity, radiation, cover, human shields, armor, Critical Injuries, Death Saves, vehicle combat and faceoffs. R. Talsorian called it a faster and more furious upgrade of the earlier rules. This page covers the shape of it, not the tables. For the numbers, use the core book or the free Easy Mode.

A round, in plain words#

Initiative decides who acts first. It is a check, and the game gives characters ways to improve it. Then each character, on their turn, gets one move action and one other action: shoot, reload, take cover, hack, patch a friend.

Attacks use the core mechanic of the game: take the relevant stat, add the skill, add a d10, and beat a Difficulty Value set by the game master. A Difficulty Value is just a target number. The idea is old and simple, and Cyberpunk was one of the first tabletop games to use it.

Armor, hit points and Critical Injuries#

RED swapped 2020's health track for ordinary hit points. Hit points make characters spongy, so the designers lowered armor values to compensate and added a critical wound system.

• Armor: Armor is rated in Stopping Power (SP) and loses 1 SP each time an attack penetrates it (not when it stops one), which is why a long fight changes who is safe. Armor is lower in RED than in 2020 so fights stay lethal.
• Critical Injuries: Roll two 6s on a damage roll and the target takes 5 damage straight to hit points and a brutal injury that hurts their stats until it is healed with a skill check. The check's difficulty depends on the injury.
• Trauma Deck: An official RED product for dealing out Critical Injuries in firefights.

Speed and the Solo#

Initiative is where cyberware earns its price. The Kerenzikov adds +2 to Initiative permanently, and the Sandevistan adds +3 for 60 seconds with a one-hour cooldown. A character can only carry one piece of speedware. The 2077 version of the implant is on the Sandevistan page, and the broader catalog is in cyberware 101.

The Solo's Role Ability, Combat Awareness, splits points among sub-abilities. Initiative Reaction adds up to +1 per point to Initiative, Precision Attack adds +1 to Attack checks per 3 points, and Damage Deflection reduces the first damage that gets through armor each Round by 1 for every 2 points spent, up to 10. See Cyberpunk RED roles for the others.

Fixer's notes: how it plays at the table#

The first fight is the one your players remember. They walk in thinking it is a dungeon crawl, somebody gets a Critical Injury in round two, and the table goes quiet. Warn them before you start, as your first session advice suggests. The lethality is the point, not a bug.

Opinion: the best fights are short and set up in advance. Cover, a corridor, a hostage and a ticking clock beat a battlefield. If a fight lasts more than five rounds, somebody made a mistake, usually the GM.

Make the Netrunner useful in the same fight, not in a separate scene. Cyberpunk RED netrunning is built for it: the runner wears goggles and stays in the room with the party.

Gear matters more than skill points. Spend the opening session's money on armor and a reliable weapon from the weapons list. Players who skip armor to buy a cooler jacket learn quickly.

If you are new, start with character creation and read the books guide before buying more.