Combat in Detail

What Decides a Strike

When a blow is thrown, the attacker's weapon training and build are weighed against the defender's guard, training and reflexes, with dice on both sides. Strength drives the heavy weapons and dexterity the quick ones; most blades want some of both. Constitution is your endurance. Every swing, lunge and rush spends it, and a winded fighter guards badly. Wounds make everything worse: a hurt arm attacks badly, a hurt leg defends badly, and blood loss ends fights on its own.

Bodyparts

Every attack names its target: head neck chest stomach arm rarm larm leg rleg lleg. A bare arm or leg picks a side for you. The torso is the easiest target. Limbs are a little harder to hit and cripple what they hit. The head and neck are the hardest to hit and the worst to be hit on, which is what a helm is for.

The Four Defenses

There are four ways to meet an attack: parry turns it aside with a drawn weapon, dodge moves you out of its way, block takes it on a shield, and footwork keeps you at a distance where it cannot land. Declaring one with defend spends your action, but sets a much stronger guard through the next round. Without a declaration you have a weaker guard, drawn from whatever you carry.

No defense is best against everything. Each one meets each kind of weapon differently, so a guard that stops one opponent may be almost useless against another's weapon, and a canny fighter switches weapons or leads with the off hand to get around a declared guard. Which defense answers which weapon is learned by fighting and watching how well each guard holds.

Your guard also wears down. Wounds weaken it, exhaustion weakens it, and every extra attacker you face in a round finds you more open than the one before.

Armor

Armor comes in grades of protection: leather, then studded and decorated leather, then chain and ring, then plate. Heavier armor turns aside more of a blow, and each kind stands up differently to cuts, thrusts and crushing blows.

• Armor only protects what it covers. A breastplate does nothing for your head. To fight someone in armor, aim for the parts they have left bare; that is what targeting a bodypart is for.
• The metal changes the weight, not the protection. A chain shirt of dwarven-cut steel guards you exactly as well as a bronze one. It is lighter to carry, and that is all.
• Armor is heavy. Walking in heavy armor drains your endurance, which is why a knight in full plate rides. In a fight, heavy armor also makes moving about cost more.

Weapons, Reach and Dual Wielding

Weapons differ in reach as well as in damage. A spearman can strike from paces away; a knife fighter has to get close. The room is a grid, lunge moves you across it, and where you stand decides who can reach whom.

Fighting with two weapons adds an off-hand rider strike to your attacks, at reduced effect that grows with your dual wield training. dattack leads with the off-hand weapon instead, which is useful when your opponent's guard answers your sword better than your dagger. Not every pairing works: an off-hand weapon must be light enough to manage beside your main one, and pole weapons need both hands. A shield and an off-hand weapon cannot be used together.

Parrying has costs of its own. A blade takes damage turning aside a heavier weapon, and a strong exchange can disarm a fighter or break a weapon.

Fighting Into Another Room

A bow, a thrown weapon or a sorcerer's element reaches one or two rooms away. Put the direction in front of the name and the attack goes down that straight line: attack north guard chest <emote>. Someone standing in your room is always tried first, so a mob keyworded "north" beside you is still a person, not a direction.

The line is the one scan walks: one exit, followed straight out. A shut door ends it, and so does a passage nobody has found, and so does a corner, because there is no shooting around one. A window is for seeing through, not shooting through. Exits are as they were built, so a shot can come from a place there is no way back toward.

You have to be able to see your target. Your target does not have to see you.

Distance costs. Every room of it costs accuracy and endurance, and a far shot spends your whole action for the round, like a sword swing. At two rooms you are shooting at a shape rather than a chosen mark, and the bodypart you named is lost. A bow reaches the next room in any archer's hands; the room beyond it needs a master. A thrown weapon carries one room and no further.

Nobody can simply walk out of a fight. charge is the one way to move inside one, and it keeps hold of the fight. The fighter closing moves every round, while the one shooting can shoot or move, never both. An archer who lets you get near has lost their advantage, and once anyone reaches them they cannot hold a distant aim at all.

A fight spread across rooms is still one fight on one clock, and the clock belongs to the room the blow lands in: one round number, one forfeit, one ending, wherever everyone stands. scan refuses while you are fighting, so combat is your eyes: it gives a bearing to everyone fighting you and a look down the line you are shooting along. A fighter you cannot see is never given a bearing.

Sorcery in a Fight

A sorcerer's combat action is mattack: an element thrown at one person, described in an emote like any other strike. It can be used from the third rank of the gift, and at that rank it reaches anyone in the same room. The fourth rank carries an element through a doorway; the fifth carries it two rooms, and only the fifth can throw the void.

Armor stops stone and wind, and nothing else. Thrown stone lands as a crushing blow and wind as a cut, and armor meets them as it meets a weapon. Plate is no more use against fire, cold or the void than linen is. A parry or a block declared against an element has nothing to meet, so it falls back on giving ground; footwork is the best answer. An element is the lightest thing anyone throws, it carries no strength behind it, and it cuts the shallowest wounds. The sorcerer pays for it in breath, in blood, and with the law.

The real answer to an element is a ward, raised with mdefend. A ward is not a guard and never makes anyone harder to hit; it catches what was going to land. Raising one costs the round, so a sorcerer holding a ward is not striking, and holding one up round after round wears it thin. The sorcerer names an element, and the ward's strength comes from their rank in the arcane force paired with it: you attack with the element and ward with its force, and the two are trained separately. Which ward answers which element follows from the elements themselves; water against fire is the one everybody knows.

A ward is no answer to steel, with one narrow exception: each arcane force turns exactly one family of ordinary weapon. Stone takes the weight of a crushing blow, cold turns a swung edge, flame slows a driven point, and moving air pushes anything in flight. The void turns nothing mundane. A sorcerer can be covered against one family at a time, has to guess which one is coming, and pays a round for the guess. A swordsman still wins the exchange comfortably.

Burns, frostbite and the grey deadness of a void mark are wounds of their own kind. None of them takes a bandage or a needle. A burn or frostbite needs a salve or a poultice, and the town physician treats all but the worst of them with her own. A void mark needs magic and nothing less. Stone leaves bruises and wind leaves cuts, which are bound and stitched like any other wound. Sorcery thrown in an open Escard street is remembered by everyone who saw it, and by the Isleguard.

Leaving a Fight

Backing away is not safety. An attacker whose reach you leave may catch you with a parting strike as you go, and anyone can surge or rush across the room after you. A chase is decided by endurance: running costs, armor multiplies the cost, and the winded lose. To get out for good, use escape: a contest of speed, endurance and footwork against everyone still in reach. Win it and you are free. Lose it and you have spent your action standing where you were.

Wounds and Treatment

Wounds are specific: a gash on the sword arm, a cracked rib, a broken leg, each with its own effects. Cuts and punctures bleed, crushing blows bruise and break, and fire and the other elements leave burns that no bandage helps. An untreated wound gets worse with exertion. treat and bind are skills worth learning, the Escard clinic treats for a fee, and the scene after a fight is often better than the fight.

Fighting Animals

Animals fight by the same rules with their own weapons: claws that rake, jaws that puncture, hooves that crush. The wilds have every grade of danger. A fox is a nuisance, a bear is a serious opponent for a seasoned fighter, and there are worse things than bears. Hunt accordingly, and bring friends for the big ones.

Conduct

Combat is still roleplay. Write emotes worth reading, and give your opponent a scene. Sparring blows are pulled by definition, and if someone stops pulling theirs in the middle of a bout, the whole room hears about it. When a fight ends with someone helpless, what happens next, whether mercy, ransom, capture or worse, is roleplay with consequences, and the community expects it to be treated that way.