The World
Combat
Fights resolve in automatic rounds, but almost nothing about them is automatic. What you do between the blows is where the fight is won.
Rounds, not turns
Once a fight starts, blows land on a timer whether or not you type anything. That is the floor. Everything else - closing the distance, changing stance, drinking a potion, calling for a rescue, or deciding this is not your fight - happens on top of it, in real time, while the rounds keep coming.
Three stances
stance defensive trades your offence for survivability, stance aggressive does the reverse, and stance neutral is the middle. It is a single command, it takes effect immediately, and switching mid-fight as things turn is normal play rather than a trick.
Distance is real
Combatants occupy one of five range bands, and archers care enormously about which one:
- Distant
- Far
- Midway
- Close
- Melee
A bow wants distance and loses value as the gap closes; a blade wants the opposite. Ranged attacks consume real ammunition from a real quiver, so an archer who stops watching their arrow count becomes a poor melee fighter at the worst possible moment.
Position is a running score
Beyond distance, every fight tracks how well each side is actually doing, across seven steps:
- Very bad
- Bad
- Risky
- Neutral
- Advantage
- Well in control
- Overwhelming
It moves as the fight moves, and it is visible to you. Watching it slide is the clearest early warning that you should be doing something other than trading blows.
Fatigue governs everything
Acting costs stamina, governed by Constitution, and how much you have left is how tired you are. Tiredness is banded, and each band costs you accuracy, damage and every defence you have. A fight you could win fresh is a fight you can lose having walked a long way to reach it.
Running away is a real option
flee is a supported, respectable answer, and wimpy sets a health threshold at which your character takes that decision for you. Death is not the end of a character, but it is expensive, and the game is built on the assumption that you will sometimes decide a fight is not worth finishing.
Where the numbers come from
Damage runs through one pipeline for every blow in the game - a normal swing, a skill, a spell - so a weapon's condition, your stance, the range, your fatigue and your opponent's armour all meet in the same place. There is no second set of rules for special attacks.