Combat

The Basic Rhythm

Combat Rounds & Actions

Fights are resolved in combat rounds, each representing roughly a dozen seconds of game time — enough for everyone involved to start or finish at least one action. The gamemaster begins counting rounds the moment a physical confrontation looks likely, and stops once it's over. Within a round, the gamemaster calls out passing DEX-ranks, attackers roll to hit, and defenders choose to parry, dodge, or trust to armor while doing something else entirely.

An adventurer actively fighting hand-to-hand is "engaged"; anyone else in the encounter is "unengaged." A round breaks down into a short menu of possible actions:

1. Move, if disengaged. An adventurer can move to close with someone, but moving more than half their normal movement in a round means waiting until the next round to attack (dodging or parrying is still fine). Moving 2 MOV or less costs five DEX-ranks of delay; moving 3–4 MOV costs ten.
2. Perform a non-combat action, if not engaged. Attempt a skill, begin casting, or simply do nothing.
3. Move to engage. Moving half or less of normal movement still leaves time to attack and defend that round.
4. Disengage from combat. Declared at the start of the round: the disengaging adventurer makes no attack, but must successfully dodge every attack aimed at them. Succeeding at all of those dodges lets them move up to full movement by round's end, including running away; failing even one means they're still engaged.
5. Attack. Engaged adventurers fighting hand-to-hand can't also fire or throw missile weapons that round.

Other Actions

6. Draw, pick up, or sheathe a weapon. Each costs five DEX-ranks and can be done while moving or fighting.
7. Parry or dodge. A parry blocks a blow, usually with a weapon or shield, starting each round at the same percentage as the relevant weapon skill. A dodge is a full-body evasion, using the independent Dodge skill, and works to evade a blow, disengage, or close in against a longer weapon. Both are free actions that cost no DEX-ranks and can be attempted once per round at no penalty — but every additional dodge or parry after the first, for that character in that round, drops 30 percentiles from whichever one is used next (the two compete for the same shrinking pool, so a highly skilled parry and a highly skilled dodge can't both stay at full strength through a busy round).
8. Riposte. Only possible when fighting with two weapons, or a weapon and shield. No more than once per round per combatant, a critical parry lets the defender make a free counterattack with whichever weapon didn't parry — this doesn't cost DEX-rank position, occurring immediately in the same rank as the parry, and can itself be parried or dodged normally.

Combat Summary

Attack	Parry	Result
Hits	Intercepts	Attacker's blow is deflected.
Hits	Misses	Defender is hit and may lose hit points.
Misses	—	Defender maintains guard; no roll needed.
Fumbles	—	As attacker's miss, plus a roll on the fumble table.

Reading the Dice

Levels of Success & the Attack/Parry Matrix

Every combat roll falls into one of five outcomes, from best to worst:

• Impale — a roll of exactly 01, possible only with cutting, thrusting, or certain missile weapons capable of impaling. Roll damage twice and add both results, ignore the defender's armor entirely (the blow slips between its segments), and add the usual damage bonus. Only magic or a critical parry can stop an impale; a critical parry still lessens the damage.
• Critical — a roll of 20% or less of the adventurer's skill (round fractions up). In combat, a critical does double damage (plus normal damage bonus) against armor that defends at its normal rate. For a non-combat skill, a critical simply means something unusually good happens.
• Success — a roll at or under the adventurer's skill but above the critical threshold. Achieves exactly what was intended, no more, no less.
• Failure — a roll higher than the adventurer's skill, but not a fumble. Nothing happens; the next attempt may succeed.
• Fumble — a 99 or 00 for a skill of 100% or less, or 00 only for a skill of 101% or higher. Something has gone seriously wrong — a dropped weapon, a badly timed slip — and a roll on the fumble table usually follows.

*A parrying weapon or shield may still lose hit points if a single blow's damage exceeds its remaining hit points.

To resolve an attack or parry, roll D100 against the relevant skill and read the result against this matrix. No hard cap exists on how many dodges or parries can theoretically happen in a round; percentages simply reset to their normal maximum at the start of the next round.

Sequencing a Round

Order of Action

Every combat round runs through four phases, always in the same order: Statements, Magic, Actions, Resolution.

1. Statements. Everyone declares their general intentions for the round. No statement is required just to parry, dodge, or ready a weapon, and declared actions can always be canceled or redirected if circumstances change — within reason; a character can't suddenly prepare for an ambush they failed to notice.
2. Magic. Spells cast the previous round take effect first; new spells and summonings can only be started in this phase. Casters act in order of Intelligence, highest first, and may delay to a later INT-rank if they choose (ties broken by a D100 roll). Magic points are marked off as they're spent.
3. Actions. Everyone not already engaged, or otherwise committed, may move up to their maximum. Attacks, parries, and dodges are ordered by DEX-rank, highest first; within the same rank, missile-weapon users go first, then long weapons, then medium and short hand-to-hand weapons (ties broken by D100). Multiple actions in one round must be spaced at least five DEX-ranks apart.
4. Resolution. Everyone updates their sheets — hit points, magic points, spells in memory — before the next round begins.

Blade to Blade

Hand-to-Hand Procedures

Hand-to-hand fighting is treated separately from missile combat because the skills and instincts involved are genuinely different — it demands raw strength, honed reflexes, and a certain fearlessness that ranged combat doesn't ask for in quite the same way.

To attack, the attacker's player rolls D100 against the current weapon skill. A successful attack that isn't parried or dodged calls for a damage roll (plus any damage bonus); subtract that from the target's current hit points, first passing through any worn armor, which absorbs its own rolled amount of protection. If the armor's roll meets or beats the damage rolled, the target isn't wounded at all by that blow.

A parry occurs in the same DEX-rank as the attack it's responding to. An adventurer skilled enough (101% or higher) with an attack can choose to make either one full-strength attack per round, or split their percentage across multiple attacks in the same round, so long as each individual attack keeps at least 50 percentiles. Facing multiple opponents, a sufficiently skilled adventurer chooses the order in which to engage them.

Weapons and shields used to parry can themselves take damage. Ordinarily a parry costs a weapon nothing, but if a single blow's rolled damage exceeds the weapon's remaining hit points by at least one point, the weapon breaks; any damage beyond that passes through to the target. Shields work the same way, but only break once their hit points reach zero entirely, rather than the first time they're exceeded.

When It All Goes Wrong

Fumble Tables

A hand-to-hand fumble is rolled on D100 and covers everything from a simple stumble to a genuinely disastrous mishap. A few representative results across the range: low rolls tend toward slipping or tripping (on rocks, a corpse, spilled blood) and losing the next parry or attack; the low-middle range covers dropped, knocked-away, or broken weapons and shields, and minor injuries like a wrenched shoulder or a face full of blood; the middle-to-upper range covers real wounds — a cut nose, a smashed knee, a half-blinding cut across the eye — some of which impose lasting penalties until treated with Physik, Heal, or Suture; and the extreme high end (98–99 and 00) forces the player to roll again one or more additional times, compounding the bad luck. A "standard fumble" — simply dropping the weapon at one's own feet, five DEX-ranks to retrieve — can substitute for any result the gamemaster judges doesn't fit the situation, and demon-equipped combatants use a separate set of entries for their demon armor, shield, or weapon rather than the ordinary results.

A "standard fumble" — the weapon simply drops at the fumbler's feet, five DEX-ranks to retrieve — can stand in for any result the gamemaster judges doesn't fit, and demon-equipped combatants use separate demon-armor, demon-shield, and demon-weapon entries in place of the ordinary ones (replacing results 25–28, 56–58, 59–62, 63–65, 90–92, 93–95, and entry 5 of the missile fumble table below).

Missile weapon fumbles are simpler, since ranged mishaps are more routine and generally only affect the shooter.

Protection

Armor & Shields

Armor is essentially reinforced clothing — leather, bronze, and steel in varying combination — stiff enough to blunt an attack while leaving both hands free; once strapped on, it needs no ongoing attention or skill roll to wear. No armor is perfect: even the best plate has gaps where pieces must meet or joints must move, since fully rigid armor would be unable to move at all. Better armor is lighter and stronger, but steel is difficult and expensive to work well, and wearing armor at all is treated as an open declaration of hostility in more civilized places. Some armor types are regional specialties — sea leather only from the Isle of the Purple Towns, barbarian leather and wood only from the Sighing Desert's tribes, and Melnibonéan or Pan Tangian plate essentially unobtainable outside their home nations.

In play, armor needs no roll of its own to wear; when a successful attack lands, roll the armor's protection value and subtract it from the damage rolled — the wearer only loses the difference, if any. Mixing components from different armor types is possible by adjusting the roll up or down a point or two depending on the quality of the substitution.

Shields work similarly but block a reliable, fixed amount rather than a randomized one — every shield stops at least 15 hit points of damage outright, roughly matching the protection of the finest plate. Shields don't ordinarily lose hit points when struck, nor are they easily knocked from a defender's grip, but a blow that exceeds a shield's remaining rating whittles that rating down permanently, and the shield breaks entirely once it reaches zero. All shields function alike, so improving skill with one improves skill with all of them; most also carry their own attack, the knock-back, using the shield's metal rim plus the wielder's damage bonus.

Reading the Weapon Tables

Weapon Classes

Weapons that work similarly enough — same general grip, technique, and purpose — are grouped into shared classes; training with any one weapon in a class raises skill with the whole class. Broadly, weapons also sort into a few functional families: cutting weapons (axes, most swords) hack and chop with an edge; thrusting weapons (long spears and the like) jab or lunge, up to several yards in length; cut-and-thrust weapons (shortswords, long daggers) are flexible medium-length blades good for lunging or slashing; missile weapons are hurled or shot and leave the attacker's grasp; close-quarter weapons (Brawl, Wrestle, and similar grapples) work at point-blank range; and bashing weapons (maces, clubs, quarterstaffs) don't impale but hit hard through leverage and weighted ends. The 25 individual weapon classes below break this down further.

Reference

Weapon & Armor Tables

The complete Weapon and Armor Tables follow — base chance or starting skill, damage, hit points, and whether each weapon can impale or parry. "db" means the wielder's damage bonus.

*Physically long, but usable at all three combat ranges. †Cavalry Lance damage bonus is the horse's if charging, the rider's if standing still.

Impromptu weapons can parry but aren't designed to; if used that way, they accumulate parry damage rather than shrugging it off like a true hand-to-hand weapon.

Damage bonus for missile weapons is added at half value, rounded up. See "Volley Fire" for a faster rate of attack with bows and slings.

"Chance affected" is an optional rule: if a wearer attempts a non-fighting skill in armor, that percentile chance means the armor effectively halves the skill (round fractions up).

Every shield blocks at least 15 hit points of damage outright before its rating erodes. All shields share one skill: raising skill with one raises it with all of them.

Putting It Together

Worked Example: Four Rounds

The book illustrates these rules with a short duel between two adventurers. The retelling below follows the same general shape and mechanics — DEX-rank order, parries, a fumble, a dodge to disengage, a riposte-worthy critical — without reproducing the original's exact wording.

This retelling shows how DEX-rank order, parries, dodges, fumbles, and armor rolls interact turn by turn, following the shape of the original example without quoting it.