What the Blade Was Worth
Defending is now rolled like an attack — and every blow the world strikes is finally written where you can read it.
You can see the fight now
Combat was being narrated somewhere you couldn't read it. Every blow the world struck — the prose, the damage, who was still standing — was written and then discarded before it ever reached you. All you saw was your health moving and no account of why.
Every exchange now lands in the scroll as an Attack Results card: the world's own telling of each strike, what it cost, and how much fight the target has left in them.
Defending is a real action
Declaring a dodge used to be worth a small, fixed nudge — the same whether you had spent a turn setting the moment up or simply written the word. It could never fully stop anything.
A defense is now rolled, the way an attack is. What it's worth depends on three things:
- What you did — dodge, block, parry, displace, or counter
- How wide it reaches — one blade, an arc, everything committed to where you were, or a barrier against all of it
- How hard it was — from trivial, when a blow was committed to an afterimage and you are already somewhere else, to desperate, when you're cornered and barely aware it's coming
Footing, darkness, cover, having a man's back turned to you — all of it counts toward that last one. Earn the moment and a strike can be voided outright. Botch it and you'll have moved into the blade.
Defending against everything at once is possible, and expensive: the wider you spread, the thinner it holds. Expect to shed the clumsy blows and still feel the dangerous one.
Some attacks cannot be answered at all. Those now say so, before they land.
The telegraph is a promise
An incoming attack shows what it's worth while it's still winding up — up to some number. That number is now binding. A blow can no longer warn you about one wound and then quietly deal a third more.
Still to come
Crowds are the next problem. A press of six bandits currently telegraphs six separate attacks at you, and no defense — however well earned — is meant to hold against that. Grouping the rabble into a single threat, so a mob reads as a mob, is the next thing being built.