Playing
Fighting
Grades, rolls, effort and exhaustion, defending, falling and death.
Judged by the storyteller, settled by dice
In a fight, the storyteller does one job: it reads what you wrote and grades it. How good was the plan? How much risk did you take? How hard is the target to hit? Storyteller Everything after that is code. The grades become a hit chance, a d100 decides the outcome, and a formula sets the damage. Engine
So a clever, careful attack genuinely lands more often than “I hit him”, and no amount of eloquence turns a miss into a hit.
Your chance to hit
Heroes start from an 80% base chance (a world rule; enemies start from 65%). Then:
| Grade | Effect on your chance |
|---|---|
| Tactics | poor −5 · standard 0 · good +5 · excellent +8 · brilliant +12 |
| Risk you take | safe or measured 0 · aggressive −8 · reckless −20 |
| Target | easy +5 · standard 0 · difficult −8 · extreme −15 |
| Who's stronger | up to +12 when you far outclass them, down to −10 when they far outclass you |
| Momentum | your side's run of form, below |
| Exhaustion | −5, −10 or −15 once you've spent over 40%, 60% or 80% of your reserves |
How it lands
The engine rolls d100 and measures how far past (or short of) your threshold it came. That margin sets the grade:
| Grade | Damage | Roughly |
|---|---|---|
| CRITICAL | ×1.4 | 25 or more past the mark |
| CLEAN | ×1.15 | 12 or more past |
| SOLID | ×1 | just past |
| GLANCING | ×0.5 | just short |
| DEFLECTED | ×0.2 | 10 or more short |
| WHIFF | nothing | 20 or more short |
| BACKFIRE | nothing | 30 or more short, and the biggest blow to your side's momentum |
Damage
Damage grows with your power, your tactics grade, the grade you rolled, and how much effort you poured into the blow: spending more stamina or mana hits harder, with diminishing returns. A target that fought recklessly last turn takes more (up to a third again), and a better weapon against worse armour adds more still. Engine
You can also fight to subdue (the target is left on its feet at the brink), to disable (no damage at all), or with restraint. Say so in your action.
Power and the gap
Every character and creature has a rank: a letter from D up through C, B, A, S, SS and SSS. (X and XX exist, but only for things of the world, never for a character. A builder's world may give the ranks its own names.) Rank is logarithmic: ten points of gap between two fighters means one is ten times as powerful as the other.
| Gap | What you're told | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| Far above them | Beneath you. | Your blows land hard; theirs barely matter. |
| Somewhat above | upper hand | The fight leans your way. |
| Even | even | Anything can happen. |
| Below | outmatched | You need a better plan than trading blows. |
| Far below | Suicidal. | Your best hits glance off. |
| A hundred times weaker | cannot meaningfully harm | Nothing you do can hurt it. Flee, hide or bargain. |
Effort: stamina, mana and overreaching
Strength is both how powerful you are and a pool of stamina; magic is both a power and a pool of mana. Every action is rated by how big its effect is, on one ladder from speech and walking up through “maims a person”, “kills a dozen”, “guts a stone building” and far beyond. Storyteller The engine prices it against your pool. Engine
- Acting at your full rank costs your whole pool. Each tier below it costs a tenth as much, so everyday things are close to free.
- A tired character reaches less. The emptier the pool, the smaller the biggest thing you can do right now.
- Trying more than you can afford is quietly scaled down to what you can manage, unless you say plainly that you push past your limit.
Overdraw
If you do push past your limit on purpose, the effect happens, and it costs you permanently:
| How far past | What it costs |
|---|---|
| A little | A rupture: your pool's maximum drops by about a fifth. |
| Well past | A maiming: your maximum halves, and you carry a visible wound for good. |
| Far past | It works, and it puts you on the ground, bleeding out. |
Defending
Enemies declare their attacks a turn ahead: the narration tells you what's coming, and it lands on your next turn. Say how you meet it: dodge, block, parry, get out of the way, or counter. The engine rolls your defence once per turn and compares it with each attack. Engine
- A good defence turns an attack into a WHIFF, or at least caps it at GLANCING.
- A botched one makes an attack land one grade better.
- Covering several attacks with one defence is harder for each extra attack. Some attacks can't be dodged or blocked at all.
- Which moves an enemy has comes from its own abilities, not invention on the spot. The storyteller chooses what it attempts; the dice decide whether it works.
Momentum
Your side shares a momentum score. Good grades raise it (a CRITICAL by 3), bad ones lower it, a kill adds 2, an ally falling costs 3, and creative or coordinated play earns a little. It fades by one each turn and feeds straight into everyone's hit chance. Engine
After the fight
- Experience is paid only for a victory in which every enemy is dead. Walking away or losing pays nothing, and a fight far beneath you pays nothing either. Harder foes, better tactics and more risk pay more.
- Spoils: up to three items can be taken from the fallen.
- Falling in a fight leaves you downed, not dead: see Falling, and dying.