03 Combat

Combat takes place in Rounds, with each round representing 10 seconds of in-game time.
Each round is divided into the following phases:

1. Determine acting side:
Each side rolls 1d6. The side with the highest rolled number chooses to Act or React.
Ties are re-rolled.

2. Acting Phase:
The Acting Side moves, charges into melee, fires ranged attacks and casts spells.

3. Reacting Phase:
The Reacting Side moves, charges into melee, fires ranged attacks and casts spells.

4. Melee:
Melee combat is conducted. Attacks happen simultaneously, except when one combatant gains the First Strike or their opponent has Last Strike.

Your character can move up to their Combat Movement distance per turn. This is a third of your characters Exploration Movement distance. The table below contains common movement distances for your convenience.

A character that is engaged in melee at the beginning of the round can move away from their enemy, but this triggers an Opportunity Attack from their opponents: The opponent can immediately do one melee attack.

Instead of moving normally, your character can Run up to twice their Combat Movement distance in a straight line. A running character may not fire ranged weapons, cast spells or move within melee range of an enemy. They may fight in melee if they were charged by an enemy, but they always attack last.

Instead of moving normally or running, you can choose to Charge an enemy within your movement distance.
If you do this, you must move within your melee range of that enemy (usually 5 feet).
You gain First Strike for this round, except when your enemy has a weapon that specifically negates this.

To attack you roll a test with your weapons Attack Attribute. This is usually Strength or Agility, but more exotic weapons might use other attributes instead.
This attack roll uses the targets Evasion as its difficulty value.

Evasion is based on Agility:

Example: Darna the dwarf attacks an Orc with her mace. The maces Attack Attribute is Strength. Her Strength score is 10. The Orc has an Evasion value of 1, so she has to roll 9 or lower (10-1) to hit. She rolls 2d6 and gets a 7. A hit!

Spellcasting is described in more detail in Arcane Magic. Characters that cast a spell cannot attack with a ranged weapon, cannot charge and always get Last Strike in melee.
Casting a spell while in melee range of an enemy triggers an Opportunity Attack.

Melee attacks usually happen simultaneously, at the end of the combat round. This means that both sides roll attacks and do damage, if they hit, even if one of the combatants is incapacitated by the damage taken.

Exceptions to this are First Strike and Last Strike. If one of the combatants has First Strike, they do damage before their opponent can attack - if the opponent is killed by the attack, they cannot fight back.
If both have First Strike, they attack simultaneously as normal.

Conversely, if one opponent has Last Strike, they attack after their opponent. They don't get a chance to fight back, if they are taken out.
If both have Last Strike, they attack simultaneously as normal.

Armour grants Protection against damage. This is a number value, usually between 1 and 3. Any damage done to the wearer gets reduced by this value.

One handed weapons do 1d6 damage. When attacking with two weapons, you roll 1d6 twice and take the higher result. Two handed weapons do 1d6 + 1 damage.

Example: Darna the dwarf hits an Orc wearing leather armor with her mace. The armor has a Protection value of 1, her mace does 1d6 damage. She rolls 1d6 and gets a 3. Because of the Protection the damage is reduced by 1 and the Orc takes 2 damage.

Additionally, each armor belongs to a Category like Leather, Metal or Dragon Scales. Weapons can have Armor Piercing values that list a category and a number, like "Metal; 2". This means that the weapon will bypass Protection up to the listed number from Armor of the listed type. In our example, the weapon would bypass up to 2 points of Protection from Metal armor.

Example: Darna the dwarf hits an Orc wearing thick metal armor with her mace. The armor has an protection value of 3. Her mace has an armor piercing value "Metal; 2". She rolls 1d6 and gets a 4. Because of her armor piercing, the protection of the Orcs armor is reduced to 1, so she does 4-1=3 damage to the Orc.

Any damage dealt to player characters first reduce their Stamina. Once their Stamina reaches 0 any damage taken (including leftover damage from the hit that reduced Stamina to 0) is dealt to their Health instead. Once a characters Health reaches 0, they die.

Most non player characters don't have Stamina. They take damage directly to their Health.

When doing ranged or melee attacks, it is possible to attack a specific part of the target.
Doing this increases the difficulty of the attack, but results in additional effects. For example, attacking a persons hands may cause them to drop what they are carrying.

The Difficulty increase is determined by the referee. As a guideline, attacking the hands of a humanoid should increase the Difficulty by 1, while attacking their eyes could increase it by 3.

In combat, it is often advantageous to do other things than hitting someone with your sword. There are endless possibilities: Throwing barrels down staircases, flipping over tables, setting a curtain on fire, and many more.

Characters can forgo attacking in melee, ranged attacks and casting a spell to perform an improvised action: They describe what they want to do, and preferably the desired outcome. The referee then determines if the action requires an ability check and the difficulty and bonuses that may apply.

In some situations, one side of a combat may be surprised by the other. A surprised side does not get to act in the first Round of combat.
If there is doubt, the referee rolls 1d6 per side. On a 1 or 2, the side is surprised.

Most people are not trained for mounted combat and suffer a difficulty of 1 when attacking. On the other hand, a charging horse alone can do significant damage to anyone unfortunate enough to be run over by it: Charging while mounted increases damage done by 1.

Optional Rule

The weapon table in the Equipment section lists Lengths for different weapons. If the combat is happening in a tight, confined space - for example a low-ceiling corridor of a dungeon - longer weapons become harder to wield.
In such spaces, attacks with Middle-length weapons get a Difficulty of 1, while attacks with Long weapons get a Difficulty of 2.