Core Mechanics

Resolving Combat: A Two-Axis Model

You've now met every piece of a fight: opposition and resistance, splitting your EL, and wagering for a guaranteed effect. This page puts them together into the single picture you actually use each exchange. There are no new rules here - just a clearer way to see the ones you have.

Two Axes, Not Two Modes

Every exchange, your EL is a budget you divide along two axes:

• Offense - points aimed at specific targets. An attack is per-target.
• Defense - one pool, reusable for the whole exchange.

That's the whole decision. Opposition and resistance are not a third thing you pick from a menu; they're simply what happens when your offense meets a foe who did, or did not, aim offense back. If they swung at you too, the two attacks contest each other - that's opposition. If they didn't, your attack lands against whatever defense they set aside - that's resistance. Same dice, same turn; the label just describes the geometry.

The Two Layers

Because you allocate both buckets, a single engaged exchange can put an attacker through two hurdles at once:

1. The contest. Your offense against their offense. The higher roll wins and the difference is its effect. This is the clash of blades, the riposte - either fighter can come out ahead.
2. The defense. Whatever effect leaks through to you then meets your separately allocated defense pool, rolled fresh. This is the shield-block, the duck-and-cover.

So to actually harm a careful foe - one who both swings and guards - you must clear both: win the contest and beat the defense roll. This is why a skilled, self-preserving fighter is such a brick wall, and why "I hit them really hard" so often still doesn't land. When someone "punches back," that costs them a slice of their turn (it's an attack of their own), which is exactly why the smart fighter splits a little into a reusable defense rather than spending everything on the swing.

Defense Is a Reusable Soak; Offense Is a Threat

One defense allocation rolls fresh against every point of effect that reaches you this exchange - whether it leaked through a contest or came from an attacker you never engaged. That makes even a little defense an enormous bargain against many attackers: the swashbuckler's single guard turns aside the whole room, again and again, as a free action.

Offense, meanwhile, does double duty. The points you aim at a foe force them to hold defense back or eat your effect - taxing their budget. Your attack protects you indirectly, by making the enemy split their attention too. A creature with strong offense and no defensive skill is still well-guarded whenever it can oppose: its attack's margin keeps it safe. It is only fragile against attacks it cannot answer.

Spend Everything on Offense and You Are Naked

The corollary is sharp. Any foe you did not engage, against whom you allocated no defense, hits you with no roll to stop it at all - only Armor, Plot Armor!, or a Luck Token can save you. The all-out attacker is the easiest target on the field. "The point is not to get hit," and offense alone does nothing to keep you from getting hit by someone you aren't threatening.

The Same Engine, Simple or Deep

At its simplest, combat is the whole system in miniature: assign a difficulty, roll, compare, narrate. The deep game is the same numbers with these two axes in mind - multi-target offense, a reusable defense, wagers, and shaped dice pools. A table that wants quick, cinematic fights and a table that wants tense, realistic tactics are playing the identical engine at different resolutions. That duality is the whole point.