Combat
Combat in Nephibis is player-driven. There's no initiative order you wait in: you declare what your character does, and the GM resolves how the world reacts — one fluid exchange at a time.
How a turn flows
- You state your action: attack, move, use an ability, interact, or talk.
- The GM compares your Speed to the NPCs involved and narrates the full exchange — your action and their reaction as one scene.
Speed decides who gets to react. The faster you are, the less the world can answer back:
| Your Speed vs the NPC | What happens |
|---|---|
| Yours > theirs +10 | They cannot react at all this turn. Your action lands before they respond. |
| Yours > theirs (1–10) | Delayed reaction — they can dodge or brace, but not counter. |
| Within ±5 | Simultaneous exchange. You trade. |
| Theirs > yours (1–10) | Quick reaction — dodge, reposition, and counter. |
| Theirs > yours +10 | They act before your action resolves. They can interrupt or evade entirely. |
Against fodder — enemies far below your level — don't run turn-by-turn combat at all. You cut through them in a narrative burst: five seconds, four bodies, the alley smells like blood and fear.
What you can do
An exchange can hold any combination of moving, attacking, and using an ability that your resources allow. Your abilities fall into tiers:
| Tier | Cost | When you get it |
|---|---|---|
| Active | Stamina, Energy, or Mana (small) | At creation, from your species and type |
| Signature Move | Moderate resource | The GM grants it at a key narrative moment — a personal revelation, a training milestone, an emotional breakthrough. These are your moves: flashy, memorable, uniquely yours. |
| Finisher | 50–80% of your max pool | Desperation, master training, or a power awakening. Fight-ending, and risky — it can leave you exposed. |
| Ultimate | 80–100% of your pool, once per encounter/day | A major story climax. The most impressive thing in the fight. Ultimates can't be taught to anyone but your own offspring. |
Signature moves, finishers, and ultimates define who you are in a fight. Don't hoard them — they're the moments people remember.
Power struggles
When two continuous beams collide mid-air — energy beams, elemental streams, holy and dark flows — a Power Struggle begins. Both sides can invest more resource each round to push the collision point toward their opponent. The struggle ends when someone runs out of resource, disengages, or gets interrupted. If a beam reaches its target, it hits with full accumulated force — an explosion that can end the fight. The risk/reward is the whole point: invest hard to overpower them, but if you run dry first, their beam is coming at you at full power.
Called shots & vitals
You can aim. Called shots cost accuracy — arms and legs −10%, head and hands −20%, specific vitals −30% — but the payoff is real:
| Location | Multiplier | Effect |
|---|---|---|
| Head (skull) | 2.0× | Stun 1 turn |
| Brain | 3.0× | Instant kill for most species |
| Heart | 3.0× | Heavy bleeding, possible instant kill |
| Spine | 2.5× | Paralysis |
| Throat | 2.5× | Suffocation, heavy bleeding |
Vital hits apply their multiplier even without a crit; crits stack on top. Limbs have their own HP — a limb at 0 is lost (permanently, until regenerated or replaced), and each limb lost costs you speed, accuracy, or weapon use. A called shot to a limb plus a crit — or a single hit dealing half your max HP to that limb — can take it off.
Resources under fire
Your pool is your life in a long fight. Stamina users regenerate 5% per turn; at 25–50% pool, ability costs climb 25%; below 10%, abilities become unstable — and at 0, you're burned out for an hour. Energy and Mana follow the same shape. Passive healing varies by race: a human heals 1 HP per 10 minutes out of combat; a demon heals 2 + CON while fighting; a regeneration mutant heals CON per turn and can rise from near-total destruction. Fire, acid, and anti-regen weapons suppress healing — a regenerator's worst nightmare is a burn they can't put out.
Death
At 0 HP you're down, not necessarily dead. An ally can stabilize you within one turn. True death comes from your species' kill condition — brain or heart destruction for humans, core destruction for androids and AI, banishment for demons — or from overwhelming trauma.
Revival is possible but expensive: nano revival needs your head intact; regeneration needs a living cell; magic revival costs mana and leaves you with memory loss; cloning starts you over at level 1. The window matters — revival is easiest in the first minute and nearly impossible after a day. Omega-tier beings can regenerate from a single cell. Some fates can't be walked back; that's what makes the high-stakes fights worth winning.