Fighting

A monster in the room means a fight. There is no negotiating with anything down here and nothing has ever been talked out of eating a delver.

The roll

You roll your own dice. Always. The Warden rolls for the monsters and never for you, and it will not narrate the outcome of a roll you have not reported yet.

	Roll	Hits on
You attack	1d20 + MIGHT	the monster's defense or higher
It attacks	1d20 + its attack	your defense or higher

Damage is flat on both sides. Yours is MIGHT + weapon; its damage is printed on the monster.

A natural 20 deals double damage. A natural 1 always misses, whatever the modifiers say.

The order

Highest AGILITY acts first and you win ties. Then it alternates until one side is down.

If a room holds three of something, they are three separate things with three separate pools of hit points. They are not one blob with a shared total. Kill one and there are two.

Numbers, not adjectives

A fight is reported plainly, because you are making decisions with it:

You hit. 6 damage. Ghoul at 2.
Ghoul hits. 3 damage. HP 9/12.

You should always know exactly how much you have left. A game that hides your hit points to build tension is hiding the only information you need.

Running

You can leave a fight through any door, any time, at no cost. The monster stays where it is, keeps the damage you did, and does not follow. The room stays uncleared.

This is a real option and you should take it more often than feels dignified. @Missing file in particular will let you go — it does not pursue, it does not initiate, it only objects to being walked past.

What you are likely to meet

Eight things have been catalogued below the seal. Four of them will kill a careless delver. Two of them will kill a careful one.

The small ones

@Missing file is barely a monster. Four hit points, defense 9, and it deals 2. It is dangerous only in numbers and only if you stand in it.

@Missing file kneels until you are inside the room, then rises. Six hit points, defense 10, deals 2. It fights slowly, it does not follow you out, and if you leave it alone for a moment it goes back to trimming a wick.

@Missing file lies under the water until you are past it. Eight hit points, hits for 3, and does not stop.

@Missing file is defense 12 and hard to catch clean, and it only deals 2. Ten hit points of loose parts that keep closing. A nuisance at full health and a real problem at four.

The ones that take a fight

@Missing file is empty armour with fourteen hit points and a defense of 13. It hits for 4. Standard kit needs three connected swings to put it down and it will land two or three in return. Fight it at full health or not at all.

@Missing file is the opposite trade: defense 11, so you hit it almost every swing, but sixteen hit points to chew through and 5 damage coming back. Three of its hits kill you and it will get four rounds.

The things at the end

@Missing file. Twenty-four hit points, defense 14, six damage a hit. Four swings to kill at standard damage; it kills a full-health delver in two. Do not meet it without drinking first.

@Missing file is the other one, and it fights on terms that sound generous. Twenty hit points, defense 14, five damage. It never closes, never pursues, and never leaves the room — so nothing happens to you at all until you step in to swing, and then it happens four times.

Dying

Zero is dead. There is no dying state, no death save, no bleeding out while a friend reaches you — there is no friend. The run ends and the floor is discarded.

Nothing will be fudged to prevent this. If the arithmetic says you are dead, you were dead several decisions ago.