Fighting
Something is standing on the tile and it is not going to let you past. Fights in Tesserae are short, arithmetic, and genuinely dangerous — you have 12 HP and no healer.
The numbers
| Roll | Formula | Succeeds on |
|---|---|---|
| Your attack | 1d20 + _might | ≥ the creature's defense |
| Your damage | _damage | flat, no roll |
| Its attack | 1d20 + attack | ≥ your _defense |
| Its damage | damage | flat, no roll |
Natural 20 doubles damage. Natural 1 misses.
The order
Higher Agility acts first, and you win ties. The order is announced once and holds for the whole fight.
On your turn you attack, use an item, or leave. On its turn every creature present acts — if there are three of something, that is three attacks, and their HP is tracked separately rather than as one pooled lump. @Missing file at a count of three is not one enemy with triple HP; it is three animals circling you, and the one behind you commits first.
Leaving, and why it is the whole strategy
You can walk out of a fight. Cross an edge and you are gone. Nothing follows you across an edge.
And here is the part that matters: the damage you did stays done. A creature you left on half health is still on half health when you come back tomorrow, or next week. Nothing in the Kettle heals.
So the hardest things on this board are not meant to be killed in one visit. They are meant to be worn down — go in, take a third off it, walk out, cook and sleep, come back. Retreat is not failure here; it is the intended way through, and a player who fights everything to the death on first contact will die to something they could have beaten in three trips.
What you get
Loot goes onto your sheet the moment the GM describes it. If it was described but never written down, say so.
Then you harvest the body, and everything in the Kettle gives @Missing file. That is not optional and there is no roll — a dead animal is material. It is capped by what you can carry, though, and a large animal gives far more than a person can lift. Take what you can and leave the rest; it does not keep.
Raw meat does nothing. It heals no HP and cannot be used in the field. It becomes hit points only when cooked at a camp with cook stones — four HP a joint. This is the argument for building a hearth before going anywhere interesting: without one, hunting is just weight.
What lives here
| Creature | Ground | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| @Missing file | Highland | Holds its rock. Fair fight, good meat. |
| @Missing file | Woodland | Never alone. Threes and fours. |
| @Missing file | Marsh | Best eating in the region. |
| @Missing file | Highland | Hard to hit, waits by unopened cairns. |
| @Missing file | Marsh | Opens from under the reed mats. |
| @Missing file | Far marsh | The hardest fight here. |
The one at the far end
@Missing file stands in the eastern marsh — the tile the water cuts off from everything else, reachable only the long way round the south.
24 HP, defense 13, and it hits for 5. Against 12 HP that is not a fight you win on the first visit, and it is not supposed to be. It gives eight to ten joints of meat, which is most of a season.