Combat
title: Combat: Attacks, Armor & Wound Depth
Combat here has no hit points. A blow is not subtracted from a number — it goes somewhere and does something. One roll answers two questions at once: did you strike, and what did you strike through.
The attack roll
Roll d20 plus Strength (melee) or plus Dexterity (ranged) and compare it to the target's Defense.
- A character's Defense is 10 + Dexterity modifier + armor rating — the sheet computes it. A trail guide in leather jacks sits at 14.
- A hostile's Defense is written on its entry.
Say you throw a punch at a toll collector and roll a 14 with a +2 Dexterity modifier: 16 against Defense 12. You did not merely hit — you beat them by 4, and the margin decides what happened.
Wound depth — what tissue did the blow reach?
The margin (roll result minus Defense) decides how far through the body's layers the attack drove:
| Margin | Tissue reached | What you suffer |
|---|---|---|
| 1–3 | Skin | A bruise or a scrape. Hurts, bleeds a little, passes. |
| 4–7 | Flesh | A true wound — laceration, puncture, torn muscle. Bleeding and pain. |
| 8–11 | Bone | Fractured ribs, a snapped forearm, knocked-out teeth. The part stops working until set. |
| 12+ | Organ | The strike reaches vitals — concussion, punctured lung, internal bleeding. Surgery territory. |
Two things modify the margin before you read the table:
- The weapon's depth bonus (on the weapon's entry) is added to the margin for depth purposes. A war hammer hits deeper than a cudgel even when both connect cleanly.
- Armor rating is already baked into Defense, so it soaks the margin before depth is ever read. This is what armor is for: not avoiding every blow, but keeping the ones that land shallow.
Damage type decides the injury
The weapon's damage type names the family of wounds it opens:
- Blunt — bruises, fractures, concussions, ruptured organs from crushing force.
- Cutting — lacerations, severed tendons, amputations.
- Piercing — punctures, deep internal bleeding, wounds that look small and kill anyway.
Called shots
Declare a location — the throat, the sword arm, the eyes — and take −5 to the roll. If you still hit, you strike what the anatomy actually puts there, and the effects follow the organ: a called shot to the neck that reaches tissue is a different wound than a called shot to the ribs.
Criticals and fumbles
- Natural 20 — the wound bumps one tier deeper, and the GM picks the worst result at that depth.
- Natural 1 — a mishap: the sword rings off stone, a muscle pulls (−1 on your next roll), or you leave your guard open.
Striking enemies
Hostiles use the same rules you do. Their entry carries a Defense, an anatomy note telling you which organs are reachable and what protects them, and a threat level for the GM. The anatomy note is your map: the bog troll's hide makes shallow cuts worthless, so cutting at it is wasted effort — fire, or a deep puncture, is the honest answer.
A wound you deal or receive is recorded with the injury rules in the next chapter — depth and damage type together pick the injury, and the injury does the rest.