Guidebook: Combat

Dice and stats should be used for combat. List your remaining health at the end of each combat post.

Keep combat posts short and to-the-point with actions / reactions. This helps keep things moving and easy for other participants to understand what is going on. Extra "fluff" on combat posts can make it difficult for multiple participants to follow the actions if it's buried in paragraphs of metaphors and flowery language. Describing injuries, what a character is feeling, a small amount of dialogue or internal thoughts/feelings are fine to include.

Actions in combat happen fast! Each action or reaction should only take a few seconds. Be mindful of this when describing what a character is doing. It's unlikely they'll have time to complete a myriad of complex actions, interact with multiple enemies, or talk a lot without being interrupted.

Aiming for a vital spot is not an instant win. Hitting a vital spot on the first round of combat isn't going to instantly win the fight. It's good to aim for vitals, but it's not a one-shot. Even if rolled successfully, the other character can pull away, push through the pain, and continue fighting. It'll take time to bleed out and characters generally are not powerful enough to "one-shot" other combatants.

Injuries and Death

OOCly, characters cannot be killed or permanently maimed without the players permission; however, IC characters don't know this. A life-threatening fight should be treated as such. A character reaching 0 health during a dangerous fight (not a spar or practice fight) should result in unbridled fear, panic, exhaustion, begging for their life, etc. Reaching 0 health during a dangerous fight means the character is incapacitated: they cannot fight back, can be kidnapped, or stolen from. Characters should consider Escaping before reaching zero health.

Injuries take time to heal. Because our game has magic and healers, we use altered realism for this. Minor injuries can be healed within a few days, while moderate injuries can up to 1 week. Severe injuries can be healed after a minimum of 2 weeks. Injuries do not affect a character's health points after the thread ends, but we encourage players to play out the effects of their injuries.

Joining Combat

If combat has already started, there are some restrictions to joining the thread. This is to prevent meta gaming (OOCly calling your friends to help just because your character is in trouble).

Private Threads - If you weren't one of the original participants the thread was intended for, and combat has started, you can only join if ALL other participants agree.

AW threads - You'll have 48 hours after combat starts to join. Your character must be in the sub-location on that same day to join.

Raid / Escape / Flee / Capture - see Capturing / Escaping

Deadlines

Players have 48 hours to respond to an attack toward their character. Players must tag the other player to let them know combat has started. If there is no response, the attacker may post again (double-post). If a character misses 2 deadlines in a row, the fight will be forfeited.

Deadlines are only enforced by players. If a player chooses not to double-post or not to declare a forfeit against their opponent, there is no penalty. Staff may intervene to announce a forfeit if they feel appropriate to do so (usually only in large group threads or a thread that is holding up a major plot ).

Judging

Players moderate their own fights. In most situations, there is no reason for Staff to intervene if all players are following their dice-roll results and stats. Players should discuss with each other if there is a misunderstanding or disagreement about what's happening in a fight. If the situation still cannot be resolved, Staff may then be contacted to review the situation.

Players can, however, choose to pre-determine the outcome of a fight or make other agreements, like agreeing not to use dice-rolls or that a fight should only last a certain number of rounds. If no pre-agreement was made, characters can fight until they run out of health, until one of them gives up, or until both mutually stop attacking.

A battle isn't won until all opponents are defeated. OOC rules do not equal IC rules. Characters can lie, cheat, backstab, play dirty, break laws or any agreements they made in character. If a character wins a fight but then 3 more opponents remain, the fight might not be over.



Remember me