What This Page Is
A fight in this world is not a contest of numbers. It is a siege problem run at the speed of a breath: two people, ten people, a line and a wall, and the question of who is still standing when the ground stops moving. The Way of the Blade is the standing rule for every fight in the series — the round, the stats, the wounds — so that a skirmish on the The Shattered Coast and a battle in the The Nameless Tundra are run by the same hand.
The machine-enforced stat blocks live in the stat system spec; the size of the thing standing across from the party is a question for Scale Anchors. This page is the fight itself.
The Round
A round is a breath, not a menu.
- Initiative is AGI, tie broken by DEX. The fighter who acts last in a round acts first in the next — the order turns, like a wheel.
- A fighter may take one move and one action in a round, or two weak actions — two short attacks, a throw and a grab, a step and a parry. You get more, or you get better. Never both.
- Moving is a full ten paces. More than that is a running round, and a running fighter cannot parry.
- A round that ends in nobody hitting is a valid round. Fear, ground, and distance are tactics.
The Stat Table (Combat Roles)
Every number on the sheet has exactly one job in a fight:
| stat | combat role |
|---|---|
| STR | weapon damage. The ogre's whole argument. |
| DEX | to hit. The hand finds the gap. |
| AGI | initiative and dodge. The first word of the round. |
| WIS | fear threshold (with LUK). What you refuse to see. |
| CHA | the line behind you holds (or breaks) by this. |
| LUK | criticals and fumbles — and half your fear threshold. |
| INT | arcane spell attack (with casting, see The Veil). |
| WIS | divine spell attack — the oath, not the school. |
| CHA | enchantment spell attack — the voice, the price, the promise. |
Resistances are damage reduction, one point for one point, on the matching damage type. A being with 300 dark resistance does not resist dark — it bargains with it.
Hit → Wound, Not Number
A hit is not a damage figure. A hit lands in a zone — head, torso, or limb — and the zone decides the wound, and the wound decides what the fighter can still do:
- Head — the wound that ends the argument.
- Torso — bleeding; the fighter loses a little every round until it is dressed, and the dressing is a scene, not a tick.
- Limb — broken or bound; the fighter loses the move or the second action for as long as the limb is gone.
Wounds persist. There is no regen in the wild — a wound that kills is a body, and the body goes in the ground or on the fire, and the story knows which. The cure for a wound is time, a healer, a spell — or a choice someone makes about who gets carried.
The Three Stances
Every fighter in a fight is in one of three stances at a time:
- Parry — for slashing and piercing. The blade meets the blade; the fighter who wins the DEX check takes the gap, and the loser takes the parry's price — a step back, always.
- Brace — for blunt. The body is the wall; the ogre's doctrine is that you do not dodge a mace, you out-stand it. A braced fighter takes half the blunt wound — and cannot move that round.
- Dodge — the free move. The fighter spends the round not being hit, and pays for it with initiative next round: the dodge was the loan.
The Shield Doctrine
Rumzuck Umbatsch does not parry. Rumzuck holds.
A fighter bracing behind a shield — or behind Rumzuck — gives the allies behind it +stance: they may parry or brace for free this round, because the person in front is the one who is hit. The shield is not armor. The shield is a refusal to let go, and it is the single most reliable mechanic in the world, because it is the ogre's whole personality, and the ogre's whole personality is load-bearing.
The Floor
Medieval is the floor, not the ceiling:
- Nobody gets back up from a wound that kills.
- A mage in a battle is the first target — magic is a target, not a force multiplier, and everyone who has ever seen a spell land knows the shape of it.
- When the fight is ten against ten it is a battle. When it is a hundred against a hundred it is a siege, and formations, ground, and supply outrank individuals — see Blood and Nerve for the siege register, and Scale Anchors for which register a fight is in.