meaningful combat without hp or damage rolls

Art by A. Shipwright

Continuing my series of blogposts about the fiction-first system I've been working on. Some more context and the core resolution mechanic can be found in this post, and things will likely make a lot more sense if you read that one first. 

This post will cover the combat system, as well as wounds, healing, and death. As mentioned in the first post, this is some properly Arnesonian style game design, only a tad more structured than freeform, so if that's a turn off, you've been warned. Also, as with the first post, I will be providing commentary/examples in italics. So if a combat system completely devoid of damage dice and HP interests you, read on!

Combat

Initiative is handled through common sense, using Traits to inform the situation as necessary. On your turn, declare your Intent.

As noted in the last post, Intents should be relatively discrete actions: “tackle someone and stab them in the eye” is two Intents: “tackle someone” and “stab them in the eye." Intents should also be specific: "I swing at him" is not a sufficient Intent, but "I swing at his nose" is.

If your Intent is to attack another character, you declare what you intend to do to the defender. This is limited by the fictional positioning of the you and defender, and should take into account where the you and defender are relative to each other, any weapons or armor you or they may have equipped, both of your Traits, and any Wounds either of you may be suffering from. 

The GM may declare that what you intend is not possible if it ignores the fictional positioning, and is responsible for clarifying the fictional position of all parties as needed. 

If you are attacking, once you have declared your Intent, the defender may choose to Take the Hit and offer a compromise. This compromise should be about half as bad as the harm they would have suffered. 

When determining a suitable compromise, refer to these guidelines if needed:

• a killing blow becomes an incapacitating wound 
• an incapacitating wound becomes a hindering wound 
• a  hindering wound becomes a glancing wound 
• a glancing wound becomes a disadvantage
• a disadvantage remains a disadvantage, but it affects the defender in a lesser way.

Compromises are also governed by fictional positioning: they must be something the defender could feasibly do to mitigate the attackers Intent. Thus, a defender in a more advantageous position may leverage that to obtain a more favorable compromise.

Alternatively, the defender may choose to Avoid Harm, and roll. If they succeed the roll, they suffer no harm from the attacker. If they fail the roll, they suffer whatever the attacker’s Intent was. 

For example, if a PC wielding an axe was close enough to a bandit to reach his neck, the PC could declare that their Intent was to chop off the bandit’s head. 

The GM could then decide that the bandit Takes the Hit, and raises his shield to block the blow to his neck, the impact of the axe shattering his wrist. (killing blow becomes an incapacitating wound).

The GM could have instead decided that the bandit would attempt to Avoid Harm, and have rolled the dice: if the bandit succeeded, he would have taken no damage, if he had failed, his head would no longer sit upon his shoulders. 

However, if the bandit’s neck had been well armored, the PC would not have been able to attempt to chop off his head: instead, they would have had to declare some other Intent: knock him to the ground perhaps. They could have still declared that they were still going to swing at the bandit’s neck, but the bandit would have been able to offer a more favorable compromise, reducing a perhaps hindering wound to the neck to a glancing one.

Unlike a lot of theater of the mind systems, positioning matters a lot in this one. Being to the side of a foe vs being in front of them will often be the difference between getting to declare that your Intent is ramming your spear into your enemies unprotected flank, and having to settle for a jab to their thigh. 

Weirdly, despite all the numbers being stripped out, this system encourages and facilitates ''realistic" combat more than more mechanics heavy ones do: whereas in D&D a knight with full plate can still be skewered with a longsword if you roll well enough and have enough bonuses, no such option exists in this game: your best option to wound a knight in a Milanese harness would be the historically supported one - grapple the knight, and then knife him in his eye slit. However, you shouldn't have to be a combat arts expert (I'm certainly not) to enjoy this game. The important thing is that all players are on the same page about what is possible in combat, and what the potential outcomes are. Once you've decided what kind of combat you're running and set expectations, all you have to do is be consistent and the rules will get out of your way. Want over the top anime fights? Cool, the rules won't stop you from destroying a guys breastplate with a flurry of punches, provided everyone has agreed that that's on the table, and nobody will get pissy when the same thing is done to them.  On the other hand, if your table has decided you're running a historically accurate retelling of the Siege of Troy and someone tries to pull that same flurry of punches, it wouldn't be possible. Treat the rules of whatever fiction you have chosen as having weight and internal consistency, and the rest will follow.

Wounds, Death and Dying

Wounds are recorded along with a character's Traits. It is important to keep a record of Wounds suffered, as they affect a character’s fictional positioning and thus limit their Intents as well as their ability to compromise. 

A character dies when they suffer (either due to inability to offer a compromise or due to a failed roll) a fatal blow.

Healing

Wounds are healed on a case by case basis with suitable time and care. Until then, they remain as Traits on your character sheet. 

Healing times can be adjusted to suit the tone and brutality of your campaign: so long as its consistent, it should run smoothly. In fact, that's kind of the deal with this whole combat system: because there's no numbers, and Intents are handled through a mutual understanding of fictional position, depending on the kind of fiction you want to emulate, you could have it so that PCs mow down a few mooks a turn. On the other hand, you can easily make it so that every blow is a desperate struggle. The system can handle either equally well, but it all hinges on consistency, and a willingness to pay attention, and make sure everyone is on the same page at all times.

By losing numbers, you say goodbye to a lot of irritating abstraction and non-diegetic elements, but you also lose the safety net of being able to space out and then come back to the table, check your hitpoints, and know what's going on. You don't have that with this system. In order to make this work, you need to commit to engaging with the fiction as a persistent and consistent reality. As the GM, this means a lot less tallying and bookkeeping, but a lot more responsibility to maintain the fictional world as a place with internally consistent rules that the players can trust.

That's the end of this post! I'm curious what people think of this one: I understand the urge to add more "gameable" elements to it, but I actually started with a lot more and gradually stripped them out. In any case, the next post will cover character creation. Strangely, characters are the most mechanically dense part of the system, so if you've been missing more traditional ttrpg elements, I wouldn't say you're in luck, but you might be luck-adjacent. Let me know if you have questions, criticisms, etc, and I'll see you in a day or so!