This page defines mechanics shared by both Individual Combat and Unit Combat. Health, damage application, positioning, and scale-specific procedures belong on those pages.
Roll the listed number of dice against the pool's target number. Every die meeting or exceeding the target is one success.
Pool notation states how many independent checks or effect dice an action creates. Use the full contested and combat sequence: offense, defense, then effect.
N hits makes N independent attack checks. Resolve a separate defense against every successful attack and a separate effect for every failed defense.Do not treat one successful die in a cluster as permission to apply every effect die. Pair each attack, defense, and effect through the sequence.
The combat mode determines how a successful effect changes health:
Weapons and other equipment retain their listed individual damage dice. Do not flatten 1d4, 1d8, 1d10, or 1d12 into d6 tiers.
An action without exact source dice may still define its own effect pool, such as 1d6, 2d6, or 3d6. Individual Combat rolls that listed pool in hit points. Unit Combat converts equipment damage from its average into Hit Dice.
All checks and thresholds represent percentages. A pool's X+ target is shorthand for the percentage represented by its successful faces.
| d6 threshold | Success chance |
|---|---|
| 2+ | 83.3% |
| 3+ | 66.7% |
| 4+ | 50% |
| 5+ | 33.3% |
| 6+ | 16.7% |
X+ always includes X. The general conversion is (N - X + 1) / N; the complete cross-die table is in Exact Threshold Table. Use percentile checks when finer precision is required.
Combat uses the universal critical bands. A favorable critical doubles effect dice on a successful action. An unfavorable critical halves effect dice if the action still succeeds, rounding down to at least one die.
Critical modifiers change only the critical band. Effortless and strained outcomes change action timing according to Roll Checks.
Individual Combat · Unit Combat · Scale Conversion · Back to Combat