There are some RPGs out there which go to great lengths to explain how combat isn't the only way to win a fight, how storytelling and narration are far superior to shooting people, and then go on to fill a chapter with combat rules.

We, on the other hand, are taking the opposite approach. We're sticking the combat rules first and then hammering the rest of the bits of the game into the shape they make because World of Balance is, primarily, a game about kicking ass and taking names with unfeasibly large swords, great big fireballs and ostentatious FMV dragons, and nobody is going to make us pretend otherwise.

However.

It's also a game about cinematic battles, rather than sensible ones. This means that the rules for fighting aren't intended to accurately simulate what fighting using a gun-sword, magic spatula, or razor-sharp frisbee would be like. (If that were the case, the guy with the gun would always win.) Nor are they intended to directly replicate the way combat systems in console RPGs work. (After all, console RPGs started off trying to emulate pen-and-paper ones in the first place. We'd have an emulation of an emulation.) Inside they try to capture the feel of console RPGs -- especially that cool bit in the cut-scene where your character leaps off a tower, swings on some bunting and draws his sword in mid-air to skewer the guy he's fighting.

Combat actions

So how does this work? During each combat round, every participant gets a turn (in the order that they joined the combat, or clockwise if you prefer.) During their turn the participant gets a Combat Action:

1. The participant states which skill she is using and describes her attack. For each detail she adds, she picks up a die, up to a maximum of the value of the skill she is using.
2. The defender then describes his reaction to it: either a counterattack, or his defence, or just what he does next. Again, he states which skill he is using, and for each detail he adds he picks up a die, up to a maximum of the value of the skill he is using.
3. Both parties roll their dice. The one who rolls the most sixes wins. If both roll the same number of sixes, then the one with the most fives wins. If they draw on that, then the one who rolled the most fours wins, and so on.
4. The side who rolled the lowest loses a point from the defence pool associated with the skill they were using. If the defence pool has dropped to zero (or if both sides rolled exactly the same) nothing happens.

Example: Peter, a ninja and servant of the forces of light, is in the middle of a climactic battle with Lord Doom. Peter uses his 5 point Body-based skill Fight Like A Mosquito to attack, saying "I leap from the balcony [pick up a die] grabbing onto the chandelier [pick up a die] and land behind Lord Doom [pick up a die] catching him off-guard [pick up a die]".

Peter added four details, so he gets to roll four dice. If his skill in Kung Fu had only been three, he'd only roll three dice for the attack he narrated, no matter how many more details he added.

Lord Doom's player responds, using his Hack People To Small Pieces skill of 7 to respond with "I spin round with unearthly speed [pick up a die], growl "You really think you can fool me like that, insect?" [pick up a die] and bring my greatsword flashing down towards you [pick up a die]."

Note that in that example, even though Lord Doom had a higher skill, because he only used three details he only gets to roll three dice. Even if his Hack People To Small Pieces skill had been 99, if all he says are things like "I hit you with my sword" he'll have his metallic, armoured ass trounced all round the kingdom on a regular basis.

Finishing Moves

Beating down defence pools is all well and good, but it doesn't actually finish the fight. To win a fight, you use a special kind of attack called a Finishing Move. The rules for Finishing Moves are:

In place of a normal attack, a participant can describe a Finishing Move in which he defeats another participant. In this case, the defender doesn't narrate a defence: she gets to roll with dice equal to twice the defence pool corresponding to the skill the attacker used. Should the defender lose this roll, then she is knocked out of the fight and all the Focuses she staked are destroyed. Should the defender succeed then the attacker loses points from his defence pool equal to the number of points in the defender's defence pool.

Example:

The stakes in this fight are high. Peter kittied in by staking his Level 4 Focus, the life of Princess Princess (an NPC love interest; Peter's action justifying this was that Lord Doom turned out to have Princess Princess shackled to a sacrifical altar. Lord Doom responded by staking his Level 5 Focus, the will to take over the Kingdom and Peter was forced to stake his life or abandon the fight.

Things are going badly for Peter and Doom decides to finish things. He can't challenge Peter's life while the life of Princess Princess is in the pot. He attempts a Finishing Move on that instead, using his skill Hack People To Small Pieces and narrating:

"With a mighty swing [pick up a dice] I fight past your guard [pick up a dice] racing to the altar and raising my sword [pick up a dice] before driving it into Princess Princess [pick up a dice]".

Peter's Might defence pool is down to 2 and so he gets to roll 4 dice against Lord Doom's 4. Peter wins the roll, and Lord Doom loses two points from his Might defence pool.

With his next few rolls, Peter gets lucky, and tries to make a Finishing Move against Lord Doom's will to take over the Kingdom using his White Magic skill of 6. Peter's player says:

"I'm making a finishing move: The charm around my neck bursts into blinding white flames [pick up a dice] the light making me appear taller than my small frame would allow [pick up a dice] and speaking with the Voice of Gaea Herself [pick up a dice] I intone: Leave This Place, Imhohen Doom, And Never Return [pick up a dice]. You crumble to dust [pick up a dice] leaving behind only a scream of "This isn't over!".[pick up a dice]" Peter has six dice.

Doom defends against this with his Magic defence pool of 3, rolling six dice, but Peter wins. Doom loses the Will To Take Over The Kingdom and is out of the fight.

It's worth noting in that example that the Finishing Move Peter made was only valid because his player knew OOC that Doom was the kind of guy who can come back from being crumbled to dust like that (and so the Finishing Move was targeting staked focus, the Will To Take Over The Kingdom, not his Life). Even so he clarified it. This is good practice if people might get the wrong idea about what you're trying to do.

Narrating combat

The way combat is narrated is different to many games. A player gets to narrate his combat actions in full, and they happen whether or not the dice roll succeeds. (If you like, what you're rolling to see is whether or not the thing you do has any effect in moving the fight forwards, not whether or not you succeed in doing it.) There are two exceptions to this:

• You flat-out can't do anything that will permanently damage or maim another character (unless they've staked Their Life and you're performing a Finishing Move on it). Combat is cinematic and excessive and explosive, not gritty and bloody. Think of films like Pirates Of The Carribean or The Matrix or even Fellowship of the Ring where people swashbuckle back and forth for a full scene and only actually get hurt right at the end -- if then. It's not believable for people to be able to do that kind of excessive action when their arm has just been severed. This doesn't mean you can't ever do anything violent. Most of the damage done to people in that kind of film is from being kicked, punched, hit in the face with some scenery, set on fire, or pushed from a great height onto a big pile of boxes, and all those things are fair game because someone can just get back up from them (well, not in real life they can't, but this isn't real life).
• If you do anything that will destroy one of the staked Focuses, or get it permanently into your possession, that action is a Finishing Move. Finishing Moves are the exception to the "everything I narrate happens" rule: when somebody describes them (and confirms that yes, they really do want to make a Finishing Move) the action stops and both sides make the roll; if the roll fails then the narrated action gets retconned into a crushing defeat.

It's quite likely that some readers are rubbing their hands together and thinking about narrating actions like "I trip and stumble over a magic gem which turns me into a cool god and gives me control over all the world and makes me really cool, did I mention how cool I am?". And while it's possible that we could come up with game mechanics which stop players doing that kind of thing, we figure it's easier just to have a couple of guidelines which can be bent but not broken.

1. Avoid narrating other characters' actions too much. If you say "Your warrior shrieks in terror as I come charging towards him" the other player might think that their character would never be afraid of somebody as puny as you. Actions which make other characters look good are more fun and don't cost you anything game-mechanical. "Your warrior easily parries my first strike, but my second catches him off-guard and knocks him on his back" is better.
2. Don't contradict stuff that's already happened. When somebody narrates a combat action, that combat action has happened; for better or for worse, it's now set in stone. If people don't have to keep taking back what they do, then combat is less stop-start-y and flows more like a narrative.
3. Make people look cool. Performing ridiculous and over-the-top stunts, like swinging on a chandelier, jumping off a balcony, or climbing up a narrow ledge, is not only entirely without risk but actively advantageous: they provide valuable inspiration for those oh-so-important extra details.
4. Avoid viscera. We've said this before, we know, but this really isn't a game about hacking people to bloody pieces. That said, it only really applies to individual NPCs. If you're fighting a swarm of NPCs you're a bit more at liberty to kill or maim, but really if you get your kicks from buckets of blood pouring out of other peoples' bodies you're in the wrong game.
5. Don't take the piss. This is the important one. The rules for combat are wide and free-ranging and we can't cover every possible loophole with a rule -- so it's really up to the other players and the GM to step in when somebody starts using them in a way that's unfair.

To The Victor The Spoils

Combat ends either when

• only one person is still in combat, or
• all the combatants with Focuses left in the pot agree to end combat (and on how to divvy up what's left in the pot between them).

When combat ends, all combatants recover their Defence Pools. Anybody who lost points from a Defence Pool during the combat has all but one of those points returned. Anybody who didn't lose any points from a Defence Pool (but whose Defence Pool started the combat below its maximum value) recovers one point to that Defence Pool.

Next, people gain XP, which is used for creating Focuses, adding Cherries to existing Focuses, and fixing pieces of the setting so that they can no longer be changed. (We'll explain how XP is spend on things later.) For each enemy Focus you destroyed during combat, you gain XP equal to the value of that Focus. You can share that XP out amongst other players as you wish. You do not automatically get it as a Focus, even if your Finishing Action implied that it's now in your possession. This means that you do not get the Cherries attached to a Focus once you win it from an enemy.

If a participant folded and left some of their Focuses in the pot, then the remaining participants also need to decide how to share the XP from them. Of course, if only one participant remains, then she gets all of them -- and if two or more remain and they can't agree on how to share their XP, then they don't necessarily have to stop fighting just yet...

Example: John the Pirate and Tim the Pirate are fighting. Tim has wagered his Level 4 Map To Treasure Island; John has wagered his Level 4 Sarcastic Parrot. John uses a Finishing Action to grab the map from Tim and push him overboard. John now has 4XP. He could put all 4 XP into the focus Map To Treasure Island, in which case John would now have a level 4 Focus named Map To Treasure Island. He could put 2 XP into the focus Map To Treasure Island and keep 2XP for buying Cherries on the map; he would then have a Level 2 Focus Map To Treasure Island with 2XP worth of Cherries attached to it. He could keep all the XP for improving his skills. In this case, he would still technically have the map to Treasure Island, but it would no longer be a Focus, meaning that getting to Treasure Island (or, indeed, stealing the map from John) would now be a trivial action that anybody can do.

Example: Rufus fights Price Bastard for his Focus the love of the Princess, and spends the points from the Focus when he obtains it. The Princess's love stops being worth fighting for; nobody cares for the treacherous cow now.

Example: Reno fights Barrett for his Focus my daughter Marlene. Reno wins and spends most of the XP but invests one in a (lower level) Focus Barrett's daughter Marlene. Later, Barrett fights Reno again, gets the Focus back, and spends the 1XP he gets for this on fixing Marlene so that she can never be kidnapped again.

Example: Jack fights Will for his focus, the key to the Dead Man's Chest. Jack wins the fight and spends the XP on creating a new Focus, Davy Jones' heart.

To the loser, a bit of peace

The other important thing about the end of a fight is that it's final. Once a fight's over, there are no rematches; all parties get the opportunity to escape with whatever Focuses they have left. Neither the individual who initiated the fight nor the individual he forced into it can start the next fight or be forced into the next fight.