Combat

Combat in ØMEN: After Dragons is a back-and-forth of declared actions, simultaneous rolls, and split-second defensive choices. A fight has a beginning (who was ready, who acts first), a middle (turns taken in initiative order), and an end (when one side yields, flees, or falls). This section walks through that flow from the player's and GM's chairs, and shows how a single attack or save resolves from declaration to applied damage.

Preparing for Combat

Before blows are exchanged, the GM settles the setup. The GM decides the characters' positions - asking for your formation, or negotiating where everyone stood before the fight, if it wasn't decided beforehand. It is up to your group to set these expectations before fighting starts. In a normal scenario, characters usually have time to draw weapons and ready handheld gear before battle, so they don't have to spend actions equipping or start empty-handed.

The combat sequence begins by determining ambush and initiative, then moves to combat itself.

1. Determine Ambush

In an ambush, the defending party rolls Perception against a difficulty set by the ambushers. Each ambusher rolls Stealth to set the Ambush Difficulty (the GM may also set a preset difficulty when NPCs try to surprise the party).

Time Waited	Roll	Difficulty
Less than a minute	Lowest Roll	Lowest Roll + 2
1–2 minutes	Average Roll	Average Roll + 3
3+ minutes	Highest Roll	Highest Roll + 4

Each defender rolls Perception individually against that difficulty:

• Complete Surprise - fails the roll by more than 5 (e.g. difficulty 15, rolls 10). The character loses their turn to act for the first round but keeps their Bonus Actions, replenishing them on their initiative; they also cannot draw equipment that wasn't already equipped.
• Partial Surprise - fails by 5 or less, or ties. The character takes −5 to their Initiative Roll but may draw weapons and shields before combat begins.
• Alert - succeeds. The character acts normally.

2. Determine Initiative

Each participant rolls Initiative, an AGI Check, applying any modifiers before declaring the result. This sets the initiative order for the combat. If two characters tie, they compare AGI Bonus and the higher goes first; if still tied, they re-roll against each other. This applies to friend and foe alike, though allies may simply agree who goes first without rolling.

3. The First Round

In the first round you may be attacked before your first turn. Every character has 2 Bonus Actions available to use defensively before their first turn - available even to those who haven't acted yet. A Completely Surprised character's 2 Bonus Actions are replenished when their turn would come up in the first round.

Your Turn

When your turn comes up in the initiative order, you may use it however you like, drawing on Actions, Bonus Actions, Free Actions, Abilities, and Spells (see Action Economy). Combat continues until one side yields, flees, or is defeated; the GM determines when a combat ends.

How a Single Action Resolves

Each action moves through the same lifecycle: it is declared, its preconditions and costs are checked and paid, it resolves, and the results settle onto the characters involved. Reactive abilities may open windows before and after resolution (see below). The heart of resolution - for attacks and saves - runs as follows.

Resolving an Attack

1. The attacker rolls the hit pool - Primary die + FCS die, plus the Attack Hit Bonus and modifiers.
2. The defender rolls base defense - RES die + Defense Rating. This happens automatically, every time, unless the defender is incapacitated or paralyzed.
3. Active Defense window - having seen both rolls, and before damage is determined, the defender may spend a Bonus Action on Dodge, Parry, or Block to raise their total defense.
4. Determine hit and crit - the attack hits if its total strictly exceeds the total defense (the defender wins ties); a critical is judged by comparing the attack's FCS portion against the defender's RES portion.
5. Resolve damage - compute damage, apply damage reduction (Armor and Resistance), and apply the result to the target's resources.

A worked melee example, step by step:

1. Attacker rolls STR and FCS dice.
2. Count the dice and add the Attack Hit Bonus.
3. Defender rolls the RES die and adds Defense Rating.
4. If the attack would hit, the defender may spend a Bonus Action to improve the Defense Roll.
5. Recalculate the hit if a Bonus Action was used.
6. On a hit, determine damage from the rolled main attack die plus the Damage Bonus.
7. Reduce Armor Rating and Resistance from the damage and apply it to the target.

For Finesse weapons the STR die in step 1 becomes an AGI die; for Spell attacks it becomes an INT die. The full math behind each step lives in Rolls and Resolution.

Resolving a Save

When an effect calls for a save, it resolves as an opposed single-die check: the saver's die + bonus against the attacker's die + bonus, with the saver succeeding on a tie. The effect's success and failure branches then route which consequences apply.

The Order Effects Apply

When several effects land in the same step, they resolve in the order they are written - there is no hidden priority. Conditional branches (on-hit / on-miss, save-success / save-fail) are chosen by the hit, crit, and save results above. Deferred costs settle when their trigger comes due, and conditions tick at their defined timing.

Special Combat Conditions

Position and circumstance can swing a fight:

• Encircled - when a character is outnumbered, the attacker gains +2 to Hit for each outnumbering adjacent ally, up to +6. The attacking side must outnumber the adjacent enemies by at least 2 to 1 for this to apply.
• High Ground - attacking from higher ground (GM's call on what qualifies) grants +2 to Hit. Attacking into higher ground imposes no penalty.
• Prone - attacking a prone character grants +4 to Hit, and the prone defender cannot Dodge. Ranged attacks against a prone target instead take −2 to Hit.
• Unseen - attacking from a hidden position grants the attacker a second FCS die to Hit. This usually requires the target to have failed to notice you (a successful Stealth Check to stay hidden). Once you attack from hiding you are no longer Unseen to that target or their allies; the GM decides whether your Stealth was broken.

Reactions and Interrupting the Flow

A fight is not strictly one character at a time, but ØMEN keeps off-turn play deliberately narrow - there is no general counter-attack or riposte system. Off-turn play happens through Reactions, each paid for with Bonus Actions:

• Active Defense. Whenever you are attacked you roll your own defense - the defender always rolls (see Rolls & Resolution). The Active Defense options Dodge, Parry, and Block are declared as the attack resolves.
• Attack of Opportunity. When an enemy within reach tries to leave your zone of reach with a Movement Action, you may strike them with the basic Attack Action. Movement following a Disengage does not provoke it.
• Disengage lets you safely retreat from melee without provoking reactions, provided you take a Movement Action right after.
• Catch lets you intercept a thrown or tossed item about to hit you (see Action Economy for the full rules).
• Interrupt. The Interrupt basic action (2 Bonus Actions) lets you strike an adjacent enemy as they act: a Melee Attack that, on a hit, costs them the Action they were taking (see the action table in Action Economy).

Individual abilities may carry their own reactive triggers, but each resolves on its own terms - there is no universal stack of counters resolving against one another.

The Death Spiral

ØMEN has no single "bloodied" penalty die - the decline is emergent. As a fight grinds on, Exhausted and Fatigued accumulate, and each stack strips attribute bonuses and edges a character toward incapacitation; when Dying finally sets in, the end comes fast. Stacked together these conditions feed on one another - the weaker a character grows, the harder they are to keep standing, and the faster the next blow tells. See the Conditions reference for the exact stacks, thresholds, and recovery rates.