Combat

Combat uses the same dice mechanic as everything else — same 5d6, same outcome bands, same T-numbers. The only differences are structure (turn order, action economy, position) and consequences (damage as Stress).

Turn Order

The GM decides who acts when. No initiative roll. The GM looks at the situation and calls who's up first, based on dramatic logic and what makes the scene most interesting. This is fast and flexible.

Your Turn

Each turn, you get one Action and one Movement. Or alternatively, you can sacrifice your Action for a Double Movement — useful for crossing ground quickly.

• Action — make a roll, use an item, take a meaningful in-fiction action
• Movement — change zones (one zone shift) or stay put
• Double Movement — no Action this turn; move two zones

You also have one Reaction per round — a triggered ability that resolves outside your normal turn, in response to a specific event. Reactions don't cost your Action or Movement. Your Reaction refreshes at the start of your next turn. Most abilities use Actions; only a few specifically use Reactions, and they'll say so.

Zones

Distance in combat uses four named zones. The grid (or minis on a map) shows exact positioning; the zones are how the rules talk about distance.

A normal Movement takes you between adjacent zones. A Double Movement takes you across two.

Weapons & Gear

Gear matters — but never as a number. No weapon has a damage value. A sword and a rifle differ in where and how you fight, not in how hard you hit; how hard you hit comes from the outcome band of your roll (see Damage, below), the same for every weapon. What gear gives you is options. A weapon is a default zone plus one or two tags — and a new weapon is a new thing you can do, never a bigger number.

Zone

Every weapon has a default zone — the range it naturally fights at. Tags can change it.

Attacking outside your weapon's zone is possible but penalised: −1 Effective Tier. (Reach is now a Positioning tag, not a zone.)

Tags

A weapon is one or two tags — the only rules it carries. Rename and re-skin freely; the tags are what's mechanical. Tags come in four families:

• Positioning — change where or what you can hit: Reach (strike into Engaged from Near; hit first when someone closes), Long-Range (attack from Far/Distant), Snaring (on a hit, pull/pin them a zone), Silent (a quiet takedown).
• Impact — when the tag's fictional condition is met, bump your outcome band one step — but only up to Success: Piercing (vs armoured/braced), Dueling (one-on-one), Brutal (vs a target already taking Stress).
• Utility — a non-combat edge: +1 Effective Tier on a specific kind of roll, or auto-clear a specific mundane obstacle. Wayfinder's Chain (+1 Effective Tier to retrace a walked path).
• Identity — no mechanical effect; pure character. Sentimental, Company-Issued, Hand-Forged.

Only the dice can crit. An Impact tag turns a Mixed into a Success, never a Success into a Crit. No tag, item, or ability makes a Crit — only beating the target by +7 on the dice does. No tag adds flat damage.

Rarity is where it came from, not how strong it is.

• Issued — mundane Company kit. No strings.
• Salvaged — pulled from a world you mapped; narrower, weirder, not stronger.
• Anomalous — genuinely strange, and always with a string (a cost, instability, downside, or Company interest). You find these out in the deep, strange worlds — you don't buy them.

Your signature item can be any provenance; what makes it signature is that it's yours.

Loot is gear recovered from the worlds you map. Because every tag is situational, more loot = more options, not more power — there's no "the next sword is better." Keep what you find off the books, log it, or hand it to the Company: every good find is a choice. Loot can come any time the fiction allows it; it isn't gated to advancement.

Armour

Armour is worn gear — it sits in your worn slot, not one of your three Ready pieces. It gives no flat, always-on reduction. Instead, when you're attacked in the situation the armour is built for (you're braced and set, or it's the kind of blow it's made to turn), the attacker's outcome band drops one step — a Success becomes a Mixed, a Mixed becomes a miss. It can never undo a Crit; only the dice decide those.

Armour is never automatic — caught flat-footed, or hit by something it was never made to stop, you get nothing from it. What it's "built for" is something you and the GM name when you get it (a riot shield turns blunt force; a voidsuit turns the cold; a warding cloak turns the cosmic). On a Catastrophic Failure on a defence roll, the armour is spent until repaired — you're unharmed from that blow but now exposed.

Your Ready Loadout

Your Ready gear is three meaningful pieces (e.g. a primary weapon, a secondary or tool, one situational item), plus what you're wearing and consumables on you. Everything else is Stowed. Bringing a Stowed item to Ready costs an Action mid-scene; in downtime it's free. (Three is a number we're testing; worn gear and consumables don't count against it.)

Improvised Weapons

Grabbing whatever's to hand — a chair, a pipe, a bottle — always follows the same rule:

• Zone: Melee (or Thrown at GM's discretion)
• Damage: the band ladder, like anything else — but no tags, so no positioning, no edges
• Breaking: breaks on any Failure or worse (not just Catastrophic)

If you deliberately prepare an improvised weapon, the GM may treat it as proper Issued gear with one relevant tag.

Ammunition

Sidearm, Ranged, and Thrown weapons use ammunition tracked as uses. Each attack roll spends 1 use, hit or miss. At 0 uses the weapon can't attack until restocked.

Resupply is handled in fiction — easy in a world with trade, impossible in a world with no gunpowder. The GM sets what's available.

On a Catastrophic Failure while using a weapon, it breaks and is unusable until repaired — a moment, not just a penalty. Ordinary gear is fixed with tools and downtime; something rarer needs a skilled NPC or specialist tools and a Hand roll (T11); something irreplaceable may be destroyed for good. (Breaking is a consequence; it never changes your damage.)

Attacking

When you attack, you roll the appropriate domain. Two cases:

Static Target Number: When the target isn't actively defending — an unaware enemy, a surprise attack, an environmental obstacle, a helpless target — the GM gives you a T-number. Roll it. If you beat it, you hit.

Opposed Roll: When both sides are actively contesting — combat between equals, a trained defender, a willful target resisting influence — both you and the target roll. Higher result wins. Defender wins ties. The margin of victory determines the severity.

Defence

When you're attacked, you defend with whichever domain fits the attack:

The "alternative" options work if you can describe them fictionally. A character dodging a sword swing with Hand instead of parrying with Body: fine, if you describe the dodge.

Damage

You don't roll separate damage. How much Stress an attack deals comes from its outcome band — the same for you and for everything attacking you, with every weapon:

A Crit doubles — and only the dice can crit (+7 over the contested value; no tag or item ever makes one). This cuts both ways, so be careful of anything that rolls a lot of dice. Strong enemies aren't scary because of big numbers — they're scary because they win rolls often and by wide margins, landing Successes and the occasional Crit. A tough foe's Success takes half a starting pool; a Crit can Break it outright.

Helping Each Other: Support Actions

Combat in TSL works best when characters help each other. On your turn (or, in one case, as a Reaction), you can take a Support Action instead of attacking. Six options are standard:

A few notes:

• Grant Reroll is unusual — you pay the Stress, not the ally. It's an act of real sacrifice.
• Soak the Hit uses your Reaction, not your Action. You can do it between turns.
• Steady the Spirit is the same effect as the Steward's Steady Presence perk, generalized — Stewards do it free once per scene as their perk; anyone else does it as their Action.
• If you describe a creative way to help an ally that isn't on the menu, your GM will probably run with it.

A Worked Example

The party — Vela (a Pathwalker), Mar (a Steward), and Ko (a Mystic) — has just walked into an ambush. A corrupted Path-walker and two thugs are waiting.

The GM looks at the table: "Vela, you spotted the ambush, you're up first. Then the thugs are going to charge. Then Mar, then Ko. Then the ambusher."

Vela's turn. "I want to drop the closer thug before they can reach Ko. I'll use my Hand and try to put one in his leg." The GM: "Hand roll, T11 — the thug isn't aware of you, so no defence roll." Vela rolls 5d6, keeps 4 (Proficient): total 16. Clean Success. The GM: "You catch him in the thigh. He goes down screaming." The thug is a Grunt — one solid hit Breaks him. Vela uses Movement to reposition behind a pillar.

The remaining thug's turn. The GM has him use Double Movement to charge into Engaged with Ko. He doesn't get to attack this turn but he's now in Ko's face.

Mar's turn. "I want to get the thug's attention away from Ko. I'll shout at him, taunt him." The GM: "Voice roll, opposed — he's mid-charge, he'll resist." Mar rolls Voice (Trained): 13. The thug rolls Mind (Untrained): 8. Mar wins by 5. "He turns toward you, snarling."

Ko's turn. "The corrupted Path-walker — the corruption isn't natural. I want to Sense the Local Reality and read what's happening to them spiritually." The GM: "That's a Spirit ability — costs 2 Spirit Stress. Mark it. You don't roll; you spend the points and get the information." Ko marks 2 bubbles on his Spirit Pool. The GM tells Ko: "You see it. The corruption isn't natural — it's binding. There's a tether between the ambusher and something deeper in this world. Disrupt the tether and the corruption breaks."

The whole encounter just shifted: from "kill the bad guy" to "find and break the tether."

That's the rhythm. Describe action → roll if uncertain → narrate outcome → repeat.