Unarmed Combat
Fighting with no weapon is not a separate system. An empty hand, a boot, a set of teeth and a wrestler’s grip are all strike modes like any other, and they resolve through the ordinary attack sequence against the Melee skill. What distinguishes them is where they come from: not from a weapon carried, but from a combat technique the character has trained.
Unarmed attacks are weak, short, and — except for the manoeuvres — poorly suited to hurting an armoured opponent. They matter because they are always available, because they work in places a weapon cannot be brought to bear, and because several of them do things no weapon does at all.
Combat Techniques
A combat technique is a trained way of using the body as a weapon. Each one carries a single strike mode with its own impact, aspect, precision and reach, and each is a separate thing to know: a fighter who can kick well cannot necessarily wrestle.
The attack is still tested against Melee. The technique supplies the attack — what the blow is, how hard it lands, how precisely it can be placed — while Melee supplies the fighter’s ability to land it. A character with no technique at all still has hands and feet, and may improvise; what they lack is anything trained to improvise with.
The Folk Roster
The techniques ordinary folk learn are these. The values are those of a human-sized person, and no further:
| Technique | Impact | Zone die | Reach | What it is for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Punch | 1d6−3 blunt | d4 | 1 ft | The plainest attack, and the feeblest |
| Kick | 1d6−2 blunt | d4 | 2 ft | The strongest opening, but it cannot reach high |
| Headbutt | 1d6−2 blunt | d4 | — | Delivered from a grapple, needing no hands |
| Bite | 1d4 piercing | d2 | — | The most precise, and the only piercing one |
| Grab | — | — | 1 ft | Take what a limb holds, or hold the limb itself |
| Press | — | — | 1 ft | Drive an opponent off their footing |
| Trip | — | — | 2 ft | Put an opponent on the ground |
| Limb Block | — | — | — | Block with an arm or a leg, having nothing else |
Reach is what the technique adds to the fighter’s own bodily reach, so a bite or a headbutt reaches nothing at all beyond the body: the target must already be pressed against you, which is why neither ever opens an exchange and both so often close one.
Four of these describe anatomy and four describe a rule. Punch, Kick, Headbutt and Bite say what a human fist, foot, skull and jaw do, and mean nothing on a creature built differently — a bear’s paw is not a punch and a wolf’s bite is not a person’s. Grab, Press, Trip and Limb Block inflict no damage of their own, so their rules hold for any creature with the limbs to perform them.
Other creatures fight with their own techniques, derived from their own anatomy and their own Strength: claws, gores, tail lashes, talons, stings, constricting coils, breath. Where such a creature does share a name with a folk technique — a bite is a bite — it does not share the numbers. See the Bestiary.
The Strength Trial
Grab, Press and Trip do not wound. Winning the exchange with one of them earns only the attempt; what settles it is an opposed Strength Trial.
Both combatants roll
d6 + Strength. The initiator must win it, and the margin decides how completely.
The Trial takes a bonus for each Impact Tactical Advantage the winner earned in the exchange — +2 for a Press, +3 for a Grab, +4 for a Trip — so a combatant who is comprehensively winning does these things almost at will, and one who scraped a narrow victory usually does not. Other circumstances adjust it too: pressing out of a charge, or having only one hand on an opponent.
Only one Strength Trial is made per exchange, and only the combatant who initiated one and won the Melee test may inflict its effect. A counterstriking manoeuvre therefore cancels the attacker’s: whoever won the exchange gets the Trial. If the initiator loses the Trial, nothing whatever happens — a manoeuvre against a markedly stronger opponent is a wasted turn.
Each manoeuvre reads its winning margin off its own table, and the tables are given with the techniques themselves. In outline:
- Press knocks an opponent back, and at a wide enough margin puts them down and into shock.
- Trip puts them prone, and at a wide margin throws them and leaves them open to an automatic Grab.
- Grab either takes an object out of the limb struck — the disarm — or holds that limb fast. A hold costs the victim their next turn, though they may still defend, and it must be renewed by a fresh Strength Trial every round. A held limb keeps what it was holding: a hold is not a disarm, which is why the grabber must declare which of the two they are attempting before rolling.
Limb Block
Limb Block is the defence of last resort — no weapon, no shield, and something already coming at you. It is a Block made with a forearm, a shin or a shoulder, and it is genuinely dangerous.
Where an ordinary block wards the blow on a tie, a limb block wards it safely only on a clear victory: a higher success level than the attacker, with no tiebreak to help. On tied successes the attack lands on the blocking limb itself — the blow strikes that limb, a d10 deciding where within it, and only 2 points are subtracted from the impact for the partial ward. Two points is nothing against a sword.
Against a fist, a club or a kick that is a reasonable trade; the worst case is a bruised arm. Against an edge and a bare arm it is a choice to make only when the alternative is worse — a blade in the forearm being better than a blade in the throat.
Armour changes the arithmetic entirely. A limb block is the only defence that decides where a blow lands, and a fighter armoured unevenly can use that deliberately: a mail sleeve over an unprotected body turns the raised arm from a gamble into a plan. The limb’s own protection applies as normal, and the block’s two points come off on top of it.
Apply −20 where the limb is at odds with the weapon’s line — a leg raised against a punch — and the GM may disallow the block outright where it would be absurd.
Armour on the Attacker
Unarmed blows are the one case where the attacker’s armour matters. A rigid helm, boot or gauntlet adds 2 to the impact of the strike it is worn on, which is most of the difference between a bare fist and a gauntleted one, and much of the reason an armoured fighter is dangerous even having lost their weapon.
The ordinary off-hand rules apply and bite harder here than anywhere: a strike thrown with the off hand or off foot takes −10 and loses a point of impact. See Dominance.
See also
- Attack Resolution — the exchange in full
- Melee Attacks — reach, engagement, and the melee defences
- Strike Modes — the structure every technique is expressed in
- Skill Descriptions — the individual techniques and their tables