Overview

Combat is the heart of Song of Heroic Lands, and also its most detailed subsystem. A single exchange can involve the attacker choosing a weapon and a strike mode, the defender choosing among several defenses, both sides rolling, consulting combat tables, rolling damage, determining where the blow lands, comparing that to armor, and finally recording an injury. Done entirely by hand, even a short fight can eat up a lot of table time.

SoHL gives you two ways to run combat, and you can freely mix them:

Both modes use the same underlying rules and the same dice — they differ only in how much of the sequence the system drives for you. You are never locked into one; a fight can start automated and drop to assisted the moment something unusual comes up, then pick back up.

Assisted Combat

Assisted Combat lets you make any single combat roll — attack, block, counterstrike, dodge, or impact (damage) — with all of the weapon’s bonuses and penalties already applied. There is no workflow: it simply makes the roll you ask for and posts the result to chat.

Why it helps

Rolling a raw Melee skill leaves you to remember and add up every modifier that applies to a given weapon and strike mode — strength bonuses, one- vs. two-handed use and its effect on heft, the strike mode’s own attack or defense modifiers, and so on. Assisted Combat does that arithmetic for you, every time, so a “swing” and a “thrust” of the same sword roll at their correct, different values without you tracking why. It also gives you the correct impact (damage) roll for that strike mode at the press of a button.

When to use it

The great strength of Assisted Combat is that it is unopinionated and context-free. You can make an Assisted attack roll:

• whether or not a combat encounter is running,
• whether or not it is your turn,
• even if your character has no token on the scene.

That makes it ideal for Theatre of the Mind, for quick “just roll it” moments, and for any situation where the full Automated Combat workflow would get in the way. Because there is no context behind an Assisted roll, it can be made at any time.

How to use it

Open the character sheet and go to the Combat tab. Each weapon (and combat technique) lists its strike modes, and each strike-mode row shows clickable values:

• Atk — roll an attack with this strike mode.
• Blk — roll a block with this strike mode.
• CX — roll a counterstrike with this strike mode.
• Impact — roll this strike mode’s damage.

Click a value to roll it; the result posts to chat with the applicable modifiers shown. (Shift-click to skip the roll dialog and use the defaults.) A value that does not apply to a strike mode — a mode that cannot block, for instance — is not shown as clickable.

Dodge is rolled from the Dodge skill (a normal skill test), not from a weapon’s Combat-tab row — dodging is not tied to a particular weapon.

🧭 Guided tour. For a hands-on walkthrough of everything above — arming a character, the two-handed/bow arm rule, rolling ATK/BLK/CX, and turning a hit into an injury — run the SoHL: Assisted Combat tour from Settings → Tour Management. It is single-actor and needs no token, scene, or encounter, and it makes clear that the system rolls but leaves the win/loss ruling to you and the rulebook.

Automated Combat

Assisted Combat speeds up the rolls, but it does not address the real burden: the complexity of the exchange itself. Automated Combat takes an opinionated, workflow-driven approach — it runs the whole attack-and-defense sequence for you, prompting each participant for the choices only they can make and resolving all the tables and rules in between.

What it does

When an attacker begins Automated Combat, the system starts a guided sequence:

1. The attacker rolls the attack (with sensible defaults offered from context and past choices).
2. The result posts to chat, and response buttons appear on the defender’s client offering their available defenses.
3. The defender picks a defense and rolls it.
4. The system resolves the exchange — comparing attack and defense on the combat tables to decide who lands a blow and by how much (the victory margin), including any Tactical Advantages earned.
5. If a blow connects, impact is rolled, the hit location is determined, the target’s armor at that location is applied, and the resulting injury is entered automatically on the target’s sheet.

Each stage outputs to the chat log, and prompts guide the players through the decisions along the way.

What it needs

Automated Combat is opinionated on purpose, and it relies on the combat encounter to know who is acting. To start an automated attack:

• A combat encounter must be running (the combat tracker), and both the attacker and the target must be combatants in it.
• Both need tokens on the scene (targeting and range use them).
• Only the current combatant may start an automated attack. Automated Combat runs off the initiative order: the attacker must be the combatant whose turn it is, and no one else can open an automated attack out of turn.
• A target must be selected, and the attacker must not be incapacitated, defeated, or dead; the target must not be dead. If one of these invariants is violated, the attempt is refused with a message explaining why.

The one thing that acts outside the current combatant’s turn is a defensive response: when you are attacked, your counterstrike strikes back within the attacker’s exchange, and a Tactical Advantage you earn can buy a follow-up strike (see Blending the two modes). Starting a fresh automated attack, though, always waits for your turn.

If you don’t have (or don’t want) a full encounter set up, use Assisted Combat instead.

How to use it

1. Set up the encounter. Place tokens for the combatants and add them to the combat tracker (see Scene Setup).
2. On the attacker’s turn, target the opponent (target their token), then right-click the attacker’s row in the combat tracker and choose Automated Combat.
3. Answer the attack dialog — pick the strike mode, set the aim and any situational modifier; defaults are pre-filled.
4. The defender responds using the buttons that appear on their client, choosing one of the defenses below.
5. Read the results in chat. Impact, hit location, armor, and injury are handled for you; the injury lands on the target sheet.

Every automated action lives on the combatant — the tracker row, not the character sheet. See Combatant for the per-action reference: what each one asks for, when it refuses, and which are offered only as chat-card buttons.

The attack dialog

Starting an automated attack opens a small dialog with three fields:

• Strike Mode — how you are attacking: one entry per strike mode that can actually reach the target, drawn from the weapons you have readied and the combat techniques you know (melee modes whose reach covers the distance, missile modes within their base range). It is pre-selected for you — the mode this combatant last attacked with in this fight if it is still available (or the weapon whose own action started the attack), otherwise the one with the best chance to hit — so you can usually just press OK. The damage aspect follows from the mode you pick; it is not chosen separately.
• Aim — the body part you are striking at, listed from the defender’s own body. What you pick matters when the blow lands: an aimed strike hits that part when your accuracy is good enough, and otherwise drifts outward to a neighbour (see Hit location: aimed vs. unaimed strikes).
• Additional Modifier — a whole-number bonus or penalty for the circumstances (cover, footing, a called shot’s difficulty, a house rule). Leave it at 0 when nothing applies; type a negative number for a penalty.

Press OK to roll the attack, or dismiss the dialog to call the whole thing off — nothing is rolled and nothing is posted.

The attack card

The attack roll posts a card spoken by the attacker, titled with the strike mode (e.g. “Broadsword Melee Attack”) and reading “attacker vs. defender”. It shows the parameters of the attack so every player can check them:

• Aim — the body part being struck at.
• Aspect — the damage aspect the strike mode delivers (blunt, edged, piercing, …).
• AML — the attacker’s effective Attack Mastery Level, after every modifier.

Below the card body sit the defense buttons — Dodge, Counterstrike, Block, and Ignore. They are addressed to the defender, so they only appear on the defending player’s screen (and the GM’s), and only the defenses that character can actually use are shown. Nothing resolves until the defender presses one.

The result card

Pressing a defense resolves the exchange and posts a result card:

• Adjustment tables — every modifier that went into the attacker’s roll, and the defender’s too when they contested (Block or Dodge).
• Attack / Defend columns — the weapon and defense used, each side’s effective mastery level (Eff. AML and Eff. DML), the roll, and the success level, coloured by success or failure.
• Victory Stars — the victory margin as stars, filled when the attacker took the exchange and hollow when the defender did; “None” on a tie.
• The outcome — “attacker strikes!” or “Attack misses.”, plus any Tactical Advantages earned, whether a weapon broke, and whether either side must make a Fumble or Stumble test.
• Attack Impact — the impact (damage) formula, when a blow connected.
• Calculate name Injury — a button for each side that landed a blow. It opens the injury resolution for that character; an aimed blow carries its hit location through, an unaimed one asks where it landed.

A counterstrike posts two of these cards — one for the original attack and one for the strike back — because both blows can land in the same exchange.

The defenses

When attacked in Automated Combat, the defender chooses one. These four are offered only as buttons on the attack card, on the defending player’s screen — they are not in the combatant’s Actions context menu, because a defense only makes sense as the answer to a particular attack. Each is filtered to what that character can actually do (no Dodge skill, no Dodge button), and an incapacitated defender is limited to Ignore.

• Block — parry with a weapon or shield. On a win (or tie), the attack is stopped. Blocking asks which strike mode to parry with, pre-selecting the one you blocked with last in this fight (otherwise your best chance), plus an Additional Modifier field for the circumstances.
• Counterstrike — defend and strike back at once. Both blows may land: you can stop the attack and hit the attacker on the same exchange, at the risk of taking the hit if you lose. It asks for an aim and a modifier just like an attack, offering only melee strike modes that can counterstrike and that reach the attacker.
• Dodge — get out of the way (a Dodge-skill roll). Avoids the blow when you clearly beat the attack. Nothing is asked; the roll is made when you press the button.
• Ignore — take no defensive action; the attack simply resolves against you. An incapacitated defender is limited to Ignore.

See Combatant for the full entry on each of these responses.

Blending the two modes

Nothing requires you to stay in one mode. A common pattern:

You start in Automated Combat. The attacker attacks, the defender chooses a counterstrike, and wins — earning a Tactical Advantage. The automated workflow doesn’t yet fold Tactical Advantages into its calculations, so at that point you switch to Assisted Combat to make the extra strike the advantage grants, then continue in Assisted Combat to finish out the original exchange.

Because both modes share the same rules and rolls, moving between them mid-fight is seamless: Automated Combat for the common case, Assisted Combat whenever a special rule, a house rule, or an unusual circumstance falls outside the workflow.

How a hit is resolved (shared by both modes)

Under the hood, both modes resolve an exchange the same way:

• Each roll is a d100 roll-under against the effective mastery level, producing a success level (how far above or below the mark) and possibly a critical success or failure.
• An attack and its defense form an opposed test: the outcome is decided by the victory score — the difference between the attacker’s and the defender’s success levels. The less-bad of two failures can still “win” the exchange.
• A decisive exchange (a victory score of 2 or more either way) awards Tactical Advantages to the winner, which can be spent on follow-up actions.
• “Landing a blow” means the blow connected — it may still be fully absorbed by armor when impact is resolved, so a connected hit does not automatically mean damage.

Hit location: aimed vs. unaimed strikes

When an attack lands, the system determines which body part is struck. This works differently depending on whether the attacker aimed at a specific part.

Unaimed strikes

An unaimed strike selects the hit location randomly, weighted by each body part’s probability weight. Larger or more exposed parts (like the thorax) are struck more often than smaller ones (like the head). No accuracy value is involved.

Aimed strikes

An aimed strike targets a specific body part and uses the attacker’s accuracy to determine whether the strike lands where intended or drifts to a neighboring part:

1. If accuracy is less than or equal to the target part’s probability weight, the aimed part is always hit.
2. Otherwise, a random number from 1 to accuracy is rolled. If the roll is within the part’s probability weight, that part is hit.
3. On a miss, the accuracy is reduced by the part’s probability weight, and the strike drifts to a random neighboring body part (weighted by probability) — the other parts of the same body zone first, then outward to the adjoining zones. The check repeats from step 1 with the new part and reduced accuracy.
4. If there are no unvisited neighbors left to drift to, the current part is hit.

High accuracy relative to the target makes aimed strikes reliable; low accuracy causes the strike to wander outward through the body’s zones. Aiming at a small, hard-to-hit part with insufficient accuracy will often hit a neighbor instead.

Impact, armor, and injury

Once a blow connects and a location is chosen:

• Impact (damage) is rolled for the strike mode, by damage aspect (blunt, edged, piercing, etc.).
• The location’s effective protection — its natural protection plus any worn armor covering it — is subtracted from the impact.
• The remaining effective impact maps to an injury level (from a light M1 up through the grievous G-levels), and the system derives the Shock Index, whether it was a glancing blow, any stumble/fumble, and whether bleeding or amputation results.
• In Automated Combat the injury is recorded on the target sheet for you; you can also produce the same injury by hand via the Add Injury flow (see Afflictions & Injuries).

Tips

• Reach for Assisted Combat by default outside a set-piece fight — it needs no setup and works anywhere.
• Use Automated Combat for standard tactical encounters where the workflow saves the most time.
• Don’t fight the workflow. When a Tactical Advantage, special rule, or house rule falls outside Automated Combat, switch to Assisted Combat rather than forcing it.
• Keep both combatants’ sheets handy when you’re learning the flow, and apply results as they post to avoid drift.
• Name weapons and strike modes clearly so the right one is easy to pick.

See also

• Combatant — the combat-tracker row and its actions: starting an automated attack, answering one, and moving a combatant between groups.
• Skill Tests — the d100 roll-under test that underlies every combat roll.
• Working with Gear — equipping weapons, armor, and shields.
• Afflictions & Injuries — recording and healing the injuries combat produces.
• Fate System — spending fate to re-roll.
• User Guide — back to the index.