We've already talked a lot about attacks in the defense section. The attacks are essentially the same as defense except that attacks are not Poison and Disease and Burning and Acid are not grouped together (although the defenses against them obviously are). The table below shows what is probably obvious by now. The descriptions below them will explain in more detail the important aspects of what it takes to use these attack skills.

• Physical
  • Force
    • Piercing
    • Bludgeoning
    • Slashing
  • Elemental
    • Poison
    • Disease
    • Freezing
    • Burning
    • Acid
    • Electricity
• Mental
  • Cognitive
  • Emotional
• Personal

Physical attacks do damage based on some external factor colliding with or reacting with a character or monster’s physical body. For convenience sake, physical attacks have been subdivided into force attacks and elemental attacks, both of which themselves are subdivided and explained below.

Fists, stones, swords, improvised weapons, falling long distances, ceilings crashing down on characters are all examples of “attacks”. Force attacks can take a variety of forms, sometimes causing heavy amounts of surface bruising damage, sometimes causing long thin gouges in the exterior of the character, and sometimes doing small but penetrating damage that doesn’t affect much of the exterior of a character but can do significant damage to the interior. We’ve chosen to divide them in that way and name them with the following: blunt, slashing, and piercing.

Why subdivide force defenses? Why not treat them all the same?

Although many times, characters and monsters are equally resistant to any form of force trauma, some types of armor or monsters might be more resistant to one versus another. For example, skeletons are highly resistant to piercing attacks (because they are just animated bones with large gaps between them) whereas they have a standard resistance to slashing and blunt attacks. Other opponents, like slimes, might be resistant to blunt attacks while being affected normally by slashing and piercing attacks.

Force attacks are generally caused by mundane means, but arcane special abilities could allow for more magical or supernatural force attacks as well.

Elemental attacks, for lack of a better term, cause damage based on temperature, chemical, or other similar external factors that aren’t related to force at all. Often they’re related to a character or monster’s reaction to something that their body isn’t equipped to handle. Elemental attacks are subdivided into poison, disease, freezing, burning, acid, and electricity. Any elemental attacks not listed here should be categorized to the closest matching category. Undead who might be particularly vulnerable to light, for example, would be characterized under burning.

Elemental attacks could be performed in mundane ways, such as throwing a bottle of acid, coating a blade with poison, or using a flaming torch to fend off a pack of wolves. In addition, magical weapons might be automatically poisonous, freezing, acidic, or burning. Any use of these attacks in magical or supernatural ways, such as conjuring firebolts or calling down lightning strikes would require special abilities allowing such.

Mental attacks are directed upon an opponent’s mind. Although they might not necessarily have any outward manifestations of damage or trauma, attacks against mental defense can be every bit as effective in turning the tide of a battle as those against force or elemental defenses can be. Magical and optical illusions can trick opponents into wasting attacks or fleeing from far inferior forces. Charm skills can make foes into friends and friends into foes. Successful attacks against mental defense can end battles without a single drop of blood spilled.

Mental attacks usually takes one of two forms, protecting against the ability of the brain to do logical and cognitive processing or protecting against the alterations to the emotional state of the brain. We subdivide them thus, as cognitive and emotional.

Cognitive attacks include the way that the brain processes stimuli from its senses to make logical sense of what is going on around a character or monster as well as to make logical decisions based on that stimuli. Magical and optical illusions, auditory illusions, feeblemind, blindness or deafness caused by magic (as opposed to force damage), hold spells, and domination are all examples of mental attacks.

Cognitive attacks could be of mundane means, especially when it comes to sleight-of-hand illusions, natural camouflage, deafening loud noises, or using mud or other pungent smells to disguise one's scent. Many of these attacks, however, require arcane or supernatural abilities.

Emotional attacks also include the way in which the brain processes stimuli, but this usually isn’t in a way to make a logical decision based on those stimuli. Instead of making a logical reaction of fleeing from a superior foe, a mother might choose to stay and fight to protect her young that wouldn’t otherwise survive or be able to flee quickly enough without her presence, even though she might also die in the process. Happiness, sadness, fear, bravery, anger, trust, and mistrust fit into this category.

Personal attacks are harder to categorize, but they have to do with violating against a person’s sense of self or their personal space. Often the easiest way of thinking of what this is is by thinking of what it isn’t… a defense against physical harm or a defense against mental manipulation. Polymorphing, pickpocketing, slow, weaken, and pretty much anything that harms adversely affects an opponent without causing physical or mental damage would be personal attacks.

In the case of an attack that affects multiple attack types, like a flaming longsword that would do both fire and slashing, or a poison bite, that does both poison and piercing, the attackers and defenders roll each attack type individually, as if they were separate attacks. The flaming sword, for example, might do three dice of slashing and three dice of fire. The defender might defend with five dice against slashing and three dice against fire.

On the other hand, some attacks might require one to be successful before the others to have any effect. This commonly happens with poison, where a totally unsuccessful snakebite would never require a character to actually make any sort of defense roll against poison.