Combat in Threshold — Resolution and Consequence
In the previous post, I outlined how combat is structured in Threshold.
Initiative, turn flow, positioning, and player agency define how a fight unfolds at the table.
This post answers the next question:
What actually happens when actions resolve?
How Games Resolve Combat
Different systems handle this in very different ways, and those differences shape the entire feel of combat at the table.
Some games separate resolution into multiple steps. You roll to see if you hit, then roll again to see how much damage you deal. D&D and Pathfinder follow this model. It creates clarity—each roll has one job—but it also introduces variance on top of variance and adds procedural steps. I've watched combat turns stretch longer than the moments they represent, especially when a single attack requires three or four dice interactions.
Other systems collapse resolution into a single roll. Dice pools like those in World of Darkness or Blades in the Dark count successes and translate them directly into outcomes. This produces more consistent results and speeds up play. The tradeoff is that you lose some of the dramatic variance that comes from rolling multiple times—sometimes that's good, sometimes it's not.
There are also systems that introduce multiple axes of outcome simultaneously. Genesys, for example, produces success/failure on one axis and advantage/threat on another, allowing a roll to succeed while introducing complications or fail while creating opportunities. This expands the narrative space significantly, but it increases interpretation load. Every roll requires the table to parse what the combination of symbols means, which can slow decision-making.
I tested variations of all three approaches during early playtests.
Why Single-Roll Resolution
I wanted faster resolution without sacrificing meaningful outcomes.
In many two-roll systems—attack then damage—combat felt like it took forever. Each exchange required multiple resolution steps, multiple die rolls, multiple calculations. The procedural weight accumulated quickly, especially in fights with multiple combatants.
Some systems solve this by removing the attack roll entirely. MCDM's system does this—you always hit, you just roll for effect. That didn't feel right for Threshold. This isn't heroic fantasy where skilled warriors never miss. Characters are grounded, capable, but mortal. Missing should be possible. The question of whether you connect matters as much as how hard you hit.
Other systems remove the damage roll instead, folding the effect directly into the attack outcome. Systems like Into the Odd, Cairn, and their descendants use automatic damage—if you hit, your weapon deals its listed damage, no additional roll. Games like 13th Age and Mutants & Masterminds tie damage scaling to other factors (escalation dice, power levels) rather than separate damage rolls. These approaches resonated with me: a weapon in and of itself doesn't change how much damage it does—how well you connect with that weapon does.
That led me toward margin-based damage: one roll determines both success and effect. Your successes over the target number become your margin, which adds directly to damage. A solid hit naturally deals more damage than a glancing one, without requiring a second roll to adjudicate it.
This keeps the resolution loop tight: roll, count successes, compare to TN, calculate damage. One decision point, one set of dice, one outcome.
Early playtests confirmed this felt faster without losing tactical clarity. Players could see the quality of their roll translate directly into effect, and combat moved at the pace I wanted—sharp moments rather than prolonged procedures.
The Core Resolution Loop
Every action in combat follows the same structure established in the resolution mechanics post:
Declare intent
Roll dice (stat + skill)
Count successes (5+)
Compare to Target Number
Determine outcome tier
Apply effect
What changes in combat is how those outcomes translate into pressure, damage, and consequences.
Attacking
When a character attacks, they roll against the target's Defense TN.
This value is fixed, derived from the target's capabilities rather than rolled each time. For player characters, Defense TN is based on stats and defenses. For enemies, it's set by their Threat level.
Outcomes determine the result:
Failure (0 successes): The attack misses or is deflected. No effect.
Partial Success (1+ successes, below TN): The attack connects but doesn't land cleanly. Deal base weapon damage only, no margin bonus.
Success (successes ≥ TN): Clean hit. Deal base weapon damage + margin of success.
Critical Success (TN exceeded by 2+): Exceptional strike. Deal base weapon damage + margin, plus additional effects depending on the situation—knock an enemy back, disarm them, create an advantage.
Margin is calculated as successes above the TN. If you need 3 successes to hit and you roll 5, your margin is 2. That margin adds directly to your weapon's base damage.
This creates a direct relationship between roll quality and effect, without requiring a second damage roll. A great attack roll produces great results. A barely-successful attack still lands, but it doesn't hit as hard.
A note on partial success: This definition—any successes below TN—is currently under review through playtesting. If the frequency or impact doesn't achieve my design goals, I may shift to a TN-1 model where partial success only triggers when you fall exactly one success short. That would make partials rarer but more predictable.
Defending
When a character is attacked, they roll to defend.
Defense is always player-facing. The GM doesn't roll for enemy attacks—players roll to avoid them. Defense doesn't cost an action or resource. It's always available.
Instead of a binary "do you get hit," players choose how they defend based on their character and the situation.
The four defensive approaches came directly from combat experience. In most physical confrontations, these are your actual options: dodge the attack, parry it, block it, or allow it to hit you and endure it.
Dodge — Get out of the way entirely. Roll Agility + relevant skill.
Parry — Deflect or redirect the attack. Roll Might or Agility + relevant skill, defender's choice.
Block — Meet the attack with a shield or barrier. Roll Might + relevant skill. Requires a shield.
Tank — Don't avoid it—absorb it. Roll Vitality + Armor to reduce damage.
Players narrate how their character responds, and that narration determines which approach they're using. The choice is fiction-forward: a veteran soldier and a nimble duelist might both defend against the same attack, but they'll do it very differently.
Outcomes determine how much of the attack lands:
Failure (0 successes): Full damage, plus a consequence tied to your defensive approach. A failed Dodge leaves you badly repositioned. A failed Parry means you're grappled. A failed Block staggers you. A failed Tank leaves you prone.
Partial Success (1+ successes, below TN): The attack hits, but you got your guard up. Damage is reduced by the number of successes you rolled. This is where partial success becomes tactically important—even a desperate defense with one or two successes can mean the difference between taking a serious wound and walking away bruised.
Success (successes ≥ TN): You negate the attack entirely.
Critical Success (TN exceeded by 2+): You not only negate the attack, you gain an advantage. The specific advantage depends on your approach. A critical Dodge gives you +1 die on your next attack. A critical Parry creates a free counter-attack opportunity. A critical Block knocks the attacker prone. A critical Tank can frighten the attacker if your Presence exceeds their Willpower.
This creates a dynamic exchange where both attack and defense rolls matter. Combat isn't just "did the attack land?"—it's "how well did you attack, and how well did they respond?"
The four approaches also create meaningful differentiation without locking characters into rigid builds. Two characters with similar capabilities can feel very different based on how they choose to defend, and those choices carry real consequences when things go wrong.
This system also makes multi-attacker scenarios more dynamic. A character engaged with three enemies can defend against all three attacks in the same round—dodging one, blocking another, parrying a third—each defense a separate choice with separate consequences.
Making defense free was partly about this cinematic quality. "The attack misses" is a mechanical outcome, but "I duck under the first blade, catch the second on my shield, and redirect the third with my sword" is a moment. The all-player-roll model combined with free defense lets players stay active and engaged even when they're being swarmed, rather than passively watching the GM roll multiple attacks and announcing the results.
This also reinforces the grounded protagonist design. You're not avoiding attacks because you have superhuman reflexes—you're making real tactical choices about how to handle each threat as it comes, and those choices matter when things go wrong.
Damage and Mitigation
Damage is calculated as:
Base Weapon Damage + Margin − Armor DR
Armor reduces damage after the outcome is determined, not before.
This was a deliberate choice. Subtracting DR from the final damage number preserves the full distribution of attack outcomes while still making armor meaningfully relevant.
If armor raised defense TN instead, it would conflate two distinct fictional things: how hard you are to hit versus how well you're protected when hit. A knight in plate armor isn't harder to land a blow on—the blow lands, the armor absorbs it. TN modification collapses that distinction.
It also creates a secondary problem: it makes lightly-armored but highly-skilled defenders and heavily-armored but slow defenders feel mechanically identical. That undercuts the entire defense approach system. I want a nimble duelist who dodges and a heavily-armored knight who tanks to feel fundamentally different, and armor-as-TN-modifier erases that difference.
If armor reduced success count before calculating damage, it would interact with the margin formula in ways that are harder to predict. Stripping successes before damage calculation means the formula doesn't run cleanly, and it creates weird edge cases where a strong hit gets reduced to a weak hit rather than a strong hit that armor absorbed.
Post-calculation flat DR keeps attack resolution clean and the armor effect legible: the hit happened, here's how bad it was, here's what your armor stopped.
The risk with flat DR is that it creates a breakeven problem at low damage values. If base weapon damage plus margin routinely sits close to DR values, armor becomes effectively binary—either it negates the hit entirely or it barely matters. That's the damage scaling calibration gap I've flagged elsewhere. I need to verify that weapon output stays consistently above armor DR for meaningful hits, while still allowing DR to matter.
The second concern is that flat DR advantages high-single-hit builds over high-frequency-low-damage builds disproportionately. A character landing one big strike per turn bypasses more armor than a character landing multiple small strikes. That's not inherently wrong—it creates real build diversity—but it's something I'm watching in playtesting to make sure it doesn't become oppressive.
Magical damage bypasses armor entirely. This is both thematic and mechanical. Armor protects against physical force, not magical energy. This also gives magic a distinct tactical role in combat without requiring separate resistance systems.
Damage Types and Tags
Not all damage is the same, but I didn't want to track multiple damage types with separate resistance rules.
In Threshold, damage is divided into two broad categories: Physical and Magical.
This distinction matters primarily for interaction with armor and defenses. Physical damage is reduced by armor DR. Magical damage bypasses it.
Beyond that, most differentiation comes from tags.
Tags describe how damage is delivered and what effects it can produce. A weapon or ability might carry tags like Blunt, Penetrating, or Fire, which determine what kinds of conditions or secondary effects can occur.
These tags aren't separate systems—they're part of how outcomes translate into consequences. Rather than tracking multiple damage types with separate math, the system uses tags to define how damage behaves in specific situations.
Tags are applied based on how the attack is narrated—the same weapon used differently can invoke different tags and effects. A sword thrust through a gap in armor might use the Penetrating tag, while a heavy swing with the same blade might use a different tag entirely.
The full structure of tags and how they interact with techniques and abilities will be expanded in the techniques post.
Stress and Wounds
Damage is applied to Stress first—a buffer representing fatigue, near-misses, and accumulated pressure.
Stress capacity is Vitality × 5. At Tier 1 (Vitality 2), that's around 10 Stress. At Tier 4 (Vitality 5), it's around 25 Stress.
More serious consequences are tracked as Wounds.
Wounds occur when:
A single hit exceeds the Wound Threshold (Vitality × 3), bypassing Stress entirely
Stress is fully depleted and damage carries over
Wound capacity is Vitality + 1. At Tier 1, that's 3 Wounds. At Tier 4, it's 6 Wounds.
Each Wound imposes a −1 die penalty to all rolls. This represents genuine physical deterioration—your body is failing, not just tired. Three Wounds at Tier 1 means you're critically impaired, barely functional.
This creates a layered pressure system:
Stress tracks short-term combat pressure. It recovers relatively quickly through rest. Running out of Stress doesn't end you immediately, but it means the next hit is going to hurt.
Wounds track lasting impact. They don't recover quickly. They require medical treatment and time. Accumulating Wounds means you're genuinely injured, and those injuries carry forward into subsequent encounters.
This two-tier system reinforces the grounded protagonist design. Characters don't have massive HP pools that make them untouchable. They have enough Stress to feel capable in a fight, but Wounds accumulate when things go badly, and those Wounds matter.
The Wound Threshold mechanic also means that a single devastating hit can bypass your buffer entirely. A critical strike or a powerful enemy attack can deal a Wound directly, even if your Stress is full. That keeps high-damage threats dangerous throughout a campaign, regardless of how much Stress a character has accumulated.
Strain and Pressure
Strain allows characters to push beyond their limits, but it doesn't modify rolls directly.
Instead, it expands what a character can do within the action economy:
Take additional movement (2 Strain per extra Maneuver)
Interrupt initiative (2 Strain to Seize Initiative, once per encounter)
Fuel abilities and techniques
This keeps probability stable while shifting decision-making under pressure. You're not rolling bigger dice pools by spending Strain—you're gaining tactical options.
Strain also serves as an attrition resource across encounters, which I covered in detail in the Combat Structure post. It doesn't fully reset between fights, which means the cost of previous encounters is visible in the next one.
The full scope of Strain is still being refined through playtesting, particularly how it interacts with techniques. Whether techniques have their own costs, consume Strain, or operate independently will shape how advancement feels in practice.
Conditions
Conditions represent temporary disadvantages or disruptions that emerge from combat outcomes.
They are binary states—you either have the condition or you don't—and most are short-lived, clearing at the end of the affected character's next turn or through specific actions.
Conditions are applied through outcome tiers rather than separate mechanics. A strong hit might impose Slowed. A critical hit might impose Stunned. This keeps them tied to the resolution system rather than existing as a parallel layer.
The base condition list includes:
Bleeding — Take 1 Stress per turn. Requires Medicine check or healing magic to stop.
Blinded — −2 dice to attacks, can't use Perception for sight-based checks.
Burning — Take 2 Stress per turn. Requires a full Action to extinguish or immersion in water.
Deafened — Can't hear. Perception checks relying on sound are impossible, concentration on spells becomes difficult.
Frightened — −1 die to attacks against the source of fear, cannot willingly move closer to the source.
Grappled — Speed reduced to 0, −1 die to physical actions. Requires successful Might or Agility check to escape.
Poisoned — Exists in two severity tiers (Sickened/Poisoned). Causes domain die reduction. Requires Medicine check or rest to clear.
Prone — Strips skill dice from rolls, movement costs an extra Maneuver to stand.
Restrained — Speed reduced to 0, domain die reduction, skill dice stripped. Requires tool use or strength-based escape.
Shocked — Lose Reaction until end of next turn. Auto-clears.
Slowed — Movement costs 2 Maneuvers per zone instead of 1, domain die reduction for physical actions.
Staggered — Lose Action on next turn, keep Maneuver and Reaction. Clears at end of next turn.
Stunned — Lose Action and Maneuver on next turn, keep only Reaction. Clears at end of next turn.
Weakened — Lower condition application threshold by one tier for attacks carrying a specific tag.
Withered — Maximum Stress reduced by tier-based amount. Clears on 3rd Rest or longer.
These conditions interact with weapon tags, damage types, and outcome tiers to create tactical variety without requiring separate subsystems. Most trigger automatically based on margin of success or critical results, keeping resolution fast.
Failure and Consequence
One of the design goals of this system is ensuring that failure still produces meaningful outcomes.
A missed attack does nothing—but failed defenses often carry consequences beyond just damage. That asymmetry is intentional. Attacking is proactive. You swing, you miss, the moment passes. Defending is reactive. You fail to defend, and now you're in a worse position.
Similarly, partial success ensures that actions rarely result in complete stagnation. Even a barely-successful defense reduces incoming damage. Even a glancing attack deals some harm. The system is designed so that every roll contributes to the state of the fight, rather than creating dead air where nothing happens.
This ties back to the broader combat philosophy: fights should resolve quickly, but the outcomes should matter. Dice rolls shouldn't feel like they're spinning wheels—they should create pressure, momentum, and consequence.
What This System Is Doing
At a high level, this approach combines:
Consistency from dice pool success counting—you're not chasing swingy d20 results.
Clarity from structured outcome tiers—you know what each result means without interpretation paralysis.
Pressure from Stress, Wounds, and Strain—combat creates lasting consequences that carry forward.
Together, these create a system where outcomes scale with performance, decisions carry weight, and combat resolves quickly while leaving lasting impact.
What I Worked On
This phase focused on connecting resolution mechanics to combat outcomes.
The challenge wasn't building new systems—it was ensuring that everything interacted cleanly. Attack resolution needed to feed into damage calculation, which needed to interact with armor, which needed to respect the Stress/Wounds split, all while keeping the math simple enough to execute quickly at the table.
I ran dozens of sample combats on paper, testing different damage values against different armor ratings, checking how often Wounds triggered, and watching how quickly Stress depleted under sustained pressure.
What Went Wrong
The biggest issue was calibration.
Damage scaling, Stress pools, and outcome frequency all depend on each other. Small changes in one area create large shifts elsewhere.
If weapon base damage is too low, margin becomes the dominant factor and weapons feel interchangeable. If it's too high, margin doesn't matter and dice pools feel less rewarding. If Stress is too low, characters feel fragile. If it's too high, Wounds never trigger and the pressure system flattens.
These are still being refined through playtesting. The formulas are stable, but the specific numbers need validation against real table conditions.
The other challenge was partial success frequency. The "any successes below TN" definition makes partials common, which was intentional—I wanted failed actions to still produce something. But common partial successes can create a grind if they're not impactful enough. That's why it's flagged for potential revision to a TN-1 model.
What I Changed
Earlier versions relied more on binary outcomes and separate resolution steps.
Attack and damage were separate rolls, which created the procedural weight I was trying to avoid. Defense was passive—enemies rolled to attack, players just took damage or didn't. Conditions were separate status effects with their own tracking systems.
These were replaced with:
Margin-based damage in a single roll, which collapsed resolution into one step without losing granularity.
Unified outcome tiers that apply to attacks, defenses, and skill checks equally, reducing the number of systems players need to learn.
Player-facing defense rolls with distinct approaches, which kept players engaged during enemy turns and created meaningful tactical choices.
Layered health and pressure systems (Stress + Wounds + Strain) that interact to create escalating tension without requiring separate resource pools for every type of consequence.
This reduced complexity while increasing consistency. The system does more with fewer moving parts.
What I'm Working On Next
The next step is expanding on how these resolution mechanics interact with character options:
Techniques and special actions
How weapons differentiate beyond base damage
Magic integration and casting rules
So far, the system defines how actions resolve and what those resolutions produce.
Next, it defines how characters expand those actions into distinct playstyles and tactical approaches.
Questions
Do you prefer single-roll resolution systems, or layered ones with separate attack and damage steps? How does that preference change when you're playing versus running the game?
In systems you've played with player-facing defense, did choosing how to defend feel meaningful, or was there usually one obvious choice?
How often should partial success occur? Should it be common (rewarding any progress) or rare (marking near-success specifically)?
