Defending Yourself

Defending yourself is as important as attacking in any combat between entities with a reasonable level of sanity. Therefore, it is highly advantageous to take multiple actions in combat, such that characters can both attack and defend. Sometimes, with additional opponents, even more attacks and defenses are necessary. Degrees acquired while defending negate degrees of your opponent's attack on a one-to-one basis. In other words, if someone hits you for 3 degrees of damage, and you defend versus 1 degree of damage, you take 2 degrees of damage.

The two basic ways to defend yourself (other than, say, running away or something) are dodging and parrying. Dodging is done with the Dodging Skill, and it has the advantage of negating the effects of every attack performed against you during the turn you dodge. Hence, if you roll 3 degrees while dodging and 16 opponents are all simultaneously attacking you, you can subtract 3 degrees from every individual attack, thus simulating the common tendency in stories for skilled individuals to competently fend off hordes of simultaneous attackers. Parrying, which is done (logically enough) with the Parrying Skill, only works versus a single opponent (unless, of course, you should elect to parry multiple times in one turn). The advantage of parrying is that since you need a tool to do it, the tool can impart its bonus to your defense. Therefore, if you have a +1 weapon, you can add 1 to your parrying skill before you roll to defend yourself.

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