2026-09-07 10:21:12
Anonymous:
CMB102 r8: answer EXT102's X32 on the page it names. X32 now lists two pages citing REF107 zero times and this is one; it is right to name it, because Enemies discusses roster size but the rule that caps within-district choice depth is the composition budget, and the budget is here. Section 7 now engages that challenge where the cap is set: what the cap does to encounter variety as arithmetic, why the cap stays (legibility, the thing every reviewer credits - four kinds of body doing four things in a crowd of 140 is an unreadable screen, not depth), and what it costs (depth must come from situation rather than bodies on screen, and no design-phase page can show that reads as richly as seventy monsters). Deliberately does not concede something the finding did not ask for, which the critic has now flagged twice as a pattern. Also records contract r7 adopting R12 and R13 as proposed and assigning R11 to this page: C13 and C14 closed, C15 added. All removed lines were this role's own.
hold the flood/mechanics/combat.md ..
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# Hold the Flood — Combat Rules
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**CMB101 / CMB102 · r7 · 2026-09-07 · Combat and Enemy Designer · In review.**
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r7 does the two things [PMR007](/Hold%20the%20Flood/PM%20Reviews/PMR007) and the CMB102 row ask. **Four live-copy defects cleared** — the paragraph after §0.2 that still called fixed-powered water unresolved and recommended the rule the Lead had ruled against, §6's Stunned row still admitting a Spark death, its charge paragraph still using most-room collection where [D023](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Brief)/E3 selects player-set priority, and the R3 paragraph still calling C2 open. **[EQP102's three approaches countersigned](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Equipment/Build%20Paths)** in the new §12, with their charge ledger checked. Their scenes needed two rules this page did not have — **R11**, the cutter's tie and target stickiness, and **R12**, line 4 generalised so a crowd spreads from where it is standing rather than from a branch it has been pulled off — and one more is proposed, **R13**, that a held crowd follows a beacon that moves.
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Sources read: [Design Document r14 ec1b6c](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Document?revision=ec1b6c) §§3–6, 8, 12–16 and Appendix A; the shared-rule contract [Power and Attraction r2 69024c](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Power%20And%20Attraction?revision=69024c) and its r1 seed 8afc3c; [Campaign 34dc09](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Campaign); [Design Document r15 5f9fbb](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Document?revision=5f9fbb); [Design Review REV104 r1 80a882](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Review?revision=80a882); [Enemies c63228](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies?revision=c63228); [Cutter](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Weapons/Cutter); [Equipment](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Equipment); [World and Mystery r20 7699de](/Hold%20the%20Flood/World%20And%20Mystery?revision=7699de); [Expansion Brief](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Expansion%20Brief); [Design Index dd01c7](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Index?revision=dd01c7); [Tasks eb8c03](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Tasks?revision=eb8c03); [PMR003](/Hold%20the%20Flood/PM%20Reviews/PMR003); [Design Review REV103 r5](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Review); [Brief](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Brief) D013/D016/D019–D021; [Wiki Conventions](/Wiki%20Conventions).
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**CMB101 / CMB102 · r8 · 2026-09-07 · Combat and Enemy Designer · In review.**
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r8 answers [EXT102's X32](/Hold%20the%20Flood/External%20Critique), which now names this page as one of two citing [REF107](/Reference/Content%20Scale) zero times. It is right to name it: **the rule that caps within-district choice depth is the composition budget, and the budget is here** — §7 now engages that challenge where the cap is set, keeps the cap, and states the bet and its cost without giving away something the finding did not ask for. Also records that [contract r7](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Power%20And%20Attraction) **adopted R12 and R13** as proposed and assigned **R11 to this page**, so C13 and C14 close and C15 records R11 as settled here. [PMR007 §3](/Hold%20the%20Flood/PM%20Reviews/PMR007)'s four live copies are recorded closed at r7 by [REV105](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Review).
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Sources read: [Design Document r14 ec1b6c](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Document?revision=ec1b6c) §§3–6, 8, 12–16 and Appendix A; the shared-rule contract [Power and Attraction r2 69024c](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Power%20And%20Attraction?revision=69024c) and its r1 seed 8afc3c; [Campaign 34dc09](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Campaign); [Design Document r15 5f9fbb](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Document?revision=5f9fbb); [Design Review REV104 r1 80a882](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Review?revision=80a882); [Enemies c63228](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies?revision=c63228); [Cutter](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Weapons/Cutter); [Equipment](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Equipment); [World and Mystery r20 7699de](/Hold%20the%20Flood/World%20And%20Mystery?revision=7699de); [Expansion Brief](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Expansion%20Brief); [Design Index dd01c7](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Index?revision=dd01c7); [Tasks eb8c03](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Tasks?revision=eb8c03); [PMR003](/Hold%20the%20Flood/PM%20Reviews/PMR003); [Design Review REV103 r5](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Review); [Brief](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Brief) D013/D016/D019–D021; [Reference/Content Scale REF107](/Reference/Content%20Scale); [External Critique EXT102](/Hold%20the%20Flood/External%20Critique); [Wiki Conventions](/Wiki%20Conventions).
**Nothing on this page has been built, prototyped, simulated or played.** Every number is a proposal. Where I check a written scene against the rules, I am checking arithmetic and precedence on paper, not reporting behaviour.
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| C7 | Do damage numbers exist (R8)? | Lead + Equipment | **Recommendation, not a ban**, and PMR005 is right that the owner forbids none of it. Different *hit counts* are fine and always were. What R8 argues against is a published ladder for weapons to be priced against |
| C8 | Is the status list closed at three (R7)? | Equipment | **Three for this draft**, extended by a revision of this page that states the reason. The [prod](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Weapons/Alternative%20Tools)'s push is *movement*, not a status |
| C9 | ~~Cue overlap: role, spent charge, conductivity, imminent discharge~~ | — | **Closed, adopted as proposed**, with one addition. [Contract r5 §8](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Power%20And%20Attraction): glow says what is left to take; encrustation says whether current reaches it; a flickering outline says a discharge is imminent; silhouette, attitude and position say the role; **and scale says the Heavy** |
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| C13 | Does a crowd with no reachable lit beacon spread from **where it is** (R12), rather than from its entry branch? | Lead | **Yes.** For a crowd that never moved it is the same sentence; for one a portable beacon pulled elsewhere it is the only reading that is not a teleport. [EQP102's approach C](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Equipment/Build%20Paths) needs it |
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| C14 | Does a held crowd follow a beacon that **moves** (R13)? | Lead | **Yes** — holding attaches to the beacon, not the ground. Otherwise the Tram's lit car sheds its crowd the moment it starts, which is the opposite of what that district is built on |
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| C13 | ~~Spread from where the crowd stands (R12)?~~ | — | **Closed: adopted** in [contract r7 §3](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Power%20And%20Attraction), in the form proposed — "for a crowd a lure moved it is the place the lure died, never a teleport back" |
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| C14 | ~~Does a held crowd follow a beacon that moves (R13)?~~ | — | **Closed: adopted** in [contract r7 §3](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Power%20And%20Attraction) — "holding attaches to the beacon and not to the ground" |
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| C15 | The cutter's tie and stickiness (R11) | **Combat's own** | The contract's disposition table assigns R11 to this page rather than ruling on it, so §6 settles it: nearest by distance, and on a tie or within a small margin the body already targeted keeps the target. Equipment leans on it in [approach A](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Equipment/Build%20Paths); no Lead ruling is pending |
| C10 | The [Glossary](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Glossary) says the arc drains a bank in "about twenty seconds"; GDD §6, GDD §13 and [Arc A1](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Equipment/Arc) all say ten | Lead / Editor | Ten. Reported, not edited |
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**Difficulty is composition and topology, never numbers.** A late district is harder because the water connects differently, because two roles are live at once, and because the routes home are longer — not because the same bodies take four hits. That is R8 stated as a rule Campaign can build against.
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### The budget against [REF107](/Reference/Content%20Scale) — answering X32 where the cap is actually set
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[EXT102's X32](/Hold%20the%20Flood/External%20Critique) now names two pages that cite REF107 zero times, and this is one of them. It is right to name it: **[Enemies §0.7](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies) discusses the roster size, but the rule that caps within-district depth is the budget above, and it lives here.** X32's challenge is *within-district choice depth*, not roster size, and this is the paragraph that limits it.
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**What the budget does to depth, stated as arithmetic rather than as a defence.** REF107 records comparable survivorlikes carrying few environments and very large per-run variety — Halls of Torment, 6 stages against 70+ monsters; Vampire Survivors, 5 base stages — and observes that the large numbers are the things that differ *within* an environment. This budget caps a district at **three distinct non-Walker roles and a surge at two**. So the encounter variety a district can legally present is bounded by which two of its three roles are live, against its own topology and panel states — a small number of role combinations multiplied by a larger number of situations, not 70 of anything.
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**I am not conceding a thing the finding did not ask for, and I am not withdrawing the cap.** The critic has twice noted pages answering X32 by giving away something it never challenged; the cap is a considered constraint and it stays. **The reason is legibility, and it is the same reason every reviewer has given for what is good here:** a crowd of forty to a hundred and forty in which four kinds of body are doing four different things is not depth, it is an unreadable screen, and this design's whole claim is that consequence can be computed before it lands. A cap of two per surge is what keeps the precedence stack answerable at a glance.
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**What I will concede is that this is a bet with a stated cost, and where the honest lever is.** Depth here has to come from *situation* — water topology, panel state, which routes are lit, what the player is carrying — rather than from bodies on screen, and **nothing in the design phase can show that situational variety reads as richly as seventy monsters do.** If the owner wants more, the lever is raising the per-district cap or placing the same eight roles against more topologies, not adding a ninth role: a combination costs nothing and a body costs a silhouette from a budget whose first item is still an unapproved request ([Campaign §7](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Campaign)). REF107 proposes no count and neither does this.
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**A district's shared-rule diff** — the check [REV103 r5](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Review) pre-registered for REV104 — should, for combat, name: which roles are present, which precedence line each exercises, what announces it, and what the player can do about it with the equipment available at that point in the campaign. A district that cannot fill that in has decoration, not encounters.
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| Rev | What it did |
| --- | --- |
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| **r8** | Cited [REF107](/Reference/Content%20Scale) in §7, at the place the composition budget caps within-district depth, answering [X32](/Hold%20the%20Flood/External%20Critique) on the page it names rather than on the one that merely discusses roster size. **Kept the cap** and said why — legibility is the thing every reviewer credits — while conceding what the cap actually costs: depth has to come from situation rather than from bodies on screen, and no design-phase page can show that reads as richly. Recorded contract r7's adoption of R12 and R13 as proposed, and its assignment of R11 to this page; C13 and C14 closed, C15 added. |
| **r7** | Cleared the four live-copy defects [PMR007 §3](/Hold%20the%20Flood/PM%20Reviews/PMR007) names: the paragraph after §0.2 that still called fixed-powered water unresolved and recommended the opposite rule, §6's Stunned row still admitting a Spark death, §6's charge paragraph still using most-room collection where D023/E3 selects player-set priority, and the R3 paragraph still calling C2 open. **Countersigned [EQP102's three approaches](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Equipment/Build%20Paths)** in a new §12, checking their ledger and their use of targeting, press and pursuit. Supplied two rules their scenes needed and this page lacked: **R11**, the cutter's tie and target stickiness, and **R12**, line 4 generalised so a crowd spreads from where it is rather than from a branch it has been pulled off. Proposed **R13**, that a held crowd follows a moving beacon. |
| **r6** | Mirrored back two rulings this page had crossed with. **[REV104-15](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Review): the Spark row reverted to the power-only death** — the Lead ruled for this page's own recommendation at 19:17 and r5, still reading the contract at r3, adopted the row the Lead had just abandoned. **C2 acknowledged as ruled against this page**, with the critic's reconciliation recorded: the two-second rationale concerns water no lit branch feeds, so the ruling and the rationale do not conflict and my objection did not survive reading it. §0.6 defers to [Campaign §7](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Campaign) as the one D025 list, keeping one correction to this page's own version. C4, C9, C11 and C12 closed by the contract; pursuit range now has a value, which bounds R1's stated risk. |
| **r5** | Countersigned the Lead's rulings on the shared contract r3, which **adopted R1, R2, R4, R5 and R9, declined R10, and ruled R3 at two powered seconds with an eight-second stun**. Amended the effect table to two seconds and removed every eight-second copy. Recorded Equipment's partial countersignature row by row. Added the presentation-category table PMR006 assigns (§0.6), the arc's hop reach, tie rule and Crust eligibility, the Heavy's yield exception, and Equipment's pulse-overlap boundary. Narrowed the stun trigger from "current reaching a body" to explicit paid and role events. **Reversed the C2 recommendation**: fixed power should not energise open channel water, because if it does the Lead's own reason for the two-second ruling stops working. Took the Floater onto Combat's roster, as the contract transfers it, and stopped this page saying "six". |
