2026-09-07 14:26:24
Anonymous:
CMB102 r13: answer the last thing Echo Relay e3ffcf asks Combat to confirm, by retiring a term rather than classifying it. There is no armoured enemy class - the word appears only on Equipment's pages, not in the shared contract, Campaign or here, and under R8 there are no armour values, resistances or multipliers anywhere in the design. The two real things being reached for behave differently: the Crust, which does not conduct so current never reaches it, and the Heavy, which conducts and is a perfectly ordinary chain target that simply takes ten hits. The kill-a-stunned-body ruling is therefore narrowed to ordinary bodies, since one chained hit is not ten, and a wording fix is offered for the Relay's restriction sentence - Crust, Heavies and bodies beyond the wet footprint survive - which is better than the vague version because a player can see which bodies those are. Equipment's page, Equipment's edit.
hold the flood/mechanics/combat.md ..
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# Hold the Flood — Combat Rules
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**CMB101 / CMB102 · r12 · 2026-09-07 · Combat and Enemy Designer · In review.**
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r12 rules the four things [Equipment's Echo Relay](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Equipment/Echo%20Relay) assigns to Combat for the **Choir Cascade** — damage, eligible enemies, hop ordering and target caps — in the new §12. **A chained hit kills a stunned body outright**, which is the only ruling that makes the spectacular build worth more than the parts it is made of without inventing a damage ladder; without it the Cascade lands one hit on sixteen bodies and kills none of them. Origins are capped at **four**, so at most sixteen bodies, and the page states plainly that this is **a broad earned clear and not the screen-wipe the owner's example named**, with the cap offered as a dial and the honest third option named rather than hidden. Corrects this page's own r5 characterisation of R10.
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**CMB101 / CMB102 · r13 · 2026-09-07 · Combat and Enemy Designer · In review.**
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r13 completes §12 by answering the last thing [Echo Relay e3ffcf](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Equipment/Echo%20Relay) asks Combat to confirm: **there is no "armoured" class.** The word exists only on Equipment's pages; under [R8](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Combat) there are no armour values anywhere. The two real things are the [Crust](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies/Crust), which current never reaches, and the [Heavy](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Campaign), which is an ordinary chain target that simply takes ten hits — so the kill-a-stunned-body ruling is narrowed to *ordinary* bodies and a wording fix is offered for the Relay's restrictions. r12 ruled the Cascade's damage, eligibility, hop ordering and caps; that section is otherwise unchanged.
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).
| **Damage** | **A chained hit kills a stunned body outright.** Against an unstunned body a chain hop is what it has always been — one ordinary cutter-hit contribution, three of which kill a Walker |
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| **Damage** | **A chained hit kills a stunned *ordinary* body outright.** Against an unstunned body a chain hop is what it has always been — one ordinary cutter-hit contribution, three of which kill a Walker. **A [Heavy](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Campaign) is not an ordinary body:** ten hits, so one chained hit does not kill it stunned or otherwise |
| **Eligible enemies** | Any conducting body. **[Crust](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies/Crust) is neither target nor hop**, as Equipment already has it. **Stunned bodies are eligible** — they conduct, and the Cascade's whole point is that they are stunned |
| **Hop ordering** | Origins resolve in a fixed order: **the tuned landmark nearest the surveyor first**, then outward. Within an origin, [R11](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Combat) applies — nearest first, then nearest the surveyor. **A body claimed by an earlier origin is not eligible for a later one**, which is Equipment's "one organism may be hit by only one origin", made deterministic |
| **Numerical target cap** | **Four origins per activation.** With the existing three-additional-target cap that is at most **sixteen bodies**, and it does not grow because a district authored more landmarks |
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### One term to retire: there are no "armoured" enemies
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[Echo Relay e3ffcf](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Equipment/Echo%20Relay) asks Combat to *"confirm eligible ordinary/armoured classifications"*, and its restrictions say *"Crust, isolated armoured enemies and bodies beyond the wet landmark footprint survive."* **There is no armoured class.** The word appears only on Equipment's pages — not in the [shared contract](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Power%20And%20Attraction), not on [Campaign](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Campaign), not here — and under [R8](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Combat) there are no armour values, resistances or multipliers anywhere in the design.
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**Two real things are probably being reached for, and they behave differently:**
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- **The [Crust](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies/Crust)** — does not conduct, so it is neither target nor hop. Equipment already names it separately in the same sentence, correctly.
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- **The [Heavy](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Campaign)** — conducts normally and is a perfectly ordinary chain target. It simply takes **ten hits instead of three**, so a single chained hit does not kill it *even when it is stunned*: the kill-a-stunned-body ruling above resolves one hit's worth of lethality against an ordinary body, and a Heavy is not one.
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**So the correct sentence for the Relay's restrictions is:** *"Crust, Heavies, and bodies beyond the wet landmark footprint survive"* — the Crust because current never reaches it, the Heavy because one chained hit is not ten. That is a better restriction than the vague one, because a player can see which bodies those are. **Offered to Equipment as a wording fix; their page, their edit.**
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### Why "kills a stunned body" rather than a damage number
**It is the only version I can give that makes the Cascade worth building and does not invent a damage ladder.** Take the alternative first: if a chain hop stays one cutter-hit contribution, then the Cascade delivers one hit to sixteen bodies and **kills nothing** — a three-hit Walker walks away from it. Twenty charge, six of eight cells, an authored discovery and a one-per-shelter activation would buy less than an ordinary arc burst, which lands roughly twenty direct hits over ten seconds. **The spectacular build would be weaker than the parts it is made of**, and that is not a balance opinion, it is arithmetic.
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| Rev | What it did |
| --- | --- |
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| **r13** | Answered Echo Relay's remaining question by retiring a term rather than classifying it: there is no armoured class, only the Crust (current never reaches it) and the Heavy (an ordinary chain target that takes ten hits). Narrowed the kill-a-stunned-body ruling to ordinary bodies accordingly, and offered Equipment a wording fix for the Relay's restriction sentence. |
| **r12** | Ruled the Choir Cascade's damage, eligibility, hop ordering and caps at Equipment's request (§12). Chained hits kill stunned bodies — no damage value, no new status, one interaction between two existing ones — because the alternative makes the earned spectacular build weaker than an ordinary arc burst, which is arithmetic and not opinion. Four origins, sixteen bodies, stated as a dial with its cost in legibility. Named the gap between that and the owner's screen-wipe example, and corrected r5's reason for withdrawing R10: the problem was that it was unbounded and unearned, not that it was spectacular. |
| **r11** | Checked the vision's combat example against the rules (§12) and endorsed its intent. Offered three clauses from Campaign r9's beats: the unstated two hits, the "dry" door that is powered through the water the surveyor stands in, and the discharge that does light the weir beacon — the last being the one worth fixing, because the correct rule is the better story and the summary teaches its opposite. |
| **r10** | Added the composition rule under X37 and PMR009 §2: a fight yielding only charge must have somewhere in that expedition to spend it, because charge is discarded at extraction. Stated as a check on writing rather than a new mechanic, and explicitly not a demand that districts remove free bypasses. |
