How Combat Works
Initiative, HP, defeat with consequences, and enemies that stay hurt: what happens when a SagaBound scene turns into a fight.
Updated July 2, 2026
When a scene turns violent, SagaBound switches into structured combat. Enemies and allies act on their own turns, damage lands against real HP, and in almost every world, falling to 0 HP defeats your character without ending your story.
Turn order
Combat runs on initiative: you act, and everyone else in the fight takes their own turn in response. Enemies press their advantage and allies pull their weight. The fight's state carries from turn to turn, so a foe you badly wound stays wounded instead of narrating back to full strength.
Your options
You are not locked into attacking. Describe whatever your character would plausibly try: fight, take cover, intimidate, grab the ledger and run. The narrator resolves it against the situation, your gear, and your character's capabilities, with your Reality Grounding setting deciding how much slack a bold move gets.
Defeat has stakes, not game-overs
Hitting 0 HP defeats you, and defeat has consequences: captured, robbed, left for dead, rescued at a price. The story absorbs the loss and keeps moving, which keeps fights tense without making every mistake fatal. Worlds can opt into permadeath; everywhere else, defeat is a setback rather than an ending.