Combat
Combat in the world of Terres Rising may seem complicated at first, but after a little bit of practice, it is actually fairly easy. All you have do is keep mental track of a few numbers, and understand that any action you take requires you to pause a full second before taking an additional action.
CALL BACKS
The first principal to remember with all combat is responding with callbacks. When any effect strikes you, you must respond to the attacker. This can range from a simple spoken subtle, "Got it", to some kind of role-playing cry of pain like a scream or growl. Any attacker must pause for one second between attacks, to give you the opportunity to acknowledge the effect, with a callback. Additionally, you should try to role-play the results of being affected by an attack's effect whenever possible. If you're being hit with a powerful strike, you should react differently than if you were hit with a regular blow, or even a bolt of lightning. Finally, if you are protected from an attack due to an ability or some other type protection, you must call back the protective effect. If you are using Dodge, Parry, or if you are immune to certain effect, you should always state it loud and clearly, so the attacker will know.
MELEE COMBAT
Let's start from the beginning, and build a hypothetical character. Let's use a Krosan fighter, with normal strength, who wears 5 points of chain mail armor. You decide that the starting skills that you want to learn are: Sword, two-handed weapon style, Fatal Strike, and Power Strike.
Now you are ready to go off and play! So, you wander off from the safety of your cabin, and soon encounter a lone savage cannibal (an NPC played by a Staff member) coming towards you. As a Krosan, you would never fear a lone cannibal. You waste no time, and rush the cannibal, striking it from the side before it gets a chance to attack you. Do not swing hard, and no baseball bat or hockey stick style swings. The swing from your phys rep is just enough to touch and make contact, and allow the other player to feel it. Since you didn't use any special abilities, you do not need to call any damage, or make any call, as you attack. The NPC gives you a "callback" by groaning and quickly says, "Got it!", to acknowledge the hit. The NPC mentally subtracts one point of damage from his total body points. As soon as he acknowledges the hit, you take another swing. Before you hit the cannibal, he is able to block it, and as he is fighting with two weapons, he blocks your sword with one hand, and hits you with the other. You mentally deduct 1 point from the 5 points of armor you are wearing. You step back as you acknowledge his blow, and you callback, "Got it!", and block another shot quickly before swinging up and hitting his shoulder, just as he lands another blow with his left hand. You are now left with only three armor points, but the cannibal who has no armor on, can't last much longer. So, you land one last blow, and using 1 AP, do a Power Strike, and now, after you've connected, you call, "4!" The NPC did the math in his head, and he was out of BP, so the cannibal falls. You have not been hurt, but your armor is now worth only three points of protection.
Now that the NPC is unconscious and prone, you touch your weapon to his torso, and say, "I deliver you to Death 1, I deliver you to Death 2, I deliver you to Death 3." Remember, a killing blow can be disrupted by someone knocking your weapon out of the way. But now that he's dead, the NPC will hand you his essence tag(s), which you put in your pouch, to save for the end of the event, which you will give to Staff, and which will be converted into XP. If you move on before collecting the essence tag, you have ten seconds to retrieve the tag before the essence is lost.
SPELL COMBAT
Spell casting is a little more complex. In order to cast a spell, you must have a spell learned. You use ability points to represent the effort it takes to draw upon and focus the magical energy of the world. With one ability point, the beginning mage can channel two Magic Points (MP). In order to cast a spell, one must use 1 MP per two levels of the spell. For example, a 1st level spell requires 1 MP to cast, which means you have used 1 MP, but you still have 1 MP left over to use for another spell. A 7th level spell requires 4 MP to cast, which means you have converted 2 AP.
This time, you are a human caster, and you and your party are in a fight with a group of aggressive little creatures and you want to attack one. You have learned "Pin," a second level spell, and want to use it on one of the creatures. You take one of your spell packets and call out the verbal incant for the spell, "I pin you to the ground!" After you have completed the verbal incant, you throw the packet at your target. If the packet hits your target, you can call out the effect, "Pin," and you subtract one Magic Point. You must wait a full second for your target to acknowledge the spell, before casting another spell at that target. If your packet missed the target, you lost one Magic Point. Keep track of all the spells you cast, and subtract the proper number of ability points from your ability point pool.
Some spells have lasting effects, and are not instantaneous. These spell effects stay with a person until they are used. For example, if you have learned "Weapon Shield" under the Protective List, you need to touch the recipient of the spell and state the incant "I create a force to shield me from harm.", and then subtract two Ability Points from your pool, since Weapon Shield is a 3rd level spell. You will have 1 Magic Point leftover. (Some spells, known as "line of voice" spells, may not even require the throwing of a packet.)