henlo frens, i am here to hold your hands in these trying times when everything is new and unfamiliar
and for those of you joining us in the future, hopefully whatever you’re about to read is just as relevant now as it was when it was written
A Quick Start Guide to Basic Combat on Bleach Gotei
Without too much of a preamble, combat on Bleach Gotei has historically gone through a lot of variations, and we currently find ourselves using a real-time chat-based dice-rolling solution that relies primarily on a D20, loosely (very loosely) based on other RPG systems you may be familiar with. While we are and will always be a site first and foremost for collaborative storytelling, over a decade and a half of experience has taught us that combat between characters is really difficult to implement in a satisfactory way within the confines of the traditional play-by-post format, but it nevertheless remains a central part of our setting. Our solution, therefore, is to quickly resolve the progression and subsequent outcome of fights via the use of pseudorandom outcomes enabled by our mechanical rules. This keeps us all on our toes because the dice certainly have their own story to tell, but it also means that the outcomes are more often than not reasonable.
The System As Written
In its most basic form, combat on Bleach Gotei happens through a series of checks which are resolved through the rolling of dice, the results of which are modified by statistical representations of character strengths. A comprehensive guide to this system can be found here.
What you need to know is this:
Characters, upon creation, are granted a Reiatsu Class ranging from 1–40, which serves as an indication of their relative power in the setting, where 1 is weakest and 40 is strongest. This number will fluctuate as the character develops (though generally will tend to go up over a long enough timespan), and is used as a basis for many of the dice checks. Skills further modify these checks, and have a series of ranks which indicate increasing proficiency, each rank conferring a larger bonus. Of note is that Skills are divided into Major or Minor as a way to differentiate skills that are used to contest the actions of others and skills that simply have an effect no matter what—typically, Minor Skills don’t affect dice rolls, but may instead simply affect the resulting outcomes thereof. To pay for these skills, characters are awarded Growth Points, or GP, by the Game Master. To serve as fuel for the special abilities attached to skills, every character has access to a limited pool of Reiryoku (you can call it Spirit Power, or SP for short), which by default caps out at 10 and is refreshed at the discretion of the Game Master.
In short, what you’ve got at your disposal is Reiatsu Class, Skills, Reiryoku, and a D20 roll bot in the Discord.
So, how to put it all together?
The Flow of Combat, or I cast DICE
BG treads familiar ground with rolling; generally, the goal is to meet or exceed the target value. Sometimes you’ll find yourself in a situation where, with all the bonuses and base values calculated, a roll can’t succeed, or a roll can’t fail—no matter the value. This is by design: you have reached a point where it would be wholly unreasonable to expect a character not to succeed, or not to fail. As this is a combat-focused guide, that’s where we’ll start.
Combat mostly revolves around the following formulas:
Combat Check = D20 + [Reiatsu Class] + [Relevant Skill Bonus]
Combat Class = 10 + [Reiatsu Class] + [Relevant Skill Bonus]
Typically, every round sees all combatants perform a Combat Check against their target’s Combat Class, and without delving into the esotericism of it too much, try not to think of these rolls as individual attacks in a set time frame but rather as the ebb and flow of combat. Are the combatants keeping an even footing? Are they landing blows? What’s happening here is that by pulling modifying values from relevant skills (typically the character’s favored combat skill, or whichever skill is most applicable in the situation) as well as their class, we are allowing both raw character power and technique play a part in the outcome. In short, what this allows is for attacks to be variably successful while simultaneously having some characters completely and totally outclass others purely on the merits of their baseline power, which is wholly in line with and indeed inspired by the source material.
Pointy End in the Other Guy
The result of a Combat Check is a wound, the severity of which (or lack thereof) is dictated by the outcome of the roll. There are six levels of wounds which each represent increasing levels of harm, and while these wounds have no numerical effect on combat performance, they ultimately dictate when a character is no longer able to fight. Accrued wounds stack, combining for a higher overall level of severity—two wounds of the same level are counted as a single wound one level higher. Be aware that this may chain multiple times if there are already several wounds of varying severity on a character—sometimes suffering a single minor wound can lead to a character reaching an overall wound level of fatal!
When a Combat Roll reaches the target’s Combat Class, it inflicts a major wound, which is what BG considers a ‘full-strength’ wound. Failing to meet the target by 1 or 2 lowers the inflicted wound by one level; failing to meet the target by 3 or 4 lowers the inflicted wound by two levels. Any lower than that, and no wound is inflicted at all.
Here are the wound levels, from least to most severe:
Superficial, rarely inflicted outside of special situations (RP purposes or via wound-mitigating skills)
Minor, inflicted by rolling 3–4 under
Moderate, inflicted by rolling 1–2 under
Major, inflicted by a success (a full-strength wound)
Severe, barring special circumstances (such as specific skill effects), characters are unable to keep fighting at this level
Fatal, the jig is up and you’re more or less toast
There are three special rules to keep track of when dealing with wounds, and they are as follows:
1. Three major wounds (or equivalent, e.g. one severe and one major) combine to count as Fatal, usually ending the fight.
2. If a character is 5 Reiatsu Class higher than their target, all wounds inflicted are increased in severity by one level; if a character is 8 Reiatsu Class higher than their target, all wounds inflicted are increased in severity by two levels. The normal wound level adjustments from rolling low still apply as normal.
3. ‘Fatal’ doesn’t necessarily mean immediate death, but it is a perilous state to find oneself in.
Turns and Phases
For ease and clarity, BG utilizes simultaneous turns split into two distinct phases. At the start of every turn, a quick status report of all the combatants should be posted (any participant, GM, or a helpful third party, can do this) in order to present an overview of the fight: sustained wounds, remaining Reiryoku, durations of special effects, whatever strikes your fancy. Once this is done, the turn moves to the Combat Phase. Here, participants are free to choose how their character will act and roll accordingly, and bear in mind that taking special actions is done in addition to a regular Combat Check, rather than instead of. Help one another resolve these actions (for example, someone may choose to use an alternate skill and as a result have a different Combat Class), then proceed to the Reaction Phase. Here, participants are free to use skills or abilities that change the outcomes of the Combat Phase before the turn is completed. Then, the process repeats until the fight concludes.
I can tell you could use an example. Let’s take a hypothetical character, we’ll call him Kyousuke. We’ll say he’s Reiatsu Class 27, and he’s sparring with his beautiful wife, Lina, who is, for the sake of variety, Reiatsu Class 28. Hypothetically. Kyousuke and Lina are both very good at what they do, but Kyousuke prefers using his fists and Lina has always been partial to her blade. That won’t matter much, since they’re both governed by the same skill, but maybe we’ll throw in a little variety. What you’re here for is mainly the structure of the turns; lower-level introductory fights are far less complex but to better illustrate the nature of the phases, I’ll be using some higher-level skills.
Conclusion
That should be about it, no doubt there’s something missing but feel free to ask questions or provide feedback so I can keep this guide as useful as possible.
Esoterica
Rolling on Discord is pretty easy. My recommendation is to use the following command:
It’s good practice to add a comment to your roll so it’s easy to see what it’s intended for, and the modifiers can be split up as I have done above or added as a lump sum (+35, in this case), either way should work fine.
A quick reference of Major Skill bonuses is as follows:
Novice + 1
Proficient +2
Adept +4
Expert +7
Master +10
Grandmaster +15
Consider saving a transcript—either copied straight up or edited down to just the most important parts—of your fights. I like to post mine in a spoiler along with a quick summary of how the fight went as a placeholder in whatever thread the fight took place, so that I can come back later and write a long-form post.
and for those of you joining us in the future, hopefully whatever you’re about to read is just as relevant now as it was when it was written
A Quick Start Guide to Basic Combat on Bleach Gotei
Without too much of a preamble, combat on Bleach Gotei has historically gone through a lot of variations, and we currently find ourselves using a real-time chat-based dice-rolling solution that relies primarily on a D20, loosely (very loosely) based on other RPG systems you may be familiar with. While we are and will always be a site first and foremost for collaborative storytelling, over a decade and a half of experience has taught us that combat between characters is really difficult to implement in a satisfactory way within the confines of the traditional play-by-post format, but it nevertheless remains a central part of our setting. Our solution, therefore, is to quickly resolve the progression and subsequent outcome of fights via the use of pseudorandom outcomes enabled by our mechanical rules. This keeps us all on our toes because the dice certainly have their own story to tell, but it also means that the outcomes are more often than not reasonable.
The System As Written
In its most basic form, combat on Bleach Gotei happens through a series of checks which are resolved through the rolling of dice, the results of which are modified by statistical representations of character strengths. A comprehensive guide to this system can be found here.
What you need to know is this:
Characters, upon creation, are granted a Reiatsu Class ranging from 1–40, which serves as an indication of their relative power in the setting, where 1 is weakest and 40 is strongest. This number will fluctuate as the character develops (though generally will tend to go up over a long enough timespan), and is used as a basis for many of the dice checks. Skills further modify these checks, and have a series of ranks which indicate increasing proficiency, each rank conferring a larger bonus. Of note is that Skills are divided into Major or Minor as a way to differentiate skills that are used to contest the actions of others and skills that simply have an effect no matter what—typically, Minor Skills don’t affect dice rolls, but may instead simply affect the resulting outcomes thereof. To pay for these skills, characters are awarded Growth Points, or GP, by the Game Master. To serve as fuel for the special abilities attached to skills, every character has access to a limited pool of Reiryoku (you can call it Spirit Power, or SP for short), which by default caps out at 10 and is refreshed at the discretion of the Game Master.
In short, what you’ve got at your disposal is Reiatsu Class, Skills, Reiryoku, and a D20 roll bot in the Discord.
So, how to put it all together?
The Flow of Combat, or I cast DICE
BG treads familiar ground with rolling; generally, the goal is to meet or exceed the target value. Sometimes you’ll find yourself in a situation where, with all the bonuses and base values calculated, a roll can’t succeed, or a roll can’t fail—no matter the value. This is by design: you have reached a point where it would be wholly unreasonable to expect a character not to succeed, or not to fail. As this is a combat-focused guide, that’s where we’ll start.
Combat mostly revolves around the following formulas:
Combat Check = D20 + [Reiatsu Class] + [Relevant Skill Bonus]
Combat Class = 10 + [Reiatsu Class] + [Relevant Skill Bonus]
Typically, every round sees all combatants perform a Combat Check against their target’s Combat Class, and without delving into the esotericism of it too much, try not to think of these rolls as individual attacks in a set time frame but rather as the ebb and flow of combat. Are the combatants keeping an even footing? Are they landing blows? What’s happening here is that by pulling modifying values from relevant skills (typically the character’s favored combat skill, or whichever skill is most applicable in the situation) as well as their class, we are allowing both raw character power and technique play a part in the outcome. In short, what this allows is for attacks to be variably successful while simultaneously having some characters completely and totally outclass others purely on the merits of their baseline power, which is wholly in line with and indeed inspired by the source material.
Pointy End in the Other Guy
The result of a Combat Check is a wound, the severity of which (or lack thereof) is dictated by the outcome of the roll. There are six levels of wounds which each represent increasing levels of harm, and while these wounds have no numerical effect on combat performance, they ultimately dictate when a character is no longer able to fight. Accrued wounds stack, combining for a higher overall level of severity—two wounds of the same level are counted as a single wound one level higher. Be aware that this may chain multiple times if there are already several wounds of varying severity on a character—sometimes suffering a single minor wound can lead to a character reaching an overall wound level of fatal!
When a Combat Roll reaches the target’s Combat Class, it inflicts a major wound, which is what BG considers a ‘full-strength’ wound. Failing to meet the target by 1 or 2 lowers the inflicted wound by one level; failing to meet the target by 3 or 4 lowers the inflicted wound by two levels. Any lower than that, and no wound is inflicted at all.
Here are the wound levels, from least to most severe:
Superficial, rarely inflicted outside of special situations (RP purposes or via wound-mitigating skills)
Minor, inflicted by rolling 3–4 under
Moderate, inflicted by rolling 1–2 under
Major, inflicted by a success (a full-strength wound)
Severe, barring special circumstances (such as specific skill effects), characters are unable to keep fighting at this level
Fatal, the jig is up and you’re more or less toast
There are three special rules to keep track of when dealing with wounds, and they are as follows:
1. Three major wounds (or equivalent, e.g. one severe and one major) combine to count as Fatal, usually ending the fight.
2. If a character is 5 Reiatsu Class higher than their target, all wounds inflicted are increased in severity by one level; if a character is 8 Reiatsu Class higher than their target, all wounds inflicted are increased in severity by two levels. The normal wound level adjustments from rolling low still apply as normal.
3. ‘Fatal’ doesn’t necessarily mean immediate death, but it is a perilous state to find oneself in.
Turns and Phases
For ease and clarity, BG utilizes simultaneous turns split into two distinct phases. At the start of every turn, a quick status report of all the combatants should be posted (any participant, GM, or a helpful third party, can do this) in order to present an overview of the fight: sustained wounds, remaining Reiryoku, durations of special effects, whatever strikes your fancy. Once this is done, the turn moves to the Combat Phase. Here, participants are free to choose how their character will act and roll accordingly, and bear in mind that taking special actions is done in addition to a regular Combat Check, rather than instead of. Help one another resolve these actions (for example, someone may choose to use an alternate skill and as a result have a different Combat Class), then proceed to the Reaction Phase. Here, participants are free to use skills or abilities that change the outcomes of the Combat Phase before the turn is completed. Then, the process repeats until the fight concludes.
I can tell you could use an example. Let’s take a hypothetical character, we’ll call him Kyousuke. We’ll say he’s Reiatsu Class 27, and he’s sparring with his beautiful wife, Lina, who is, for the sake of variety, Reiatsu Class 28. Hypothetically. Kyousuke and Lina are both very good at what they do, but Kyousuke prefers using his fists and Lina has always been partial to her blade. That won’t matter much, since they’re both governed by the same skill, but maybe we’ll throw in a little variety. What you’re here for is mainly the structure of the turns; lower-level introductory fights are far less complex but to better illustrate the nature of the phases, I’ll be using some higher-level skills.
Kyousuke vs Lina
Kyousuke: RC27, 17 Reiryoku (SP)
Lina: RC28, 15 Reiryoku (SP)
Round 1: Combat
Lina rolls d20 + 28 + 15 (d20 + RC + Skill Bonus) = Rolled a 7, so 50
Kyousuke rolls d20 + 27 + 15 (d20 + RC + Skill Bonus) = Rolled a 20, so 62
Lina’s 50 vs Kyousuke’s CC of 52 = Moderate Wound (missed by 2, reduced by one level)
Kyousuke’s 62 vs Lina’s CC of 53 = Major Wound
Reaction
Lina uses Evasion for 3 SP, checks her Grandmaster Hohō vs Kyousuke’s Master Hohō:
Lina rolls d20 + 28 + 15 = Rolled 20, so 63
Kyousuke rolls d20 + 27 + 10 = Rolled 4, so 41
Success, evades the wound!
Round 2
Kyousuke: Moderate Wound, 17/17 SP
Lina: No Wound, 12/15 SP
Combat:
Lina rolls d20 + 28 + 15 (d20 + RC + Skill Bonus) = Rolled a 3, so 46
Kyousuke rolls d20 + 27 + 15 (d20 + RC + Skill Bonus) = Rolled a 7, so 49
Lina’s 46 vs Kyousuke’s CC of 52 = No Wound (missed by 6, no wound inflicted)
Kyousuke’s 49 vs Lina’s CC of 53 = Minor Wound (missed by 4, reduced by two levels)
Reaction:
No reactions taken!
Round 3:
Lina declares victory, having brought Kyousuke to a Moderate Wound while only sustaining a Minor Wound! He’s a lover, not a fighter, or something.
Conclusion
That should be about it, no doubt there’s something missing but feel free to ask questions or provide feedback so I can keep this guide as useful as possible.
Esoterica
Rolling on Discord is pretty easy. My recommendation is to use the following command:
Code:
!roll d20 + [MODIFIER(S)] [comment or description]
EXAMPLE:
!roll d20 + 20 + 15 My RC 20 character attacks with a Grandmaster skillA quick reference of Major Skill bonuses is as follows:
Novice + 1
Proficient +2
Adept +4
Expert +7
Master +10
Grandmaster +15
Consider saving a transcript—either copied straight up or edited down to just the most important parts—of your fights. I like to post mine in a spoiler along with a quick summary of how the fight went as a placeholder in whatever thread the fight took place, so that I can come back later and write a long-form post.
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