The Edge

Optional Combat Rules for Bound

"There is a moment, between the last word and the first wound,
when both sides understand exactly what they have agreed to.
That moment is the only honest negotiation left." — Kaelith, former Sword-Bound of the Iron Duke

The PhilosophyWhen Words Fail

The core rules of Bound resolve everything — including violence — with a single roll. That is intentional. Most of the time, a fight is just another action with uncertain outcome: roll your dice, read the result, narrate the consequences. These rules do not replace that. They exist for the moments when the table decides that a fight deserves more — more structure, more tension, more of the slow ratcheting dread that comes from watching two people trade harm until one of them stops.

Use these rules when combat is not a single decisive action but a sustained exchange. A desperate duel on a collapsing bridge. A running battle through a burning Hold. A standoff between two contracted walkers whose Bindings have made this fight inevitable. If a fight can be resolved in one roll and one consequence, use the core rules. If the fiction demands that the violence have its own arc — escalation, crisis, resolution — use The Edge.

The Principle Combat in Bound is not a tactical exercise. It is a negotiation conducted in blood. Every fight is a contract: two or more parties have agreed, through action or circumstance, that words are no longer sufficient. What follows is an exchange of terms — written not in ink but in pain, fear, and the limits of what each side is willing to endure. These rules give that exchange a structure. They do not give it a winner. The fiction decides that.

One more thing. Violence in Bound always intersects with Contracts. Your Grant shapes what you can do. Your Binding shapes what you must or cannot do. The Grey is the space where combat becomes truly dangerous — not because of swords, but because of the choices they force. A fight is never just a fight. It is a stress test for every deal you have ever made.

The FrameworkStakes & the Shape of a Fight

Before dice are rolled, before anyone draws a weapon, every participant in the fight declares their Stakes — what they want from this violence. Not "I attack" but the thing behind the attack. The goal that makes the bleeding worthwhile.

Declaring Stakes Stakes are specific, achievable, and honest. "I want them dead" is valid. So is "I want them to drop the package," or "I need to reach the gate," or "I want to protect the courier until she's through the door." Stakes tell the table what this fight is about. They tell the GM when the fight is over. And they create the possibility — always, always the possibility — that both sides can get what they want without anyone dying.

Stakes can change mid-fight. A character who declared "I want them to flee" may, upon seeing a companion fall, shift to "I want them dead." Announce the change. The table notes it. The fiction shifts accordingly. Changing Stakes is not free — it reveals something about the character that the other side can exploit.

Voss declares her Stakes: "I want the ledger he's carrying." Her opponent, a contract-runner for the Firm, declares: "I want to deliver this ledger to the third floor." Neither needs the other one dead. Both need the other one to stop. The fight has a shape now — it is a tug-of-war, not an execution. The moment one of them gets what they want, the fight can end.

When Stakes Are Achieved

A fight ends when one side achieves their Stakes, when one side Yields, or when both sides are unable to continue. There is no round limit. There is no automatic ending. Combat runs until the fiction resolves it, which means the GM must watch the Stakes like a contract lawyer watches the fine print — the moment the conditions are met, the fight is done. Anything after that is cruelty, and cruelty has consequences.

The ExchangeThe Rhythm of Violence

Each moment of combat is an Exchange — not a single swing or a single shot, but a stretch of action where the situation shifts. An Exchange might be thirty seconds of circling and testing. It might be a single explosive clash. The fiction determines the pace; the dice determine the outcome.

How an Exchange Works

Both sides roll simultaneously, using their normal dice pools. The same rules apply: if you are acting within your Grant, roll 3d6 and take the highest. If you are fighting with mundane skill, roll 2d6 and take the highest. If your actions violate a Binding, roll 1d6. If you are exploiting the Grey, roll 2d6 and the GM rolls the Arbiter Die as normal.

Once both sides have their results, compare the highest die from each side:

Comparison	Outcome
Your die is higher	You win the Exchange. You press toward your Stakes and may inflict a Wound.
Their die is higher	They win the Exchange. They press toward their Stakes and may inflict a Wound on you.
Tied	The fight grinds. Both sides take a Wound. Neither advances.

The quality of a victory is determined by the difference between the two dice:

Difference	Quality of Victory
1	Pyrrhic. You won, but barely. The Wound you inflict is minor. You've gained inches, not ground — and you're exposed for having reached.
2	Costly. You advance toward your Stakes, but the victory comes with a complication — you're hurt in the winning, something breaks, someone sees what you did.
3+	Decisive. You achieve your Stakes outright, or inflict a severe Wound. The fight may end here. This is dominance — the other side felt the gap between you.

Why This Matters The difference is everything. A character fighting within their Grant (3d6) doesn't just win more often — they win by wider margins, turning Exchanges into routs. A mundane fighter (2d6) can still beat a Grant-wielder, but the victory will almost always be Pyrrhic — a razor-thin edge that costs as much as it gains. And a character rolling against their Binding (1d6) who somehow wins does so by the skin of their teeth, bruised and bleeding for every inch. The system doesn't just reward power. It rewards the distance between what you are and what your opponent is.

Lysra (Grant: healing, fighting mundane — 2d6) faces a Bloom-creature in the Waste. She rolls 4 and 2 — her highest is 4. The creature, driven by the Sun's will, rolls 3d6: 6, 3, 1 — highest is 6. The creature wins by 2: a Costly victory. It surges forward, thorns raking Lysra's shoulder, but the ground beneath it cracks — it's overextended, and Lysra can see the gap in its canopy. She's hurt, but the path to the Hold gates just opened.

StanceHow You Fight

At the start of each Exchange, every participant declares a Stance — their approach to the violence. Stance does not change your dice pool. It changes what winning and losing mean.

Press You are advancing, attacking, trying to end this. When you win an Exchange in Press, the Wound you inflict is one step more severe than normal. When you lose, you take the Wound as normal. Press is for characters who have decided that the fastest way to their Stakes is through the other person.

Hold You are defending, enduring, protecting something. When you win an Exchange in Hold, you do not inflict a Wound — but you prevent your opponent from advancing their Stakes. When you lose, the Wound you take is one step less severe (minimum Bloodied). Hold is for characters who are buying time, shielding others, or refusing to be the one who escalates.

Maneuver You are repositioning, feinting, changing the terms of the fight. When you win an Exchange in Maneuver, you do not inflict a Wound — but you gain Advantage on your next Exchange: roll one additional die. When you lose, you take the Wound as normal. Maneuver is for characters who fight with patience, or who need to be somewhere other than where they are.

Stance is declared openly. Your opponent knows how you are fighting. This is intentional — combat in Bound is not about hidden information. It is about visible choices and the weight they carry.

Stance and the Fiction Stance is not a menu. It is a declaration of intent that the GM and the table interpret through the fiction. A character in Press who is wielding a Grant of fire is doing something very different from a character in Press who has a broken bottle and nothing left to lose. A character in Hold who is standing over a dying friend is not the same as a character in Hold who is stalling because reinforcements are coming. Let the fiction breathe. The mechanic gives you a framework. The story gives it meaning.

Two contracted walkers face each other on the road. Kael, who serves the Hollow King, declares Press — he has been ordered to claim this ruin and the person standing in it is an obstacle. Sera, who serves the Root, declares Hold — she does not want to fight, she wants to survive long enough for the tunnels beneath her to open. Their Stances tell the table everything about this fight without a word of dialogue.

The ConsequencesWounds

There are no hit points in Bound. There is a Wound Track with four stages, each a narrative state that carries mechanical weight. When you take a Wound, you mark the next empty stage on your track. Wounds accumulate. They do not reset between Exchanges.

1 · Bloodied You are hurt and it shows. A gash, a bruise, a limp. No mechanical penalty, but the fiction has changed — people see your blood, and blood invites questions.

2 · Staggered Something is wrong. A cracked rib, a concussion, a hand that won't close. Mundane rolls drop by one die (to a minimum of 1d6). Your body is failing. Your Contract hasn't noticed yet.

3 · Broken A serious injury. Bone, tendon, something that won't come back the same way. All rolls drop by one die (including Grant rolls, to a minimum of 1d6). Something permanent has happened. Name it.

4 · Fallen You are done. Unconscious, dying, surrendered, or fled — the fiction decides which, based on the attacker's Stakes and the circumstances. A character whose opponent's Stakes were "I want them dead" is dying. A character whose opponent's Stakes were "I want them to stop" may simply be beaten into submission. Fallen is not necessarily death. It is the end of your participation in this fight.

Death in Bound A character dies when the fiction demands it — when the Wound that brings them to Fallen is clearly fatal, when no one is there to help, when the attacker's Stakes were lethal and they won decisively. Death is not a mechanical state. It is a narrative truth that the table acknowledges together. The GM should never kill a character without the table understanding why, and a character should never survive something clearly unsurvivable just because the rules don't say "you're dead." Trust the fiction. It knows.

Healing

Wounds clear at different rates, because some things heal and some things change you:

Bloodied Clears after a scene of rest. A bandage, a moment to breathe, the fight leaving your hands.

Staggered Clears after a full day of rest, or immediately through magical healing (a Grant roll from someone with the right Contract).

Broken Requires dedicated care — magical or mundane — over multiple days. When it clears, it leaves a mark. A scar, a limp, a flinch. Work with the GM to name what's different now.

Fallen If the character survives, they return at Broken and must heal from there. The experience changes them. Consider whether their Stakes, their Contract, or their sense of self has shifted.

Healing Grants are invaluable in combat-heavy stories. But remember: every healing is a Grant roll, and every Grant roll is a use of power, and every use of power is witnessed by a patron who has opinions about what their gift is for.

The ContractGrants in Battle

The most dangerous thing in a fight is not a weapon. It is a Grant. A character fighting within their Grant rolls 3d6 — in an opposed exchange, that advantage is enormous. But power in Bound is never free, and combat has a way of making Contracts reveal their teeth.

When Your Grant Is a Weapon

Some Grants are built for violence. The Burning Glass focuses the Sun's light. The Reaper ends things cleanly. The Commander orders the dead. When your Grant directly applies to harming, restraining, or overpowering an opponent, you roll 3d6 for every Exchange where you bring that power to bear. This is straightforward and devastating.

But most Grants are not built for violence. They are built for domains — healing, knowledge, shelter, influence. Using these Grants in combat requires creative interpretation, and creative interpretation lives in the Grey.

The Arbiter at the Edge If a character argues that their Grant applies to a combat situation in a way that stretches the Contract's intended domain, the GM may rule that the action falls in the Grey. This means 2d6 plus the Arbiter Die — powerful, but with the risk of Reckoning. A healer who uses their knowledge of anatomy to target a nerve cluster is exploiting the Grey. A fire-wielder who uses their Grant to cauterize a wound mid-fight is not. The GM decides where the line falls. In combat, the line falls fast.

When Your Binding Meets Your Blade

This is where combat in Bound becomes unlike any other game. Every character carries restrictions — things they cannot do, things they must always do. In the calm of normal play, Bindings are manageable constraints that drive interesting choices. In the heat of a fight, they become impossible dilemmas delivered at the speed of a sword swing.

Lysra's Binding: "You shall not take a life by your hand or will." She is fighting a bandit who is trying to kill her friend. She is winning. The bandit is Staggered, then Broken. She can see the next Exchange will bring him to Fallen. If her Stakes are "protect my friend," she has almost won. But if the Wound that drops him is fatal — if the fiction makes it clear that one more blow will kill — then continuing to Press violates her Binding. She must change Stance, change Stakes, or accept a Reckoning. The fight is not the hard part. The Contract is.

Fighting Against a Binding If a character's actions in combat directly violate their Binding — killing when forbidden, fleeing when compelled to stand, showing mercy when commanded not to — they roll 1d6 for that Exchange. In an opposed roll, 1d6 is almost certainly a loss. The game is telling you something: your patron does not want you to do this, and the universe is listening. If you do it anyway, Reckoning follows, and the Reckoning for a Binding violated in blood tends to be severe.

The reverse is also true. If your Binding demands violence — "never show mercy to the defeated," "destroy what threatens the old kingdom," "you shall not refuse a challenge" — then the fight is not a choice. It is an obligation. Characters bound to violence carry a different kind of horror: not the fear of what they might do, but the certainty of what they must.

The ExitYielding

At any point during combat, any participant can Yield. Yielding is not defeat — it is a declaration that you are willing to abandon your Stakes and accept the other side's terms, or to offer new terms that end the violence. It is, in the language of the game, an attempt to renegotiate the contract of the fight.

How Yielding Works

A character declares a Yield between Exchanges. They state their terms: what they are willing to give, what they are asking in return. The opponent can Accept the Yield (combat ends on the stated terms), Counter (offer different terms, which the yielding character can accept or reject), or Refuse (the fight continues).

The Weight of Refusal Refusing a Yield carries no mechanical penalty. But it carries narrative weight. A character who is offered surrender and chooses to keep fighting has made a statement about who they are and what they value. The table should remember this. NPCs should remember this. And if the refusing character's Binding has anything to say about mercy, cruelty, honor, or restraint — the Binding remembers too.

Bindings and the Inability to Yield

Some characters cannot Yield. A Binding that says "never show mercy to the defeated" may be interpreted to mean that accepting a surrender is a violation. A Binding that says "you shall not refuse a challenge" means you cannot be the first to Yield. These restrictions make the character terrifying in combat — and tragic outside it. A person who cannot stop fighting is not powerful. They are trapped.

Conversely, some characters must Yield. "You shall not take a life" means that when the opponent is approaching Fallen, the Bound character faces a crisis: Yield and abandon their Stakes, or continue and risk violating their Binding. The beauty of this intersection is that the combat system does not resolve the dilemma. The player does.

The Iron Duke's champion has the Binding: "Never show mercy to the defeated." He is winning. His opponent, Broken and bleeding, offers a Yield — information in exchange for her life. The champion knows the information is valuable. He knows that killing her will make enemies he cannot afford. But his Binding is clear, and the Grey he wrote at character creation — "defeated" is ambiguous; does it mean "unable to fight" or "unwilling to fight"? — is the only space he has to work with. He reaches for the loophole. The Arbiter Die reaches back.

The MeleeGroup Combat

When more than two participants are involved, the fight becomes a Melee. The same rules apply, with the following additions:

Pairing Off

At the start of each Exchange, the GM determines who faces whom. The fiction should drive this: who is closest, who has declared Stakes against whom, who is the most obvious threat. Characters can declare their intent to engage a specific opponent, but the chaos of a Melee means the GM has final say. Not every Exchange pits you against the enemy you chose.

Outnumbered

A character facing multiple opponents in the same Exchange is Outnumbered. For each opponent beyond the first, the outnumbered character's dice pool drops by one die (to a minimum of 1d6). Three against one means the lone fighter rolls at least two fewer dice than normal. Numbers matter. Heroic last stands are possible. They are not likely. That is the point.

Shielding

A character can declare their Stance as Shield — a special form of Hold. Instead of defending themselves, they designate an ally. The shielding character's roll applies to their ally's defense: if they win the Exchange, they prevent a Wound to the ally. If they lose, they take the Wound instead of the ally. A character who Shields cannot advance their own Stakes that Exchange.

Shielding and Sacrifice Shielding is the mechanical expression of something the game cares deeply about: choosing to be hurt so someone else is not. It is not a tactical optimization. It is a statement of value — this person matters more to me than my own safety. In the Grind, Shielding against an Institution's enforcer is an act of solidarity. In the Ember, Shielding a companion from a Bloom creature while the Sun watches is a different kind of Contract — one written not in ink or in blood, but in the space between two people who have decided that the other one survives.

Collective Violence

When multiple player characters act together against the same opponent in the same Exchange, they do not simply outnumber the enemy (though they do). They may also invoke the spirit of Collective Action — each rolls their normal pool, and the group takes the single highest die across all pools, then adds +1 (maximum 7, treated as 6 with an additional narrative benefit). This represents coordinated, purposeful violence — not a mob, but a group acting as one.

Collective Action in combat has the same restriction as in the core rules: it cannot be used to exploit the Grey. The loopholes are individual. The violence is shared.

At the TableRunning Combat

When to Use These Rules

Not every fight needs The Edge. Most confrontations in Bound — a scuffle with a guard, a brief chase, a moment of sudden violence — are better served by a single roll and its consequences. Use these rules when:

Reach for The Edge When

The fight involves opposing Stakes that cannot both be achieved without sustained conflict.
Multiple characters are involved and their Bindings create cross-pressures — obligations that demand contradictory actions.
The outcome of the fight will significantly change the direction of the story.
The table wants the fight to breathe — to feel like a scene, not a speedbump.

If none of these apply, use a single roll. The Edge exists to make important fights more, not to make every fight longer.

Pacing

A good fight in Bound should last three to five Exchanges. Fewer than three and the Stakes didn't need extended combat. More than five and the tension is leaking. If a fight is dragging, the GM should introduce a complication that forces a resolution: the building is collapsing, reinforcements are arriving, the patron intervenes, the ground gives way. The fiction should end fights that the dice won't.

The Contract Is Always Watching

The most important thing a GM can do during combat is remember the Contracts. Every Exchange is an opportunity for a Binding to become relevant, for the Grey to be tested, for a Reckoning to loom. The mechanical exchange of Wounds is the skeleton. The Contract pressure is the muscle. A fight where no one's Binding complicates their choices is a fight that does not need The Edge.

Keep a list of every combatant's Binding visible during the fight. When a character acts, check the Binding. When a character wins and must decide how to press their advantage, check the Binding. When a character considers Yielding, check the Binding. The Contracts are not background flavor. They are the engine of combat drama.

Violence Has a Memory

After combat ends, the consequences linger. Wounds heal at their own pace. Reckonings arrive on their own schedule. But beyond the mechanics, the GM should ask: who saw this fight, and what did they learn? A character who used their Grant to kill in public has announced something to the world. A character who Yielded has shown what they value more than victory. A character who Shielded a companion has made a promise without words.

Combat in Bound is never contained. It ripples. Make sure the ripples reach the shore.

A Note on Restraint These rules are designed to make combat feel heavy. The Wound Track is short. The dice are cruel to the outnumbered. Bindings turn victories into crises. This is deliberate. If your table finds that characters are avoiding fights — looking for other solutions, negotiating harder, running when they can — the system is working. Combat in Bound should be a last resort that characters choose with full knowledge of what it will cost them. The best fight in Bound is the one that almost happened.

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Bound — The Edge v0.1
Optional Combat Rules for Oaths & Loopholes