I know that you have all been awaiting the posting of these rules. I apologize for any delays. However, it was in the best interests of balance that I waited for the roster to fill completely before displaying the rules of an official duel. Because of this, everyone will be given the same amount of time to study, practice fighting with(to a degree), and ask questions about the rules.

I expect a lot of PMs about this, so don't hold back. No question is a stupid question when it stands between your OC and victory at the top of the ladder. Even so, I will do everything I can to make these rules thorough and relevant.

I will also be posting a mock duel shortly between two of my OC's, outline step-by-step the process of a duel, and what you can expect. If you read the entire duel, you should have an excellent understanding of what to expect, and what will be expected of you.

This is a rules thread, meaning this is not a discussion thread. Move any posts regarding it to contest discussion please. Thanks!

I. Additional Stat Information

I will not lie. Certain information regarding various stats was withheld, and in the initial rules the stats were left vague intentionally. This was to prevent the manufacture of characters specifically (and intentionally) tailored to influence judge decisions.

As a duelist, the stats do nothing for you but allow you some rough estimations for whether or not your character is faster, stronger, or smarter than another.

As a judge, these same stats behave very differently. We use the stats to make informed decisions regarding each action, offensive and defensive alike. Because of this, every stat has both offensive and defensive qualities. Both were not necessarily listed in the initial rules, so read this section carefully for more detailed descriptions on the stats your character has, and how they will influence decisions made in your combat.

Vitality:
Vitality is the measure of your character's health. Your physical damage incurred has a finite limit, and when reached, the next blow to connect with you will be judged as a killing blow. Characters with very high vitality will be able to withstand more attacks, possibly giving them an advantage in combat by risking their body to achieve leverage.

All damage dealt is dealt to your vitality. This means that magical and physical damage alike will be subtracted from your health in the same fashion, though they are each calculated differently.

Vitality is also the measure of physical endurance, also called stamina. Physical characters who rely on their speed and agility will have their strikes and evades directly impacted by their vitality. In longer matches, high vitality might allow you to outlast opponents who have exhausted themselves. Your stamina, like your health, is theoretical number which is subtracted from based on how tiring the actions you take would be.

This changes based on other stats. Agility characters who dodge powerful attacks will use less stamina than characters with low agility who try to dodge the same. Characters with high strength will use less stamina to block a blow than characters with low strength.

Willpower:
This stat will surprise many of you. If you rolled a mage and wondered if you would be easily outclassed by physical characters, you will be pleased with the information that was hidden about willpower. If you decided that willpower was a worthless stat because you were a physical character, you may come to regret this.

Willpower is, first, very much like mana. Creatures with magical abilities will use this instead of vitality to determine how exhausting their magical actions have been. Magical creatures also use their vitality to determine physical evades and blocks.

Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, willpower determines your character's resistance to magic. This means that magical damage dealt to you is directly modified by your willpower stat, as well as various other effects. Your character's susceptibility to illusions, shock from lightning, burns from fire, and various other things will be judged differently based on this stat.

Strength:
Strength is not solely the measure of your character's physical force. While this is the primary factor behind strength, it also acts as a sort of "natural armor". The stronger your character is, the more physically resistant it will be when being judged.

This means that if a strong character is hit by something physically, they may not be stumbled by it, granting them an advantage in physical fights.

Strength also determines the damage of your physical blows when they are judged to connect. The judges will determine the amount of damage incurred by your attack based on a number of factors, including the strength of your opponent.

Agility:
Agility is the measure of your character's speed. It helps to determine the likelihood of evades, as well as the evades of your enemies.

Characters with high agility will be able to react faster than others, giving them an advantage in physical fights and allowing them to dodge certain things that other less-agile champions could not. Likewise, a champion with high agility is more difficult to avoid, as they strike faster than most opponents can react in time.

Agility, however, can be problematic. Being fast means being able to do more, and doing more means your vitality becomes a primary concern.

Intelligence:
Intelligence speaks for itself. For magical characters, this is the power behind your spells. The higher your intelligence is, the more damage your spells will do when they connect, and the harder they will be to resist.

Intelligence is also the measure of your character's intuition, or foresight. Call it experience. Experienced characters are more likely to see through an illusion, or recognize a feint for what it is. This sort of knowledge is granted to a high-intelligence character by the judges themselves if applicable, giving them a slight advantage over less-wise opponents.

Intelligence, however, does not affect spell damage dealt to you; only that dealt by you.

II. Strategy: The Combat Character Triangle

Having read the updated stats, you have probably realized that there are distinct advantages, and disadvantages to each of them. This means that, by allowing you to customize your character's stats somewhat, you have made trade-offs to achieve the champion you desired.

There is no single top-dog class or build. By giving you all the exact same number of points to work with, you achieve balance amongst yourselves.

Watch and be amazed:
Strength VS. Intelligence - The strength character likely dropped his points in willpower, thinking he would not need them, as he needs no mana. However, this has made him less resistant to magic, giving the mage (who is physically weak), a fighting chance. The mage, however, likely dropped their strength and vitality in favor of higher willpower and intelligence, leaving them with very weak physical resistance. However, intelligence will also offer them some defense in the way of foresight, meaning they will not simply be overwhelmed by the high-strength, high-vitality opponent. In this scenario, both parties have a very high potential for dealing damage to the other.

Intelligence VS. Agility - The agility character will have a harder time evading magic than physical attacks, and this method of fighting usually has a lower vitality and willpower, leaving them susceptible to magic, though not as much as a strength character. The intelligence character is at risk of being hit frequently, meaning that to defend with magic, they will have to exhaust their willpower more quickly to keep up their attack and defenses. In this way, the agility character and intelligence character behave in a balanced match, both having medium potential for damage.

Agility VS. Strength - The agility character is faster, hitting more often but not as hard. It is also for more difficult for the strength character to hit, being of a more evasive nature. The strength character is less likely to hit, but more likely to leave a real scar when it does. The agility character is likely to hit more often, but do little damage per strike. The agility character will use stamina often to attack, while the strength character will use even more to try and compensate for the speed of his opponent, essentially balancing the difference in stamina. One party deals massive damage with moderate hit rate, while the other deals light damage with a high hit rate.

As you can see, one specialized build is not necessarily better than another, and stat for stat, matches will balance themselves when rendering judgment. However, the variation each champion has will allow for interesting, powerful matches and intricate tactics that destroy the typical 'cookie-cutter-outcome' that you've come to expect from RPG combat using similar stats.

Obviously champions fighting their own kind (strength VS. strength, etc.) will be inherently balanced, forcing the players to rely more than ever on their creativity to secure victory. Likewise, characters who have not specialized in anything will have to be creative to take advantage of their more balanced stat spread.

III. The Posting Format
Combat occurs post-by-post, with the combatants alternating. However, there is a very specific method to this madness.

Your character is given two moves per turn, more or less. These are not strictly declared, but are again moderated by the judges, same as all the stat nonsense. The first is your reaction, the second is your action.

The Reaction - Reactions are very simple, and normally incredibly obvious. The reaction comes before your action in response to your opponent's. Let us say, for example, that for my action last post, I swung a sword at your head.

Well you're not going to just stand there and get your skull cracked, and as a judge I won't make you. You are free to try and take action to evade the attack your opponent made at the start of your next post. The judges will tell you, before you even post, whether or not your reaction is completely, partially, or not at all successful. They will also tell you if what you're trying to do is just not possible, to keep you from doing something that would be unfair or make you look really, really dumb.

The Action - The action is also pretty obvious. This is where, once you're all done dodging and shit, you start casting spells, swinging swords, and hurting people. The judges will, again, weed out any impossibilities, but other than that, your actions are limited only by your character and your imagination.

These two elements will appear in all posts except for the very first one, which includes only the action, also known as the first strike. Certain actions are risky, as are certain reactions, and performing these might cause you to lose your reaction or action phase on the next turn, so be wary. Such things will be explained more in the next section.

IV. Judgment as a Combatant:
When fighting, all of your actions and reactions are judged before your post is allowed on the thread. Posting without approval will just get your shit deleted and make you look like a damned fool, so don't even bother. This only applies to your official duel posts, not OOC stuff.

When you have written your post, and think you've got what you want out of it, you will send it to the judges. The judges will check the post you send them for the following:
-Multiple Actions/Reactions
-Godmodding
-Impossible actions (for your character).
-Success of reactions.
-Grammar-type things, ensuring it is readable and easy to understand.

Judges will never make decision on action phases. All decisions are made during the reaction phase. This means that when the guy goes "I swing my sword at your face", the judges can't say it hits you before you get a chance to dodge. If your character is in a position where the judges do not think you could evade no matter what you tried, they will tell you, but they will always give you the chance to amaze them with your badass mind and find a way out.

The judges will inform you individually of various things, especially your health, stamina, and mana. These are not solid numbers, but rather concepts. As such they are flexible to a certain degree, meaning that your health isn't a fixed thing; you might take more damage or less damage, depending on how poorly you defended yourself, and where you were hit. Things of that nature.

However, to ensure a fun and entertaining fight, this information is given only to you. Your opponent will never be told how much damage he really did, or how much health you have left. He won't know if he's about to land a killing blow unless you lead him to know it, and vice versa. It is your job to make this information relevant through description, such as your character dragging an injured leg, or clasping a gash on the shoulder. It says nothing finite, but speaks volumes all the same. You are, of course, not obligated to do this, but come on... if you're hurt, it shows, and not being descriptive is just boring.

As stated in the previous section, some actions and reactions could have nasty side-effects. Not only is it possible to really, really screw yourself if you do something dumb (judges won't stop you from doing dumb shit, just shit that you can't do), but you can also 'lose-ground' doing certain things.

Let's assume you decide to take the hit from your enemy's action. Well guess what? Obviously you get no reaction phase. You got hit, you don't react besides getting hurt, and whatever comes with that. Perhaps you get knocked back.

"Why the hell would I get hit on purpose?" you ask. Well, one, it makes my job easier. I don't have to decide if you get hit or not. Two, think of it this way: if you are hit on purpose, or position yourself to take advantage of being hit when you know you can't evade, you can deny your enemy his reaction phase.

Example: he stabs at you with a spear. Being a big, strong creature, you just say "Bring it on," and he stabs you in the shoulder. Well, you didn't waste any time getting out of the way or moving around like a sissy, so you get to attack him back before he can react, assuming you picked the hit you took carefully and went with something that didn't throw you twenty feet away from your opponent. See there? You can get a counter out of being hit, if you pick your fights carefully. This won't always work, so be mindful.

Now let's say you're a mage. The big, bad, nasty warrior is running at you screaming like the devil himself, and he wants to axe you something. You are not agile enough to dodge that bullshit, and you're not for sure you can get a barrier up in time. So instead (assuming you're the blinking type) you warp out of the way. Probably behind him, because big, heavy warriors don't turn around very fast, usually. Well, doing that got you out of the way, but you have a new problem. Because of that, you don't get an action this phase. Your 'warp out' strategy uses your entire turn, leaving your enemy free to turn around, and charge at you again if they like, and they take no damage, guaranteed.

One last example. Let's say you're doing something that takes a lot of time, and quite a bit of your attention. Perhaps you're channeling a big spell, loading your gun-thing because it ran out, or rushing to retrieve your weapon. Again, because these actions take a lot of time and focus, you lost your reaction for the turn after you start. This would be a good idea if, let's say, your opponent is all the way across the map for some reason and can't reach you during the turn where you can't react. Then you can unleash hell.

There are other scenarios in which the judges will deny you a reaction, or an action, but they are rare. Mostly, though, it is down to common sense. Things that take a lot of time might deny you a reaction to perform the action. Reactions that really get you away from your opponent might leave you too far away to do anything, denying you an action. Be cautious, clever, and creative.

V. Judging Combat Fairly
Any and all of you might be asked to assist in judging the fights of others. I cannot render all judgments on my own without a certain level of bias, and having a group of people to discuss the physics, and fun, behind the stuff you do will lead to more realistic and worthwhile judgements.

The contestants will be asked to send their combat posts to you for review. I will assist in judging all fights, except for the final fight in which I am a participant, because that would just be stupid.

You will review the posts to ensure that they are sensible and free of godmodding. Outside of that, you will use the knowledge of a character's stats to determine the success of reactions to actions made against them. This means you are responsible for determining damage dealt, as well as killing blows later in the fight. Your role is critical, and helps to ensure the fairness and weed out bias. As such, consider judging a fight to be a professional obligation. It's serious business.

VI. Godmodding
This is a term that simply means "that which pisses off the judges". You do not want to do this. At all. One because the judges will be angry and like you less, and two because your post will be denied as many times as it takes for you to stop godmodding. If a single post of yours has to be sent back because of godmodding five times, you will be disqualified immediately. After the first-round duels conclude, you will receive only one warning per post in subsequent rounds.

Now, to explain what godmodding is. An example would work best:

"Aurus tackled Luna to the ground, punching her square in the teeth."

Brutal, and look how badass that sounds! Wonderful, right? No, no it's not. If Aurus is my character, and Luna is yours, how would you feel? I just punched you in the face, and gave you no chance to avoid it. I literally just said "It happened, so cope with it."

This is godmodding. Luna is not my character, yet I am 'controlling her' in this case. I am deciding whether or not she gets to dodge my attack before she even gets a chance. This is the single least fair thing you can ever do in roleplaying. I don't care if you're just talking to someone's character, you don't just grab it out from under them and tell them what their own character says. Not unless you have permission, or the character is public or whatever.

I digress, but can you tell I really hate godmodding?

You are to leave all actions open-ended. Your reactions, however, can and should be closed. These have to be approved by judges, so they are final. Actions have to wait for reactions to happen first, so they are not. To simplify, your action is the beginning, your opponent's reaction is the ending, and you're not allowed to decide what happens in the middle.

So, obviously my example sucks. That is clearly godmodding, and the judges were pissed about that, so they sent it back. The first thing I decided to do was take out the part that made it godmoddy:

"Aurus tackled Luna to the ground, punching her square in the teeth."

Well, shit... Taking that out just leaves me with "Aurus," and he's not even doing anything. Boring. It is about this same time that I realize I also took two actions. Not only did I tackle Luna, I also punch her. That's not going to fly when I send it to the judges.

So I need to limit myself to one action only, and leave it open ended. Here we go:

"Aurus lunged for Luna, attempting to tackle her."

God damnit, that just sound shitty. I mean, how many ways are there out of that? I understand I can't just auto-hit her, but I want to increase my chances all the same. What can I do?

Oh, right, the judges decide if she gets to evade or not. The less they know about my attack, then the more they'd let my opponent get away with. I must describe my attack better, so that the judges can get a feel for what I'm doing, and maybe even limit my enemy's reactions! Let's give this another go:

"Aurus lunged at Luna from her left, staying low and aiming for her legs, hoping to topple her from below."

Well, that's way better. Now the judges can tell where I'm coming from, and what I'm trying to do. My chances of success are now infinitely better. Victory will be mine, one open-ended lunge at a time.

Do not godmod, or I will end you.

584856
Because that was put into the description after I made my post :P

VII. Weapons and Items
Lots of characters have items with them. Guns, armor, swords. You name it, someone is probably carrying one around in this tournament.

Allow me to start by saying that equipment effects you during a fight. Heavy armor might reduce the damage you take, but you'll be less agile. I don't care if your stat sheet says you have a B in agility. That's true if you're not wearing a tank, but if you're covered in heavy armor with a huge-ass shield, be honest with yourself: you're not still at a B.

This is true for all items. The weight of your equipment will slow you down if it gets high enough. If you don't like it, you can drop stuff during the fight. Hell, you can even take your armor off if you want to. Will you be more vulnerable? Yes. But you will also then be faster in that scenario.

There's a drawback to dropping an item. If you intentionally drop it, or have it knocked out of your character's grasp, your enemy can pick it up and use it, assuming they know how to. If you have a staff of infinite magicalness and you drop it, some earth pony could pick it up. It's not worth anything to them, but guess what? They have it, and not it's not worth anything to you. Be mindful of what you cast off.

Stealing items from other players by force is strictly forbidden. This means that your unicorn telekinesis can't just got ripping swords away from people, so don't even try it. As a judge, I will let you fail, treat it like you lost a grapple check, and then let the other guy hit you with the weapon you tried to steal for the sake of irony.

Judges may decide you lose your weapon during an attack, however. Let's say you have a shield, I have a warhammer, and I swing from the bottom up at you. You block with your fancy shield, but my sweet, sweet biceps just don't care. One of two things is going to happen. Your shield will go flying, or you will be tipped over backwards. This is an extreme example, but it illustrates that you could be separated from your equipment.

Messing with someone's equipment is a valid strategy. Aiming for armor straps, heating metal armor, electrocuting people with swords, all valid. Obviously you can't decide whether or not this ruins their equipment, the judges do that, but if you're just getting stomped by Armor McHuge-arms, it might be worth a few turns to try.

Other items, such as trap-type things, poison darts, and things of that nature, adhere more to physics than anything else. If you hit a patch of marbles at a full sprint, you will be falling, and it will deal damage. Same if you sprint across a thing of tacks. Items might leave you with some rather inconvenient wounds as well, so be careful.

VIII. Physics
Yes, physics in a roleplaying game. They will happen, and they will happen exactly as you know them. This means that hard objects beat the shit out of soft ones, fast things can't stop on a dime, and pointy objects have more force at the tip than blunt ones.

Basically, you've existed long enough as a human being to understand how physics works. You cannot throw a dagger in a perfectly straight line for miles like you see in videogames, wind will affect arrows. I'm not going to sit here and list physics phenomena, but I will let you in on a little secret.

The judges deal with physics too, to a certain degree. They will stop you from doing things that are physically not possible. They will not, however, stop you from doing things that are physically possible and stupid. This means if you're firing arrows at a pegasus and he's all like "Duh, aeromancy," he can just bat them aside with wind. You will have wasted a turn doing dumb shit. Use common sense, understand how the world works, and you'll be golden. Don't, and you're bound to get your ass kicked.

IX. Post and Judge Request Formats

Due to some serious inconsistencies in the first round regarding communication between judges and contestants, and even judge to judge, new rules are in effect to keep things moving forward, and running more smoothly.

Duel posts must now follow a specific format, and the 'hidden' nature of your character's health, mana, and stamina has changed. These are now publicly visible, and all judges will be watching closely for any metagaming that may come about as a result. You are required now to include your updated health, mana, and stamina as a part of your post.

The structure for a deuling post is as follows:

Judges: X, Y, Z
Health: X% Mana: X% Stamina: X%

Action:

Reaction:

All future posts not in this format will be required to change. Refusal to change a post will result in its deletion.

Requests made to judges now have a format as well. New information is required to better assist judges in communicating with one another, the duelists, and rendering more informed decisions.

The format for judge requests is as follows:

Opponent profile: [Link to X post on the roster.]
My Profile: [Link to X post on the roster.]
Last Post: [Link to most recent enemy post in the duel.]
Health: X% Mana: X% Stamina: X%

Action:

Reaction:

Any additional information, including questions and concerns, should come after this information has been provided; in other words, at the end of your PM. Any PMs sent to judges that do not contain this information will be required you to make it known before any judgement will be rendered.

If you do not know how to link a post:
-Locate the comment you wish to link on the page.
-In the upper-left of the comment is a hyperlink showing the comment's number.
-Copy this link url. This will link directly to the post.

As always, thank you for your continued cooperation, despite the changing of rules.