Combat is resolved using LARP-safe weapon phys-reps. Upon landing a blow against an opponent, damage calls are used to indicate what effect an attack has on them, which may include special effects. There are no unarmed attacks. Hits to the hand count as hits against a weapon or shield held in that hand (if the hand is empty or holding a non-combat item this is a hit against the arm).

Hits and calls are subject to a one-second rule: with the exception of RESIST, NULL and IMMUNE you may only make one call per second. If you are hit more than once a second by another person, you should only take the effect of one blow per second from that person.

Characters and monsters in Moonrise have a pool of hits indicating how much damage they can take. These hits are “global”, ie. hits are lost from this pool regardless of where on the body they land. Whilst this system features armour, this is abstracted into the total number of hits a character has.

When their pool of hits reaches 0, characters usually have a period of time over which they either bleed out, or discorporate, usually 60 seconds, known as a “death count”. If not healed or stabilised in some way by the end of this period, a character dies.

Damage calls may include a damage component, which can range from ZERO (no damage), to SINGLE (one point of damage) through to HEX (six points of damage). No single call may have a damage component above HEX except for one delivered with a LARP-safe arrow or bolt shot from an appropriate bow. In this case, damage above 6 is expressed simply as a number, eg. SEVEN.

Attacks which strike a weapon or shield (or a hand holding such) which the wielder is capable of using do not deal damage, and the damage component of the call may be ignored without needing to call RESIST. Any effect component, as detailed below, still applies.

Effect calls follow any damage component of the call and are limited to one per call. They come in Physical and Mental variants; the former uses the active voice and the latter the passive. Whilst the Physical version of a call may represent some physical force, eg. a blast knocking someone back for a REPEL, the Mental version generally represents something more abstract, such as inducing fear and causing someone to flee for BE REPELLED. Negative effects such as this are referred to as Impairments.

With the exception of HEAL and DISAPPEARING, all calls have a default duration of 10 seconds. This may be modified with a duration, specified as a number of seconds, at the end of the call.

Eg. SINGLE DAZE 3 - Deals 1 point of damage and causes the DAZE impairment for 3 seconds.

A duration of CONTACT means the effect persists for as long as contact is maintained with the weapon used to make the call. If contact is broken for one second or longer after the first 10 seconds the effect ends (the intention of this initial grace period is to allow for slow reactions on the part of the one receiving the call which if the call had started from the first moment of the blow landing would have prevented contact from being broken, if you intend to not maintain the contact simply make the call as a normal duration call). As a reminder for those afflicted by CONTACT calls held items count as part of you for taking the effect component of calls so transferring the weapon maintaining CONTACT to your weapon/shield will have no appreciable effect.

A duration of ONGOING means the effect lasts until the end of the encounter or otherwise suspended. At the end of the encounter players who have taken an ONGOING call should check with a GM or the source of the call in case there are lasting effects.

Anybody may respond to impairments by focusing utterly on resisting them. By taking no action except defending yourself with one hand or calling RESIST/NULL/IMMUNE; including making (non-RESIST) calls, moving, using a shield or speaking, you may ignore the effect of any Impairments you are currently suffering. Doing this is mandatory if you would otherwise be under multiple directly conflicting Impairments, eg. REPEL when both legs are LOCKed. After a whole minute of continuously doing this to resist an ONGOING Impairment you may call RESIST to one of the Impairments you were under for that minute.

A simultaneous REPEL and DRAW from the same target may be resolved by moving in a constant distance orbit around them.

The following calls may be combined with damage or be made in isolation:

The following calls are special calls which are not combined with damage:

The following modifiers may be applied to the start of calls:

• MASS - The call affects everybody (whichever side of a fight they may be on) within 5 meters of the caller. It does not typically affect them. Unlike other LARP systems you may be used to, if an ability allows you to make a MASS call you may not reduce it to an arc.
• ARC - The call affects everybody within 5 meters of the caller, but limited to an arc marked out with outstretched hands. Some sources of ARC calls may specify limits to the arc that can be made. If not, you may make the arc a full circle and instead make a MASS call.
• RANGED - Used purely for disambiguation, the call did not require weapon contact between the caller and the target. Where the caller is not currently attempting to strike the target with a weapon this call component should be skipped.

Moonrise features two planes in which combat may occur: the Physical plane and an abstract spiritual space in which Vision Quests occur. Whilst in the Physical world a character uses their physical hits, and whilst on a Vision Quest they use their spirit hits. Damage from regular damage calls is dealt against the appropriate pool for the plane combat is taking place within.

Generally, Physical combat involves more hits, higher damage and more Physical effect calls, whilst Vision Quest combat involves less hits, less damage and more of a skew towards Mental effect calls. Unless specified otherwise, skills function the same in both the Physical plane and on Vision Quests. Whilst there may be rare situations in which Player Characters may take spiritual damage in the Physical world, PCs are not permitted to gain any ability which would allow them to do this (so GMs need only define a single hit pool for most monsters).

Regular adventures will feature Vision Quests at various points throughout, and there are Greater Vision Quests which last for an entire adventure, for which Vision Quest rules are always in place.