Now that I've got all of the characters done, I'd better go through how combat works in this game. It's really very simple.

If you want to make an attack:

1. Say you want to attack
2. Spend Meta (if appropriate)
3. Roll your Atk dice. I will tell you if you hit.
4. If you hit, roll your Dmg dice. I will tell you the result.

If you are attacked:

1. I will tell you that you're being attacked.
2. Spend Meta (if appropriate)
3. Roll your Def dice. I will tell you if you succeed.
4. If you do not succeed, roll your AR dice. I will tell you if you take any damage.

Notice that you roll all the dice regardless of whether you're attacking or being attacked.

Combat is done according to Nish (short for Initiative). If I tell the party to "roll Nish", then you know that some fighting is about to happen. All participants will take it in turns according to their Nish roll (yes, this is a doubled, open-ended roll). At the end of the round, you have an opportunity to regain Meta. Then Nish is rerolled for the next round. A short while after combat ends, Meta "normalises". I'll explain this to you when it happens.

If someone does damage to you, the amount of damage is deducted from your Vitality. These are known as Fresh wounds. If you receive healing, some Fresh wounds go away and the rest become Old wounds. For example. Say you take 3 points of damage. You have 3 Fresh wounds. Unity then does First Aid on you and heals you of 2 Fresh wounds. The remaining 1 becomes an Old wound. Similarly, if you receive healing to your Old wounds, the remainder become Critical wounds in the same way.

Essentially, Fresh wounds are easy to heal, while Old wounds are harder and Critical wounds are most difficult of all.

Notice that this party is NOT combat-heavy. Relena and Noumalia in particular have very low Vitality scores (Relena 2 and Noumalia 1). This basically means that a single hit is likely to take them down. Lance can take a little more punishment, but if you start wading into combat like your average D&D party, it's likely that at least one character is going to die.