And lastly the basics of the rules<br/><br/>Yin-Yang Dice (YyD)<br/>Yin-Yang Dice is special Qin element.  These are two 10-sided dice, white one (Yang) and black one (Yin).  The dice are numbered from 0 to 9 (not from 1 to 10)<br/>When we will talk about a result of YyD , we will mean the difference between the values of the dice.  Generally you just substract smaller value from the bigger so that result is positive.  So if you roll 8 and 3 the YyD result is 5.<br/>In some cases though it will matter which die, Yin or Yang rolled a greater value.<br/><br/>Yin/Yang balance and critical failures<br/>If you roll doubles on YyD that’s considered critical success, which means action succeeds automatically and you might get a result more spectacular then on a single success.<br/>If the double however is double zeros… well that is critical failure and while it won’t automatically kill the character it will be bad.  For example in combat you might break your weapon leaving you at a serious disadvantage for the rest of the fight.<br/><br/>Basic Test<br/>When the result of the action is uncertain, we have to perform a Test.  The generic formula for such Test is Aspect + Skill + YyD the result has to be compared with Success Threshold (ST).  If result is equal or greater than ST, the action is a success.<br/>In cases when no skill is involved you just roll Aspect + YyD.<br/><br/>Success Margin<br/>Often we would like to know not only if we succeed or not but also how well did we do.  The difference between the Test and ST is called Success Margin and is used just for that.<br/>So for example if you strike with the dagger and have Metal (3) + Dagger (2) + YyD (5) vs. Success Threshold of 7… the Success Margin is 3.<br/><br/>Several Skills Test<br/>When several skills involved in a test, say when you are fighting on horseback and so has to use both you martial skill and riding one… you use for the roll your weakest skill.  So if your spear skill is 3 and riding is 2 – you use riding for the Test.<br/><br/>Opposed Test<br/>In case your action is opposed the Test has to be compared with the Test result of the opposition instead of the GM set ST.  The higher value generally wins, except that critical success always wins over the simple one, no matter what the numbers are.<br/><br/>Continuous Tests<br/>Some actions take time to complete for example forging a sword, in such cases GM assigns not only ST but also interval and duration of the action.  Which means you have to perform the Test multiple times with a regular interval.  Sometime you need to succeed on all the Test, sometime you can still accomplish the action if you failed few times.<br/><br/>Using Chi<br/>Chi is used for magic and Taos but it can also be used for normal actions.  You can announce before the roll that you are channeling your Chi into the action and say how much.  You can add this value to you Test then.  So to reuse the dagger attack example you can now say you put 2 chi points into it and get<br/>Metal (3) + Dagger (2) + YyD (5) + Chi (2) vs. Success Threshold of 7<br/><br/>Technically if you out of Chi you cannot use any more Taos or anything else that requires Chi, but that’s not exactly true.  You still can use Chi, but for every point of negative Chi you will loose Breath of Life, I would strongly advise you against it (unless you really want to sacrifice yourself to accomplish something) because depending on circumstances such loss of BoL can be permanent.<br/><br/>Healing and recovering Chi<br/>Sooner or later you’re going to get hurt and exhausted.  Both Chi and Life recover slowly on their own.  You can speed up life recovery by applying first aid or medicine test, and chi recovery by meditation.  Additionally food, medicine and potion can be used to help you further.<br/><br/>The Tests are obvious, the normal test using medicine skill.  The only special element is first aid Test, which can be attempted by any character, even the one not trained in the medicine and it only recovers 1 point of the Breath of Life (normal medicine test will recover points based on SM of the test)<br/>Naturally critical failure on such tests is not a good thing.<br/><br/>Finally Chi is also recovered whenever player rolls a balance on YyD and the amount recovered equals to the value on the die.  On the other hand critical failure causes immediate loss of 5 chi point, but you cannot go into negative chi this way.<br/><br/>Combat<br/><br/>Rounds<br/>Combat is divided into rounds; one round is approximately 2-3 seconds.  It is usually enough time for a normal person to perform one action but heroes can usually manage several.  Basically it depends on character level in appropriate skill.  Beginner can do one 1 action a round, Apprentice – 2, Competent – 3, Expert - 4 and so on…<br/><br/>Exchanges<br/>Rounds are divided into Exchanges.  Exchange is the time enough for a single action of the heroes.  Basically exchange of blows, strike and parry, this sort of thing.  The round has number of exchanges equal to the number of actions of the most active character.  If one character has more actions then the others, he will act alone on the last exchanges (since others ran out of actions).  There is one exception however, even if you out of actions you can still initiate one more active defense but only by sacrificing action from the next round, in other words you can decide to parry this round, but loose an attack on the next one.<br/><br/>Distances and facing<br/>Generally there are only 2 distances in combat: close combat zone and distance combat zone.  Naturally only ranged weapons can be used in “distance zone”.  More accurate distance calculations are made for the range combat though… short, medium, long and extreme ranges.<br/>As far as facing goes it is assumed that opponents automatically face each other.  That does not mean you can’t attack from behind of from a side, but you can only do that if you say use special abilities such as Tao of Six directions, have several people attack one, or sneak up on the enemy.<br/><br/><br/>So what happens in a combat round<br/>Initiative<br/>First each char figures out his initiative in this round. Initiative = Water + YyD.  The player with the highest initiative moves first, then 2nd highest etc… All exhanges in a round follow the same sequence and only on the next round would initiative be re-rolled. Critical Success on Initiative rolls makes you initiative automatically 1 point higher then the highest normally rolled one in this round.  Ties go to the player with higher Water score.  If even that doesn’t help – the actions considered to be simultaneous.<br/><br/>Action<br/>Characters take simple actions.  Examples are Move, Catch a Projectile, Attack in Close Combat, Attack in Ranged, Active Defense and more, it is impossible to define all the action you can potentially take, the final decision as to how many exchanges does the action takes is up to GM.<br/><br/>Active Defense<br/>This action as you have no doubt guessed sacrifices an attack for a much better chance to defend yourself from an incoming attack.  Active defense could be block/parry or dodge, in the first case corresponding martial skill will be used, in the second dodge skill will be.  Oh and you can’t parry/block arrows and other projectiles unless you are at least an expert in a skill.<br/><br/>Balance and Critical Failures<br/>As you can expect critical success on an attack will produce better results such as increased damage for instance, critical success in attack can only be stopped by a critical success in active defense.  Critical success in active defense unopposed by critical in attack, not only allows you to defend successfully but give you +1 initiative in the next exchange.  Naturally critical failure are bad things, causing damage to your weapon or armor, and similar.<br/><br/>Damage<br/>Damage is calculated as Metal + Weapon Damage + YyD.  However, this is a special YyD, attack is Yang action and YyD is added only if Yang value is greater than Yin value.  Otherwise it is just Metal + Weapon Damage.<br/>Apparently Rolling the balance on this YyD simply adds the value on the die to the damage.  So rolling 8 Yang and 1 Yin produces same exactly damage as rolling double 7s.  Oh well…<br/>Finally unarmed combat damage according to the book is simply Metal + YyD since you have no weapon, but I am adding a house rule here.  Competent skill level in unarmed gives you +1 damage and master skill gives you plus 2.<br/><br/>Penalties and Bonuses<br/>Every Test, combat or not, can have modifiers applied to ST.  Searching for something in the dark is harder than in a normal light, attacking from behind is easier than face to face, etc.  The possibilities however are endless and ultimately come down to GM decision so I am not going to bother posting tables of possible modifiers.