Combat

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An old Pre-Kickstarter screenshot of a combat

Is That Which Sleeps primarily about combat?

No. Combat is a necessary part of the game at times, but it is not the central experience: Covert manipulation is the primary focus of the game. Combat is something that happens as a "crisis point" in the game, and you can choose to either head toward this direct conflict, or to shift your goals elsewhere and avoid open confrontation.

When combat breaks out, what happens?

You are taken to a separate combat screen, which shows the Heroes arrayed against your Agent and his/her/its Minions. Each Hero, Agent, and Minion has various combat statistics, which are pretty typical stats such as Health, Attack and Defense. Each entity also has various abilities (usually 2 to 4) that they can use.

Combat may also have various Modifiers in place based on the participants and/or place. For example, Ancient Forests act as a dampener on your Old One's powers and prevent you from channeling Ancient Power into your Agent to boost abilities. Others may reduce or enhance certain types of damage, make fleeing more difficult, etc.

How does the combat actually work?

Combat is divided into Rounds. Each Round, your side goes first, and then the Heroes' side.

Your Minions do not block (except in rare circumstances). Therefore, if any Hero is able to act, he or she is likely to damage your Agent directly. Much of combat therefore revolves around the mechanics of Distraction. If you are able to get past a Hero's Defense and damage his or her Health, he or she becomes Distracted for the rest of that Round. A Distracted Hero no longer counterattacks and does not make its regular attack on its turn. A Distracted Hero also stops Guarding other Heroes if he or she was doing so.

These Rounds of alternating sides continues until one side is completely defeated, you Flee or Retreat, or something else happens that ends the combat (perhaps you Possess the last Hero on the opposing side).

As for actually attacking, there are various forms of Attack (Physical, various Elemental types, Arcane and the unblockable Ancient type) and various forms of Defense (one for each type of Attack). The numerical value of these are compared in various ways to arrive at the result of the attack. Each attack against a Hero also provokes an immediate counterattack, unless the attack was a Spell or was a "Reach" attack.

What other unique effects happen in combat?

Certain actions may cause the Heroes to become Demoralized, which lowers all their Wills by 1. Killing one of the Heroes can Demoralize the others, as can causing a corrupted Hero to betray its side using the Backstab ability.

Certain abilities can Stun their targets, which prevents them from taking any action for a set amount of time.

In addition, certain abilities (usually on the Agents) can be Channeled by your Old One. Channeling an ability expends 1 to 5 of your Orbs of Ancient Power (how many you can use depends on how much power you've Imbued that Agent with previously). Depending on the ability in question and the amount of Ancient Power expended, the ability's power can rise to truly frightening heights - one of the devlogs shows The Baron inflicting 13 Physical Damage on one Hero and 6 Physical Damage on a second, killing them both, with one ability use. Of course, such a vulgar display of power will attract a lot of attention from the rest of the world...

Can I escape combat once it has started?

Yes, in most cases, but it can take a while. The option to Flee becomes available in the second Round (unless a Modifier has changed it). However, Fleeing only saves your Agent; it leaves all your Minions behind. The option to Retreat becomes available in the third Round (again, unless Modified), and Retreating preserves your Minions. Of course, this assumes you and your Minions survive into the second or third Round, and some Heroes have abilities that inflict a "parting shot" on fleeing/retreating Agents.

What are the potential results of a successful combat?

Depending on what all happened, you could end up with dead Heroes, wounded Heroes, captured Heroes, or even Possessed Heroes. You may also collect "spoils of war", such as items or Artifacts the Heroes were carrying. You will also incur two stats: Fame and Danger, based on the amount of carnage you caused and how overwhelmingly you caused it. Fame from Combat works like any other Fame and makes your Agent more noticeable and "interesting" to the world. Danger represents how threatening you are to the world. An Agent with high Danger can expect Heroes to get high-powered help before coming after him or her.