Attack to harm the enemy.

The attack action is how you try to take out an opponent—whether you’re looking to kill a loathsome monster, or knock out an innocent guard who doesn’t know the truth about what he’s guarding. An attack can be unloading with a machine gun, throwing a solid punch, or casting a baleful spell.

Keep in mind whether or not harming your target is even possible. Not every attack is equal. You can’t just punch a kaiju and hope to hurt it. Determine whether the attack even has a chance of being successful before you start rolling the dice. A number of powerful beings may have specific weaknesses that need to be exploited, or some means of defense you must get through before you can even begin to hurt them.

Your outcomes when attacking are:

• If you fail, you fail to connect—the attack is parried, dodged, or maybe just absorbed by armor.

• If you tie, maybe you barely connect, maybe you cause the defender to flinch. Either way, you get a boost (page XX).

• If you succeed, you deal a hit equal to the difference between your attack’s total and the defense’s effort. The defender must absorb this hit with stress or consequences, or else be taken out (page XX).

• If you succeed with style, you deal a hit just like a success, but you may reduce the shifts of the hit by one to get a boost.

Ruth has stumbled across a corpse raised by arcane powers to fulfill some dark purpose. She decides to punch it. She has Great (+4) Fight but rolls [-][-][0][0], giving a Fair (+2) effort.