Occasionally, battling in Solaris RPG can become a bit of a chore. Every character must calculate attacks and calculate defenses. Every attack must be clearly labeled after meticulous calculations and every hit scored must then have its damage reduced by defenses. You must record every charge of power and each expenditure, keeping track of hit points, remaining power level, attributes, and etcetera. It kind of takes the fun out of role playing, does it not?

Occasionally, players might just want to ignore the rules and just bring out the fisticuffs and go hog-wild. Many players have adopted a fighting style that pays less regard to the rules. While this is acceptable in some instances, it does not come without rules of its own.

Let us pretend that three warriors have decided to spar in the Arena (usually during fights between one or more PC’s are better done with the actual rules, though not required). The characters Barney, Kenneth, and Stewart are of the classes Ninja, Knight, and Wizard (respectively) and all have approximately the same power level with minimal stat boosting items. All three players mutually agree ahead of time that they wish to battle using these rules (if one were to disagree, then they must battle using the normal rules). Here is the general synopsis of the battle:

Barney will be the fastest of the three, especially since he is wearing no armor and has the speed bonus. Kenneth clearly has the advantage in both attack and endurance. Stewart takes the cake with respect to magical prowess, especially since one of his favored elements is Water, and both Barney and Kenneth prefer Fire. Instead of each character every round carefully explaining how much energy they charge and finish every attack with a damage value in parenthesis, they just role play like it were not even a battle – just explaining what they do. It is just that Barney will move faster, Kenneth will hit harder, and Stewart will rely mainly on energy for attacks and defense.

Taking hits in this mode of play is a little different as well. In a normal rules battle, a character who is hit directly in a limb might choose to role play himself losing the limb (do not worry, the orbs of the Arena can take care of that). In this mode of combat, this is generally how battles are won. Since characters cannot fall due to loss of hit points, one must usually take his opponent down with other means. In the combat above, Barney’s strategy will probably be to disable his opponents – starting with the arms then moving to the legs and eventually finishing him off while using his greater speed to dodge attacks with ease. Kenneth will probably be able to take down his opponents with just one good hit to the chest or head while parrying what attacks he can toward a heavily armored part of his body. Stewart will use energy balls, energy discs, energy shields, energy – you get the idea.

With regard to the rules, some characters may not wish to use this variant, such as Gladiators with enough armor to counteract pretty much all damage, and other characters may choose to adopt this style often, like Clerics who then can cure cuts and blows without having to worry about "running out" of energy. Whatever the reason, this variant can quicken game play and make battles more interesting. However, not all players will have the capacity to be able to play well in this manner. If a player exhibits this lack of skill, then consider this before agreeing to his request of battling using these rules.

This mode of play is acceptable when fighting NPC characters as well, because these rules can easily take less time and does not require the NPC user to calculate exact stats for the creature. Players who have reached the power to play an NPC are usually good enough players to be able to handle the playing style, and so it is usually unnecessary to worry about their skills. But, as in all cases, these variant rules are never the default rules and therefore the decision of using these rules must be made beforehand and must be accepted by all parties. In this case, where the player of the NPC is not required to reveal his identity, this may have to be done in the chat room or over a private chat room message. If the discussion of this decision is not in OOC previous to the battle, then it must be stated at the beginning of the battle’s post that it was decided. Before the battle will be deemed acceptable in any situation, all participants (excluding the poster) must reply acknowledging that it was, in fact, decided upon before hand.

In the case of a PC fighting a PC to the death, it is sometimes better to use the default rules for the battle. Killing other PC’s is a big deal on Solaris RPG and can cause characters to escalate quickly in ranks and it is better for higher ranked characters to have a full grasp of understanding of the fighting rules. Remember that the combat judges will take this into consideration when judging a PC fight, and if using this variant, the fight must be extraordinary if it is to be accepted. No lame, two-hit finished will be accepted. Please play responsibly.