canon/tiers/01_Tier_1_Foundation/T1_Combat_System_Spec [ACTIVE v1.0].md
**RULED ADDENDUM POINTER (2026-07-26 — binds this spec; combat-scope slices INTEGRATED
2026-07-27):** docs/COMBAT_PROGRAM_ADDENDUM.md §§7-12 carry Josh's rulings. Where each
combat-scope slice now lives in this doc: §7 two-lane bonus system as it applies to weapon
and combat-proficiency progression, plus §10 universal pools and the LEGENDARY and MYTHIC
grades at the final mastery questline — Section 12 Weapon Proficiency Bonus Lanes and
Selectable Pools, with touchpoints in the Section 5 and Section 6 Per-Weapon Canonical
Structure. §8 the gear-imprint rune lane — Section 13 Gear-Imprint Rune Lane, with the
lane disambiguation carried at the Section 3 Resource and Rune-Enhancement Note. §9 loadout
sets, spec purposes, and companion parity — Section 14 Loadout Sets, Spec Purposes, and
Combat Build Sanctums. §10 the AAAAA balance doctrine, §11 the endgame build-role taxonomy,
and §12's ally stat spreads and MMO bridge — Section 15 Build-Role Taxonomy and the Balance
Doctrine, with the raid role-taxonomy wiring at Section 7 Tier C MMO World Boss Encounters.
Ability-side bonus mechanics (per-ability bonus pools, per-ability tier unlocks) stay owned
by T1\_Ability\_Tree and are referenced here, never duplicated. Also:
docs/NATURAL_VOICE_DOCTRINE.md binds every player-facing string this spec generates.Humanity Project Tier 1 Foundation Combat System Specification
Joshua Alexander Milks. CONFIDENTIAL.
Last updated: July 27, 2026\.
Tier 1 Foundation. Drive placement at /Humanity/01-Foundation/T1\_Combat\_System\_Spec. This doc owns combat canon scope per T1\_Architecture\_and\_State Tier 1 Foundation Architecture: the 72-weapon framework split 36 Brute plus 36 Trickery/Sorcery, the 4-weapon-to-add canonical anchors, World Boss combat architecture, the 77-course agility system, combat variety framework, damage formula structural specification, defensive combat surface, decay and maintenance, balance principles. Per the addendum integration of 2026-07-27 the owned scope extends to: weapon and combat-proficiency progression bonus lanes and their selectable pools, the gear-imprint rune lane, equipment-and-ability loadout sets and their spec purposes, and the build-role taxonomy plus the build-diversity balance doctrine that governs every balance principle here. This doc does not own per-weapon detail, per-chapter combat encounter design, vril physics, integrity score-band mechanics, per-course traversal scripts, music or audio direction, per-ability bonus pools or per-ability tier unlocks, companion loyalty and departure canon, or the familiar roster.
Update cadence: minor edit version bumps for refinement. Major rebuild for combat architecture shifts. Estimated stable size 40 to 55 pages once Phase 6 region cascade feedback locks the per-weapon T0 row populate and the Phase 5M numerical balance audit closes the absolute damage values, the bonus and imprint magnitudes, and the build-space sweep thresholds.
CVD is top authority on combat-relevant world canon: Section 13 protagonist abilities scope, Section 11 mechanics framework, Section 17 hard lines including cultural depiction at Ch 29 Sámi, Ch 42 Haiti, Ch 57 Australia, weapon authenticity, AIATSIS-protocol compliance, no songline-imitating content. CVD wins on every conflict against pre-restructure source content.
T1\_Ability\_Tree v1.4 ACTIVE owns the ability enum families that combat damage formulas consume: cast\_pattern, persistence\_class, cooldown\_class, damage\_scaling, vril\_cost\_class. It also owns the twelve-tier Hermetic mastery framework as applied to abilities, the Mastery Point allocation economy, the respec mechanic, the combo element matrix, and the per-ability bonus pools and per-ability tier unlocks that Section 12 mirrors on the weapon side. Section 12 owns the weapon and combat-proficiency half of the same two-lane bonus system and cites the ability catalog without duplicating it. T1\_Vril\_and\_Magic\_System\_Master v2.0 owns vril mechanics, vril-seat slot architecture, the seven vital energy device infusion pattern, vril-coupled weapon framework, and the vril recharge-site canon that Section 14 sites loadout quick-change at. T1\_Integrity\_Paths\_Worldstates\_Master v2.1 Section 13 owns the mirrored 5-band combat behavior modifiers consumed by the damage formula, and its relational-ladder section owns companion loyalty, the departure bands, and the no-dead-end rerouted-paths contract that Section 14 companion parity defers to. T1\_RNG\_Sigma\_Constraint\_System owns the plus-or-minus 1 sigma bound on damage rolls and drop tables, which binds every gear-imprint roll in Section 13 per hard line HL\_0061.
T1\_Tier\_C\_MMO\_Spec Section 8 owns Tier C World Boss architecture at the MMO layer per CVD §13.1, including the four-operational-team framework, kill benefits, and per-server strategy divergence. This doc owns the combat architecture those encounters run on and the role taxonomy the teams instantiate; the two docs agree by cross-reference, and the Tier C spec wins on MMO-layer conflict.
T0\_Rune\_Registry owns rune row-level canon across both rune lanes, with RN\_0018 as the gear-imprint anchor. T0\_RNG\_Drop\_Table is the primary consumer of the Section 13 imprint-roll tables. T0\_Weapon\_Registry carries the per-weapon rows this doc schemas. T3\_Familiars\_Named and T0\_Familiar\_Registry own the 33 legendary-tier species and the 22 player familiar slots that Section 15 treats as build components.
T1\_Build\_Pipeline\_Contracts ACTIVE owns the consumer pipeline interfaces: Section 1 UE5 combat asset contracts, Section 2 Meshy weapon mesh authoring, Section 10 SFX combat audio routing through T0\_SFX\_Registry seven-category taxonomy.
Tier 6 Weapons\_Detailed docs (6.2 Brute, 6.3 Trickery, 6.4 Legendary Master, 6.5 Brute Legendary, 6.6 Trickery Legendary, 6.7 Resources Mechanics, 6.8 Enhancements Alterations, 6.9 Ammunition) own per-weapon detail content. Tier 2 ChapterDesign briefs own per-chapter combat encounter design including specific Boss roster, environmental boss implementation, agility course site assignment.
The 72-weapon canonical roster splits 36 Brute plus 36 Trickery/Sorcery. The 72 count aligns numerologically with Shem HaMephorash 72 names of God, Goetia 72 demons of Solomon, Luke 10 commission of 72 disciples, and the structural identity 72 equals 8 times 9 equals two complete cycles, with 36 equals 6 squared equals six attributes squared.
Pre-restructure source documents 34 Brute plus 34 Trickery for 68 documented entries. The 4-weapon-to-add gap brings the documented count to canonical 72\. Section 5 and Section 6 lock the 4-to-add chapter slots per the regional-fit principle; specific weapon identity authors during Phase 6 spine cascade.
Brute and Trickery/Sorcery are a philosophy-of-engagement split, not a strict damage-versus-magic divide. A Brute weapon can be vril-infused. A Trickery weapon can deal massive damage. The categories describe how the weapon is wielded, not what it does mechanically.
Resource economy operates across five resource systems:
The four canonical resource types are HEALTH, VRIL, STAMINA, and RAGE. Health and Vril are always present. Rage and Stamina share a single archetype-swapped slot: a Brute (Rage) weapon shows the RAGE bar (builds in combat, decays out — the Brute primary); a Trickery/Sorcery (Stamina) weapon shows the STAMINA bar (regenerates out of combat — the Trickery primary). RUNES (Sorcery off-hand) and AMMUNITION (projectile/firearm) are archetype and weapon overlays, not always-on bars. On the HUD, the Vril pool renders as a layered blue bubble (concentric deeper-blue layers, Zelda-style) at the far left; the Health bar is the main bar, joined to the lower-right of the Vril bubble and stacking additional full bars as its max grows; and joined to the bottom of the Health bar sits the single archetype-swapped Stamina/Rage bar. STAMINA is spent in combat and recovered between abilities; RAGE builds as the player attacks and, once the player stops attacking, freezes for roughly five seconds before it begins to deplete. Every resource max grows through level and character progression and through Zelda-style exploration rewards (the heart-container and vessel analog).
Ratified Section-5 consumer-layer numericals (2026-07-14). Max growth uses a fifths quantum: five collected pieces make one full additional unit, uniform across all four types — five Health pieces add one stacked Health bar, five Vril pieces add one bubble layer, and five Stamina or Rage pieces add one swap-bar unit — sourced from the FOUND WORLD: bar and layer COUNT growth comes from exploration and puzzle and achievement pieces, while level and character progression raises WHAT EACH BAR IS WORTH -- the per-bar/per-layer value scales with level and stats, never the count [AMENDED (Josh RULED 2026-07-27, twelfth sitting): "the leveling progresion doesn't increase bars, it increases how much each bar is worth and there are plenty of stats to raise" -- the prior sixty/forty piece-sourcing split re-reads as POWER-GROWTH ATTRIBUTION (roughly sixty percent of lifetime power growth arrives through per-bar value scaling from progression, roughly forty percent through capacity count growth from the found world), so a completionist is meaningfully stronger while a non-explorer is never progression-gated, exactly as before]. Of the fifty capacity pieces in the arc economy, TWENTY are locked to authored rift dungeons (ten Vril + ten Health -- the rift ladder is worth exactly two full bubble layers and two full stacked bars; Josh RULED 2026-07-27), with the remaining thirty carried by agility-course puzzle variants, achievements, and world secrets. The stack and layer ceilings are fixed: the Vril bubble caps at seven layers, mirroring the seven devices and vril-seats; the Health stack caps at five bars, mirroring the five integrity bands and keeping the stack readable; and the Stamina or Rage swap-bar is a single bar that scales numerically with no visual stacking, so the swap slot stays legible. Health does not passively self-regenerate IN COMBAT, which is what distinguishes it from Stamina — in a fight it is restored through vril-healing at the Heart-seat, through potions, and through recharge and rest sites, with incoming healing modulated by the integrity bands. Outside combat, health regenerates on its own. Potions are both crafted and bought. Regeneration is also a bonus the build can carry: it rolls on the stat and equipment lanes and it inscribes on the rune and imprint lanes, so a player who wants to recover faster can build for it rather than only carry for it. Every rate and magnitude here — the out-of-combat regeneration rate, the potion restore, and each regeneration bonus — is ordinal-fixed and plugs its value in at the Phase-5M balance audit. The Vril pool regenerates through three channels — density-scaled passive atmospheric absorption, rest at safe sites, and rapid recharge sources — and never auto-fills to maximum mid-combat in a deadzone, which is the intended difficulty dial; per-ability Vril cost is derived by the balance formula as a fraction of the baseline pool across the five cost classes from low to extreme and shrinks in effect as the maximum pool grows. The regen and cost magnitudes are ordinal-fixed here and plug in their final values at the Phase-5M balance audit.
THE HEALING MODEL, AMENDED — new canon, RULED by Josh in chat on 2026-08-04. His words, recorded verbatim because they are the rule: "We can craft and buy potions and also health regenerates outside of combat and also with stat or equipment roll bonuses or inscription/rune bonuses." What this supersedes, stated plainly so no later pass re-derives the old shape: the Section-5 sentence above previously read "Health does not passively self-regenerate" without qualification and named exactly three restoration sources — vril-healing at the Heart-seat, Alchemy potions from Trade 5, and recharge and rest sites. Four things change and one thing deliberately does not.
THE OUT-OF-COMBAT CEILING — AMENDED AGAIN, RULED by Josh in chat on 2026-08-14. His words: "proper regeneration of health outside of combat up to 25% (then needing potion or food or rest or magic to heal to 100%)".
This is the one magnitude in the healing model that is now RULED rather than ordinal-fixed, and it is ruled because it is not a tuning value — it is the shape of the survival loop. The 2026-08-04 amendment above said health regenerates outside combat and deferred the rate and the magnitude to the Phase-5M balance audit. The RATE still defers. The CEILING does not.
Firearms (modern world Ch 39 onward) do not conduct vril-seat efficiently. Brute firearms use Rage for raw force; Trickery firearms use Stamina for precision. Power is in firearm mechanics, not vril integration.
The combat layer integrates four input streams into final damage calculation: the ability tree layer per T1\_Ability\_Tree v1.4 enum families, the weapon damage application layer per Section 4, the integrity-band modifier layer per T1\_IPW Section 13 mirrored 5-band, the RNG sigma constraint layer per T1\_RNG\_Sigma\_Constraint.
Rune-inscription and enhancement operates as three non-overlapping lanes, with no ordinary-rune grind. The first is worn inscription — a permanent equipped enhancement layer, never consumed and never farmed (the canonical runic weapon alterations, Trade 3 Blacksmithing plus Trade 9 Inscription at Adeptus Minor); rarity gates access to an operator you then wear, never a per-cast burn. The second is the spell-creation catalyst — a rare or epic rune consumed exactly once at authoring to birth a learned custom spell, a personal merge of a few of the 185; runeless and Vril-pool-paid thereafter. The third is enchantment runes — a re-rollable, improvable affix layer socketed on gear and consumables (weapons, grenades and bombs, potions, poisons) to add effects; the player tunes toward a target build, Borderlands or Diablo style, never luck-gated into farming. Base casting of all 185 abilities is runeless and mastery-channeled, paid from the Vril pool — there is no slotted or hotbarred spell-bar for the 185.
This enhancement lane set is distinct from the in-combat RUNES off-hand currency described under the resource systems above: the RUNES currency regenerates through play and meters the Sorcery off-hand cadence, while these three lanes are the worn, catalyst, and enchantment inscriptions.
Lane mapping to the ruled rune architecture, so no downstream doc conflates them. The worn inscription and the spell-creation catalyst are the OPERATOR side of the rune system — the operator families and the merge catalyst that author custom abilities from mastered proficiencies and specialties, owned as ability-creation canon and rowed in T0\_Rune\_Registry (RN\_0016 and RN\_0017 are the catalog anchors). The enchantment lane is the GEAR-IMPRINT side — the imprint runes that stamp rolled bonuses onto weapons, armour, and consumables — and Section 13 is its combat home, anchored on RN\_0018. Three statements hold together with no overlap: the in-combat RUNES currency meters the Sorcery off-hand and is never farmed; operator runes author abilities and are worn or consumed once at authoring; imprint runes enchant gear and roll under the sigma constraint. Base casting of all 185 abilities remains runeless and mastery-channeled in every case.
The damage formula consumes T1\_Ability\_Tree v1.4 ability enum families plus weapon damage application plus integrity-band modifiers plus RNG sigma constraint. Numerical specifics defer to Phase 5M audit per the canonical class boundaries lock at Session 5H.
Final damage equals base weapon damage multiplied by cast pattern modifier multiplied by persistence class modifier multiplied by damage scaling modifier multiplied by integrity band modifier multiplied by RNG sigma factor, with ability layer damage applied additively after weapon multiplication.
Cast pattern enum per T1\_Ability\_Tree v1.4: instant, charge\_hold, sustained\_drain, channeled, passive, ambient. Each maps to a numerical modifier class with bounds locked at Phase 5M audit.
Persistence class enum: instant, brief, sustained, charge\_hold\_scaled, battlefield\_minutes, permanent. Determines damage application duration window.
Cooldown class enum, with vril cost class as cooldown analog: low, medium, high, very\_high, extreme. Drives ability availability cadence.
Damage scaling enum per T1\_Ability\_Tree v1.4 schema. Drives per-ability damage curve.
Vril cost class enum per T1\_Ability\_Tree v1.4 schema. Drives resource expenditure per ability use.
Per T1\_IPW Section 13 mirrored 5-band:
The mirrored structure preserves balance across the 5-band spectrum: pure-good states gain healing reception, pure-evil states gain damage output at the cost of vulnerability. L3 Drifting carries the universal damage-received penalty as the unaligned center.
Per T1\_RNG\_Sigma\_Constraint: damage rolls bound within plus-or-minus 1 sigma. Anti-streak floor at minus-1 sigma resets on drop occurrence. Mandatory drop ceiling at plus-1 sigma. The sigma constraint prevents both unbounded outlier streaks and unbounded crit cascades.
Per the Section 7.6 vril-seat integration framework absorbed from pre-restructure GDD\_Systems:
Six vril-seat positions receive Enhanced Mastery infusion via vital energy devices. One vril-seat position remains at standard Mastery — the player chooses which per playthrough. Full vril-seat mechanics owned by T1\_Vril\_and\_Magic\_System\_Master.
Specific numerical values for cost classes mapped to damage ranges, integrity band percentage bounds, RNG sigma deviation in absolute units, and vril-seat match bonuses in absolute damage points lock at Phase 5M close audit pass or at a dedicated balance-tuning session post-Phase 6 vertical slice. The formula structure and class taxonomy lock canonically at Session 5H. The numbers plug in when balance data exists.
Canonical 36-Brute roster across 8 group categories. Pre-restructure Weapons\_Brute documents 34 entries plus 2 to add per GDD\_Systems v2 Section 27.1 proposal: one Ch 9-10 Ethiopia / Rift Valley slot, one Ch 47-48 Mesoamerica slot. Specific weapon identity for the 2 add slots authors during Phase 6 spine cascade per the regional-fit principle.
Resource: RAGE primary, with STAMINA for shields, ammunition for firearms and projectile weapons.
The 8 Brute group categories with documented entries:
Plus 2 to add slots: 1 Ch 9-10 Ethiopia / Rift Valley plus 1 Ch 47-48 Mesoamerica. Group placement (which of the 8 groups receives which slot) authors during Phase 6 alongside specific weapon identity per regional fit.
Each Brute weapon carries the following canonical structure, owned at the framework level here and at full content level by Tier 6.2 Weapons\_Brute\_Detailed and Tier 6.5 Weapons\_Legendary\_Brute\_Detailed:
The Mastery ability at Proficiency Level 8 and the Legendary form transformation at Proficiency Level 99 are the canonical quest-gated transformative bonuses already locked in this structure; Section 12 generalizes that pattern across the full proficiency ladder and adds the incremental lane beneath it.
Most players master 5 to 10 weapons. Completionists master all 72\. Enhanced Mastery in all 72 constitutes a generational achievement.
When Phase 6 spine cascade or region build identifies a weapon fitting a region better than a current 36 Brute roster entry, the better-fit weapon swaps in 1-for-1 against the entry being retired. The Brute count stays at 36 immutably.
Legacy-foundational weapon types carry deeper vril-seat and vril coupling. Newer mechanically-powerful weapon types carry shallower vril-seat and vril coupling. The balance vector inverts mechanical power against magic affinity so the 36-Brute spread spans the full mechanical-versus-magical axis without any single weapon dominating across both axes simultaneously.
This axis is one instrument of the governing balance doctrine at Section 15: breadth of viable builds is the target, and the spread is measured against it by the build-space sweeps rather than asserted.
Minimum-viable 8-column schema locked at Session 5H per pipeline-driven schema principle:
Column expansion derives from Phase 6 region page build feedback per the pipeline-driven schema principle. Per-weapon row populate target Phase 6\.
Canonical 36-Trickery/Sorcery roster across 9 group categories. Pre-restructure Weapons\_Trickery documents 34 entries plus 2 to add per GDD\_Systems v2 Section 27.1 proposal: one Ch 29 Sámi reindeer-antler knife (WPN_071 Reindeer-Antler Knife, Trickery/Blades, Josh-confirmed 2026-07-08) slot, one Ch 57 Australia slot. The Ch 29 Sámi and Ch 57 Australia slots carry CVD Section 6 cultural depiction discipline and Research\_Depth\_Standards source processing per high-care chapter protocol.
Resource: STAMINA primary for Trickery, STAMINA plus VRIL for Trickery/Sorcery hybrid bridge weapons, the regenerating RUNES off-hand currency for Sorcery off-hand (Orb and Tomb) — regenerating through play, not a scarcity or farm resource, with Sorcery ability casts drawing their vril_cost from the depletable Vril pool.
The 9 Trickery/Sorcery group categories with documented entries:
Plus 2 to add slots: 1 Ch 29 Sámi reindeer-antler knife (WPN_071 Reindeer-Antler Knife, Trickery/Blades, Josh-confirmed 2026-07-08) plus 1 Ch 57 Australia. Group placement authors during Phase 6 with Research\_Depth\_Standards source processing for both high-care chapters.
Same canonical structure as Section 5 Brute: 4 abilities, Mastery ability at Proficiency Level 8, Legendary transformation at Proficiency Level 99, Legendary ability, Legendary quest, Balance note, and the Section 12 minor and major bonus pools. Per-weapon detail content owned by Tier 6.3 Weapons\_Trickery\_Detailed and Tier 6.6 Weapons\_Legendary\_Trickery\_Detailed.
Orb and Tomb are the foundational Sorcery off-hand pair, both introduced as paired tomb artifacts at Ch 15 Egypt. Orb provides passive Vril regeneration and Crown vril-seat ability amplification, the most consistent Vril income of any item. Tomb enables astral projection without Crown vril-seat ability tree development, extends inscription range, allows astral travel to documented locations viewed through inscription. Both compatible with any main-hand weapon. The Orb/Tomb pair meters on the regenerating RUNES off-hand currency (Orb generates, Tomb spends) — not a scarcity or farm resource; Sorcery ability casts themselves still draw their vril_cost from the depletable Vril pool, with RUNES governing off-hand cadence. Neither has direct damage capability. Both cannot block.
The Orb and Tomb pairing is the entry point for the Sorcery resource economy. Players building around vril-seat abilities rather than weapon damage center their loadout on this pairing.
Wand is Trickery/Sorcery main-hand magic amplifier. Found at Ch 15 Egypt tomb artifact alongside the Orb and Tomb pair. Amplifies all vril-seat ability damage when held — the most direct weapon-ability amplifier in game. Conducts all elements equally. Can inscribe symbols on surfaces. No physical damage capability. Cannot block. Requires the other hand free for Vril channeling, or pairs with a dedicated off-hand item like Orb or Tomb.
Same canonical principle as Section 5 Brute. Trickery/Sorcery count stays at 36 immutably. Regional-fit weapons swap in 1-for-1 against retiring entries during Phase 6 spine cascade.
Same inverse mechanical-versus-magical axis as Section 5\. The 36 Trickery/Sorcery spread balances Stamina-only Trickery weapons against Stamina-plus-Vril hybrid weapons and pure Sorcery Runes weapons across the full mechanical-magical axis. As at Section 5, the axis serves the Section 15 balance doctrine and is measured by the build-space sweeps.
Same 8-column minimum-viable schema as Section 5 Brute. Per-weapon row populate target Phase 6\.
The combat system carries two distinct boss-encounter scales: chapter-level Boss encounters across the 77-chapter Tier A Solo Base, and 100-player World Boss encounters in Tier C MMO. The two are categorically separate per CVD §13 architecture.
Boss encounters within Tier A Solo Base anchor at chapter peaks per Pillar 8 blended-mode requirement: every boss blends combat plus weapons plus abilities plus puzzles plus character engagement. No boss is a pure DPS check. The Ch 17 Entu Priestess three-phase template (surface combat phase, moral descent phase, philosophical confrontation phase) binds the narrative-tentpole bosses as canonical structure. Mythological-monster and honored-adversary bosses — dragon, serpent, sea-beast, ogre, demon, undead — may be pure multi-phase fights with mechanical variety and no philosophy or lecture phase. A glorious brawl is a legitimate boss, not a defect: for these encounters the Pillar 8 blend is met through mechanical variety, environmental interaction, and phase escalation rather than a mandatory philosophical confrontation.
Boss encounters distribute across hard-line spine anchors and chapter peaks. Five tentpole anchor positions across the Tier A Solo Base align with hard-line spine chapters. These five are the arc's tentpole bosses, not a ceiling on boss content: the arc additionally carries per-chapter mythological-monster, honored-adversary (the Louhi rule), deity-champion, and environmental or atmospheric bosses per HL_0080, HL_0121, HL_0122, and HL_0123, and most chapters stage at least one real fought boss. The five hard-line anchors are:
Additional chapter-level Boss encounters distribute throughout the 77-chapter arc per pacing mountain-range discipline. Per-chapter Boss roster identity, mechanics, and regional placement owned by Tier 5.1 Questlines\_Master\_Summary plus Tier 2 ChapterDesign briefs. Chapter-level Boss encounters track via T0\_Quest\_Definition\_Registry plus T0\_Chapter\_Index integration per pipeline contract Section 6 Quest Writing.
World Bosses per CVD §13.1 are 100-player encounters at canonical Tier C spawn locations. Tier A Solo Base completion never encounters a World Boss as required content. World Bosses are the endpoint of guild-scale collective action in the MMO shared world layer.
Each World Boss encounter requires 100 players organized into 4 operational teams:
The four operational teams are the Section 15 build-role taxonomy at raid scale, and the wiring is deliberate rather than coincidental (per docs/COMBAT\_PROGRAM\_ADDENDUM.md §12). Team 1 instantiates group damage, Team 2 group heals and sustain, Team 3 group control and environmental manipulation, Team 4 group support and protection — the same six role axes the solo player builds a companion party against. Single-player party composition is therefore the training ground for Tier C raid composition: one role architecture, designed once, scaling from a three-companion party to a hundred-player boss. Companion and familiar stat spreads per Section 15 are the solo-scale instance of the same composition problem, and the build-space sweeps measure both scales against the same axes. Tier C World Boss architecture at the MMO layer, including per-boss team optimization and the roster, is owned by T1\_Tier\_C\_MMO\_Spec Section 8 per CVD §13.1; this doc owns the combat architecture the encounter runs on.
Two-server divergence is canonical: two servers may develop completely different strategies for the same boss. Framework allows player community innovation across the canonical Tier C World Boss roster.
Defeating a Tier C World Boss produces permanent regional improvements for the entire server:
World Boss benefits do not apply to Tier A Solo Base or Tier B Solo DLC regions per CVD §13.5: Tier C MMO does not extend into hard-line chapters or pre-identified DLC regions.
Tier C World Boss roster, per-boss mechanics, and Tier C spawn location detail scope at Session 5J T1\_Tier\_C\_MMO\_Spec. Tier C World Boss data populates T0\_Boss\_Encounter registry per its scope-locked status in T1\_Architecture\_and\_State Tier 0 Registry Architecture.
77 agility courses canonical: one course minimum per chapter. Inspired by RuneScape agility course pattern, implemented with documented-site grounding. Each course uses a documented cultural or architectural site appropriate to its chapter as physical layout. Traversal is timed, hazard-rich, and tied to Book of Trades and collectible unlocks.
Three variants per course: Standard, Hardcore, Puzzle. The variant taxonomy is canonical per pre-restructure source.
Timed traversal within target window for Agility XP bonus. Targets tune per course. Standard rewards include Agility XP and a regional letter-fragment collectible (chapter-themed letters assembling into regional words: Ch 2 spells FLORES, Ch 13 initial letters D-R-A-K spelling DRAKENSBERG progression, continuing across all 77 chapters). Open to all integrity bands. No integrity gating.
Tightened time target plus zero-penalty constraints (no hazard triggers, no faction-disturbance events, no wildlife disturbance per course type). Completion unlocks course-specific titles displayed in MMO contexts as cosmetic achievements.
Title cosmetic variant reflects current integrity band per the integrity-visible discipline:
Same course mechanic across all bands. Same target time. Integrity-aligned cosmetic only — the title surfaces what the player is, not what gate they passed.
Non-timed or loosely timed. Specific collection or ordering objectives during traversal. Examples canonical from pre-restructure source: collecting 12 forest pods in Ch 2 Flores canopy course without stopping; touching all 5 story-levels of Ch 3 Manggarai mbaru niang in ascending order while collecting 5 specific ceremonial objects.
Puzzle variant completion typically unlocks a Book of Trades entry tied to the course's regional trade focus — Herbalism content for Ch 2 forest pods, Tailoring content for Ch 3 ceremonial objects, Herbalism content for Ch 4 Bali (the course itself is the Uluwatu cliff-vertical traverse per the spine and region page; the pre-restructure rice-terrace example corrected in place 2026-08-03 — site and biome assignment are Tier-2 ChapterDesign's per this section's own closing delegation). Most Book of Trades entries unlocked via Puzzle variant are integrity-neutral. Some entries gate by integrity band per CVD Section 17 hard line discipline at high-care chapters.
The 77 courses rotate biome types to ensure variety. No two consecutive courses share dominant biome type in the first 5 to 10 chapters. Thereafter, biome variety maintains across any 5-course window.
Established Ch 2-12 examples canonical from pre-restructure source:
Biome-first courses establish templates carrying forward. The Ch 12 cliff-face template seeds Ch 14 Nubia rock-cut tombs, Ch 18 Levant Petra, Ch 34 Canary Islands Guanche cliff-dwellings, Ch 53-55 Andes cliff-terraces. Per-course biome assignment and template inheritance owned by Tier 2 ChapterDesign briefs.
Agility course rewards integrate with multiple system layers:
Per CVD Section 6 cultural depiction standard, certain courses occur at documented sites requiring source processing per Research\_Depth\_Standards Tier 1.7:
Cultural sensitivity mechanics embed in course design as documented-site respect that produces documented faction and integrity consequences, not as content gating.
Per-course detail (specific site, layout, hazards, rewards, biome assignment, template inheritance) owned by Tier 2 ChapterDesign briefs per chapter range. This Section holds only system architecture.
The combat variety framework sustains engagement across 77 chapters per Pillar 1.12 mode variety mandate. Every chapter carries combat content proportional to chapter length, alongside puzzle, learning, character, and transformation beats. Long chapters earn their runtime through variety, not repetition. The combat surface serves all three player layers per Pillar 12: Layer 1 surface players experience a rich continuous combat loop across the full 77-chapter arc, Layer 2 depth players engage combat alongside trade quest gates and SQ engagement, Layer 3 completionists exhaust the full combat surface including legendary weapon questlines and Enhanced Mastery thresholds. Combat density at the per-chapter level runs in the dozens of designed encounters plus emergent open-world combat plus infinite side quest combat. Variety operates along multiple axes: encounter type, opponent class, environmental context, ability requirement, weapon viability, and per Pillar 10 regional combat identity (stance systems per region, environment hazards per region, weapon-of-origin bonuses, movement modifiers per biome, ability interaction changes per region).
Ten encounter categories distribute across the arc to prevent repetition:
A distinct boss encounter type that is not a person, animal, or conventional combat opponent. The boss is an environmental or atmospheric vril-state requiring perception, vril-management, and restraint to resolve. Cannot be defeated through damage. Distinct from World Boss (Section 7), which is the 100-player MMO encounter category.
The 4-step non-damage protocol is one encounter class within a chapter, never the chapter's sole combat layer: every listed instance also stages a real fought encounter elsewhere in the chapter, and the containment beat itself is staged as an action-forward, vril-taxing set-piece — dodge, parry, and manage the pool under real pressure — not a static perceive-and-wait puzzle. It never converts a fightable monster, deity-champion, or malevolent being into a containment puzzle; the class survives only for genuine sacred-site and atmospheric vril echoes.
Resolution protocol, canonical 4-step:
Failure states canonical:
Documented instances across the arc per pre-restructure source:
Capability baseline: success at environmental and atmospheric encounters is determined by Intuition, Constitution, and Integrity, exercised through active dodge, parry, and vril-pool management under real pressure rather than a static perceive-and-wait puzzle. Resolution stays non-damage — the genuine echo is never destroyed through combat-scale expenditure — but the beat plays as an action-forward set-piece, and it is never the chapter's sole combat layer.
Per-chapter environmental boss implementation owned by Tier 2 ChapterDesign briefs.
Distribution rules across the 77-chapter arc:
Per-chapter combat encounter design owned by Tier 2 ChapterDesign briefs. Distribution principles owned by Philosophy\_and\_Balance Tier 7.3.
The defensive combat surface consumes T1\_Ability\_Tree v1.4 defensive abilities plus weapon defensive properties (shields, parrying weapons, defensive variants per weapon class).
Per T1\_Ability\_Tree v1.4 Layer A and Layer B catalog:
Per-mechanic timing window, vril cost, and integrity-band variance numerical bounds defer to Phase 5M audit per Decision 2 lock at Session 5H. Class boundaries lock here; absolute numbers tune at balance phase.
Shield-based active defense with Stamina cost:
Block reduces incoming damage application before integrity-band and RNG sigma factors apply per Section 4 formula.
Weapon-based defensive timing window. Successful parry generates Stamina or Vril per weapon class. Canonical parry-capable weapons per pre-restructure source:
The Madu is unique as the only Trickery weapon designed primarily for parry rather than offense.
Ability-tree-driven via Fluid Dodge T1 Water and Wind Step T1 Air for Trickery players. Stone Skin T1 Earth provides Brute mitigation as the equivalent damage-reduction layer.
Integrity-band variance per T1\_IPW Section 13: dodge timing window varies across the L1 to L5 spectrum. Numerical bounds at Phase 5M audit.
Defensive ability layer integrates with the Section 4 damage formula. Defensive successes (block, parry, dodge) reduce or negate incoming damage application before the integrity-band modifier and RNG sigma factor apply. The defensive layer operates as a damage multiplier at zero or fractional value rather than as a separate damage-mitigation pool. RULED 2026-07-30 at the twenty-ninth sitting: which of those two values a successful defence produces is a SCALE and never a binary. A parry, physical or elemental, negates in full only where it meets the attack's strength, and an attack much stronger than the answer still lands residual damage through a successful parry. The scale itself is stated at The Mitigation Scale under Nature-Derived Counter Classes and the Complexity-First Difficulty Law, and every magnitude on it stays with the Phase 5M audit.
Combat skill maintenance per the unified maintenance and decay framework absorbed from pre-restructure GDD\_Systems Section 8.5.
Weapon proficiency carries minor rust only. Slight decrease without practice that returns quickly with use. Decay never falls below floor of 70 of whatever level was achieved — a Mastery 100 wielder bottoms at 70, not at 1\. Prestige tiers 101 to 199 and Enhanced Mastery 200 do not decay.
Attributes that decay without maintenance, decay rate 1% per in-game week:
Attributes that do not decay:
Per pre-restructure source canonical mitigation mechanics:
Decay floor at Level 70 of whatever level was achieved. Ceiling at Mastery 100 unaffected by decay. Prestige 101 to 199 and Enhanced Mastery 200 fully decay-immune.
Per docs/COMBAT\_PROGRAM\_ADDENDUM.md §7 and §10, Josh-ruled 2026-07-26. Proficiency is not a presentation ladder and not a bare numerical gate: every proficiency tier a weapon or combat-adjacent capability reaches grants a mechanical bonus, and the player chooses which bonus from that tier's pool. The system runs in two lanes over the twelve-tier Hermetic mastery framework owned by CVD §12.1 and applied per capability in T1\_Ability\_Tree. The ability-side instance of the same two-lane system — per-ability pools and per-ability tier unlocks — is owned by T1\_Ability\_Tree; this section owns the weapon and combat-proficiency instance.
The incremental lane. Each proficiency tier reached on a weapon class, defensive discipline, or combat-adjacent trade proficiency grants a minor bonus, selected from that tier's minor pool. The bonuses sharpen what the capability already does; they never change its identity. The seed set of bonus kinds, verbatim from the ruling and expandable by the factory per weapon class and per chapter: reduced wind-up, cast, or recovery time; reduced target elemental resistance where the capability conducts an element; increased elemental superiority on the matrix edge the capability already holds; raw damage; critical chance. This is the seed set, not the roster ceiling — appropriate additions per weapon family (guard-break pressure on Blunt, reach and thrust economy on Long Blades, reload and spread on Range, catch-window width on the parry weapons, Rage build rate or Stamina economy per archetype) author as the factory reaches each class.
The transformative lane, carried on the mastery framework's canonical quest gates — the twelve canonical level gates per capability per CVD §12.1, each requiring a quest-unlock event and not a numerical threshold alone per CVD §17.5. The 120-gate roster is T1\_Trades\_Master's ten-trade instance, twelve levels multiplied by ten trades; a weapon or combat proficiency crosses the same twelve level gates per capability without adding to that roster count. A gate bonus changes what the capability is, and the player picks it from that gate's major pool. Josh's seeds on the ability side read as the register: a single fireball becoming three, an area-of-effect detonation appearing on impact, casting permitted while moving; an earth tremor gaining a brief stun, randomized earthen-wall segments circling the player, a short mobility surge. Those fireball and earth-tremor seeds read onto the catalog as Fire Bolt and Tremor Stomp per T1\_Ability\_Tree, whose sections own the ability-side instance. On the weapon side the same register applies, and the canonical Lane B instance in this doc is the Legendary form transformation at Proficiency Level 99 locked in Sections 5 and 6, a Lane B bonus under its original name. The per-weapon Mastery ability at Proficiency Level 8 sits inside Tier 1 Neophyte's 1-to-9 band rather than at a gate crossing, so it reads as an in-tier milestone of the same transformative register; which gate carries it authors with the per-weapon detail below. Lane B generalizes that established pattern across the full ladder. Per-weapon major-pool identity authors during Phase 6 alongside per-weapon detail; the seeds are examples of the class, never its limit.
Pools are selectable, not fixed grants — the point of the system is that two players at the same tier on the same weapon carry different builds. Minor picks sit on the proficiency tiers, major picks on the quest gates, each drawn from the pool that tier owns. Per §10 the pools are universal: every weapon class in the 72, every defensive discipline in Section 10, every trade-adjacent combat proficiency, and every gear-imprint rune in Section 13 carries its own appropriate minor and major pools. Pool authoring is per-class and expandable; a class shipped with a thin pool is an authoring gap, not a design statement. Respec and re-selection mechanics are owned by T1\_Ability\_Tree's dual respec mechanic and apply here unchanged.
A standing balance principle of this spec, ruled with the lanes: lower-tier weapons, techniques, and abilities keep their place among higher-game progression options. A mastered early-game capability competes through its accumulated bonus ceiling rather than being retired by a later unlock, and the player who invested in a Ch 2 weapon can carry it credibly into the endgame with the pools filled out. Dead kit — a capability that becomes strictly dominated and is never selected again — is a balance defect measured by the Section 15 sweeps, not an accepted cost of progression.
Completion of the final mastery-gate questline for a capability grants access to the LEGENDARY and MYTHIC grades on that capability's pools and on its imprints. MYTHIC extends the rarity ladder above legendary as the apex grade, reached only through the completed mastery questline and never produced by a drop table or an imprint roll. Which crossing that questline sits on is RULED — Josh, 2026-07-27, D-MYTHIC-GATE option (a) per docs/spine/DECISIONS\_PENDING\_JOSH.md: MYTHIC rides the final solo-reachable mastery-gate crossing, the post-Chapter-77 prestige questline, and the Tier C Magus crossing extends pool rosters without gating the mythic apex. MYTHIC is a rarity grade, never a mastery rung - not an eleventh grade and not a thirteenth level: the twelve-level Hermetic framework (ten grades as bands) and its twelve canonical level gates per capability per CVD §12.1 are unchanged — the 120-gate roster is T1\_Trades\_Master's ten-trade instance — and the 72-weapon roster, the 22 familiar slots, and the 185-ability baseline are unchanged. The earned summit is a rarity ceiling the questline opens, and the questline is the only key.
Mythic gear is level-scaling and it carries into New Game Plus. Per docs/spine/DECISIONS\_PENDING\_JOSH.md, the twenty-eighth sitting item J3 (RULED, Josh 2026-07-30): mythic equipment and mythic weapons the player has obtained move into the new game with them and scale permanently with the player's level. At New Game Plus start the scaling is lower, matching the level the player is at, and the item stays mythic — so it remains stronger than the drops that level is giving. The reason is recorded with the rule: the player earned those sets through the hardest content, and New Game Plus is ruled enhanced difficulty and complexity rather than a victory lap, so the earned set is something the second climb may actually need. This is an additional property of the mythic grade and it replaces nothing: mythic access is still granted only by the completed final mastery questline, mythic is still never produced by a drop table or a roll, legendary is still mastery-gated per item, and the level-scaling property attaches to obtained mythic equipment and weapons rather than to the grade's access rule. The prestige-only carry model governs everything else across the New Game Plus boundary, and the per-grade carry data lives on T0\_Rarity\_Grade in the ng\_plus\_carry and level\_scaling\_model columns.
The pre-5090 data work is per-capability tier-bonus rows on the extension rail: tier or gate identifier, pool membership, bonus kind, selection state, and grade ceiling. Bonus shapes and pool membership lock at authoring; every magnitude — percentages, durations, resistance deltas, critical increments — defers to the Phase 5M balance audit alongside the Section 4 damage-formula numbers. Ordinal ordering within a pool is fixed here, absolute values plug in when balance data exists.
Per docs/COMBAT\_PROGRAM\_ADDENDUM.md §8, Josh-ruled 2026-07-26. This is the second of the two canonical rune lanes and this doc is its combat home. Imprint runes stamp rolled bonuses onto gear — weapons, armour, off-hand items, grenades and bombs, potions and poisons — in the Borderlands and Diablo register already named at the Section 3 Resource and Rune-Enhancement Note. This target list is the expanded superset of that note's seed enumeration rather than a competing roster; Section 3 stands as written and this section carries the fuller set. The lane is distinct from the operator rune lane, which authors custom abilities from mastered proficiencies and specialties, and distinct again from the in-combat RUNES off-hand currency that meters the Sorcery pair. The three statements at Section 3 hold; this section expands the third.
An imprint carries a rolled bonus rather than a fixed one. Roll quality scales with the rarity of the source: higher-rarity gear and higher-rarity boss drops roll into better windows, and the strongest windows are difficulty-gated so the top of the lane is earned against the hardest content rather than farmed against the easiest. Slot counts follow the ratified RN\_0018 scheme as amended — zero, one, two, three, and four slots for the Common, Uncommon, Rare, Epic, and Legendary item grades respectively, with the questline-earned MYTHIC grade sitting above per Section 12. Common is the slotless floor grade and Uncommon is the first imprint-bearing rung, so the first socket the player sees reads as progression rather than as an empty feature. Re-rolling is deliberate and never luck-gated into farming: a cheap deterministic cost that rises per consecutive re-roll, with a hard lockable-affix floor after roughly five re-rolls so the player tunes toward a target build instead of grinding for it. Roll magnitudes and the exact re-roll cost curve defer to Phase 5M. Grade is the ruled noun here per Josh's tenth-sitting item F-1 of 2026-07-27: Legendary and Mythic are rarity grades on equipment, consumables, drops, crafting items, and runes, never mastery-tier names, so the earlier "item tiers" wording is corrected and this section keeps the rarity ladder and the mastery ladder in separate vocabularies throughout.
Supersession note on the slot sentence above, recorded in place per living-source law. The sentence previously read "one, two, three, and four slots for the Common, Rare, Epic, and Legendary item grades respectively" and named four grades with Common carrying a slot. That wording quoted a version of RN\_0018 that the anchor row itself no longer carries: RN\_0018 was AMENDED at Josh's eighteenth sitting of 2026-07-28 ("i like b more on 1. the rarity floor") to the five-rollable-grade scheme with Common as the slotless floor, and the seventeenth sitting of the same day ruled the five rollable grades plus the sixth MYTHIC grade outright. The 1/2/3/4 count-set the old sentence stated is preserved exactly; it is re-seated one rung down onto Uncommon, Rare, Epic and Legendary. RULED by Josh on 2026-08-04, D-RARITY-LADDER-SHAPE option (C) harmonized ("Agree with your recommendation"): the eight-token roster on T0\_Rarity\_Grade does not move, this sentence is re-authored to the amended scheme, and LEGENDARY is roll-obtainable only inside the access the per-item mastery questline opens — the per-weapon LEG\_WPN\_001 to LEG\_WPN\_072 and per-seat LEG\_ARM\_001 to LEG\_ARM\_007 questline rows — never as an ungated early-chapter chest roll. That access rule is carried as data on the legendary row's gate\_kind and gate\_ref cells, and the Section 12 MYTHIC language is untouched.
Every imprint roll is bound within plus-or-minus 1 sigma per T1\_RNG\_Sigma\_Constraint\_System and hard line HL\_0061, with the anti-streak floor at minus-1 sigma and the mandatory ceiling at plus-1 sigma, resetting on drop. Each imprint-roll table maintains its own sigma counter per the per-drop-table rule, so a rarity grade's dry streak is bounded independently of any other table. The constraint that keeps damage rolls fair keeps imprint acquisition fair by the same mechanism.
Crafting an imprint is gated on rarity and on proficiency, both. The rarity gate is materials and source-item grade; the proficiency gate is the mastery tier reached on the sourcing trades — the Engineering or Alchemy crafted base item paired with Inscription, per RN\_0018's source-both scheme, with Blacksmithing carrying the worn runic alterations on the operator side. A player who has the materials and not the mastery cannot craft the imprint, which is the same "creation from what you have truly mastered" invariant the operator lane runs on.
The lane fills from four directions, a seed set the factory expands per chapter and per boss:
Difficulty-gating applies across all four: the strongest rolls attach to the hardest sources.
RN\_0018 in T0\_Rune\_Registry is this lane's registry anchor, with the operator-lane anchors RN\_0016 and RN\_0017 sitting in the other lane and never conflated with it. T0\_RNG\_Drop\_Table is the lane's primary consumer: imprint-roll tables per rarity populate as drop rows carrying base rate, sigma floor and ceiling counts, reset condition, mastery-tier gate, and chapter gates, per its existing schema. Per-boss and per-chapter imprint drop rows author at the Phase 6 cascade and the per-chapter factory pass; the framework operates here.
Per docs/COMBAT\_PROGRAM\_ADDENDUM.md §9, Josh-ruled 2026-07-26. A build in this game is a chosen set of gear plus a chosen set of abilities plus the selected bonuses beneath both, and the player who has built more than one deserves to carry more than one.
Later-game purchasable unlocks grant a second and then a third equipment-and-ability set. Each set holds its own gear, its own ability selection, and its own bonus picks, and quick-changes as a unit rather than piece by piece. The purchase gate keeps the sets an earned convenience rather than a starting assumption, and three sets is the canonical ceiling — a ceiling derived from the ruling's naming of a second and a third set rather than stated as a hard cap, and revisable at the schema pass. Set switching is never available mid-encounter; that ban is derived from the diegetic siting rule below, since a change that happens only at a waterfall or a vril recharge zone cannot happen in the middle of a fight, and it is likewise revisable at the schema pass should the siting rule move.
Quick-change is diegetic and sited: it happens at a waterfall or a vril recharge zone. This makes the vril site the build sanctum — one location that serves as save point, vril recharge source, and loadout home together, so the player who walks to a well is preparing for what comes next in three senses at once. Site canon and the recharge-source mechanics are owned by T1\_Vril\_and\_Magic\_System\_Master; the Section 3 rest-and-recharge regen channel is the same interaction seen from the resource side. The siting is a pacing instrument as much as a fiction: a build committed at the well is a build carried into the region.
Bonus pools carry build-defining purposes, so distinct specs emerge from the same ability set rather than from separate ability sets. The seed set, expandable per pool as the factory authors it: vril-healing focus against vril-damage focus; resource specs including vril regeneration per second and healing over time; personal scope against area-of-effect scope. A pool's purpose tags are what let the Section 15 sweeps read a build's intended role, and a purpose with no viable build behind it is a defect the sweeps surface.
Companions carry the same loadout and bonus setup the player does — the same set slots, the same selectable pools, the same spec purposes — because a companion is a build component and not a follower with fixed stats. Investment protection is canonical and load-bearing: a departing companion gives back the gear and the investment. Losing a companion costs the player the companion, never the kit. The moral weight of a departure stays on the relationship, where it belongs, and never lands as a loot punishment that would teach the player to treat loyalty as an inventory risk. Companion loyalty scoring, the departure and wavering bands, the for-life exception, and the no-dead-end rerouted-paths contract are owned by T1\_Integrity\_Paths\_Worldstates\_Master; this section owns only the equipment consequence.
Per docs/COMBAT\_PROGRAM\_ADDENDUM.md §10, §11, and §12, Josh-ruled 2026-07-26. This section is the governing balance principle of this spec: the per-roster balance vectors at Sections 5 and 6, the Phase 5M damage numbers, the bonus pools at Section 12, and the imprint rolls at Section 13 all tune toward the target stated here.
Mathematically overpowered builds are allowed. The banned failure mode is META-COLLAPSE — the state most large action RPGs settle into, where a nominally deep system resolves to one or two viable options and nothing is genuinely customizable. The canonical target is many roles and many strategies, with hundreds to thousands of equally important and equally useful builds, so that being strong depends on both talent and build: player execution and theorycraft, each carrying real weight. A peak that a clever build reaches is a reward. A peak that every build must reach to be viable is a defect.
The doctrine demands many roles, and these are the axes the game authors and measures against. The seed set, verbatim-derived and expandable:
Group roles apply twice over: to the companion party in the single-player game and to guild play in the Tier C MMO layer. One role taxonomy, two arenas, as wired at Section 7.
Allies are part of the build, not decoration beside it. A healer companion enables a glass-damage player spec; a tank companion frees a support build; a departing companion reshapes the build as well as the story.
The player-shaped ally stat spread and the ally-intelligence axis are owned by T1\_Integrity\_Paths\_Worldstates\_Master §8.11.7 and §8.11.8 — the spread the player builds through level-up choices and equipment influence, the specialties and combat styles derived from it, and intelligence bought as behaviour quality against the combat attributes it competes with. This section carries the build consequence alone. An ally's spread is a build decision of the same class as a bonus pick, so team composition is content rather than a roster screen, and ally spreads and party compositions enter the build-space sweeps below as part of the measured combinatorics.
Familiars as spec decisions. The 22 player familiar slots carry bond ladders, and the bonded-familiar ability enhancement means the familiar choice shapes the ability build — a familiar is a spec decision, not a pet cosmetic. The bond gates what a familiar can do; the stat spread tunes how it does it, and the two compose. The path-variable 22nd slot is an endgame build axis in its own right. Familiar roster and bond-questline canon are owned by T3\_Familiars\_Named and T0\_Familiar\_Registry.
The ally is a character and not a unit, and the player may take direct control of one. Per docs/spine/DECISIONS\_PENDING\_JOSH.md, the twenty-eighth sitting item J4 (RULED, Josh 2026-07-30): the player can choose to control an ally manually by switching to them, in the register of a Final Fantasy VII Remake party switch. While an ally is not under the player's control it acts as that character — according to how it has been specialized and how its stats have been awarded — with intelligence leaning into being more proactive and predicting the battle so it makes more correct and more accurate decisions. There is no player-to-ally order channel: the order-verb option is ruled dead, and the ruled line that the player earns how an ally shows up for them stands untouched. The switch is a control mode rather than a command surface, which is why it adds no order verb and no configuration menu. The behaviour side of this ruling is owned by T1\_Integrity\_Paths\_Worldstates\_Master §8.11.8 and §8.11.10, and the integrity-gated familiar direction that canon already carries is unaffected: a familiar the player may direct to attack under its own integrity band is existing familiar canon and is not an order channel.
Balance breadth is measured, never asserted. Phase 5M and Phase 5H inherit the doctrine as their charter and gain build-space sweeps: automated simulation across the bonus, imprint, spec, and ally-spread combinatorics, run per encounter class and per role axis. The output is a viability-breadth scorecard — how many distinct builds clear the bar for each role, where the collapse points sit, and which pool options are never picked. A pool option that no sweep run selects is a balance defect, carrying the same teeth as any other measured threshold breach in this project, and it is fixed by widening the option rather than by removing it. Team compositions enter the same sweeps, since ally stat spreads are part of the combinatorics. Sweep thresholds and the pass bar author with the Phase 5M audit.
Per docs/spine/DECISIONS\_PENDING\_JOSH.md, the twenty-eighth sitting item J5 (RULED, Josh 2026-07-30). Counter classes are never arbitrary flags hung on an attack. Real physics is integrated into the metaphysical system, and it is the nature of the attack — its geometry, its reach, its duration, its persistence, and the body and the weapon that produce it — that determines which response answers it. The counter class is a reading of the attack, recorded as data so the engine and the gates can check it, and it is never a free choice among equally available options.
Seven response classes, each with a home that can be checked rather than asserted. The four that existed before this ruling are unchanged in meaning; the three that arena-wide attacks require are new members of the same closed set.
The seven tokens as they appear in data, so this section and the registries can be read against each other without a translation step: any, dodge\_only, parry\_only, neutralize, cover, weak\_point, trigger\_interrupt.
The elemental half of a parry is derived from the recovered Josh-authored element matrix, which lives as data at T0\_Element\_Effectiveness and as prose at docs/original\_predclaude/ELEMENTS\_MATRIX\_RECOVERED.md. The rule is stated once here so no encounter author invents a pairing.
Per docs/spine/DECISIONS\_PENDING\_JOSH.md, the twenty-ninth sitting (RULED, Josh 2026-07-30). A parry answers an attack; it does not promise to answer it for free. The outcome of a correct response made inside the parry window is a SCALE that runs from full negation down to partial mitigation, and the position on that scale is set by the strength of the attack against the strength of the answer.
Higher difficulty increases the range and the complexity of the attacks and of the environmental hazards. It is never solely health and damage scaling. Some health and damage scaling exists, and most of the difficulty comes from complexity — that ordering is the ruling and it is the binding form of the law.
A parry-only attack defeats a dodge by its nature — by geometry, duration, and persistence — and not by a flag that switches off invulnerability frames. The implementation expresses the physics, which is what makes the class readable to the player rather than arbitrary. Whether invulnerability frames stay universal for damage is therefore a question about how the physics is expressed, and it is answered by the attack's own shape at authoring time.
T0\_Boss\_Attack\_Rail carries counter\_class per attack, together with attack\_element, parry\_element\_rule, and parry\_element\_ref for the elemental half. T0\_Composure\_Routing carries counter\_class\_interaction, which records the demands each ability class can satisfy. T0\_Element\_Effectiveness supplies the elemental answering sets. T0\_Environment\_Grammar\_Registry supplies the cover and trigger affordances, and T0\_Boss\_Encounter\_Registry hitzone\_parts supplies the weak points. The enforcing gate is harness/check\_counter\_class\_coverage.py. Every magnitude — tell windows, answer windows, hazard counts per difficulty tier — defers to the Phase 5M balance audit exactly as this spec's other numerical bounds do.
This doc cites the following authorities for canonical content:
July 30, 2026, the twenty-ninth sitting\. The parry refinement of the same day's item J5 doctrine (docs/spine/DECISIONS\_PENDING\_JOSH.md, Josh 2026-07-30). The elemental parry is stated as the player performs it: at the right parry-window moment the player puts up an elemental blast, of the opposite or strong element to the attack, forward of the incoming attack, and survives untouched or receives less damage. Parry outcomes are ruled a SCALE and never a binary — full negation down to partial mitigation, set by the strength of the attack against the strength of the answer, across both the physical and the elemental halves, with an attack much stronger than the answer always leaving residual damage through a successful parry. The scale lands at The Mitigation Scale and again at the Defensive Layer Integration paragraph whose zero-or-fractional damage multiplier it governs, and every magnitude on it stays with the Phase 5M audit. The counter class is confirmed to state the RESPONSE an attack's nature demands and never the outcome it guarantees. The twenty-eighth sitting's interim reading of opposite as Effective-against is RATIFIED by the ruling's own wording and that open item is closed. No schema column is minted here: the ordinal mitigation column mints with the attack rail's first authored moveset.
July 30, 2026\. Combat-scope integration of the twenty-eighth sitting's three rulings (docs/spine/DECISIONS\_PENDING\_JOSH.md, Josh 2026-07-30). Item J5 lands as a new section: counter classes are NATURE-DERIVED rather than flagged, the response vocabulary expands from four members to seven with cover / weak\_point / trigger\_interrupt for arena-wide attacks, parrying may require the opposite element with the answering sets DERIVED from the recovered element grid at T0\_Element\_Effectiveness, boss moves must fit the boss's own body, weapon and scale including environmental hazards, and DIFFICULTY IS COMPLEXITY -- higher difficulty raises the range and complexity of attacks and hazards, with bounded health and damage scaling permitted as the minority contributor. Item J3 extends the legendary-and-mythic grades section: obtained MYTHIC equipment and weapons carry into New Game Plus and scale permanently with player level, scaling down at NG+ start while staying mythic and staying above the drop curve. Item J4 extends the companions-as-build-components section: the ally is a character and not a unit, the player may take direct control by switching to them, an uncontrolled ally acts as its built character with intelligence leaning into prediction, and the player-to-ally order channel is ruled dead. Schema consequences landed the same day at T0\_Boss\_Attack\_Rail (counter\_class as a declared seven-member format, plus attack\_element, parry\_element\_rule and parry\_element\_ref), T0\_Rarity\_Grade (ng\_plus\_carry and level\_scaling\_model), and the two enforcing gates.
July 27, 2026\. Combat-scope integration of the ruled combat-program addendum (docs/COMBAT\_PROGRAM\_ADDENDUM.md §§7-12, Josh 2026-07-26). The twelve-section structure locked at Session 5H expands to sixteen sections; Sections 1 through 11 keep their canonical numbering and every existing cross-reference resolves unchanged. Four new sections land: Section 12 Weapon Proficiency Bonus Lanes and Selectable Pools (Lane A incremental proficiency-tier bonuses, Lane B quest-gate transformative bonuses on the twelve canonical quest gates per capability per CVD §12.1, with the 120-gate roster scoped to T1\_Trades\_Master's ten-trade instance, universal selectable minor and major pools across every weapon class and combat-adjacent proficiency, the horizontal relevance principle making dead kit a measured defect, and the LEGENDARY and MYTHIC grades opened by the final mastery questline — MYTHIC a rarity grade above legendary, never a thirteenth mastery tier and never a drop); Section 13 Gear-Imprint Rune Lane (RNG imprint rolls sigma-bounded per HL\_0061, rarity-and-proficiency-gated crafting, the RN\_0018 slot and re-roll scheme, easter-egg and rarity-graded boss drops riding the part-break and carve loop, difficulty-gated top rolls, T0\_RNG\_Drop\_Table as primary consumer); Section 14 Loadout Sets, Spec Purposes, and Combat Build Sanctums (purchasable second and third gear-and-ability sets quick-changed at waterfalls and vril recharge zones, the vril site as save-recharge-loadout sanctum, spec purposes, companion loadout parity with gear returned on departure); Section 15 Build-Role Taxonomy and the Balance Doctrine (overpowered builds allowed and meta-collapse banned, hundreds to thousands of equally viable builds, talent and build together, the six role axes crossed with mastery-hybrid, per-weapon-type, elemental-combination, and custom-forge merge builds, companions and familiars as build components with player-shaped stat spreads and intelligence as the ally-behaviour axis, and Phase 5M and 5H build-space sweeps whose never-picked pool option is a balance defect). Surgical touchpoints: the Section 3 Resource and Rune-Enhancement Note gains the lane mapping separating operator runes, gear-imprint runes, and the in-combat RUNES currency; the Section 5 and Section 6 Per-Weapon Canonical Structure gains the bonus-pool line and names the Proficiency Level 8 Mastery ability and Level 99 Legendary transformation as canonical Lane B instances; both Balance Principle subsections defer to the Section 15 doctrine; Section 7 Tier C MMO World Boss Encounters wires the four operational teams to the Section 15 role taxonomy and cross-references T1\_Tier\_C\_MMO\_Spec Section 8 and CVD §13.1. Locked canon is unchanged: 72 weapons, the twelve-tier Hermetic framework with its twelve canonical quest gates per capability (the 120-gate roster being T1\_Trades\_Master's ten-trade instance), 22 familiar slots, the 185-ability baseline. Every list carried here is a seed set the factory expands per weapon class, per chapter, and per boss; all magnitudes defer to Phase 5M.
May 10, 2026\. T1\_Combat\_System\_Spec v1.0 ACTIVE filed at Phase 5 Session 5H. Twelve-section structure locked covering doc lifecycle, authority and cross-references, combat architecture overview, damage formula structural specification, Brute weapons framework, Trickery/Sorcery weapons framework, World Boss and Boss encounter architecture, agility course system, combat variety framework, block parry dodge mechanics, decay and maintenance, cross-doc authority. The 72-weapon canonical roster framework locks with 4-to-add chapter slots per GDD\_Systems v2 Section 27.1 proposal: Brute Ch 9-10 Ethiopia / Rift Valley plus Ch 47-48 Mesoamerica, Trickery/Sorcery Ch 29 Sámi reindeer-antler knife (WPN_071 Reindeer-Antler Knife, Trickery/Blades, Josh-confirmed 2026-07-08) plus Ch 57 Australia. Specific weapon identity for the 4 add slots authors during Phase 6 spine cascade per regional-fit principle. Tier A Solo Base 5 chapter-level Boss encounter anchors (Ch 8, Ch 23 or Ch 25, Ch 38, Ch 55, Ch 65\) align with hard-line spine chapter peaks per Pillar 8 blended-mode requirement, distinct from Tier C MMO World Boss roster which scopes at Session 5J T1\_Tier\_C\_MMO\_Spec per CVD §13.1 architecture. Combat Variety Framework canonicalizes per Pillar 1.12 mode variety mandate (every chapter carries combat content proportional to chapter length), Pillar 12 three-layer engagement (surface, depth, completionist), Pillar 8 boss blended-mode (combat plus weapons plus abilities plus puzzles plus character engagement), Pillar 10 regional combat identity (per-region kinesthetic differentiation). Relief chapter framing reframed per CVD §4.4 mountain-range pacing as structural valleys carrying canonical combat content at relief-tier intensity, not combat-absent. Ch 57 Australia canonical hard line is no antagonist family presence; combat content via environmental, person-to-animal, training, astral or dream-world encounters per CVD §4.5. [Ch 57 combat scope superseded by D-COMBAT-TD R9, 2026-07-19: environmental + astral/dream-world ONLY — NO person-to-animal and NO training combat, croc = environmental hazard never a cull; see the Combat Variety Framework live rule above.] Agility variant canon Standard / Hardcore / Puzzle locks with integrity-band cosmetic variance on Hardcore titles (Light-band L1-L2, neutral L3, Shadow-band L4-L5). T0\_Weapon\_Registry minimum-viable 8-column schema locks (weapon\_id, weapon\_name, weapon\_class, weapon\_subclass, damage\_type, vril\_couple\_eligibility, canonical\_chapter\_acquisition, mesh\_id\_ref). Damage formula structural specification locks with class-boundary canon at Session 5H; numerical absolute bounds defer to Phase 5M audit. Per-weapon detail and Drive registry row populate deferred to Phase 6 region build cascade. Memory cleanup item surfaced for Phase 5M close: userMemories entry "Ch 57 is the only chapter with no combat" requires update — CVD canon places Ch 57 hard line at no antagonist family presence, not no combat.
End of T1\_Combat\_System\_Spec.