When I finished chapter 7 I was struck by the shortness of the Combat chapter. In most RPGs I've read the Combat chapter is one of the longest and almost always the most complicated. Combat in FATE is pretty simple and fast paced. The real kind of fast paced not the D&D kind where things can get bogged down if any character wants to do something out of the I-hit-you-you-hit-me mechanic.
In FATE the point of Combat is to make it as dramatic as possible not as realistic as possible. If you want realistic combat play Gurps, rules for everything and two, count'em, two, separate combat systems. In FATE just tell the GM what your character tries to do and the GM gives you what to roll and narrates what happens with the result.
I love the combat system, not sure how I feel about the stress and consequences, but though I have played FATE exactly one whole session at a con, none of the PCs ever took any damage of any kind. The dice loved us. But, this is not a good way to test a core mechanic of the system. I am planning to set up a test game in the world I am designing (the point of this blog) and trying to give my players a good taste of the injury and recovery systems.
