attacking and combat

attack (attacking): verbs attack/hit/strike/kill/ fight/slay/murder/break/smash/destroy X (the last three landed with ADR-230 D4), plus attack/hit/strike/kill X with/using Y (the weapon form skips fight/slay/murder). An explicitly named weapon is implicitly taken if needed, and is a consulted command entity: a cursed sword's on attacking it clause fires; a weapon inferred from inventory is not. What happens depends on the target:

• A combatant (the combatant trait) refuses violence_not_the_answer unless a combat interceptor is registered. Real combat is the interceptor (normally the basic-combat extension), and since ADR-215 a .story registers it itself: use combat in the story header wires the extension at load, no TypeScript, pure IR preserved. The interceptor's post-execute hook is contractually the combat resolution: it rolls the dice (seeded, in the extension; outcomes vary run to run and stay that way per project policy), damages through the health trait, and hands stdlib the result to narrate. Kills emit death events; a dead target refuses already_dead.
• A breakable (one-hit) or destructible (hit-pointed) thing genuinely breaks: target_broke, or target_damaged / target_destroyed across multiple blows, honoring armor, weapon-required, and wrong-weapon-type rules, with transformTo (shards replace the vase) and revealExit support.
• Anything else, including a plain person without combatant: the attack is ineffective, and today prints nothing at all (the path carries a raw legacy string instead of a message ID, and the current build renders it as blank output; flagged).

The author writes:

story "Guard Post" by "stdlib reference"
  id: ref-combat
  version: 0.0.1
  use combat

create the Guard Post
  a room

  A narrow stone room smelling of oil and rust.

create the rusty cutlass
  aka cutlass
  weapon with damage 5 and skill-bonus 2
  in the Guard Post

  Rust has not improved its edge, but it still has one.

create the deserter
  a person, combatant with health 8 and skill 30
  in the Guard Post

  A gaunt deserter with a wary eye on the door.

create the water barrel
  aka barrel
  scenery
  in the Guard Post

  A barrel of stale drinking water.

create the player
  starts in the Guard Post

The player sees:

> take the cutlass
Taken.

> attack the barrel


> attack the deserter with the cutlass
You land a solid blow on the deserter, dealing 6 damage!

One use line buys the whole combat layer: combatant and weapon compose with typed fields, and the attack resolves through real dice. The transcript shows one genuine run, and the same command may instead answer "You swing at the deserter but miss!" (outcomes vary run to run, by policy). The blank line after attack the barrel is the flagged ineffective path, verbatim.

Interceptors: on attacking it on the target (a story wanting scripted fights replaces the reply there instead of registering combat) and on an explicitly named weapon; a story can also register its own combat interceptor on the same trait seam.