Guide to the Arcane Realm

Combat

On Kaf, combat has always has an interesting position in society. In antiquity, combat skills were greatly favored and even encouraged developments still in use today like the stats system or spellcraft. Combat skills were also necessary for survival in many walks of life like being a vassal, sellsword or adventurer and at no other time was this more clear than the Ghulat Wars. The various wars ensured the development of new or more deadly fighting systems and weaponry for individuals and armies.

It wasn't that long ago when combat was still necessary for survival. With civilization only gradually being rebuilt in scattered pockets of the world, other beings had to live on what they could get. Thus many resorted to pillaging or were forced to defend themselves from pillaging. And when cities first started spreading, the problem got worse with crime being rampant. The amazing part is that the worldwide violence actually started to go down at some point. A lot of factors lead this including the rise of urban crimefighters, cities respecting the environment around them, social hierarchies becoming lenient, technology and artifices providing more resources and access to them, etc.

Of course combat is still a skill considered important to know regardless of your lifestyle. After all, many people today feel that much of the reason why crime became common in cities was that people got too complacent and sedentary. Even weaponry and fighting styles that were once lost to the warring periods have seen a comback or at least modern reimaginings and improvements. I suppose the main difference in combat today is its role and severity. Nowaways fights to the death are much less common, like an exception rather than the rule. Combat skills serve more in areas like spectator sports and tournaments, self-improvement, historical and cultural preservation, crimefighting, and the occasional dissagrement. Even today, warriors and mages can still find the opportunity to fight each other, whether for reasons of vendetta and personality clashes, or just for bragging rights; its just death isn't usually the result (in public anyways).

Methods of Combat

Martial Arts

Martial arts are codified systems and traditions of combat practices, which are practiced for a variety of reasons: self-defense, competition, physical health and fitness, entertainment, as well as mental, physical, and spiritual development. Martial Arts have been greatly important in Kaf's past and recently have been regaining popularity in mass media.

Greater Concepts and Principles

Technical focus

Unarmed

Unarmed martial arts are those that lack any crafted weapons, only relying on making the body a natural weapon.  They can be broadly grouped into focusing on strikes, those focusing on grappling and those that cover both fields, often described as hybrid martial arts.

There are striking martial arts focused on punching, kicking, or special strikes like with elbows, knees, any claws, etc. There are also grappling martials that focus either on throws, joint locks, choke holds, submissions, and pinning techniques.

Weapon based

These are traditional martial arts which train armed combat often encompass a wide spectrum of melee weapons, including bladed weapons and polearms.

Sometimes, training with one specific weapon will be considered a style of martial arts in its own right, which is especially the case in Wakoku martial arts with disciplines such as kendo (sword), bojutsu (staff), and kyudo (archery). Similarly, modern martial arts and sports include modern fencing, stick-fighting systems like singlestick, and modern competitive archery.

Neijing

Neijing refers to the conscious control of one's vitality, especially for combat purposes. As an advanced form of martial arts that cultivates and manipulates this inborn force, it can provide practitioners supernormal speed, power, toughness, vision, projection of internal energy as a weapon, self-powered propulsion, energy based healing, and so on.

Magical Combat

As implied, this is when magic is used to create phenomena in battle, whether offensively, or through support. Schools of spellcraft commonly known for their offensive potential include elementalism, reinforcement, and dark magic.

In traditional spellcasting, an offensive spell targets the opponents with the intention to cause damage to them. A defensive spell is used in combat to increase the target's ability to withstand either physical or energy damage. Healing spells can be used to repair damage to another character or to themselves or replace lost MP or SP, enabling the contender to keep fighting. There are also buffing spells that strengthen or debuff spells that weaken or disable.

Also traditional magical combat can involve a being using their inborn sorcery as a defense mechanism or an intentional means of attack. Summoning creatures to cause damage to others is also common with magic. Alchemists that find themselves in combat have relied on the items and artifices they made to serve as weapons. Typically, a mage's role is a long range one away from close combat as their weapons may not do well at that range or all their magic study might have taken up their time for fitness, leaving them more frail.

There have also been variations to this standard set up of magical combat. For instance their have been more and more mages who maintain their physical fitness, usually because their magic requires grand motions to perform or they have have trained themselves for melee range with unarmed combat or weaponry.

Magical Martial Arts

Martial art styles that incorporate the use of magic during combat. These can use magic power to augment martial techniques in the form of sorcery, or activate spells with martial like stances and movements. The magical effects can be channeled through unarmed combat or even through weaponry.

Weaponry

As long as there has been combat, there have been weapons. There are many specialized and unique weapons out there but again, it would be too long to list. So instead I will go over the broad types of weapons that are known, even to laymen.

Melee: Swords, Polearms, Axes, Daggers, Knuckles, Staves, Clubs, Whips, Drills, Flails

Ranged: Throwing Stick, Darts, Bows, Throwing Daggers, Slings, Firearms, Artillery, Explosives, Lasers

Magical: Wands, Rods, Grimoires, Scepters, Totems, Talismans, Amulets, Charms 

Armor: Shields, Helmets, Body Armor, Guantlets, Greaves

A/N: Combat is another aspect to think about in your world. Conflict always exists so I had to think about much I would have in Kaf as the amount of combat can set the tone for a series.