Krendel is not just an action engine. It also stresses the importance of a character's personality and her relationships, balancing story and mechanics. If a character acts in accordance with her nature, then the universe smiles upon her. If not, then the character gains no blessing in her struggles.

It seems a bit weird to have a post devoted to combat, when, unlike most games, Krendel does not have a chapter devoted to it. 

The first thing to understand about combat in Krendel is that it works just like everything else. The tests are the same, powers works the same, environment works the same, and so forth. In fact, the combat section only addresses a couple of special rules, like acting into a crowd, surprise, bouncing grenades, and the like

Earlier I talked about how successes can tailor actions and power methods can tailor worlds.  We can go even further when tailoring any game: We can customize the rules. Pretty much all gamers know this, and most game systems acknowledge this. But, few truly embrace this.

What happens when your character hits zero Health (aka hit points, life, meat shield factor, etc.)? In almost all games the character is at least temporarily taken out of play, and in quite a few it means its time for a new character. More importantly, the player is now forced to sit out. They can comment from the side lines, but they don't have any real impact on the game. Quite possible they are sitting in a corner rolling up a new character and then need to distract the GM to get final approval. This can suck. Like so many other things, Krendel handles death a bit differently.