Dune/docs/LEADER_BATTLE_EFFECTS.md

Leader Skill battle effects

13 September 2026. Prototyped, with Partial rules coverage. This follow-up connects both Rihani Decipherer bands and the lower battle bands of Mentat, Bureaucrat and Sandmaster. Normal Mentat questioning, Bureaucrat payments and Sandmaster movement collection remain missing, as do Spice Banker, Diplomat and Smuggler. Public module starts and publication remain gated.

Source contract

The GF9 CHOAM & Richese rulebook, page 9 provides the common skill procedure. The printed cards and publisher designer walkthrough supply the individual effects; see the component inventory.

• Mentat, 17:37: the surviving selected skilled disc gains two battle strength. Its printed value, bounty and Zoal source value stay unchanged.
• Bureaucrat, 15:01: the surviving selected skilled disc subtracts one from its opponent's total per distinct stronghold that opponent occupies. Contested and storm-covered occupation count; advisors and virtual victory control do not. There is no implicit zero clamp. The shared board helper recognizes HMS and Jacurutu, though combined-module play remains gated.
• Sandmaster, 15:48: a surviving skilled winner adds three board spice to an existing pile in the battle territory automatically. This grants no direct income and does not require surviving forces. No pile means no addition. Multiple positive piles are guarded before the final battle vote pending a sector-placement ruling.
• Rihani, 12:49: a face-up native trainer grants the normal private inspection after a victory using another leader. A surviving selected native skilled winner receives both bands. A surviving captured skilled winner receives only the lower band.

Rihani first privately inspects two random physical Traitor Deck cards and reshuffles them. It then offers the separate optional two-card draw. Choosing to draw commits the player to keep one newly drawn card, publicly reveal and return one unused old card, and secretly return the unkept new card. Those two returns are shuffled into the actual deck. There is no post-draw decline or return-both-new alternative. The two samples can contain the same identity.

Ordering inference: normal-before-lower follows the printed order and designer narration; no explicit priority sentence was found. Unused means not actually called, rather than merely known or publicly disclosed. Returning an old card announces its name without adding it to the actual-use register. A Traitor Card used to win this battle is already excluded from the exchange. No eligible old card means no optional draw. There is no partial draw fallback when fewer than two physical deck cards are available.

The Ixian/Tleilaxu rules place skill resolution before faction capture and Face Dance. Tleilaxu Rihani must instead exchange an unrevealed Face Dancer. The Basic Tleilaxu follow-up connects that exchange and the skill return when Face Dance kills a leader. Foreign gholas remain gated. The connected entry supports base factions in Basic/Advanced with Leader Skills alone. These boundaries are implementation limits, not prohibitions in the game.

Connected behavior and checks

Shared battle quotes calculate score changes; bots use the same public stronghold count. Sandmaster resolves automatically. Rihani offers owned draw/decline controls, then separate inspectable keep-new and reveal-old selections. All four AI profiles use only their permitted view. Only the owner receives inspection history and drawn identities. The public log names the returned old card, never the kept or unkept new identity.

Physical snapshots, an event-bound obligation and saved stages preserve Rihani through casualties, winner cleanup and captive return. Independent review found that completed receipts were not bound to custody during cleanup; this now rejects changed deck order after either decline or exchange. JSON and SQLite restart tests cover both choices, concurrent writes, stale replays, normal versus captured eligibility, actual-use exclusion and native Suk rescue preceding a captured Rihani exchange. Focused checks also cover score-boundary winners, dead/bluffed skills, Sandmaster without surviving forces and UI privacy.

Fresh browser room HNGSR8GB used genuine module setup, then a separately staged conserved battle. The human inspected two private cards, drew two separate cards, refreshed the pending exchange and selected a keep and public return. Completion and refresh restored the kept Traitor and winner card cleanup. This is targeted browser evidence, not a naturally reached complete game. Two genuine four-profile Basic/Advanced samples completed in 92/188 actions, with 3/6 JSON continuations and no rejected candidates; neither reached a Rihani effect. They establish sample continuation, not comprehensive skill acceptance.

The running server responded after the reported outage. A fresh online backup captured all 393 opening rooms. No restart or reset was needed. Required broad checks and final saved-game preservation are recorded in the checkpoint commit and private source-bound report.