I love what you have so far and am excited to see how it evolves.
Some feedback after reading (haven't played):
- 4 skill buckets is the correct number :) and I wish more rpgs would do this.
- Combat sounds overly complicated and there are many steps involved to resolve a turn in (perhaps not once you are used to it though).
- I can easily make assumptions, but it's not explicit how to resolve ranged combat.
- A turn being a "trading of blows" reminds of something like Troika!, rolling to see who comes out on top. I don't have issue with that approach, but then using "attacker's weapon dice" versus "defender's armor dice" seems contradictory to that narrative. And it creates mechanical advantages to attacking a certain foe that may not make sense narratively.
- Personally, I would rather see a wider variety of Paradoxes, even if it means fewer of them; like the Sorcerers' Calamities tables from GLoG v2.
I hope this feedback is helpful. Cheers!