Conflict is inevitable in the Imperium. The interplay of wealth, power, influence, politics, greed, and ambition that forms most interactions between the Houses of the Landsraad, CHOAM, the Imperial Court, the Spacing Guild, the Bene Gesserit, and other factions, breeds strife and turmoil. This creates opportunities to exploit and crises to overcome, and the fortunes of any House, or any person, rise and fall with how they face the conflicts ahead of them.

Conflicts add an additional layer to gameplay, and are used to provide greater detail to specific situations when desired. This does mean they add more complexity to the game, so they should be used sparingly and only in situations where the benefits of including them outweigh the extra effort involved.

Conflict covers a multitude of different forms of contest, from physical fights to intrigue and assassination. These rules assume a few concepts that differ from many other roleplaying games, and allow us to use the same system to cover a multitude of conflict styles.

• Conflict is not just physical combat, and any method to defeat an enemy with any tool can be a conflict.
• The ability and skill of each combatant is more important than the actual weapons used. A knife kills as well as a sword, although different weapons can provoke different advantages in different situations. These advantages are managed by applying traits.
• Each test in a conflict is an encounter and an exchange of blows or political moves, and does not represent a single thrust of a blade. Conflict is swift and deadly, in some cases resolved with a single dice test.
• Assets are often essential to allow the conflict to occur at all. While a fighter might choose to engage a foe unarmed, it is impossible to blackmail someone without something to blackmail them with. So, an asset or trait may often be required to make the conflict possible.
• Conflicts do not need to cause wounds or physically hurt a target. Many things might lead to their defeat, such as exhaustion, lack of resources, or losing allies or the respect of their peers. An enemy can be defeated without a drop of blood being shed.
• Complications suffered during a conflict represent actual hurt combatants suffer. They make winning more difficult but who got hurt the most doesn't define victory.
• Defeat does not mean death. While it often does in Dune, enemies can yield, be exiled, knocked out, or be stripped of resources.

Conflict Scope

Conflicts take many different forms, and they can occur on many different scales. The following forms of common conflict are discussed in more detail in these rules. But new forms of conflict can easily be initiated with the general system:

• Dueling is physical conflict between individuals, using hand-held weapons like swords and daggers, envenomed needles, and similar close-quarters tools. Personal shields—either full-body or partial—are common in dueling, making ranged weapons mostly ineffective, and lasguns of any kind a desperate proposition. Dueling can take the form of formalized dueling, assassination attempts, gladiatorial bouts, and one-on-one combat.
• Skirmishes are similar to dueling, and employ a similar range of tools, but involve a handful of combatants on each side. A skirmish may make use of ranged weapons in a way that dueling does not, particularly if the conflict starts when attempting to ambush unshielded foes. Skirmishes still take place over a relatively short range, but are close enough that a swordmaster is still able to put their prowess to good use.
• Warfare is physical combat on a strategic level, involving groups of armed personnel such as House troops, mercenaries, or even the Emperor’s deadly Sardaukar. Outright warfare between Major Houses is rare and highly regulated, in part because most factions must rely on the Spacing Guild to move anything from world to world, and the Guild may refuse to support actions that they do not regard as worthwhile. Amongst the Minor Houses on a single world, however, warfare may be as common or uncommon as the ruling Major House allows—some Major Houses encourage strife between their subordinates to weed out the weak, while others prefer different methods of resolving tensions. 
• Espionage is conflict relying on stealth and deception to gain access to a secure location or important person, normally to obtain information, steal valuable items, or perform assassinations. Espionage can easily turn into another form of conflict if performed poorly, but it can also negate the need for other, more overt forms of conflict if performed well. Espionage is primarily performed by spies, informants, and surveillance devices, and countered by guards, security systems, and methods of ensuring loyalty or rooting out deception, such as Truthsayers. Mentats, and Bene Gesserit sisters are often exceptionally valuable in both espionage and counterespionage.
• Intrigue is social conflict where secrets and individual agendas are most prominent. Participants often seek to discover what others know or what they desire, while keeping their own goals and their own secrets hidden. Intrigue can take place over a long period of time, or it can be focused on a single localized event. It occurs most regularly where society’s expectations and cultural taboos would prevent more overt forms of conflict. Intrigue often overlaps with espionage. Achieving goals through intrigue and influence is often regarded as ‘soft power’, as a counterpoint to the ‘hard power’ of direct authority, force, and military might.

Each of these forms of conflict are described in more detail in their own sections, later in this chapter.