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I'm trying to include combat in my story and I want the ready to interact with the fight, but the way I had thought of in my head (choose your action then the party members' actions, get result) had too many variables and I don't want to spend days writing the outcomes; turn based combat also doesn't make for a good CYOA (at least I don't think)
help. :/

So from what I've seen you can go with the choose your own adventure styles. There is a right choice or a wrong choice, sometimes it's just a bit of a different flavor text but your character goes on with the story either short an arrow or with marred armor, or you can have a bit of a blend where there's a choice that will lose you the fight but will move the story along, with the opposite choice winning the fight but getting your character killed in a few more pages.

Another way you can do it is the old gamebook style. You'll need the advanced editor to do this. If you're going to go with a party based system I would recommend keeping the stats super simple. I haven't messed with these options yet, but from what I've seen it can get pretty complicated trying to make something like this.

Indeed, putting combat in a storygame can be quite a challenge.

Yes, you can go to one extreme and include enormous amounts of detail with variables, random numbers, and statistics. This can be done. It takes a lot of time and lots of work with variables and scripting. There are a number of people here that have gone this route and can help you if that's the direction you want to go.

At the other extreme end you can simply give the user a few choices that are "right" or "wrong" choices. Wrong choices (block) can lead to death, while right choices (press the attack) can lead to the story going onwards. More than a few options like this will quickly make many readers bored.

The trick is to find that middle ground. No one can tell you exactly where that is, and it is likely different for different readers. You could use a few variables to track a couple stats and use choices that are worse or better that might do something like reduce the hit points by a larger or smaller number. Then it might take a number of wrong choices before the user ends up with a dead end or death.

Hope that helps!

Whoo, sorry if I'm a bit late!

I'm working on two very combat-heavy stories at the moment, and personally, I find Ogre's second method more effective for a quick action scene in the story. As opposed to heavy-handily setting up a turn-based, player-input combat scenario, I've set up my battles so there's a short bit of dialogue, the fight begins, and the player is greeted with a choice - the "Block" or "Press the Attack" mentioned above. One of these paths leads to death or injury - the other leads to an advance in the plot and combat. This way, you conserve mental energy for the rest of the story while breezing through fight scenes.

I've experimented with turn based combat, it was a lot of tedium and work that ultimately got more complaints than anything. Just making a fight a normal part of the narrative with choices attached and logical outcomes without working in stats or numbers really does make the most sense I think.