Combat Mechanics

If you read too much of the below, you probably need to increase your
 difficulty setting.  It makes playing the game easier, it can overcome a
 perceived misunderstanding but can also give you much more knowledge
than an adventuring party would normally have.

Please be mindful that fight mechanics are a choice. I chose these,
you may have chosen or preferred it slightly differently. If you have
suggestions, reply below, I will consider them, but most likely will not
 make radical design changes to these.

FLANKING
Flanking matters for accuracy and evasion. If your fighter is next to an
 orc, a 2nd player attacking him will benefit from the orc’s reduced
ability to move or see the attack coming. So this is true for ranged and
 melee attackers. Same happens to players.
Flanking benefit is enhanced if the attacker is good in the ‘no escape’ skill. Rogues, assassins.
Flanking impact to the attacker is reduced if the attacker has the ‘nimble’ skill. Monks etc.

RANGED ACCURACY
Ranged attacks that use the full range of the weapon have the accuracy
reduced. One third or half range usually stops giving penalties.

ARMOR CLASS AND PHYSICAL DAMAGE
Physical armor works as follows: first, for every 100 points of armor
the damage gets halved. Then, for every 10 points of armor the remaining
 damage gets reduced by 1. This is calculated for each of the 3 physical
 damage types separately (slice, pierce, force) then added up.
Example 1: a rat has an attack that rolls a pre-armor pierce damage of
10. It hits your player who has 50 points of armor vs piercing (pretty
good for an early party). First, the 10 reduces by about 25% (0.5 to the
 potency of 0.5), so 8 points left. Then 5 points reduced. so he takes 3
 points of damage.
Example 2: a dragon charges your level 40 knight. raw damage is 300
force damage. He has 200 armor vs force damage which is amazing (armor
vs force is the toughest to accumulate). This means the damage is halved
 twice, to 75. then reduced by 20. So he takes 55 damage.
Example 3: a dragon charges your level 40 priest. he is dead.
One of the consequences of the above is that a monk for example (who
will never have a great armor rating), better not try and fist fight an
ogre, unless he has a very high evasion and good health to survive at
least one hit and retreat and be healed. Armor Class in DnD works
different: it describes if/whether you will be hit.  My armor class
instead describes what happens when you are hit.

BASE SPEED AND ATTACK SPEED

Base speed determines two things:

a) How fast you can move, or to be precise how long you are inactive
after you moved.  The base speed is displayed in your character sheet.

b) the base speed modifier for your weapon attack.  The player’s base
 speed and the weapon’s base attack time, and the chosen weapon attack
style, together determine how fast you attack (e.g. how long you are
inactive after attacking).  Only the attack speed based on a
simple weapon attack style is displayed in the character sheet though,
so you can’t see the exact speed figure resulting from your weapon
attack style.

RESISTANCES
Resistances stack like layers: if you have two rings that grant 50% fire
 resistance each, then your fire resistance from items is 75%. (the
exposure to fire is 100% and then halved by each ring, to leave exposure
 of 25%).
For fire, lightning, magic and life-draining, resistance reduces the damage received from that type of attack.
For cold, damage reduction applies but also the COLD condition is not as
 strong, which slows you and is explained in more detail later.
For poison, the initial and ongoing damage is reduced, which effectively shortens the duration as well.
For paralysis and critical hits resistance, the % determines the chance
that you do not suffer the impact that is otherwise coming your way.

LIFESTEAL
Some monsters can steal life, so a % of damage dealt heals them.
 Players can also get this via some item properties. Lifesteal % is
different from life draining damage.  Life draining damage is just a
type of damage, that you can have resistance again as well. and boost
with ‘resist evil’.
Lifesteal is a separate feature that some monsters have, like vampires.
it is commonly the attacks that also deal some life draining damage that
 have lifesteal on, but that is not a must. Ghosts do life draining
damage without lifesteal.

CRITICAL HITS
A critical hit results in damage being 100-300% of the max damage, and
armor class of the target is halfed.  This HURTS.  A monster or player
has a critical hit chance.  A lot of monsters have zero, because
otherwise you get too many frustrating insta-kills too early.  Where
there is a critical hit chance, it is a simple % and if the attacker is
successful in rolling it, then there is a simple % resistance (0-100%)
calculated to see if the recipient can avoid the critical hit being
successful.  If the resistance roll is met, it reverts back to a normal
hit.

CONDITIONS:
Every monster and player can in theory be under the following
conditions, several at the same time possibly: BLEEDING, POISONED,
PARALYZED, STUNNED, ASLEEP, FROZEN. They all have little symbols in any
of the four corners of his tile to show it. Just covering one of the
more complex ones today:
BLEEDING. Some monsters can’t bleed, and in the LOG view (top right
button in map view), you will learn who they are. In general: elemental
earth/stone creatures, skeletal or ghostly creatures can’t. Once you
bleed, you need to use magic or a similar healing power to get rid of
it. Else your bleed counter will cause you damage every few ticks. You
don’t see ‘ticks’ in fight mode but that is how time works in the
background. A movement for a beginner player usually takes 80 ticks. You
 usually bleed about every 20 ticks. For some monsters, their massive
health and regenerative abilities means that just having a tank that
sustains all the damage and someone slowly stacking bleed-inducing
attacks can work to take him down.

Note on BLEED TRIGGER: for your normal attacks, you can see the ‘attack’
 stats in party view mode, it will say ‘chance to cause bleeding’ with a
 %. If you hit with your attack, a roll is made between 0..100 and if it
 is below that %, you caused bleeding. Bleeding added is 1 for every 25
points of damage, but a minimum of 1. Example: your assassin uses a
‘obsidian ceremonial knife of cutting’. This is an item with high ‘cause
 bleeding’ chance plus obsidian gives another 25-40% plus ‘of cutting’
adds more. So you probably have a 90%. The knife does not do a lot of
damage, probably only resulting in 2 to be added to a bleed counter of
the target on hit, but because the assassin is quick and using a very
small (=quick) weapon, the result is that he is making a swiss cheese
out of the enemy ogre. Even if he has to retreat and recover once in a
while with the ogre chasing after him, the bleeding never stops and he
is slowly winning.

Most spells or healing skills will heal some bleeding, higher
skill/spell levels would be more effective. Some monsters like trolls
have natural healing abilities that not only recover health quickly but
also heal wounds. So the before mentioned
breaking-bad-toothbrush-in-prison assassin build is no good here.

PARALYZED – this is usually some supernatural ability or spell that
someone falls prone to. It means the monster or player cannot act, and
has evasion vastly reduced. Your ‘timer’ does not progress so if you are
 waiting for your next turn anyway because you took a big action, being
paralyzed prolongs the point by which you are active again.

SLEEP – not currently implemented, but if you are asleep you can be awoken by damage or heal spells.

STUNNED – works like paralyzed but is caused by physical impact, in
particular physical force attacks, strong monsters, special charge
attacks or blunt weapons. Or the repulsion skill. The only resistance
there is against a STUN attack (because it is so fundamentally physical)
 is the BERSERKER’s WILL skill. The skill creates an equivalent % check
to see if STUN impact of an attack is ignored.

POISONED – each entity has a poison ‘ticker’ or ‘counter’. If you are
 hit by an attack with poison damage, this is added to the counter at a
factor of (1 – resistance %). So 10 poison damage turns into 6 being
added to your poison counter if your resistance is 40%. Every few
‘ticks’ in combat (and usually several times in between a normal attack
time), the following happens:

a) you receive damage equal to the poison counter
b) the poison counter reduces by being multiplied by (1 – resistance %), but at least reduced by 1.

This has 3 very interesting effects:

1. an entity with high poison resistance will take hardly any damage.
 Example: you hit a monster with 80% poison resistance with what looked
like a powerful ‘poison dart’ spell. He takes 20 damage, then 4, that is
 it. Obviously underwhelming and to be expected.
2. an entity with low poison resistance will take a lot of damage (but
over time). Example: same dart shot at a monster with zero resistance
will cause him 100,99,98,97 … 4,3,2,1 damage. A total of ~5,000 damage!
3. hitting someone with a bit of poison damage once in a while is much
less efficient than if you can stack it. Example: you hit a monster with
 zero poison resistance with your toxic dagger, but a lot of time passes
 between hits. 10 poison damage, means 10,9,8,7,6,5,4,3,2,1 = 55 damage.
 you do that 3 times, gives a total of 165 damage. not bad of course.
but if you have 3 people hitting him at the same time with such a
dagger, he would take 30,29,28 … 4,3,2,1 = ~465 damage. About 3 times
more!

So key to killing with poison is: preparation, timing, positioning
and focussing on the same target. and using DETERMINATION when you know
your POISON BOOST will run out soon.

COLD – this condition means you are slower than you normally would
be. It stacks as well, and is capped at reducing someone to snail speed.
 That snail speed is a fixed speed, not a % of normal speed. So if you
REALLY freeze an orc to the max, and REALLY freeze a gnome to the max,
they will be on the same snail speed. Whereas under normal conditions a
gnome is much faster than an orc. Cold effect reduces over time, and
cold resistance BOTH reduces the impact you receive when hit, as well as
 the speed by which it reduces over time. Basically, don’t try to freeze
 an ice demon or even a troll, they are just not that vulnerable to it.

VS. UNDEAD BONUS - Some weapons will have a % bonus damage vs. undead enemies. This bonus applies to physical attack damage only (e.g. if a sword deals slicing damage and magic damage, the vs. undead bonus will apply only to the slicing, not the magic). Some undead do not have physical bodies, such as ghosts and specters, so there is some nuance to this how the bonus works. If the target has a physical body, it's a straight bonus on top of the physical damage, so a 100 damage attack with a 25% vs undead bonus will deal 125 damage. If the target is physically immune and your vs. undead bonus is less than 100%, the physical damage and bonus are both still calculated, but only the bonus damage will apply. So against a specter, for example, a 100 damage attack with 25% vs undead bonus will deal 25 damage. If the target is physically immune and the vs. undead bonus is greater than or equal to 100%, then it works the same as if they weren't physically immune at all. You get the full physical damage and full bonus. So let's say instead of 25% you have 125% vs undead bonus. Now the same 100 damage attack against a specter gets the 100 physical damage and the 125% bonus for a total of 225 damage.