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Wiki Systems Combat

Combat

How fights are timed, how attacks land, and how damage is worked out from the swing to the wound.

Fights in Rogue are resolved in two second rounds. You do not type an attack for every swing: once a fight starts, everyone engaged swings on every round until one side dies, flees or is taken out of the fight. What you type are the skills, spells and moves that go on top of that rhythm.

Rounds are run per room, not per character. The first blow starts a round timer in the room, and everyone fighting there resolves on the same tick. A fight on each side of a doorway runs on two separate timers.

Starting a fight#

attack <target> starts combat. kill, hit, waste and gank do the same. A few things stop you before you swing:

consider <target> tells you the gap between your level and theirs, and states their level outright.

The shape of a round#

Each round works through a fixed order, which is why combat output reads the same way whoever is in the room.

  1. Queued skills and spells fire. Anything you set off since the last round resolves here, before any weapon swings.
  2. Players and ridden heroes take their automatic attacks.
  3. Bonus attacks resolve, such as rogue and bard ripostes.
  4. Warriors gain adrenaline, up to a ceiling of 100.
  5. Your own attack lines print, followed by your health line. Your swing always appears last in your own output, directly above your vitals.
  6. NPCs take their automatic attacks, which is why hostile blows appear below your health line.
  7. Defensive reactions such as parries and blocks print.
  8. Damage over time and healing over time effects tick once.
  9. Anything that died during the round is removed, so every skill and spell message appears above the death message.

A stunned character is skipped in the attack passes. A character who is knocked down or petrified cannot attack either, though a knocked down or stunned player still gives their target a free swing back.

Landing a blow#

The base chance to hit is 90 percent against a target of your own level, moving by about 2 percent for each level between you. It is capped at 95 percent and floored at 5 percent, so no fight is ever certain either way.

On top of that there is a flat 5 percent chance to miss outright, applied first, that no level advantage removes. A two handed weapon adds another 5 percent miss chance for the heavier swing. Neither applies against the level 0 training dummies.

Many effects move the number. Blindness halves your chance. Being mocked, deafened or caught in a dirge takes off 10, 15 and 5 percent. Blessings, bardic finales and accuracy runes raise it. A few creatures described as rarely missing may go past the usual 95 percent ceiling, up to 99.

Working out damage#

Damage starts from the weapon. A weapon's class sets its damage band, from 1 to 5 for the lowest class up to 12 to 50 for the best, and some weapons name a band of their own. Your level decides where in the band you tend to land: a high level character with a modest weapon still rolls near the top of what that weapon can do.

From there the swing is changed in order:

Step Effect
Luck Pulls the roll toward the top of the band, worth about 20 percent on average at luck 50. It never pushes a weapon past its own maximum.
Strength Half a percent per point above 10, so 20 percent at the cap of 50. It applies to the whole band, so critical hits carry it.
Weapon condition Up to 60 percent less from a ruined weapon. See durability.
Caster melee Mages and healers deal 15 percent less with weapons. Their spells are not affected.
Runes Might runes add a flat percentage.

A few things are settled last, on the finished blow, so they count your fighting style, your sharpened edge and every other bonus as well as the roll:

Critical hits come next. The base chance is 5 percent, plus one point for every 4 points of agility above 10, so 15 percent at the agility cap. Other effects add more. A critical does not multiply your roll: it replaces it with the most that attack could do, so a critical is always a full power blow.

Rogues, thieves and assassins are tuned differently. They gain half the agility points, reaching 10 percent at the cap rather than 15, and their weapon criticals land for 85 percent of the attack's ceiling rather than the full maximum.

Critical hits on skills#

Skills and spells can be critical hits too, on the same chance as a weapon swing: the same base, the same agility, and the same shouts, runes and potions.

Every skill hit rolls inside a band of its own. A skill whose damage is a single figure rolls evenly from 13 percent under that figure to 13 percent over it, so its average is the figure itself. A skill that already had a range keeps it. A critical lands for the top of the band. Nothing is multiplied: a critical is the most that skill can do, for every class.

Luck pulls a skill's roll toward the top of its band, as it does a weapon's: not at all at luck 10, and 90 percent of the way at luck 50. It never pushes a skill past its own maximum.

A critical shows as a red star in brackets after the hit line, in front of the damage number if you have numbers on. Both the striker and the target see it; onlookers do not.

The same roll reaches fighting style procs and the damage procs on weapons. Damage that ticks over time, such as bleeds, poisons and burns, is not a hit and never rolls a critical.

Healing can be a critical as well, on the healer's own chance. A heal has no band to top out, so a critical heal mends 20 percent more and carries the same red star for the healer and the healed. Healing over time does not roll.

A handful of abilities have a critical of their own that works differently: a ranger's aimed shots, Shiv, Spin Kick, Shock and the gnome's Sparkblast. Those keep their own rules, and the ordinary critical applies to their base hit as well.

Flurries#

Some weapons, and the Berserker style, can set off a flurry of extra swings. The number is tied to the same critical chance. A flurry made for two swings gives one, and two on a critical. One made for three gives two, and three on a critical. A flurry with a range, such as one or two, keeps its range and gives one more than its top on a critical. A critical flurry carries the red star on its own line.

Level gaps#

The gap between two fighters' levels changes the damage, not only the chance to hit:

At equal levels none of this applies. A creature far above you is therefore much more dangerous than its hit chance suggests, and a group cannot farm one by weight of numbers. A kill pays experience as if the creature were at most 15 levels above you.

Getting hit#

Incoming damage passes through several layers, and they are not interchangeable.

Shields. A warrior with the Shield Mastery passive in a slot and a shield on blocks 40 percent of weapon blows outright, before anything else happens. A cleric running Anvil of Kranos blocks from level 31, at 10 percent rising to 20 at level 100. The Bulwark style adds 10 to 17 points. A block stops the whole swing, and the chance is capped at 95 percent. A shield a merchant has spiked with spike also hurts whoever it blocks.

Active defenses. Parry, evasion and the bardic dances are avoidance defenses, and only one of them can fire per attack. If none does, the passive shields and wards are tried in turn, and again only one takes effect. Aura of Sanctum is the exception: its flat 10 percent reduction does not use up the slot.

Parry is a warrior stance from level 30. Raising it costs spell points, and each parry costs 1 endurance; the stance drops when you run dry. It fires 50 percent of the time at level 40 or below, rising to 90 at level 100, and takes 60 percent off the blow, or up to 70 with strength. Evasion is a rogue and thief ability from level 9. It fires 80 to 90 percent of the time and takes 30 to 40 percent off; below level 30 it pays its minimum. Each evade costs endurance, 1 at low level rising to 5 at level 100. Agility adds one point to all of these chances for every 4 points above 10.

Fighting in social attire switches off the whole defense chain. Parries, dodges, wards and absorb pools stop firing, and any resistance or stat bonus on your gear stops counting. Your armor class and your shield block still work, but everything above them is gone.

Armor. Armor is the last layer and the most predictable. The pieces you wear are weighed against the level of whoever hits you: against a level 25 attacker every 4.8 points of worn armor are worth 1 percent, against a level 50 every 8.8, and against a level 100 every 16.8. A full kit of your own level stops about two fifths of a same level blow at every level; a weaker enemy finds it thicker and a stronger one thinner. Your shield, constitution, set bonus, runes and armor blessings are flat: every 25 points of those are worth 1 percent whoever swings. There is no class floor or ceiling. What separates a warrior from a mage is the armor each may wear, covered in gear, not a hidden cap. A ceiling of 75 percent exists only to stop stacked effects reaching immunity. Armor works on weapon and fist blows; abilities and spells are not reduced by it.

Your armor class is the armor rating of every worn piece, reduced by each piece's condition, plus rune bonuses, any set bonus, and five points for every point of constitution above 10. NPCs use an older mitigation profile tuned to their difficulty tiers.

Endurance#

Every swing costs endurance, whether it hits or misses.

A swing you cannot afford is not made and costs nothing. Walking costs endurance too; see vitals for that and for recovery.

Fighting styles#

style shows your styles and mastery, style <name> switches, and style info <name> shows what your current rank does. Each style has fifteen mastery ranks, earned by using it.

Normal, Offensive and Defensive are open to every class from level 1. Offensive adds 1 damage to your main hit and can land a sharp follow up. Defensive deals 2 less on the main hit and 7 to 10 percent less weapon damage, takes 8 to 15 percent less damage, and can guard, counter and recover endurance.

The other styles are learned in their own guilds, at the level each names. Weapon and shield needs hold for the whole fight, not only when you switch.

Attack procs share a four second cooldown. Berserker flurries also have a twelve second cooldown, and Bulwark knockdowns ten. Defensive reactions share six seconds and Duelist reactions four. Switching style does not reset these timers, and a follow up set off by a style cannot set off another.

Fighting other players#

Other players can be attacked with attack wherever the room does not forbid violence. There is no flag to set and no consent step: the same defenses, mitigation and round order apply as against any other opponent, and a player who loses pays the price described in death. Killing a player marks you as feared, and outside an arena as wanted, in the reputation the world keeps of you.

Leaving a fight#

flee runs you through an open exit without a door. It fails if an effect or a boss fight forbids flight, or if your leg is wounded. Fear can force the same flight on you against your will.

You cannot quit while anything hostile in the room has you on its enemy list, whether you have swung back or not. There is no timer on it: once nothing in the room is after you, quitting works again. Dropping your connection is no escape either. See death for what happens to a body left behind.