Combat

Fights are decided by dice: two twelve-sided dice for every attack. Every blow is rolled. It can miss, it can hit hard, and it hurts. Whatever loses all its hit points dies. That goes for you too, and death is final. How hit points work, how they come back, and what happens when you die is on Hit points and death, and stances, free blows, and stamina are on Stances, free blows, and stamina.

You attack by moving into a hostile creature (see Controls), which takes a turn. You can also bash it with your shield, or shoot or throw from afar with t (or T; see Ranged combat).

Each attack trains the weapon skill it uses and the fighting style you fight in. Your ranks in them help you hit, hurt, and defend. With a weapon in each hand, an attack up close is a blow with each. Creatures fight each other and you by the same rules (see Creatures), and casters cast the same spells you do (see Spells).

Hitting

An attack rolls two twelve-sided dice and adds them, for 2 to 24, most often around 13. It hits when that roll plus the attacker’s bonus to hit reaches the target’s Defence.

• Up close, your Strength helps you hit. When shooting, your Dexterity does. With a finesse weapon up close, Dexterity helps you hit and Strength does not, even if your Strength is higher. Some weapons are easier to hit with than others, and your rank in the weapon’s skill helps more the more you have trained.
• Two ones always miss, and a roll of 22 or better always hits. 22, 23, and 24 are 6 of the 144 ways the dice can fall, about one blow in 24. However high a Defence climbs, some blows still land.
• The sum of two dice gathers around the middle. So each point of bonus or Defence matters most when the odds are close, and little when they are long either way:

The first column is the target’s Defence minus your bonus to hit: what the dice must reach. Against an unarmoured, ordinary target (Defence 10), an attacker with no bonus hits three times in four.

Example: a dwarf warrior against a kobold. Thora, a level 1 dwarf warrior, has Strength 15 and rank 2 in Long blades, and swings a long sword (1d9, no bonus to hit of its own) at a kobold with no armour.

• Her bonus to hit: +2 for Strength 15 (modifiers), +1 for rank 2 in Long blades (what a rank gives): +3. The character screen shows “+3 to hit, 1d9+3 slashing or piercing”.
• What the dice must reach: the kobold’s Defence is 11 (10, and +1 for its Dexterity 13), so the dice need 11 − 3 = 8.
• Her chance to hit: 123 of the 144 rolls make 8 or more: 85.4%.
• Her damage: 1d9, +2 for Strength, +1 for her rank: 4 to 12. The kobold has 6 hit points, so seven hits in nine kill it outright.
• A critical: the long sword threatens on 20 to 24, 15 rolls in 144 (10.4%). The second roll needs 8 again, so 85.4% of those threats confirm, and the damage is rolled twice and added: 2d9+6, 8 to 24.

The game never shows you the rolls. But the character screen (@) shows your own attacks beside your stats:

• the blow of your main hand (or bare hands);
• your off hand’s blow, when you fight with two weapons;
• the shot or throw of your missile weapon, with its range in steps.

Each shows its bonus to hit and its damage (+4 to hit, 1d8+2 slashing). These count everything that goes into the attack as you stand now: your stats, your ranks in its weapon skill and in the fighting style you hold it in, two-weapon penalties, your stance, your talents, and the magic you know about. A magic item’s unknown powers count only once it is identified. Anything that depends on the moment, such as striking from hiding or being dazzled, is left out.

This is exactly how an attack is rolled, and what adds up to its bonus to hit and its damage:

An attack rolls 2d12 (its natural roll, 2 to 24) and adds its to-hit; it hits when the sum is at least the target’s Defence (10 plus its bonuses). A natural 2 always misses, a natural 22 or better always hits (6 of the 144 rolls), however high the Defence. A natural roll in the attack’s threat range (22–24 unless the weapon says otherwise) threatens a critical: a second 2d12 plus the same to-hit against the same Defence confirms it, and the damage is then rolled ×2 (unless the weapon says otherwise) and added up. Ranks and magic widen a threat range, never past a natural 2, and raise a multiplier, never past ×5. A hit does at least 1 damage before Protection.

A creature’s attacks add up the same way. Their numbers are on Creatures in numbers.

Finesse weapons

A finesse weapon’s blows are guided by Dexterity instead of Strength. Its bonus to hit up close is your Dexterity modifier, even when your Strength is higher. Strength still adds to its damage.

The finesse weapons are the dagger, the knife, the rapier, the short sword, and the stiletto.

Defence

Your Defence (shown as Dv on the character screen, @) is 10 plus what protects you. It comes in kinds:

• Dexterity: quick feet, your Dexterity modifier (see Stats). A clumsy character’s Defence is below 10. Heavy armour limits how much Dexterity can add (see the table below), and so does a heavy load: at most +3 when you are burdened, +1 when strained, nothing when overloaded (see Burden). The lower limit counts.
• Armour: what you wear on your body.
• Shield: a shield in your off hand. Your rank in Sword and Board adds more, with a weapon in the other hand. In Two Shields, you hold a shield in each.
• Parry: a weapon that turns blows aside, such as the quarterstaff, plus your rank with the weapon you wield (blades, spears, and staves), plus your rank in Duelist or Staff Fighter while you fight that way. Parry counts against blows only. An arrow, a bolt, or a thrown thing is not parried, except by a duelist of rank 10 (Measure, see Fighting styles), and except against a shot from beside you (Distance).
• Natural: a creature’s hide, shell, or scales. You have none, unless your race or a magic item gives you some. Lizardfolk’s scales soak blows but do not turn them (see Races).
• Dodge: training and magic. The tumble skill adds to it, more the higher it is, and so do magic items that make you nimble.
• Deflection: magic items that turn blows aside.
• Wall: the stone around an incorporeal creature standing inside a wall (Creatures).

Within each kind only the best counts, so two pieces of armour do not add up. Dodge is the one kind that does add up.

Armour also has Protection, which takes damage off the blows that get through (see Protection below). Light armour is mostly Defence. Heavy armour is mostly Protection.

Helms, cloaks, gloves, boots, rings, and amulets add to Defence only through their magic (see Magic items). Magic armour or a magic shield may add more than its base. The heavier helms, gloves, and boots, and the fur cloak, give Protection.

Why an attack missed

When an attack misses, the message says why, as far as you saw it:

• A roll so poor it would have missed a target standing still in no armour at all is a plain miss: “The kobold misses you.”
• Otherwise your Defence turned it. One kind is picked, more likely the more it adds: “You dodge the kobold’s spear.” (Dexterity), “The kobold’s spear glances off your armour.”, “You block the kobold’s spear with your shield.”, “You parry the kobold’s spear.”, “Your sword glances off the cave beetle’s shell.”
• A clumsy character’s low Dexterity lowers their Defence, but is never given as the reason for a miss.
• If you do not see the attacker or the target, a miss is just a miss: “Something misses you.”

Criticals

A hit whose dice come up high enough threatens a critical. Most weapons threaten on 22 to 24. Swords and daggers threaten on 20 to 24 or wider. Each weapon’s range is in the weapons table.

A second roll against the same Defence decides. If it would hit too, the critical is confirmed: the damage is rolled again and added. That makes twice in all for most weapons, and three times for the heavy ones, among them axes, hammers, spears, and bows (the weapons table gives each one’s). The message says so: “The kobold hits you hard!” A confirmed critical also opens a bleeding wound (see Status effects).

Some things have no vitals to find, so they are immune to criticals and to sneak attacks. A threat on them is a plain hit, and Vital strike or a an exploit of five at level 60 is only a plain blow (“It has no vital spot.”). These are the incorporeal (ghosts and wraiths), animated objects, and every creature tagged elemental, skeleton, spirit, or construct (the mud golem; elementals). The fleshy undead (draugr, ghouls, the drowned, vampires, mummies) do have vitals. The full list is under Surprise and sneak attacks.

Damage

A hit does the weapon’s damage dice, at least 1:

• Up close, your Strength adds to the damage, with a finesse weapon too. With nothing in your hands you hit with your fists.
• Shots do the bow’s own damage. Dexterity aims them but adds nothing to the damage. A bow is drawn by strength, though: each point of Strength you lack below what the bow needs costs you a point to hit and a point of damage.
• Creatures without a weapon bite, claw, or kick, each in its own way.
• Your rank in the weapon’s skill adds to the damage, and at higher ranks widens the critical range.
• A shield bash does the shield’s own damage (below) plus your Strength. It takes the time of a plain blow. Neither a slow great weapon’s time nor a quick one’s (nor its magic) changes that.

Bare hands: 1d3 (plus your Strength, as every blow), critical on 22–24, ×2.

How each weapon is held, its weapon skill, how far it can be thrown, and the few extras: a parry bonus to your Defence while you hold it, and the Strength a bow needs.

Messages never give numbers. They say what kind of blow it was: “The kobold stabs you.”, “You slash the giant rat hard!”, “The giant rat bites the kobold.”, “You cleave the kobold.” (see Damage types).

A big hit, one that takes at least a third of the target’s hit points at once, makes it bleed. Some creatures’ attacks can poison (see Status effects). Some bites carry a disease.

Protection

Defence decides whether a blow lands. Protection (shown as Pv on the character screen, @, beside your Defence) takes damage off every blow that does. Each hit loses between half your Protection (rounded up) and all of it, at random, with every amount in between equally likely:

• Every piece adds up. Body armour, helm, gloves, boots, and cloak each add their Protection (see the armour table above). So does the magic of Hardened armour (see Magic items). Some talents add to it too, in any armour: Bulwark 2, and the berserker’s Battle-scarred 1, or 3 while raging. The Pv on the character screen shows your Protection as it is now. A shield gives Defence only. Creatures have their own: a cave beetle’s shell turns aside much of what hits it.
• Criticals punch through. A confirmed critical rolls its damage twice (or more) first, and the Protection comes off only once.
• A hit can do nothing at all. If Protection takes all of its damage, the blow glances off and nothing else comes of it: no blood, no bleeding, no poison. “Your sword glances off the cave beetle’s shell.”, “The kobold’s spear glances off your chain mail shirt.” It still landed, so it trains your weapon skill as a hit does.
• Some weapons pierce armour, ignoring part of the Protection of whatever they hit. Their description says “Pierces armour”, but never how much.

The crossbow bolt (2), the stiletto (2), and the war hammer (2) pierce armour, each ignoring that much of the Protection of whatever it hits.

Protection soaks the blows of weapons, claws, and bites, and a trap’s arrows and spears. The blast of a fireball, a lightning bolt, or a fall into a pit goes straight through. Protection soaks physical damage only, and a piece may do better or worse against one physical kind: chain mail turns a blade well and a point badly. Fire, cold, and the rest go through any armour, and resistances take their share after it.

In the game you never see a creature’s Protection, only how its armour turns your blows. The numbers are on Creatures in numbers.

See also: Stances and stamina, Ranged combat, and Surprise and sneak attacks.