Fighting styles

A sword is one thing; how you hold it is another. A fighting style is the way you fight: with one blade and a free hand, a weapon in each hand, a great two-handed weapon, behind a shield, with a bow, by throwing, with your fists, or with a staff.

Each style is a skill like a weapon skill. It has a rank from 0 (untrained) to 10, marks toward the next rank, and benefits per rank that add to your weapon skill’s.

The styles

You train a style by fighting in it. Every attack you make while you hold your weapons its way earns marks in the style as well as in the weapon’s own skill. The rules are the same: more for a hit, more against stronger opponents (see Raising a weapon skill). A dagger alone in your hand trains Duelist. The same dagger beside a sword trains Twin Blades. A shield alone is no style at all, and neither is a shield bash with an empty other hand.

• Duelist: one one-handed weapon and nothing in the other hand. You parry better and hit more often.
• Twin Blades: a weapon in each hand. See below.
• Great Weapon: any two-handed weapon except a staff, such as the great sword or the great axe. You hit harder, your criticals even more so, and you swing faster.
• Sword and Board: a one-handed weapon and a shield. The shield protects better, and a blow that hits may be followed by a free shield bash (which trains shield bashing).
• Two Shields: a shield in each hand. See Two shields below.
• Marksman: shooting a bow, a crossbow, or a sling, whatever your hands hold. Shots hit more often and take less time, and a crossbow reloads faster.
• Skirmisher: throwing anything at all. Throws hit more often and harder, and take less time. The style does not care what armour you wear or what you hold.
• Brawler: nothing in your hands at all. Fists hit more often and harder.
• Staff Fighter: a staff in both hands. You parry better and hit more often.

Shooting and throwing are styles of their own. So a marksman with a sword at their side trains both Marksman (with shots) and Duelist (with blows). A kick is no style: you kick whatever your hands hold, so it trains only unarmed fighting, and Brawler does not help it.

Caster styles

Spells have styles too, decided by the spell and your armour: Sniper, Toucher, and Battle caster. They are on the Schools and caster styles page, with their tables.

Two weapons

Your off hand takes a shield or a light weapon (listed below; see the weapons table: “main hand or off hand”). With a weapon in each hand, every attack you make up close is two blows. The main hand strikes first, then the off hand, each at a penalty to hit.

The off hand’s blow is made with its own weapon and trains that weapon’s skill. A magic weapon’s own powers (see Magic items) go with its own blow, while what your other gear gives helps both. Each blow can draw blood and open a bleeding wound on its own. Both blows are one attack, in the time of one. If the first blow kills, there is no second.

The light weapons are the dagger, the hand axe, the knife, the short sword, and the stiletto.

Twin Blades eases both penalties. From rank 7 it adds to hit as well, and from rank 9 neither hand has any penalty: a full attack with each. Creatures that hold two weapons fight with both too.

Two shields

A shield fits either hand. With one on each arm you fight in Two Shields. Nobody starts with this style. It is not listed on the weapon skills screen, and neither are the talents that need it, until you earn your first marks in it.

Every attack you make up close is a shield bash with the first shield. It happens by itself; you need not choose Shield bash from the abilities menu. It draws on and trains both shield bashing and Two Shields. After a bash that hits, the other shield may follow with a bash of its own, more often as the style rises.

The style protects well (its Shield adds to your shields’), and it hits harder. From rank 4, a blow your shields turn staggers its striker (Staggering block). But two shields are clumsy:

• every bash is at a penalty to hit;
• every attack takes longer;
• a spell you cast with your own mana may fail, because your hands are full of shields. The mana and the time are spent all the same.

The style eases all three, and from rank 9 none is left. A scroll you read or a wand you use never fails this way.

What a rank gives

As with weapon skills, the game never tells you in numbers what a rank gives. These are the exact rules. A style’s benefits add to those of the weapon skill you fight with:

• To hit, Damage, Time, Parry, Shield, and Reload time work as for weapon skills.
• Critical damage: a confirmed critical rolls its damage that many more times (×3 instead of ×2, ×4 at Great Weapon 10; see Criticals).
• Main hand and Off hand: the penalty to hit of each hand’s blow with two weapons.
• Shield bash after a hit: the chance that a blow that hits is followed by a free bash with your shield. With two shields, it is the chance that a bash that hits is followed by one with the other.
• Bash penalty, Slower attacks, and Spell failure: with two shields, the penalty to hit of every bash, how much longer every attack takes, and the chance that a spell you cast with your own mana fails.

With a weapon in each hand and no rank in Twin Blades, the main hand strikes at −4 to hit and the off hand at −8. With a shield in each hand and no rank in Two Shields, every bash is at −6 to hit, every attack takes 50% longer, and a spell you cast fails 75% of the time.

Duelist

Twin Blades

Great Weapon

Sword and Board

Two Shields

Marksman

Skirmisher

Brawler

Staff Fighter

Rank 0 gives nothing. The first five ranks grow slowly, and ranks 6 to 10 grow much faster. Rank 10 is mastery.

What a rank teaches

A style’s rank teaches abilities the same way a weapon skill’s does (see What a rank teaches). You are told with the rank, and the abilities menu lists them after the style’s name. Most fire by themselves, free and instant, but only while you fight in the style. A duelist’s riposte needs one weapon and an empty hand. Staggering block needs a weapon and a shield.

The active ones are used from the menu for stamina and time, like a weapon skill’s (see What a rank teaches), and only in the style’s grip:

• False lead is one blow rolled as if the foe had no Parry and no Shield.
• Whirl and Staff sweep strike every foe beside you, clockwise from the north. Each blow is at −2 to hit and brings the free blows the end of an attack brings. With a blade in each hand, the blades take turns.
• Mighty swing rolls the blow’s damage dice twice, at −2 to hit. Its bonus and extra effects count once, and it is not a critical.
• Shield rush (a shield bash) and Hip throw (an unarmed blow) drive a foe they hit one cell back, if that cell is free, and stagger it. Against a wall or another creature, the foe stays where it is and is not staggered, but the blow lands all the same.

Two abilities that do the same thing never add up:

• A riposte from Duelist and one from a talent are one riposte.
• Staggered is never more than one slowed action, however many blows staggered the foe.
• A new pin keeps the longer of the two and never adds.
• Rend comes once per attack, when both blades hit and the foe lives. A shield bash is not a second blade.
• Light-footed lasts for your next action only.
• Spell reflection turns back at most one spell per turn of yours, and a spell turned back is never turned back again. So two shield-bearers cannot bat a bolt between them.

Where your styles come from

Your class starts you with a rank in a style or two. A warrior fights with sword and board, a berserker with a great weapon, and a ranger is a marksman. A thief has learned either Twin Blades or Duelist, and an ascetic either Brawler or Staff Fighter; the dice decide. The weapon skills screen (W) lists your styles below your weapon skills, and marks the ones you fight in now with a •.

See also: Combat, Schools and caster styles, and Stances and stamina.