User:DOUG/Sandbox Combat Stuff

This article is a work in progress!

Combat! No matter what profession you elect for your character, you will be exposed to combat in the world of Elanthia. For most professions, combat is the primary path to knowledge, advancement and riches. Outside of a town's walls the world awaits, usually to devour your character! Denizens of the lands like trolls, zombies, orcs, and even the occassional rabid squirrel - yes, all these and more wait to send your character to meet his or her demise. In many cases, the only way to fight off these horrors is literally to engage them in combat.

Combat Components

Even though for the most part your character should feel safe while in town, from time to time creatures will band together to test the mettle of a town's population. Usually, these invasions are immediately noticeable, but a sure sign is if you check the town's justice status and find that the chaos has the attention of the local constabulary. In order for your character to have a chance, you need to understand the basics about combat. This guide will share these basics to give you a fair shot at ensuring your character's survival. But combat can be very complex, so don't expect to learn all the in's and out's in this guide. You'll have to take your character out and experience it for yourself to really gain any competency.

Let's simplify it a bit, though. Combat is made up primarily of three factors: What you're going to attack with; What you're going to defend with, and; The combat resolution system itself, which compares your character's skills and various advantages against your foe's skills and advantages to determine the outcome of your attack. Or, of course, the outcome of your foe's attack against your character. Let's take a look in general at each of these three factors.

Tools for the Attack

In general, if your character is going to hit something, pick something stout! To effectively wield these tools, you must make sure your character has the skill to utilize whatever it is you equip him or her with. For those professions of a more physical mindset, commonly referred to as the squares and semi professions, there are several classes or groupings of weapons to choose from.

• • One-handed edged weapons
  • One-handed blunt weapons
  • Two-handed weapons
  • Ranged weapons and Thrown weapons
  • Polearms
  • Brawling

Pure magic using professions will tend to use bolt or ball spells, or spells which must be warded against, generally referred to as CS spells.

Ways to Defend

If you want to try to make sure your character can't get hit, use defensive spells. If you want to give your character a chance to block, use a shield, or if a pure, use a runestaff. And if you want to make sure your character survives, wear armor. Not all spells can be cast on other characters, but some of the more general sought-after defensive spells are:

• • Spirit Warding I and Spirit Warding II
  • Spirit Defense
  • Spirit Shield
  • Elemental Defense I, Elemental Defense II, and Elemental Defense III
  • Thurfel's Ward
  • Mass Colors
  • Mass Blur

Resolving Conflict

This is perhaps the most confusing of the three for new players. The combat resolution system has myriad mechanisms to determine fairly who hit whom - even though sometimes you'll scratch your head and wonder what exactly just happened to your character. There are four primary types of combat resolution that you'll see. And you can quickly determine which type of combat resolution your character is facing, based on what the combat type starts with. We'll go over each type in a bit of detail, and there's a lot of math involved. Fortunately, the combat resolution system handles all that for you, but you need to understand the components. Let's get a general view of each type, first.

If, for example, the combat starts, and you see a line of letters and numbers that starts with AS, you know you're being swung at, shot at, or some mean magic user has cast a bolt or ball spell at you - or that you attempted to do the same to a creature. This is the most frequent type of attack that you'll see when first starting.

If the combat starts and you see a line of letters and numbers that starts with CS, you'll know that an even meaner magic user has cast a warding spell at you - or you cast such a spell at another.

If, on the other hand, you see a line of letters and numbers that starts with UAF, then you're facing a combatant that is attempting to use the brawling skill to shorten your character's journey - or that you are swinging away without a weapon.

And finally, if you should see a line of letters and numbers that starts with [Roll result:, then you know you're facing a creature that is attempting a combat maneuver against your character - or that you've initiated such a skilled attack.

Just because combat is so much fun, sometimes you won't see anything but the result - some calculation of damage and some effect like stunned or prone from a special creature ability. Or, it could mean you initiated an attack that resolves under the Standard Success Resolution System, the character's counterpart to the creature ability. You won't see too much of this in your character's early training, though.

Determining Resolution

In keeping with your character's personality and roleplay, you have likely decided to FIGHT! While not always your best first choice, if you're going to do it, do it well. In GemStone, attacking well means one simple thing - have the entire combat resolution come out with a number greater than 100 at the end. That's when the resolution is considered, successful. Let's break down each of the four basic types of resolution briefly, to orient you to what you're actually seeing.

Attack Strength or AS

The first type of combat resolution occurs when someone swings, shoots or casts something at someone else, be it a PC or a creature. AS is always compared to DS in this formula. This type of resolution looks like this:

AS: +200 vs DS: -3 with AvD: +35 + d100 roll: +38 = +276

This resolution has four components, each made up of several factors.

1) AS: +200
AS, or Attack Strength has been calculated to be 200 for this attack. Factors that make up this component include skills, attribute bonuses like STR, weapon properties such as enchantment, and certain spells such as Strength or Bravery which can add to the attempted attack.

2) DS: -3
DS or Defensive Strength has been calculated to be -3 for this attack. Factors that make up this component include skills, attribute bonuses like AGI, shield or runestaff use, properties of the shield / runestaff and armor such as enchantment, and those spells from earlier that help protect your character.

3) AvD: +35
AvD, or attack versus defense, is a numerical value that aggregates the effectiveness of the weapon used in the attack against the effectiveness of the armor worn by the defender. It is very complicated and wide ranging, but check out your character's specific weapon to see what AvD is expected against different armors can be a very helpful piece of information. If the AvD value is low, the weapon your character chose will not be nearly as effective against the defender's armor as you might wish.

4) d100 roll: +38
And here the magic happens. Each attack is randomized by a d100 (random number between 1 and 100). Besides tracking your character's luck, this number compared against the attack's final result will give you an immediate impression of whether or not your character might even stand a chance of defeating the opponent. Or, if you're looking at the result of an attack on your character, whether or not your character might be in harm's way.

= +276
The last number in the string is the one you want to see over 100, if your character is attacking, or under 100 if your character is under attack. The higher this number over 100, the more pain someone is going to feel!

Cast Strength or CS

The second combat resolution type occurs when someone casts a warding spell at someone else, again irrespective of PC or creature. Here, CS is always compared against TD or Target Defense, to resolve success or failure of the attack. This type of resolution looks like this:

CS: +141 - TD: +128 + CvA: +25 + d100: +60 == +98

This attack likewise has four components which function similarly to the AS/DS resolution type, each component possibly comprised of several factors.

1) CS: +141
CS, or Cast Strength has been calculated to be 141 for this attack. Factors that make up this component include spell ranks, attribute bonuses like WIS or AUR, and certain spells such as Elemental Targeting or Mystic Focus which can add to the spell's power.

2) TD: +128
TD, or Target Defense has been calculated to be 128 for this attack. Factors that make up this component include character or creature level, attribute bonuses like WIS or AUR, and those defensive spells that help your character ward off spells.

3) CvA: +25
CvA, or Cast versus Armor, is a numerical value that shows how hard it may be to penetrate armor with a spell's effect. This number is much more straight forward to calculate than AvD, and not quite as wide ranging. A low CvA value usually means that the opponent is in a heavier armor, and likely to take less damage than you might like..

4) d100 roll: +60
Again, the attack is randomized by a d100 (random number between 1 and 100). It is still important to watch this number and compare it to the end result to see how much potential for success the attack may have.

== +98
Bad news! The last number in the string is not over 100. In this example, the opponent will successfully ward this spell and will suffer no ill consequence. This is also a good example of a case where success is questionable. Since the end result would need to increase by three to have any effect, the attacker in this scenario would need a d100 result of 63 or more. Said differently, there is only a 37 percent chance of success - just a bit more than 1/3rd of the casts will cause damage. Not very good odds!