Redux
Redux, also known as Damage Reduction, is the ability of a character to resist physical damage more effectively, resulting in less health loss, as well as reducing or even negating what should have inflicted a wound. This is not to be confused with Defensive Strength (DS), which reduces the endroll in the combat formula. Redux does not come into play until the character is successfully hit by an AS based attack, at which point it will then reduce the ensuing damage correspondingly.
Redux is initially achieved by training in physical skills, and the total reduction is increased by additional training in these skills. Some skills provide more redux benefit than others, and are divided into primary, secondary, and tertiary skills. Primary skills effectively provide one "point" towards redux, secondary skills provide 0.4 points, and tertiary provide 0.3 points. The threshold for achieving redux is approximately 109 redux points, however, at lower levels, this threshold is higher.
The skills that benefit redux are as follows:
Primary Skills:
Secondary Skills:
Tertiary Skills:
- One-Handed Edged Weapon Training
- One-Handed Blunt Weapon Training
- Brawling Weapon Training
- Polearm Weapon Training
- Ranged Weapon Training
- Thrown Weapon Training
- Two-Handed Weapon Training
It is also known that training in spells will reduce how much redux a character has. Anything over two spells per level will make redux impossible. The closest current hypothesis is that the spell penalty is multiplicative and seed-based. Each level of spell penalty results in a 1/13 (of previous redux factor) penalty to redux factor. The amount of spells a character can learn before being penalized is equal to the truncation of (level / 20). Thus, a capped character could learn 5 spells without a redux penalty. Each following seed is determined by the previous seed + 2.
It is not currently possible to determine one redux factor value for any given character. A recently discovered relationship that helps decrease the deviations from average redux factor is to take into account critical damage ratio (CDR), defined as reduced crit damage divided by total reduced damage. The amount CDR deviates from its average has an effect of opposite sign multiplied by .25 on redux factor.
It is also not currently possible to determine redux factor from redux points alone. The relationship is roughly logarithmic and somewhat level-dependent, as the following graph indicates:
Redux is also known to deflate the critical divisor. Roughly, the crit divisor is deflated by RF/3. Note: it is never the case that a character is worse off for having redux.
There is another theory of redux that is considerably more complex. In brief, it posits the existence of two redux factors (RF1 and RF2), the former being used in crit divisor depression calculations and the latter in most AS/DS combat resolutions.