Standardized Dice Rolls

When a contender holds the initiative, the most common action is to attack their adversary. Every attack is answered by a defense, and each of them is built from a pair of stats: one that carries the force of the attempt, and one that governs how it is delivered or resisted.

Determining whether an attack is successful depends on dice rolls and a little arithmetic. Both can be worked by hand, but the bot Desdaemona is programmed to do them for you rather more easily. Combat commands are normally issued in the OOC channel, so the mechanics never clutter the roleplay itself.

Building the Total

The basic formula for calculating an attack strength and a defense strength is identical, and it takes three steps. Whatever the action, and whichever side of the exchange you are on, the procedure never changes:

1. 1.Roll 1dFirst Stat: the die is sized by the character's current level in the first stat listed for that kind of attack or defense.
2. 2.Roll 1dSecond Stat: the die is sized by the character's current level in the second stat listed for that same action.
3. 3.Add every applicable modifier to the two rolls.

An Example

Fred attacks Jane with a close-in physical attack. Fred has STR 25 and DEX 32, and carries a sword with an attack value of +2 +2, so he rolls 1d25 for Strength and 1d32 for Dexterity: 1d25 + 1d32 + 4 in all.

Jane answers with a close-in physical defense, rolling 1d18 for her CON of 18 and 1d36 for her DEX of 36. Her armor carries a DEF value of +2 and her Pendant of Shielding another DEF +3: 1d18 + 1d36 + 5 in all.

If Fred's total is higher than Jane's, he has made a successful attack. If it is not, her guard held.

A landed attack still needs a measure of how well it landed, and that takes one more roll. An attack can do an amount of damage up to the difference between the attack roll and the defense roll, with a cap of 50 points unmodified.

Spells, skills, or items that add to damage, such as a ×2 modifier or a +5, allow the damage to bypass that cap, unless they specify that they do not. Damage is taken from the Health (HP) of the character being attacked, and when HP falls to 0 or below the defender is dead. A writer who does not wish to kill the defender holds back that final roll.

An Example

Fred makes a successful attack with a roll of 73 against Jane's defense of 42. The difference is 31, so Fred rolls 1d31 and the result is the damage done to Jane's HP.

Later, Jane makes a successful attack with a roll of 89 while Fred gets unlucky and rolls only 12 in defense. The difference is 77, which is higher than the cap, so Jane rolls the maximum 1d50 to see how much damage she did to Fred's HP.

There can be occasion for a character to come into a fight carrying a disability, or to earn one as a result of it. The penalties quoted for the various injuries and impediments apply to pre-existing harm as well as to injuries of that kind gained during a combat. The same holds for environmental and spell effects, such as stepping into a marsh while dodging, or being caught in a working that restricts free movement.

Applying a Penalty

The modifier is taken as a percentage of a fully efficient roll. Subtract the disability from 100% (a −25% penalty becomes @75%) and place the result on the roll before any other modifiers are added, in the form below.

If a character is affected by multiple disabilities, the effects stack with each other unless a spell, skill, or ability states otherwise. A character both deaf and blind, for example, takes −30% to close-in physical attack and −55% (−30% plus −25%) to close-in physical defense before any modifiers are tacked on.

Debuffs

Detrimental spells cannot push a character beyond −50%, however many are stacked. That limit applies to spells alone: characters carrying genuine disabilities are not capped by it.

An Example

Fred the Ogre loses his right hand during a fight with Jane, taking a 25% penalty to any close-in physical attack he makes. On his turn Fred rolls !combatdice 1dStat1 1dStat2 @75%. The bot totals the two stats and reduces that total to 75%, applying the −25% before the remaining modifiers.

Every attack and defense draws on stamina whether or not it succeeds, so even a short exchange leaves both contenders breathing harder.

An active magical shield spell draws extra STA every time it is called into use; the spell lists carry the details. Certain other spells and enchantments may increase or decrease the amount of STA spent to attack or defend.

When STA drops to zero a character can no longer take any action to attack or defend, and must yield. The one exception is a final attack that took the opponent down to 0 HP: since that opponent would have had the next action and at 0 HP is dead, the character regains 2 STA during that final round and can drag themselves off the ground to win the exchange.

On a turn to move, a character may choose a passive action rather than attack: backing off to recover stamina by evading, attempting to shake off the effects of a hostile spell such as sleep or poison, or using a potion to shift their stats or call up a defensive power. The contested character does nothing to defend against a passive action and regains 2 STA.

A character attempting to regain stamina rolls 1dSTA, where STA is their normal stamina stat, and regains that much up to their maximum. Their opponent regains 2 STA at the moment the roll is made. Desdaemona performs the roll with !evade.

Each contender takes their turn in sequence, following exactly the same rules as single combat. If five weaker characters attack one strong one, they attack one after another, and each attack is met with its own defensive roll, so the strong contender may make five defenses before their own turn to act comes around again.

That turn may be a personal attack on one of the attackers, or an area spell such as a fireball that catches everyone in its reach.

Carrying two weapons has no effect on combat rolls unless a character holds a specific skill that brings the second weapon into play. Otherwise the secondary weapon is purely for roleplay effect, and modifies neither attack nor defense.

Switching from magical to physical combat, or from ranged to close, costs no combat turn. It happens as part of an attacking turn.

Natural fliers may elect to fly in combat when there is space enough to do so, spending an additional 1 STA on any attack or defense unless their racial write-up says otherwise. A character flying by magical spell must spend a full combat turn to gain flight, and spends stamina according to the spell's mechanics.

Neither natural nor magical fliers may !evade for stamina while airborne. Landing costs no combat turn for either, but after landing a flier needs a full combat turn to take flight again.

While in the air, a flier may engage ground targets only with long-ranged attacks, and cannot be answered with close-ranged reprisals. Fliers may still engage other targets in the air at any range.