melee combat

[CivBesch]

Does the following calculation still stand:

CALCULATING MELEE COMBAT ABILITY
--------------------------------

Many factors are taken into account when considering your character's skill in
successfully landing a blow in hand-to-hand combat. The outline for
calculating the numerical rating of this skill is as follows:

base class ability
+ racial modifier
+ level modifier
-------------------------------
base melee combat skill

strength modifier
+ dexterity modifier
- armor encumbrance penalty
+ equipment bonuses/penalties
- heavy weapon penalty
- edged weapon penalty
+ temporary spell bonus
- stunning penalty
-------------------------------
bonus to combat skill

(from thangorodroim.net)

[Gwarl]

I believe so, that would be a list of all the variables in the equation which determines your fighting skill (which is just a number).

The in-game helpfiles go to an awful lot of detail about this stuff as well.

[CivBesch]

The calculations and tables that follow the above introduction, take a series of pages, which look very interesting to understand if you want to have an idea about the efficiency of your character in combat.

I would be very interested in knowing if all of those calculations also still stand today:

http://www.thangorodrim.net/spoilers/attack.txt

[Sideways]

Much of it is out of date; and the simplest way of seeing your to-hit is with Shift+C anyway.

If you want a quick idea of how likely you are to hit a monster:

- press Shift+C, look where it says "To-hit: 102,+42" or whatever (be sure to get the melee number - there's a different to-hit listed for ranged combat)
- add those together and multiply by 3 to get number X (in this example, (102+42)*3=432)
- take the monster's AC, divide by 1.5 and round down to get number Y (say 195/1.5=130)
- there's an automatic 12% chance of a hit, and a 5% chance of a miss
- in the remaining 83% of cases there's a Y in X chance of a miss (here 130/432=30.1%), with an upper limit of 100% of course
- the total chance of a miss is 30.1*0.83+5=30%, and therefore the total chance of a hit is 70%

[CivBesch]

wow, thanks for this very valuable information.

What about the damage done? How is it easily calculated?

[Derakon]

wow, thanks for this very valuable information.

What about the damage done? How is it easily calculated?

Hit 'I' and inspect your weapon, and it'll tell you your damage. That's the easy way. You can do the math yourself, but critical hits make things substantially more complicated. The base damage is (dice roll * slay multiplier) + to-dam bonus, but crits apply variable multipliers and flat damage bonuses (e.g. one level of crit does 1.5x + 10 damage, another does 2x + 15, etc.), and the odds of getting a crit depend on stuff like weapon weight, strength, and accuracy in a way that's really not easy to explain without basically just rewriting the code.

[Pete Mack]

@CivBesch--
Your to-hit probability for any monster is known via lore. Just navigate to the monster via 'l' (or 'x' in roguelike keymap), then hit 'r'. Alternatively, use the monster knowledge menu, or the monster genus interface ('/' or I think '[').
If you don't have lore for a monster (i.e, nothing more is known about' it) you can either probe it, melee it (to discover AC), or simply override the lore file (by clobbering it with a copy of monster.txt.)

[CivBesch]

Much of it is out of date; and the simplest way of seeing your to-hit is with Shift+C anyway.

If you want a quick idea of how likely you are to hit a monster:

- press Shift+C, look where it says "To-hit: 102,+42" or whatever (be sure to get the melee number - there's a different to-hit listed for ranged combat)
- add those together and multiply by 3 to get number X (in this example, (102+42)*3=432)
- take the monster's AC, divide by 1.5 and round down to get number Y (say 195/1.5=130)
- there's an automatic 12% chance of a hit, and a 5% chance of a miss
- in the remaining 83% of cases there's a Y in X chance of a miss (here 130/432=30.1%), with an upper limit of 100% of course
- the total chance of a miss is 30.1*0.83+5=30%, and therefore the total chance of a hit is 70%

Thank you again for the calculation.
I also discovered that the knowledge base gives me a percentage of 'chance to hit', but I get to a different figure when using calculation.
I tried this out with a giant salamander:

- My 'To-hit is 27+16=43
- 43*3=129
- the monster's AC = 24 (I suppose that that is what is meant with 'life rating')
- 24/1.5=16
- 16/1.29=12.4
- chance of miss is 12.4*0.83+5(where does this '+5' come from?)=15.3
- chance of hits=85%

But the knowledge base tells me 69% chance to hit. Where do I go wrong?


*I find it astonishing that the AC of the monster and not his armor is used to calculate the chances to hit (one would suppose that the amor protects from being hit, not the life rating??). When using the armor rating of the salamander I arrive at 68,64. Rounded up that would be 69

[Pete Mack]

It's 27+3*16 = 69, not 129. Bonus to_hit counts for more than innate.

[CivBesch]

27+3*16 = 75 !

But is still does not add up: the final figure is now 80%

[Pete Mack]

Ah hell. I thought that bug was fixed 2 realeases back. Dammit. Nick! FIX IT ALREADY.

[Nick]

Ah hell. I thought that bug was fixed 2 realeases back. Dammit. Nick! FIX IT ALREADY.

You mean like this?

[Sideways]

AC = armor class, not life rating. That's where you went wrong. A giant salamander has an armor class of 60.

And that calculation is in fact (27+16)*3=129, because while Pete Mack is right about bonus to_hit counting more than innate, that 27 has already been divided by 3 to account for that. The real innate to-hit here is 81 or 82 or 83. (There's a similar slight uncertainty in the overall result, which could be 130 or 131; but that only has a minimal effect on the result.)

(60/1.5)/1.29*0.83+5 = 30.74% miss chance, and 69.26% hit chance.

[Pete Mack]

Sorry about that, folks. In that case, I don't like the way displayed armor level works, that the whole thing is divided by 3. That's seriously confusing, and has led me to do less melee and archery as a mage than I otherwise would.

[CivBesch]

Yesss !!

It's perfectly correct now.

thanks for all the advice and corrections