Weapons

Archived from: http://dwwiki.mooo.com:8080/wiki/Category:Weapons

Weapons on the disc are divided into the following categories, each with its own skill associated with it.

Most weapons are melee weapons, that can be used in close combat without using projectiles.

The type of a weapon can be seen by appraising it.

appraise knife - The blued Klatchian steel knife is about nine inches long and an inch wide. It is made of klatchian steel and could be used as a weapon of type dagger. It is in excellent condition.

appraise cane - The raven topped rosewood cane is about three feet long and three inches wide. It is made of wood and could be used as a weapon of type mace. It is in excellent condition.

Attacks

Each weapon has one or more 'attacks' that may be used when a player strikes with it; each 'attack' has the following associated with it.

• The type of damage (blunt, sharp, piercing or fire) - this determines which variety of armour class is used when the weapon strikes armour, and also determines which special attacks the weapon has associated with it. Fire damage ignores armour for the most part, taking several layers of it to make any difference. It may be that metal armour is treated differently than other types in regards to fire damage.
• A difficulty rating - this determines how hard it is to perform that attack.
• A base damage characteristic - this is the distribution of damage caused by that attack, before any other modifiers (such as the player's skills) are applied.

For example, a long sword might have two attacks associated with it - slashing at someone and stabbing them with the point. The former attack does slashing damage, and is easier than the latter to do. The latter attack does piercing damage and, although harder to do, causes more damage.

It should be noted that although weapons may have multiple attacks associated with them, only one attack is used per strike - a weapon with 10 attacks does not strike any more often than one with a single attack. Multiple attacks only serve to add variety to the weapon's damage, they do not make it hit any faster.

There is no way for a player to specifically view the attacks associated with a weapon, though the presence of multiple attacks could be inferred by observing the attack messages produced by the weapon over a while, thereby deducing the types of the attacks observed (eg. pierce and blunt). It should be kept in mind that there can be several attacks of the same type with different characteristics (average and maximum damage, chance to hit, etc.) produced by the same weapon.

Special attacks

Each weapon may have any number of special attacks associated with it; the list of special attacks is revealed on successful use of the judge command, but only for the special attacks known to the one using judge. Special attacks are attacks which require guild points to perform and consume additional action points, but can cause much more damage than a normal attack would.

Damaged weapons

As weapons are used to attack or parry, they become damaged and lose condition. This negatively affects the damage that weapon can deal out, therefore it is important to keep weapons in good condition. Weapons can be fixed in a location appropriate to the material they are made out of - metal weapons (most weapons are made of metal) are fixed in a smithy, leather ones (such as whips) are leatherworked in a tannery, and wooden weapons (staves and broomsticks) are repaired in a woodworking shop (AM Thief Guild launder room, Lancre).

Scabbards

Due to their shape, many weapons do not fit well into standard containers (such as backpacks). To that end, players can sheathe their weapons inscabbards when they are not using them.

Magical weapons

Some weapons have magical effects associated with them. These can be divided into two categories:

• Weapons that serve a magical purpose, but don't automatically cause magical damage when fighting. Examples include broomsticks and red staves (casts the KOF aoe spell when 'invoke'd).
• Weapons that do (or have a chance to do) magical damage with each hit. Examples include:
  • Sarilak - sprays acid on striking.
  • Ornate warhammer - poisons on striking.

Mechanics - To hit

The chance to hit an opponent with a weapon is a long and complex calculation. In terms of factors directly affected by the attacker's weapon(s), the following sections apply. Note that there are many other factors at play - for example, the opponent's dodge and/or parry prowess, how bright the room is, whether the attacker is low on fighting GP, and so on.

Attack selection and difficulty

As indicated above, each weapon may have multiple attacks associated with it, and each attack has an an inherent difficulty rating.

When a player attempts an attack with a weapon, they are given a score as a random number. This score is then modified as follows:

• It is increased by the attacker's strength stat.
• It is increased by the attacker's dexterity stat.
• It is decreased by 4.5x the weapon's weight (in lb).

The score is then compared against the difficulty rating for each attack. Any attacks that have a higher difficulty rating than the score are discarded, and an attack is randomly chosen from the remainder. If no attacks remain, then the attacker will fail to do anything for that combat round.

Weapon encumberance

The to-hit chance is affected negatively by the weapon's encumberance, that is, how hard it is to swing it around. Specifically:

• There is a to-hit penalty proportional to the weapon's weight.
• If the player is holding multiple items, then there is a to-hit penalty based on the weight of the other held items.
  • This penalty is reduced a lot if the item in question is a shield.
  • This penalty is reduced if the player's tactics-response isn't parry - as long as the total weight of the other items is less than dexterity/9 lb.
• The weight penalty is decreased by 33% if the player is wielding the weapon in both hands.
• The weight penalty is reduced by an amount proportional to the player's strength.

Attacking with the off-hand

If the attacker is attacking with a weapon held in their off-hand, then you need additional skill to wield it without penalty. Specifically, you will incur a penalty if attacking with the off-hand and your dexterity is less than 14, with the penalty proportional to (14 - dexterity).

Skills

The attacker gets a to-hit bonus in proportion to the weapon skill appropriate to their weapon (see the categories section above).

Mechanics - Action point cost

The action point cost of an attack determines, to a certain extent, how many attacks a player can make in a combat round. The following sections detail how this cost is calculated.

Weapon encumberance (round 2)

Not only does weapon encumberance affect the chance to hit, but it also affects the AP cost of an attack - a more cumbersome weapon takes longer to attack with than a lighter one does. Weapon encumberance has the following action point effects:

• The action point cost is increased by the 9x the square root of the weapon's weight (in lb).
• This cost is reduced by 33% if the weapon is held in both hands.
• If the attacker if wielding two weapons, then the action point cost is reduced by a small, constant amount (as you can use one to counterbalance the other).

Skills

The attacker's skills affect the action point cost as follows:

• The AP cost is reduced by an amount proportional to the attacker's bonus in the weapon skill appropriate to the weapon being used (see thecategories section above).
• The AP cost is reduced by an amount proportional to the attacker's fighting.special.tactics bonus.

Caps

The action point cost for attacking has both maximum and minimum caps:

• It is capped at below 2x the 'base AP cost'
• It is capped at above 1/5 the 'base AP cost'

Therefore there are certain limits beyond which it is impossible to make a weapon attack any faster (or any slower).

Mechanics - Damage

Base damage

The damage calculation for a weapon starts with the weapon's base damage. This is essentially a representation of how good the weapon is on its own, before any other factors have been taken into account.

The base damage of a weapon may be categorized by a minimum, average and maximum damage caused by that weapon. Weapons may fall into one of three categories as far as base damage is concerned:

• Constant damage: These weapons always do exactly the same amount of base damage - thus, their minimum, average and maximum are the same.
• Flat variable damage: These weapons may do anywhere between their minimum and maximum base damage, with an equal chance of a given hit being anywhere inbetween the two.
• Binomial variable damage: These weapons may do anywhere between their minimum and maximum base damage, but a given hit is more likely to occur at a damage level around the average than towards the extremes.

You can derive a rough assessment of a weapon's average and maximum damage using the judge command.

Why should I care about the maximum damage?

Generally speaking, the average is the most important in terms of total damage dealt over time. However, the maximum damage becomes relevant if you're attacking an armoured opponent, or one who otherwise has protection which removes a roughly constant amount from attacks.

The reason for this is hard to explain, but easy to demonstrate. Essentially, a more variable weapon is more useful against armour because a lesser proportion of damage is removed from the 'big hits', and those have a bigger impact on the total damage dealt.

To illustrate this, consider the following example. A target wearing armour is hit by two weapons, both with the same average damage:

• Weapon 1 does a constant 150hp damage per hit.
• Weapon 2 does between 50 and 250 damage per hit.

The armour absorbs 100hp from each strike.

Let us simulate 10 hits from weapon 1:

And now 10 hits from weapon 2: