Basics of Combat, Volume 5, Glancing Blows and Critical Strikes

Todays posting will cover 2 topics, Glancing Blows and Critical Strikes. Glancing blows represent a hit, but not a very solid one. In these cases the target only receives 50% of the damage from the attack before damage negation from AV is taken into account. Critical Strikes deal 50% more damage to the target before damage negation is applied. I should make note that the Glancing Blow range is notably higher than the critical strike range. This, of course, goes both ways. So let us start off by looking at the formula for glancing blows.


The value for the glancing blows range is based off of the Target's Dexterity, Dodge, and Parry values. Since we have these values already determined, let's take a look at the formula:

Glancing Blow = (Target's Dexterity / 12) * (Dodge Chance + Parry Chance)

So if we take our level 1 warrior again, we have the following numbers:

Dexterity = 14
Dodge Chance = 3
Parry Chance = 9

So the formula, with numbers, would look like this:

(14 / 12) * (3 + 9)

1.17 * 12

14.04

Remember to truncate all fractions, so the final value is 14. There is a 14% chance that the attack will only be a glancing blow.

So now we are left with the last figure to determine we can slap it together to get our hit tree, and that is the Critical Strike chance. Like Glancing Blows is entirely based on statistics for the defender, the critical strike chance is entirely based on statistics from the attacker. In this case we are looking at the Attacker's Offense skill and Intelligence Attribute. The first step is to determine the final Offense skill value for the attacker, in this case a Scar-Eyed Goblin Whelp. The whelp has the skill of 10, the Dexterity of 14, the Strength of 16, and no direct bonuses to his Offense skill. So the formula to figure out his final skill value would look like this:

10 + (((14 + 16) / 2) * 1.75)

10 + 26.25

So the total for the skill is 36.25. Now the attacker also gains a bonus to his critical strike value equal to his Intelligence attribute divided by 10. The Scar-Eyed Goblin Whelp has the Intelligence attribute of 12 so he gains a 1.2 bonus to this critical strike score. Let's now take a look at the formula used to calculate the attacker's critical strike value:

3 + Intelligence Bonus + (Total Offense Skill / 60)

So the goblin's values would look like this:

3 + 1.2 + (36.25 / 60)

4.2 + 0.604

So the final value would be 4.806. Dropping the fractions would give us the critical strike chance of 4%, or almost the minimum value of 3%.

So now we have formulas to figure out all stages of the combat hit roll. So let's put it all together. First we need to start off with determining the goblin's chance to hit the warrior, since in our example we determined the warrior's chance to hit the goblin. Use the formula posted in Volume 2 of the Basics of Combat we know that the goblin's to-hit chance against the warrior is 12%. So we start by subtracting 5 from that to get the to-hit value that needs to be tracked by the script, or 7%. So the tree would look like this:

1 - 7 - Miss
8 - 16 - Parry
17 - 19 - Dodge
20 - 33 - Glancing Blow
34 - 91 - Standard Hit
92 - 95 - Critical Strike

So there you have it. The combat script would then take a random number between 1 and 95. Compare that number to the chart above and that would determine the type of hit scored against our poor warrior.

Next posting we will take about damage determination. Until then, see you in the game!