combat mechanics

[Sombre]

Originally Posted by Graeme Dice

I'm not sure that I've ever seen repelling work at all, either as a defense or in causing damage to the attacker. It's especially less effective than awe +0, when it should be just as effective at damage prevention.

If the attacker has a shorter weapon than the defender, then the attacker must check:
morale + 1d6oe > 10 + 1d6oe

If it succeeds then the attack continues, if it fails then the attack aborts. If the attack continues, then the defender makes a attack roll. If that attack roll is successful, then a damage roll is made. The damage caused by this roll is capped at 1, and no extra effects are caused by the weapon.

Ah, no no. This isn't right.

You've definitely seen repel if you've played dom3 more than a bit. Whenever you see puffs of blood coming up amongst the unit that is actually attacking (during its turn) that's repel doing damage. It's especially pronounced when the insects from the spell Swarm attack - most of them will be killed by a thug just for attacking him, for instance. I'm talking about a thug without something like a fireshield here, also. Just a guy with decent att and a weapon longer than length 0.

The thing you have wrong in the repel calculation is that the morale check is made after damage is assigned and /only/ if 1 damage is actually dealt. This is why repel is so terrible. In order for it to work you must:

A) Have a longer weapon
B) Have high enough att to hit them
C) Do enough damage to penetrate their armour (at which point you'll do a single damage, with no DRN)
D) Be attacked by stuff with low morale

Let's say you're a guy with att 10 and your opponent is wearing armour with decent prot overall, like prot 15. He has def 10 also. His morale is 10. So assuming you have a longer weapon, that's a 50% chance to hit the guy, then let's say around a 50% chance to get past the armour, then a 50% chance he'll fail his morale test. So even in an even situation where you have the longer weapon, your chance to repel is already crap. On top of this, you get a penalty for each repel check you make beyond the first UNLESS your opponent is mindless (which is why swarm suffers horrible casualties to repel, but a horde of non mindless crappy swarmers doesn't suffer much at all.

IMO repel is such a non factor that unless you're dealing with swarm, you should just ignore it. The most practical way to test this is by putting a bunch of pikemen against barbarians. You'd expect them to OWN barbs with their repel, but they don't at all.