Draft:Defense and protection
Defense and protection in Omega are several separate layers. Def makes attacks using a hit check less likely to land; Arm absorbs ordinary damage after a hit; tactical blocks modify a particular melee check; and immunities can stop a damage type altogether. Understanding the difference helps you choose body armor, shields and combat actions without mistaking a high number for complete safety.[1]
Defense and absorption
Your displayed defense begins with 2 × Agility modifier + floor(character level / 2). An attribute modifier is (attribute - 10) / 2, truncated toward zero. Add the following equipment and status contributions:[2]
| Contribution | Defense (Def) | Absorption (Arm) |
|---|---|---|
| Worn shield | Base shield defense + enchantment | None |
| Worn body armor | Enchantment - bulk penalty | Armor's absorption rating |
| Heroism | +Agility | None |
| Protection status | None | +current Protection value |
The armor and shield comparison tables list base properties. For example, +0 chain mail contributes -3 defense and 4 absorption, and a +0 large round shield adds +3 defense. Together they leave your base defense unchanged and add 4 absorption. Enchanting that chain to +1 improves defense by one but leaves absorption at 4.
Only the correct equipment slots provide these contributions. Body armor and a shield are separate, so both may be used. Two-handed weapons occupy Weapon hand and Ready hand; they do not consume the Shield slot. Carried spare armor contributes burden rather than protection.[3]
What a hit actually does
For an attack that reaches damage resolution, the game first checks immunity to its damage type. An immune character loses no HP from that damage call. Otherwise, ordinary damage loses max(1, raw damage - Arm) HP; other damage types ignore Arm. Four absorption turns a ten-point ordinary hit into six HP lost, and a two-point hit into one, but does not reduce a ten-point fire hit at all.[4]
A high Arm value therefore never eliminates all landed ordinary damage. It also does not prevent secondary effects just because the physical part was small: poison, disease, sleep, immobilization and life drain can follow their own attack branches. A dragon's successful melee strike has separate physical and fire damage components, so dragonscale's fire immunity does not eliminate the physical blow.[5]
Not every attack rolls against Def. For instance, an incoming bolt that reaches your square checks deflection and then damages you; it does not make the melee defense check. Area fire, cold, lightning and manastorm explosions also use their own damage path. Matching a block to an imagined fireball height cannot stop those attacks.[6]
Blocking and ripostes
Set your saved combat sequence with F. Block costs one maneuver, while Riposte costs two and requires a thrusting weapon when selected. Choose Low, Center or High for the action. For the combat editor's explicit commands and its faulty shortcut in 0.90.4, see Melee attacks.[7]
Every incoming monster melee attack checks the whole saved sequence. Each block or riposte matching the attack's height adds 10 defense for that check. These defenses apply to every qualifying attack until you change the sequence; they are not used up by the first enemy swing. They do not require a shield.[8]
| Saved defensive actions | Extra defense against this melee attack |
|---|---|
| No Block or Riposte anywhere in the sequence | -10 |
| At least one Block or Riposte, but none at the incoming height | 0 |
| One matching Block or Riposte | +10 |
| Two matching Blocks or Ripostes | +20 |
Thus even a wrong-height block removes the no-block penalty. Matching multiple blocks can greatly reduce a predictable attack's chance, at the cost of maneuvers that could have been attacks. A matching riposte can counterattack after the incoming attack misses, subject to a separate player hit check. Multiple matching ripostes increase defense, but this incoming-attack check triggers at most one counterattack.[9]
Exact hit chance
The ordinary hit test rolls an integer from 0 through 19. Zero always hits and 19 always misses. Every other roll hits when it is strictly less than attack score - effective defense. Equivalently, the hit probability is clamp(attack score - effective defense, 1, 19) / 20. Monster lunges add the monster's level to its attack score.[10]
For a monster with attack score 15 attacking Center, a character with displayed Def 0 and no shield has these chances to be hit:
| Sequence's defensive part | Effective defense | Chance of being hit |
|---|---|---|
| None | -10 | 95% |
| Block Low | 0 | 75% |
| Block Center | 10 | 25% |
| Block Center twice | 20 | 5% |
These are individual hit checks under the stated conditions, not survival probabilities. The last row spends two maneuvers on defense. Damage, secondary attacks, enemy action count and your own lost offense still matter, and the natural-zero rule prevents an absolute melee dodge guarantee.
Weight and speed
Your carrying capacity is Strength × Agility × 10. Equipped items, accessible possessions and backpack contents all count; a two-handed weapon occupying both hand slots is counted once. Putting a heavy spare suit into your pack does not remove its burden.[11]
Before haste, slow, heroism and mounting are considered, the base action delay is 5 - min(4, Agility modifier / 2), with integer division toward zero. Haste halves and slow doubles that base delay, after which burden adds:
| Total weight W, carrying capacity C | Added delay |
|---|---|
| W = 0, or W ≤ C/4 | 0 |
| C/4 < W ≤ C/3 | 1 |
| C/3 < W ≤ C/2 | 2 |
| C/2 < W ≤ C | 3 |
| W > C | 6 |
These intervals assume positive capacity. Heroism then halves the resulting delay, and the result is limited to 1-25. Being mounted finally sets the delay to 3. The display expresses speed as roughly 5 / delay, so a larger delay means slower movement, not faster.[12]
For Strength 10 and Agility 10, capacity is 1000. A total load of 250 avoids the burden penalty; 251 adds one delay, 334 adds two, and 501 adds three. Compare complete loads when swapping armor and shields, rather than evaluating each item's weight in isolation. Maintaining speed can be more valuable than gaining a single point of defense.
Special protections
| Equipment | Noncursed effect while worn | Cursed effect |
|---|---|---|
| Mithril chain mail, mithril plate armor | Fear immunity | Still fear-immune; also berserk, removing the usual confirmation before attacks on nonhostile creatures |
| Dragonscale armor | Fire immunity | Still fire-immune |
| Prismatrix armor, demonhide armor | Fire, cold and electricity immunity | Same elemental immunities; demonhide is generated deeply cursed |
| Powered scout armor, powered combat armor | Breathing: protection from drowning and certain poison clouds | Clears all existing breathing and immediately triggers drowning, even on land |
| Shield of deflection | Direct normal missile, fire, cold and lightning bolts miss | Clears existing deflection and adds vulnerability |
These powers are separate from the physical statistics and their enchantment modifiers. Fire, cold and electricity immunity do not imply acid, poison or life-drain immunity. Breathing does not provide general poison immunity. Vulnerability has a specific consequence in the night gaunt's nearby abduction check; it is not an extra multiplier in the ordinary damage formula.[13]
These equipment effects persist without ordinary timeout while worn, but can end when the item is removed or its power is erased. Changes to blessing can remove and reapply an equipped item's effect immediately. In particular, do not assume a breathing spell can rescue you from equipping cursed powered armor: that equip effect clears the existing protection before checking drowning.[14]
Enchantment and curses
Defender supplies a separate weapon-based contribution of 12 Protection, added to Arm while used. A chaotic attack with a blessed Defender removes those 12 points and curses the sword; later removal subtracts them again. Starting without other Protection, the complete sequence leaves -12, which can increase ordinary damage. Resolving its curse does not automatically repair this separate deficit; the weapon page explains the sequence and its implications.[15]
A successful nonnegative enchantment effect of strength E adds E + 1 to the selected item's enchantment. For armor and shields, that improves Def, not Arm. Before the increase, an item with current enchantment p has explosion probability clamp(p - 1, 0, 20) / 20: +0 and +1 have no explosion risk from this check, +2 has 5%, +9 has 40%, and +21 or higher always explodes. Explosion destroys the item and causes a manastorm.[16]
A cursed enchantment effect can instead strip an eligible noncursed magical item's power and reset its enchantment to zero. Ordinary armor and ordinary shields are exempt from that mundanity branch, as are already cursed items. A stripped special suit keeps its physical absorption and weight, but its unchanged name does not mean its old immunity or breathing still works.[17]
Curses prevent normal removal once the item is in use. Identification reveals a curse without lifting it. For a light curse of strength -1, a noncursed blessing can make the item uncursed and change enchantment to its absolute value plus one. Deeper curses resist weak blessing and can be destroyed by sufficient blessing, so that remedy must not be applied indiscriminately.[18]
Self-targeted dispelling can lift curses on items currently in use when effective dispelling strength + 1 ≥ curse magnitude. It changes blessing to neutral without repairing negative enchantment. Demonhide's -9 curse requires effective strength 8 or more; a weak dispel cannot remove it. These rules explain why a deeply cursed but valuable item needs a recovery plan rather than repeated blind blessing.[19]
Corrosion and sacrificial armor
Some hazards affect equipment independently of its normal absorption. Disintegration aimed at you destroys a cloak first, then body armor if no cloak is present, and otherwise deals 250 unstoppable damage. A suit can therefore be a sacrificial layer, but is lost rather than absorbing those 250 points.[20]
An acid cloud damages a worn cloak first or body armor when there is no cloak. The ordinary item-damage routine may reduce positive enchantment or destroy an unprotected item that has no positive enchantment left. Blessed items and items cursed more deeply than -1 get a resistance check based on generation level. This item check is separate from whether acid immunity prevents the HP damage.[21]
A failed residence safe attempt can produce a different acid spray: without a cloak, it reduces the armor's absorption and bulk penalty by three each. After combat values are recalculated, absorption is worse but the defense penalty is smaller. Repeated damage is not clamped to the original table's minimums. Enchanting the suit afterward improves defense but does not restore its lost absorption. Do not generalize this unusual safe result to every acid attack.[22]
References
- ↑ aux1.c in Omega 0.90.4, lines 281–350 Combat statistics; mmelee.c in Omega 0.90.4, lines 189–218 Blocks; aux1.c in Omega 0.90.4, lines 498–513 Damage.
- ↑ aux2.c in Omega 0.90.4, lines 12–16 Attribute modifier; aux1.c in Omega 0.90.4, lines 281–350 Derived scores.
- ↑ inv.c in Omega 0.90.4, lines 1345–1454 Equipping; inv.c in Omega 0.90.4, lines 1492–1567 Slot eligibility; util.c in Omega 0.90.4, lines 677–694 Weight.
- ↑ aux2.c in Omega 0.90.4, lines 172–176 Immunity; aux1.c in Omega 0.90.4, lines 498–513 Damage.
- ↑ mmelee.c in Omega 0.90.4, lines 77–146 Monster attacks and follow-up effects.
- ↑ effect1.c in Omega 0.90.4, lines 253–295 Player hit by bolt; effect1.c in Omega 0.90.4, lines 378–413 Area explosions.
- ↑ command3.c in Omega 0.90.4, lines 597–781 Combat editor.
- ↑ mmelee.c in Omega 0.90.4, lines 189–218 Incoming attack check.
- ↑ mmelee.c in Omega 0.90.4, lines 194–218 Counting blocks and resolving riposte.
- ↑ util.c in Omega 0.90.4, lines 53–60 Hit test; mmelee.c in Omega 0.90.4, lines 37–47 Lunge bonus; mmelee.c in Omega 0.90.4, lines 205–206 Effective defense.
- ↑ aux1.c in Omega 0.90.4, lines 283–299 Capacity; util.c in Omega 0.90.4, lines 677–694 Weight.
- ↑ aux1.c in Omega 0.90.4, lines 285–313 Order and truncation of calculations; scr.c in Omega 0.90.4, line 957 Speed display.
- ↑ itemf2.c in Omega 0.90.4, lines 73–78 Fire; itemf2.c in Omega 0.90.4, lines 138–204 Energy, fear and breathing; itemf2.c in Omega 0.90.4, lines 558–589 Deflection; aux1.c in Omega 0.90.4, lines 354–389 Berserk and confirmation; mspec.c in Omega 0.90.4, lines 28–53 Abduction and poison cloud.
- ↑ aux2.c in Omega 0.90.4, lines 361–438 Sustained statuses; effect1.c in Omega 0.90.4, lines 135–150 Curse changes; effect1.c in Omega 0.90.4, lines 160–195 Blessing changes; itemf2.c in Omega 0.90.4, lines 199–203 Cursed powered suit.
- ↑ itemf2.c in Omega 0.90.4, lines 469–515; aux1.c in Omega 0.90.4, line 286; aux1.c in Omega 0.90.4, lines 498–513.
- ↑ effect1.c in Omega 0.90.4, lines 54–114 Enchanting; effect1.c in Omega 0.90.4, lines 358–362 Manastorm type.
- ↑ effect1.c in Omega 0.90.4, lines 14–51 Mundanity exclusions and changes; aux1.c in Omega 0.90.4, lines 337–343 Physical armor.
- ↑ inv.c in Omega 0.90.4, lines 1354–1358 Stuck equipment; effect1.c in Omega 0.90.4, lines 154–198 Blessing.
- ↑ effect3.c in Omega 0.90.4, lines 827–857 Dispelling equipment.
- ↑ effect3.c in Omega 0.90.4, lines 375–392 Disintegration.
- ↑ effect3.c in Omega 0.90.4, lines 476–500 Acid cloud; aux1.c in Omega 0.90.4, lines 454–484 Equipment damage.
- ↑ site2.c in Omega 0.90.4, lines 968–985 Safe corrosion; aux1.c in Omega 0.90.4, lines 337–343 Recalculation; effect1.c in Omega 0.90.4, lines 99–110 Enchantment.