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[Badargo]

Hello!

Im sorry for posting again but I cant find the answer anywhere...

First lemme explain my reasoning.

It seem that no matter how high is your dodge skill, if you choose to block and fail you get a hit 100% of the time.

Still, after sparring with animals many times (with superior kinesthetic sense!)... I have noticed that when the dodge skill is low, a lot of attacks are stopped by passive blocks. As I keep sparring with them, they end up missing 100% of the attacks, no more passive blocks happen and the shield user skill stops at below average.

When I dont use a shield its almost the same. As I spar with them, I get passive armor deflections instead, which stop happening as I get up to legendary dodger evading 99% of the hits (thankfully armor user raises no matter if you get hit or not).

It looks like in combat we have (at least) 3 rolls, a 3 step system:

First its the dodge roll. If it fails we have the shield user roll, if it fails then its the armor user roll.

* I didnt notice any passive parrying so I dont know if theres a check for them.

What do you guys think?

My other question concerns two handed swords.

As they have 5 times more contact area then a short sword their damage potential is huge. I believe they can behead 5 times more, maybe even the big guys (in exchange of passive blocks, as they need a multigrasp to not suffer accuracy penalties)

But the wiki says elves and dwarves are too small to wield them.

I know its possible to even single grasp them in adventure mode and its kind of a silly question but can a dwarf or an elf wield a two handed sword in adventure mode without penalties?

[peasant cretin]

What governs the success of your shield block or your dodge is first the stat comparisons, and then modifiers to the roll.

If you have a level 1 (novice) dodger and shield user, the night troll who has level 6 (talented) biter is going to bite you. A 5 level stat gulf is just too big.

Modifiers to the roll are whether you're at Focused or Focused!, if you're at 1.000 walking speed or at under 0.300 walking speed, if they can attack you from the side or back, and if you have chosen to manually defend (search: "in which case that really improves your rolls, for a parry, and *decreases* your dodge and block rolls") -> (you get a boost to your choice, but a there's nerf to the others), stat penalties from being drowsy/stunned/nauseous, etc.

For defense (dodge, shield block, parry with weapon vs. weapon) against 1 opponent, each will only trigger once per turn.

Now with more than 1 opponent, both block or parry will be able to respond once per turn, but passive AI dodge can respond as many times as needed (best going full passive defense as the rolls are flat across since there was no manual choice).

When you fight animals, they attack with "natural attacks" which can only be blocked or dodged. They don't have skill levels, so just having novice level 1 skill should be enough for the stat comparisons.

(Search: "If you're doing a lot of parrying") -> What governs whether you dodge, block or parry is what stat is highest, along with how you have your combat preferences set. If your Dodge Preference is set to Stand Ground, your character will remain in the same tile. If set to Move Around, you'll dodge away, out of that tile onto another tile. So even if your character is set to Move Around, when you have a higher shield user, it's more likely that you'll not just block more often, but often stay in the same tile, countermanding your setting.

[Badargo]

So dodge and shield user arent mutually exclusive...

I made demigods using shield and not using it. The ones not carrying a shield always end up with a scar in the neck or something like that while the ones using a shield never get scarred.

If you spar with a small pet with a shield, you get passive blocks every time a dodge roll fails. But if you dont have a shield and no armor, even a stray cat will leave scars all over you. They will hit you even when your legendary dodger  + 0.

Sadly you sacrifice very good damage when you dont wield a two handed weapon... but maybe when your around legendary +30 or so you can behead a titan with a knife???

So like you said, in one turn, against a single attack, each defensive skill will have a roll against that attack.

Legendary dodgers will eventually fail, but if your also legendary shield user, that skill will back you up in such rare cases.

Parrying is nice but kinda useless against bogeyman and unarmed monsters.

[Melting Sky]

The armor user skill does NOT directly effect you chances of deflecting attacks with your armor. What it does is decrease your speed and encumbrance penalty from wearing heavy armor. As a general of thumb you should always use a shield. The benefit of the shield outweighs the benefit of the added power of a two handed weapon.

Note when I say this I am referring to actually wielding the weapon with two hands. Large enough creatures are capable of wielding weapons like two handed swords with only one hand in which case they can use it like a long sword and equip a shield in their other hand. Similarly small creatures often need to wield what would normally be a one handed weapon with both hands and in that case they suffer the same problem of not being able to use a shield.

[Max™]

Yeah, your "deflection roll" is based on your armor use skill, but in the first calculation your dodge roll counts more and replaces your deflection roll if it is higher.  That roll is thrown into an equation with the hit roll to get the "squareness" of the attack from 0 to 20.  There's some pure luck at this stage though, and the squareness can sometimes be increased regardless of the rolls.

Later, the same deflection roll is used directly with relevant worn items one by one to modify attack momentum using the material/etc. -- dodge rolls don't enter into this.  Item familiarity can increase this deflection bonus.

In addition to speed, high armor skill also decreases your "clunkiness" with heavy worn objects.  The clunkiness sum applies a minus to many skill rolls (mostly combat, but a few non-combat).

It's not as simple as it not effecting the chances, apparently.

[Melting Sky]

Yeah, your "deflection roll" is based on your armor use skill, but in the first calculation your dodge roll counts more and replaces your deflection roll if it is higher.  That roll is thrown into an equation with the hit roll to get the "squareness" of the attack from 0 to 20.  There's some pure luck at this stage though, and the squareness can sometimes be increased regardless of the rolls.

Later, the same deflection roll is used directly with relevant worn items one by one to modify attack momentum using the material/etc. -- dodge rolls don't enter into this.  Item familiarity can increase this deflection bonus.

In addition to speed, high armor skill also decreases your "clunkiness" with heavy worn objects.  The clunkiness sum applies a minus to many skill rolls (mostly combat, but a few non-combat).

It's not as simple as it not effecting the chances, apparently.

All these years I had an incomplete picture of exactly how armor user worked. I had always thought the benefits of armor user in battle were solely an indirect result of the decrease to your speed and encumbrance penalties from wearing said armor. I also had no idea item familiarity was calculated into the deflection equation or that the armor user skill applied a direct bonus to the initial deflection roll. I should have known Toady would have like half a dozen variables involved. Thanks for the informative heads up. 

[D_E]

For defense (dodge, shield block, parry with weapon vs. weapon) against 1 opponent, each will only trigger once per turn.

Now with more than 1 opponent, both block or parry will be able to respond once per turn, but passive AI dodge can respond as many times as needed (best going full passive defense as the rolls are flat across since there was no manual choice).

A slight correction to this: it appears that parry (and probably block) will respond once per turn per weapon wielded (or shield, probably).  So if you are dual-wielding swords or something, you can parry up to two attacks per turn, one for each sword.  Attacking with a weapon probably prevents it from parrying that turn, see bellow.

You can also declare multiple blocks or parries in a single turn, but in order to do so you must first declare an attack and set yourself to 'Multi-attack'.  Once you are in multi-attack mode, you can bring up the parry menu multiple times.  Declaring either an attack or a parry with a weapon removes it from the parry menu, so in order to really see this in action you need a modded race that can wield more than two weapons at once.

I tested all this in the arena with a 4-armed modded race, with 4 different weapons in hand so that I could tell what auto parry was responding with.

[Rumrusher]

For defense (dodge, shield block, parry with weapon vs. weapon) against 1 opponent, each will only trigger once per turn.

Now with more than 1 opponent, both block or parry will be able to respond once per turn, but passive AI dodge can respond as many times as needed (best going full passive defense as the rolls are flat across since there was no manual choice).

A slight correction to this: it appears that parry (and probably block) will respond once per turn per weapon wielded (or shield, probably).  So if you are dual-wielding swords or something, you can parry up to two attacks per turn, one for each sword.  Attacking with a weapon probably prevents it from parrying that turn, see bellow.

You can also declare multiple blocks or parries in a single turn, but in order to do so you must first declare an attack and set yourself to 'Multi-attack'.  Once you are in multi-attack mode, you can bring up the parry menu multiple times.  Declaring either an attack or a parry with a weapon removes it from the parry menu, so in order to really see this in action you need a modded race that can wield more than two weapons at once.

I tested all this in the arena with a 4-armed modded race, with 4 different weapons in hand so that I could tell what auto parry was responding with.

wonder if you could just hold loads of weapons at once to get more parry bonuses? or play a spiderperson since they have 4 hands in vanilla.

[D_E]

A slight correction to this: it appears that parry (and probably block) will respond once per turn per weapon wielded (or shield, probably).  So if you are dual-wielding swords or something, you can parry up to two attacks per turn, one for each sword.  Attacking with a weapon probably prevents it from parrying that turn, see bellow.

You can also declare multiple blocks or parries in a single turn, but in order to do so you must first declare an attack and set yourself to 'Multi-attack'.  Once you are in multi-attack mode, you can bring up the parry menu multiple times.  Declaring either an attack or a parry with a weapon removes it from the parry menu, so in order to really see this in action you need a modded race that can wield more than two weapons at once.

I tested all this in the arena with a 4-armed modded race, with 4 different weapons in hand so that I could tell what auto parry was responding with.

wonder if you could just hold loads of weapons at once to get more parry bonuses? or play a spiderperson since they have 4 hands in vanilla.

I can confirm that (at least for the active parry system) it is per weapon, not per hand, and if you glitch a bunch of weapons into your hands you can indeed parry with all of them independently.  I didn't try to test the passive parry system, but I'd guess the passive parry system works the same way.

Edit: Also, I forgot that spider men had multiple arms.  It should work equally well with spider people, then

[peasant cretin]

Yeah, using the (it is called this?) the backpack exploit to load your hands with multiple weapons also works with shields (provided they are wood so as not to slow you down). However in Zivilin's Dwarven Research: A Study on Shielding, itg mentions every additional shield suffers from a blocking % penalty.

Unfortunately no one's done any such study for parry: Dwarven Academy of Science: The New Knowledge Center.

With multiple shields and light weapons, you could become a blocking-parrying machine (limited by your endurance of course. IIRC, a powerleveled demigod who started with superior endurance could manage this.). YMMV on its exploitiness. But then you've got 4 prehensile grabs when wrestling, and 4 bites too.