"Realistic" combat would not be much fun, thus every game abstracts combat, damage and death to a certain extent. Health or "hit points" in Pernica are an abstraction of visible physical damage (cuts, broken bones, etc) and non-visible damage (bruises, loss of blood) which can be thought of to a certain extent as "long term fatigue". These can take a long time to recover from. Unlike other games players won't just sit and cast a few healing spells and be brought back from near death to perfectly fine in a few minutes. Often it may take real days to recover fully from an intense battle.

Combat is evaluated every fifteen seconds (this is still being play tested and may change). An "attack" is a combination of all the maneuvering and attempts to strike your target over that fifteen second period. Players may use three different combat modes:

• Careful - a conservative, defensive posture - reduces your chance to hit and to be hit by 5%
• Normal
• Aggressive - pressing the attack aggressively increases your chance to hit and to be hit by 5%

Special tactics may also be employed. For instance you might try to tackle your opponent (good luck trying to tackle a dragon!). If you succeed in tackling your opponent they will be imobilized, thus giving your friends a chance to slip away or re-group, or perhaps to allow your wizard to prepare a potent spell.

There are many other factors that influence combat (speed of movement, attacking from behind, etc). Magical items may also adjust your accuracy and/or damage.

Each weapon has a base accuracy and base damage amount. The target will have an accuracy adjustment and a damage adjustment (mostly due to agility and armor). Players attributes and skills adjust the accuracy and damage values.

Accuracy Formula:

Accuracy = base weapon accuracy * (1.0 + attribute adjustment + skills adjustment + item adjustment)

Example:

• A standard longsword has a base accuracy of 43%
• The attacker has a dexterity of 80 (thus a 5% accuracy bonus)
• The defender is only wearing clothes (no adjustment) and has an agility of 70 (thus 5% easier to hit)
• The attacker has a skill of 20 with swords (thus a 20% bonus)
• This gives the attack a total bonus of +30% or a 55.9% chance to hit

Critical hits:

The relative charisma between attacker and defender determines the likelihood of a critical hit.

A critical hit does three times as much damage as would otherwise have been done. One out of five hits might be a critical hit. If a hit becomes a potential critical hit, then the following formula is used to decide if it is an actual critical hit:

% chance of critical success = (25 + Attackers Charisma - Defenders Charisma) / 100

Example: An average player has a charisma of 75, an average orc has a charisma of 50. So the chance of a hit being a successful critical hit is 20% (one in five chance) times (25+75-50)/100 or 50%, thus 10% of this player's hits vs the orc will be critical hits.

Experience gain and looting:

Experience is gained during combat based on the amount of damage you inflict. Healers will earn experience based on the amount of healing they perform. The person striking the killing blow will get an additional experience bonus as well as becoming the person able to "loot" the defeated foe. Players will be able to declare other players "outlaws" to help curb "ninja looting". The justice system in the lands of Pernica shall listen to all cases of outlaw behavior. If found guilty an outlaw might be branded as an outlaw (faction) and able to be hunted and killed by others or they may only suffer a restriction of no further looting that day or week. Another consequence could be they find that merchants refuse to buy or sell from them.

Death Penalty

When you die you are automatically resurrected at the Abbey of Untharin Glade. You lose:

• 10% of your cash
• 25% of your fame
• All experience for that week cut to only 25% of what you otherwise would have earned.

Time of Day

• Humans and Halflings suffer a penalty during combat at night.
• Elves and dwarves are unaffected by the time of day
• Orcs, Goblins, Skeletons, Ghosts, Trolls and Zombies gain a combat bonus at night.

For more details of how weapons and armor impact combat see their pages:

• Weapons
• Armor