When you make an attack in combat, the opponent can choose whether to use active or passive defense against the attack. Your passive defense score is based on ability scores (doesn’t scale with level). If you choose to actively defend, you also get to add a relevant skill bonus to the score. (full defense, consisting of hunkering down against ranged attacks or falling back out of reach for melee attacks, may also be an option, for an additional bonus).
- The attacker and the defender each roll 1d20 + modifiers. If the attacker’s result exceeds the defender’s, the attack is a hit.
- On a hit, the base damage is equal to the attacker’s base weapon damage (eg. 8), plus the difference between the attacker’s result and the defender’s result (eg. 24 – 18 = 6).
- Calculate the defender’s effective armor score against the attack: defender’s Armor Score – attack’s Armor Penetration Score.
- If the damage exceeds the effective armor score, the attack pierces the defender’s armor and deals regular damage. If the damage does not exceed the effective armor score, the attack deals stamina damage instead.
Consequences of Active Defense
Choosing to use Active Defense against an attack reduces the defender’s initiative score by 5 every time they use it (total defense gives -10 instead). (there is a hard limit to how far below the current initiative count a character can be…beyond this point the character is overwhelmed and can no longer use active defenses). Because Active Defense makes such a big difference to a character’s defense score, it will be used against most attacks. This means that a character being attacked by lots of enemies will have a hard time counterattacking because all of their initiative will be used up defending.
On the flip side, a skilled character can occasionally punish attackers who leave openings in their own defense. If a character is actively defending and their defense result exceeds the attacker’s result by at least 10, they score a counterattack (TODO: figure out how much damage it deals)