Weapon damage

Version 0.29: This article may not be up to date for the latest stable release of Crawl.

Weapon damage is your base weapon damage, multiplied by strength modifier, multiplied by weapon skill and fighting skill modifiers. Slaying bonuses and weapon enchantment are added afterwards. Actual damage components are randomly rolled in four places: 1d(Base * Strength modifier), Slaying bonus, Weapon skill modifier and Fighting modifier.

Damage formula

Damage = [uniform(Base damage * Stat modifier) * Skill modifier * Fighting modifier + Misc modifiers + uniform(Slaying bonuses)] * final multipliers + Stabbing bonus - AC damage reduction

• While final multipliers are applied after stabbing bonus, their bonus damage is technically added on top, in order to ignore stabbing attacks.

As a shorthand uniform(x) = 1d(x+1)-1 or a roll from 0 to x inclusive.

• Base damage:
  • Unarmed combat: 3 + UC (can be changed by some spells and the claws mutation, see Unarmed combat)
  • Using a weapon: Base damage of the weapon
• Stat modifier:
  • 0.75 + 0.025 * Stat
  • Short Blades, Long Blades, and Ranged Weapons use Dexterity. Other weapons and Unarmed use Strength.
  • There is a minimum modifier of 0.01 (1%), at -30 stat.
• Skill modifier:
  • 1 + uniform(Weapon skill)/25 (not applied to unarmed combat)
  • The other main advantage to raising a weapon/unarmed skill is decreasing your attack delay.
• Fighting modifier:
  • 1 + uniform(Fighting skill)/30
• Misc modifiers:
  • Might or Berserk: +1d10
• Slaying bonuses:
  • Weapon enchantment bonus
  • Added or subtracted from sources of Slaying.
• Final multipliers:
  • If it is an additional cleaving attack: Multiply by 0.7
  • Statue Form: Multiply by 1.5
  • Shadow Form: Multiply by 0.5
  • The Weak status effect: Multiply by 0.75
  • Bonuses for Wu Jian martial attacks
  • Palentonga roll bonus
  • Confusing Touch: Set to 0
• Stabbing bonus: See stabbing.
• AC damage reduction: See AC.

Notes

• The main contributions to weapon damage are: base damage, weapon skill (Maximum of +108% at level 27) and fighting skill (Maximum of +67.5% at level 27).
• Effect of weapon and fighting skills is random, with a linear distribution between 0 and the maximum.
• At very low skill levels, the value of 1 base damage and +1 enchantment are approximately the same. But as characters gain more skill and stats, only base damage gets multiplied, having a greater effect.
• Weapon brands with multiplicative bonuses are applied after the damage formula, including AC reduction. The added damage then ignores AC, but can be affected by resistances and vulnerabilities.
• Each term in the formula is calculated in sequence and is rounded down to an integer. This rounding is worse with a weapon with low base damage. For example, take a player with Dex = 12 and Short Blades skill = 12:
  • With no slaying bonuses, a +0 dagger with a base damage of 4 cannot do more than 5 damage. The same player wielding a +0 rapier with a base damage of 8 can do up to 13 damage. So, the stat and skill bonuses increase the dagger's damage by 25% and the rapier's damage by 62%. The dagger would deal up to 10 damage per 10 aut, while the rapier would deal up to 20. For this player, a +5 dagger would be inferior to a +0 rapier (if not used for stabbing).

History

• In 0.29, launcher, long blade, and short blade damage scale with Dexterity rather than Strength.
• In 0.27, the strength modifier was simplified and made nonrandom.
• In 0.13 the effect of stats on melee was doubled.
• Between 0.8 and 0.13, melee weapons of speed suffered a -10% penalty to damage.