Weapon damage

Version 0.13: This article may not be up to date for the latest stable release of Crawl.

Weapon damage is your base weapon damage, multiplied by weapon skill and fighting skill, and your strength bonus depending on the strength weighting of the weapon type. Slaying bonuses and weapon enchantment are added afterwards. Actual damage is randomly rolled, 1dWeaponDamage.

Damage formula

Damage = {[1d(Base damage * Stat modifier)-0.66] * Weapon skill modifier * Fighting modifier
         + Misc modifiers + Slaying bonuses + Weapon bonuses)}
         * Final multipliers  + Stabbing bonus - AC damage reduction

• Base damage:
  • Unarmed combat: 3 + UC (can be changed by some spells, see Unarmed combat)
  • Using a weapon: Base damage of the weapon
• Stat modifier:
  • Stat = STR + (dex_weight/10) * (DEX - STR)/2 (a number between STR and (STR+DEX)/2)
  • If Stat > 11: Multiply by 1 + 1d(Stat - 11)*2/39 (average bonus: +2.6% for every point above 11)
  • If Stat < 11: Multiply by 1 - 1d(9 - Stat)*3/39 (average bonus: -3.8% for every point below 9)
• Weapon skill modifier: Multiply by 1 + (1dSkill)/25 (not applied to unarmed combat; average bonus: +2% for every skill level)
• Fighting modifier: Multiply by 1 + (1dFighting)/30 (average bonus: +1.67% for every skill level in fighting)
• Misc modifiers:
  • Might or Berserk: +1d10
  • If you are starving: -1d5 + 1 (bloodless vampires don't suffer this penalty)
• Slaying bonuses:
  • Effective enchantment = Weapon enchantment + Slaying bonus
  • If Eff. enchantment > 0: + 1d(1 + Eff. enchantment) - 1
  • If Eff. enchantment < 0: - 1d(1 - Eff. enchantment) + 1
• Weapon bonuses:
  • If you are a deep dwarf and it is a dwarven weapon: +1d3 - 1
  • If you are a hill orc and it is an orcish weapon: +1d2 - 1 + Beogh bonus (Beogh bonus is up to 1+1d(5.45))
  • If you are a demonspawn and it is a demonic weapon: +1d3 - 1 (demon whips, demon blades, demon tridents)
• Final multipliers:
  • If it is a weapon of speed: Multiply the damage by 0.9
  • If it is an additional cleaving attack: Multiply by 0.75
  • Statue Form: Multiply by 1.5
  • If the player has the Weak status effect: Multiply by 0.75
• Stabbing bonus: See stabbing.
• AC damage reduction: See AC.

Some considerations:

• The main contributions to weapon damage are: base damage, weapon skill (+54% at level 27) and fighting skill (+45% at level 27).
• As you can see, at very low skill levels, the value of base damage and enchantment is approximately the same, but for skilled characters base damage is much more important than enchantment.
• Weapon brands that use multiplicative bonuses, calculate the additional amount of damage as a percentage of the damage described in this page (including AC damage reduction). This additional amount of damage ignores AC, but it can be affected by resistances or vulnerabilities.

History

In 0.13 the effect of stats on melee was doubled.