Knightly styles

In dNetHack, notdNetHack and notnotdNetHack, Knights are capable of employing knightly combat styles (or knightly stances) to enhance their combat abilities - there are three basic styles and three advanced styles, and only one style can be active at a time.

List of styles

The six knightly combat styles are as follows:

• Shield bashing, which utilizes a worn shield as a weapon alongside the primary weapon for additional damage and debuffs
• Great-weapon fighting, which improves consistency in damage with two-handed weapons based on skill level in that weapon
• Half-sword style, which enables armor-piercing damage by using the free off-hand to aim thrusting attacks with a wielded long sword
• The three advanced styles:
  • Sacred style, which channels energy into a blessed or cursed weapon to inflict holy or unholy damage, based on alignment and alignment record
  • Runic style, which grants magic resistance while wielding a long sword with at least Basic skill in long swords
  • Eldritch style, which adds elemental damage from attack spells to a weapon, dependent on the hero's ability to cast the spell

Description

Knightly styles all use separate skills, and Knights can reach Expert level in the four styles that can be trained - the two un-trainable ones are automatically applied when their conditions are met, i.e. wielding a long for runic style combat, or wielding a long sword with no offhand weapon or shield for half-sword style combat.

Shield bashing

The shield bashing style allows the hero to make offhand attacks with a worn shield, which adds bonuses from enchantment or properties like a normal weapon attack. Shield bashing uses a base die of d2 at Unskilled, which increases in size by 2 for each skill level (up to d8 at expert) - the die size is modified by size as normal for weapons, so a shield size that is any amount of steps above or below medium will increase or decrease the die size by 2 per step. A successful shield bash hit trains the skill and also lowers the target's morale by one point for each skill level past Basic, decreasing their accuracy and damage; the minimum floor on morale loss that is applied this way is further lowered by 5 damage for each skill level the hero has. The table below lists the damage, morale and penalty caps for each skill level:

Skill level	Damage	Morale	Morale cap
Unskilled	d2	1	0
Basic	d4	1	−5
Skilled	d6	2	−10
Expert	d8	3	−15

Great-weapon fighting

To be written.

Half-sword style

To be written.

Sacred style

To be written.

Runic style

To be written.

Eldritch style

To be written.

Strategy

To be written.

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