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 each size above or below medium will increase/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 the accuracy and damage of bashed foes, with a minimum floor on morale loss applied this way that is further lowered by 5 damage for each skill level the hero has. The table below lists the morale and damage 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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