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.
Contents
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. Each skill must be active in order to train it if applicable.
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
The great-weapon fighting style is trained by attacking with any weapon wielded in both hands (including normally one-handed weapons) while the style is active, and increases the minimum roll for that weapon's base damage dice by 1 per level of skill in that weapon, i.e. 1 for Basic, 2 for Skilled, and 3 for Expert. This can be expressed with the equation Nd(X - i) + (N * i): i represents the value of the minimum roll increase, N is the number of hit dice, and X is the original die size. For example, a two-handed sword against large monsters has base damage of 3d6 - using the great-weapon fighting style, this becomes 3d(6 - 3) + (3 * 3), or 3d3 + 9. Great-weapon fighting damage stacks with one of exploding die or lucky dice, but not exploding lucky dice.
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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