Combat mechanics

Urtuk’s core battle mechanics are the focus of the game. Apart from the hex map battlefield, Speed-based turn sequence (initiative), and varying elevation tiles, Urtuk adds several innovative mechanics to turn-based combat.

Types of damage
There are 4 types of damage in the game:


 * normal damage – caused by most normal abilities (attack, ranged, charge, mansplitter, ram, taunt)


 * environmental damage – from the environment (spikes, traps, falls from high ground) and status effects (bleeding, poison, long reach weapons)


 * special damage – from special attacks (bash, engaging strike, grab/pull, spearwall)


 * pure damage – when performing some abilities, like the Priest's Aegis, or upon entering the death-hex. Pure damage cannot be mitigated or blocked.

Attacking
All normal melee attacking abilities, such as basic attack, lead, mansplitter and taunt may be performed only on adjacent targets and at a maximum elevation difference of 1. A normal attack and javelin throw cost 40 stamina, while crossbows cost 50 and blowguns 30 stamina. See Abilities for the stamina ºof specific other active abilities.

A normal attack ability (basic attack, ranged, charge, lead, mansplitter, ram, taunt) is usually comprised of a single hit. Certain Traits (like Strong VS) and Focus Abilities (like Extra Hit) may add an extra hit, leading to a normal attack of two hits. Only the last hit triggers additional effects (ranged support, retaliation, etc.). Extra hit is a status effect and is always attached to an attack. If you execute a Strong VS attack, gain an extra hit, and the first hit kills the target, the extra hit won’t be consumed but carries on to the next attack (which might not come until the following turn). The ram ability for example is a normal attack ability and thus may trigger extra hits. If you ram an enemy and have an extra hit available, it will automatically trigger on that rammed enemy!

The base damage is defined by the weapon a character is using and is amplified by several factors, for example:


 * Strength increases the damage by 2% for each point spent on it
 * Mutators like flesh eater, flagrant and many more give you a % increase in damage
 * Abilities can give a massive increase in damage, like the 150% bonus damage from mansplitter at the cost of a lot of stamina
 * Criticals multiply the damage by 1.5 (i.e. 50% extra)
 * Elevation increases or decreases (multiplicatively) the damage by 15% per elevation level, capped at+75% max and -48% min at 4+ elevation difference.

Assists
Other partymembers or even allied units can assist your attack and hit the target themselves in one of those cases:


 * Brother in Arms is available to every melee character and gives a % chance to trigger an assist attack
 * Ranged Support gives ranged characters a way to assist melee attacks, if the line of sight is free and they are not engaged in melee themselves or would hit any ally
 * Lead as an ability or focus causes all other characters around the target to take a free hit

Assists are only triggered if the character has the necessary stamina for it.

Backstab
Backstabs are triggered, if the target is surrounded by your allies on both sides of it. This will give you a guaranteed critical hit and triggers some special traits like the Assassins retreat.

Criticals
There is no basic critical chance in Urtuk. Criticals are instead guaranteed in special circumstances and will deal 150% damage and have many interactions with mutators which require a critical hit.

Here are some ways to trigger a critical hit:


 * Backstab a target
 * Aquire a critical charge buff on your character through various means like Patience, Critical Strike Focus, or other some other Mutators like rage.
 * Hit a slowed, panicked or stunned target
 * Some abilities grant critical hits (e.g. assassins'a mark, mocker's mark, grab and die! assist attack, aimed shot etc.)

Counterstrike
Each time damage is blocked or nullified, for example via Aegis, a counterstrike will be triggered. (if the attack is shielded, then the unit that's been shielded will deal the counter-attack).

Most normal rules for an attack apply, but there will be no assists from allies for a counterstrike.

Notable is Critical Counterstrike, allowing armoured characters to counterstrike every time a blow is mitigated by armour. It will also work if the attack is shielded or blocked by aegis.

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Mitigation and Shatter
Damage is always reduced to half as long as the defender still has armour. The armour value is displayed in the character sheet and in his tooltip:

Every weapon has a shatter value next to its damage, determining the damage dealt to a targets armour. It's fairly straightforward:

This value is increased by the shred armour trait: and by the rend armour focus:

As long as amour holds, the target will not receive any ailments like bleed or poison (exception being the porcupine/mushroom toxic cloud trait, the spiked pillar and the spike special hex tiles that cause bleed/poison) as well as reduce damage in half, which makes it a great defensive option. As seen in the tooltip, armour also regenerates by 25% each turn. Armour can be increased by the soldier perk.

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Elevation
Each level of elevation an attacker is higher than the defender adds +15% damage to the attack. This also applies in reverse, giving the attacker a -15% damage multiplier for every elevation below the defender.

This applies to both melee and ranged attacks and abilities. Since melee combat is only possible at max 1 elevation difference, it will always be 15% at most. Ranged combat, however, can benefit from more extreme damage boosts by being several elevations above the target. The effect is multiplicative, up to a maximum of 4 elevation differene which gives +75% for 4+ elevation higher and -48% for 4+ elevation lower.

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Focus Generation
Focus is gained by performing actions in combat like attacking, using abilities or even taking hits. It is directly affected by concentration: Focus generation is not affected by your base damage (i.e. 2 units with 100% focus generation that one hits for 10 and the other for 1000 damage will generate the same amount of focus per hit). Each time you hit, get hit, or cast an ability you will generate some amount of focus, which will then be multiplied by the focus generation % (e.g. if you have 150% focus gain, then any source of focus will give you 50% more focus than the baseline). One important thing to note here, is that when hitting an enemy, focus generation will also be modified according to any kind of damage modifier applied to your base damage. Therefore, striking with a critical hit, with extra damage from flagrant/flesh eater or with positive elevation will generate extra focus while hitting at armour, in negative elevation or with negative damage modifiers (e.g. weakened) will instead provide less focus.

Finally it should be mentioned the more times you strike in the same turn and the more focus you generate, the less focus subsequent hits will generate. For example, if your assassin strikes twice with swift hands and reaches full focus and then attacks again with murdering sense, the second attack instance will generate less focus than the first. Every time your focus bar is full, the equipped Focus Ability is added to your global bar. Those can be used on any of your turns and any of your characters - no matter who provided it (exception being the confuse focus which is only usable on enemies). You may only have a maximum of 5 focus abilities at the same time. Should you gain another one, the oldest ability will be replaced by the more newly obtained one.

Reaching a full focus bar also provides you with other benefits depending on the traits, mutators, and overfocus the unit has.

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Mending
The Mending limits how quickly and how much a character may be healed in one turn. Mending is shown in the extended tooltip when you mouseover a character. A character may receive up to 100% of his Mending in healing. Any further healing that surpasses current Mending will be reduced by 66%. Each heal decreases the Mending. Mending is regenerating by 40% per turn, up to a maximum of 50% of max HP. Mending was introduced to reduce excessive healing past a certain point. As this is a complex concept, here is another explanation:

Every character has half his max HP in mending at the start of the battle. Every point of healing reduces mending by 1.

If the character has mending left, he heals for 100% - if he doesn't, he heals for 33%.

Mending regenerates by 40% of its starting value every turn, but never higher than what you started with.

So, for instance, if a unit has 1000 HP he will start with 500 mending at the start of each battle. Now, if that unit falls to 100HP (10% left) and healed for 300HP, he would heal to 400 HP and the mending would be reduced by the same amount (500-300=200 mending left).


 * But what if said unit were to heal for 600HP instead of 300?. Since his mending is only 500, that means the first 500HP would heal at 100% efficiency (i.e. he'd gain all that health back). But what happens to the last 100HP? Since he has no mending left, they will heal at 33% efficiency meaning, they will only heal 33HP. So the total amount of healing will be 533HP (500*1.0 + 100*0.33). The mending amount will recover by 40% for each one of the unit's turns, meaning that next turn, he'll recover 200 mending points (i.e. he'll be able to heal 200HP at full efficiency next turn). As mentioned before, mending points can never go above 50% of the unit's maxHP.

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Ranged Combat
In Urtuk the ranged characters and their ranged weapons (crossbow, blowgun, javelin) respect some physical aspects of the battlefield. There is the line of sight (LoS) factor meaning if between your archer and its target is an obstacle (rock, another character), your hit-chance is reduced. Some classes, like the spearman and axe werebeast are projectile blockers:

All shield users have a similar trait called "Shield Wielder" which not only reduces hit chance by 95%, but also decreases damage caused by projectiles by 1/3.

Finally there's the Projectiles Deflector trait, which, as long as the unit has stamina left, will nullify any projectile fired at them or a nearby unit.

Such characters can completely protect their allies if between enemy archer and allies. Make good use of them!

All weapon types have their own trajectory - crossbows and blowguns fire in straight line, javelins have a high arc trajectory thus can fire over obstacles to some elevation level.

Counter Ranged
If a ranged character is about to fire, all adjacent enemy melee characters will gain a free attack and strike the ranged character first. This free attack is called 'counter ranged'.

Ranged Support
The ranged support trait or mutator will allow an assist for melee attacks on a target, if the ranged unit is in no danger of hitting your own units. See Assists for more info on assisting targets.

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Stamina
Every action other than movement costs stamina. When your stamina reaches zero, you cannot act (other than moving). This state is called out of breath. Each point of Agility increases max stamina by 2. In the beginning of the turn a character restores 100% of stamina. Waiting restores 50% of stamina (as of V.0.87.06+17).

Any amount of stamina left will still let you perform an attack or ability, even if you don't have the total stamina displayed left. The missing value will be substracted from your next turn instead.

For example: A character with 42 stamina attacks twice in a turn, both of which cost 40 stamina. The character will end up with -38 stamina (though hidden) and will start the next turn with -38+42=4 stamina.

Most builds want to reach certain stamina breakpoints to make use of this mechanic. It is often beneficial to make use of this extra attack or use of an ability on a crucial turn.

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Timeline
Turn order is based upon the character's timeline value, which ranges from -100 to 100. At 100, the character starts his turn. After that turn, timeline is recalculated based on AGI and speed effects. Some effects (like Wait) may change the timeline value.

The table below presents the pattern for the new timeline value based on AGI (without Wait and other special effects). As an example, when the character performs Wait, it affects the new timeline value as if AGI was increased by 25. If the character's current timeline decreases to less than -20, he will be slowed and becomes vulnerable to critical hits. If the character's current timeline decreases below -70, he will be stunned (unless he's stun inmune), with the same effects as slowed, and will also be unable to react (retaliation, ranged support, shielding, etc.). There is a complex math function which translated the AGI and speed bonus to the actual timeline value. In other words, any given speed bonus does not mean a direct addition to timeline value.

The exact timeline formula is:

Added timeline = 100 - ( 100 / (x / 85 +1)) where X is the speed value. This applies to any kind of speed addition (e.g. waiting, hastening crits, quick reflexes, mass killer etc.).

If your unit suffers a speed penalty (mud, tiring criticals, maul/mace hit etc.) the formula for how much your timeline will be reduced is - (100 - (100 / (-x / 85 + 1))).

Another thing to note, is that on your first turn, your party's units will receive a speed buff. This buff is 15+ unit's Agi + random Value between 0-10.

Characters that are stunned recovers timeline value faster to avoid being indefinitely stunned. For example, a character hits by Stunning Blow begins with -100 timeline value, but will get to their turn in significantly less than 200 "ticks."

Speed bonus can be gained with various Mutators and Traits.

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Zone of Control
Tiles adjacent to a melee enemy are in its zone of control. Once your character enters the zone of control, he cannot move any further. Note that this does not apply for ranged, stunned or panicked units.

Your character will be able to move normally on his turn, if next to an enemy. He will however not be able to move any further if stepping onto a tile with a melee unit next to it, thus limiting his movement options.

Unlike most other games, there will be no attack of opportunity when moving through a zone of control the next turn.

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