How Attacks Work

Attacks

Attack rolls are based off of a simple equation;

Attribute + Melee / Ranged + Weapon Skill + Conditional Modifiers

You combine these to get your Combat Value, you the combat value and create a series of increasingly lower checks to determine the skill of your attack, listed in the chart below is the multipliers used to determine those; Your opponent to the attack would then need to use their Dodge Value calculated like so; The Target of the attack will then similarly divide their Dodge Value into categories based off of the above chart.
Once both parties have their charted values you both roll d100 and then compare the number of successes to see if the attack hit.

Jak the Marksman is shooting his longbow at Valerie the Crusader, Jak has a 21 in STPER¹ + 25 Ranged + 15 in Archery + 10 Bow + 0 from Conditional Modifiers = 71, giving him a series of; 142, 71, 36, 18, 9, 4, 2, 1. Valerie's combined dodge bonuses come to 55. Her series looks like; 110, 55, 28, 14, 7, 3, 2, 1. Jak rolls a 33, and Valerie rolls a 33 too. This gives Jak 3 Successes, and Valerie 2. Valerie loses by one success and is struck by Jak's attack.

Now after determining success differential look at the weapon damage table and apply the damage. Damage is calculated in different ways depending on the weapon.

Melee Damage

Weapon Damage Rating + (STR/10)+Damage Modifiers* = Damage Incoming

Ranged Damage

Weapon Damage Rating + Range Distance Mod. + Damage Modifiers* = Damage Incoming

Damage Reduction and Armor

To avoid the incoming damage a character applies their armor, and possibly shield if possible (must be aware of attack to add shield) along with other damage reductions to the attack

Damage Reduction = (Armor Value + Shield Value + Natural DR + Endurance /4)

Returning to the above example, Jak, after attack vs dodge was calculated, got one success, longbows have a damage value of 3 on one success, +1 damage for short range = 4 total incoming damage. Valerie is wearing heavy plate with a AR of 12, She has no shield, no natural DR, a +20 Endurance, and no resistance to piercing = 17 total DR so even though Valerie was struck by the attack she takes no damage as her armor blocks it

Damage Resistance

Sometimes creatures are resistant or even immune to certain types of damage. If a creature is damaged by a damage type they have resistance against, they make a simple Resistance check using the related skill. On a success, the damage is negated. A creature that is immune is always considered to succeed their resistance check unless otherwise stated.

Valerie the Crusader successfully strikes Jak the Marksman with her longsword and since she has the Fire domain, she deals additional Fire damage on a successful hit. However, Jak is from the Basemer culture and from his Hardy Pioneers trait he has Resistance(Fire) 8. Therefore when taking Fire damage, Jak makes his simple check and rolls a 1d100. Jak rolls a 3 and since 3 is less than 8, he negates all the Fire damage dealt by Valarie, but still receives the Slashing from the longsword.

Piercing Attacks

Some weapons will have Piercing Values. This is how much the attack avoids DR. For each success beyond the first you ignore DR equal to the weapon's pierce value

Jak fires a second shot from his longbow and this time gets three successes more than Valerie. His longbow does 6 damage on 3 successes and has a pierce value of 2. So Valerie's armor would normally negate all damage but, Jak has 2 additional successes giving a final Piercing damage of 4.

Shields

When an opponent attacks a character, that character can make a shield roll and if its total successes are greater than the total number of successes of the opponent's attack, the character may apply their shield bonus to damage reduction. A character can not use their shield to block attacks if they are unaware of the attacker.