Combat Explanation

Seems a lot of people out there don't really "get" DDO combat, including saying it's nothing like D&D...so I thought I'd try and explain it in detail here as much as possible.

First of all, what's not like D&D is that it's real time instead of turn based.  No offense to hardcore PnP'ers out there, but I personally believe a turnbased system would be really...really...boring.  In fact it would probably be loading up a combat queue with action icons by pressing F1 and F2 and then seeing what happens...sound familiar?  Yeah, don't want that.

What "real time" means, is that when I click my mouse...I swing my sword.  When I press shield block (in my case, another mouse button) I block with my shield.  This does NOT mean that I can swing my sword as fast as I can click my mouse, because you're still limited to a certain number of attacks "per round" just like in PnP.  It just means that it's "real time".  It also means, I swing my sword at what is in front of me.  So, if by the time my next attack is allowed the monster is 5 feet away, I don't hit him (and vice versa).

Now, everything else about the combat is pretty much identical to PnP from there though.  When I click the mouse, and swing that sword, a computerized 20 sided die is rolled.  The result of that roll is combined with my various bonuses (say +5 from my +5 sword, +5 from my 20 strength, and +10 from my Base Attack Bonus, or BAB).  So, if I rolled a 3, my attack roll would be a total of 3+5+5+10=23.  That attack roll is measured against the opponents Armor Class (a combination of his actual armor or hide, dexterity bonuses, or other protections).  My attack roll has to beat his armor class in order to land a "hit".

Critical hits are a little more complicated, but here's the breakdown.  Each weapon has a "critical hit threat range", this might be 18-20, 19-20, or just 20.  This means that if my attack roll is within that range naturally (before bonuses) and I land a hit (beat the opponent armor class), I have a chance for a critical hit.  That chance is determined by yet another roll, and I have to land a "hit" on the subsequent roll to confirm the critical.  If this happens, the damage (discussed next) will be multiplied by a modifier, each weapon having it's own modifier, like X2 or X3.  Some weapons also have special effects like "burst" which provide additional damage (like a shocking explosion) on a critical hit as well.

After a successful hit, damage is added up.  This is yet another roll, this could be a 4 sided die, 8 sided die, 12 sided die, etc. depending on your weapon, to which is added your weapons bonus amount, your strength bonus amount, any additional damage (your flaming sword may provide an additional roll of a 6 sided die for bonus damage) and this all adds up for the amount of damage you do to the opponent.

I know this sounds like I click my button and then wait about 15 minutes to find out what happens, but computers are amazing things LOL!

Hope this helps!