Who attacks first
JDow
Member Posts: 71
Could someone confirm these statements about the combat sequence, or elaborate, as I’m trying to fully understand it.
For a character’s first personal attack round to begin they have to both designate they are attacking an enemy AND be in range.
E.g. for an archer their first attack round will often start immediately whereas a pure melee fighter will need to run up beside the enemy before their first round starts (having the reach of a two-handed weapon might help a bit here).
The time they attack on is determined by a small random variation (don’t know what it is) modified by the iniative factor given by a characters dexterity score (e.g. 3 for a halfling or elf with 19 dex) and then the weapon speed is taken into account.
Do the random factor & iniative factor only come into play on the first personal round or are they factored in for every round until you kill an enemy?
I understand that if you cast certain spells, while you then have to wait a full round to cast another spell, you don’t have to wait a full round before you can attack with a weapon. So if face to face with an enemy & I cast a weapon summons I can then immediately begin my round with that weapon rather than having to wait for a full cycle to elapse. Is this only for spells that aren’t attack spells (like magic missile). E.g. I assume I could cast shield and then immediately start to attack with a weapon where I a fighter/mage for example.
Does this all sound right?
For a character’s first personal attack round to begin they have to both designate they are attacking an enemy AND be in range.
E.g. for an archer their first attack round will often start immediately whereas a pure melee fighter will need to run up beside the enemy before their first round starts (having the reach of a two-handed weapon might help a bit here).
The time they attack on is determined by a small random variation (don’t know what it is) modified by the iniative factor given by a characters dexterity score (e.g. 3 for a halfling or elf with 19 dex) and then the weapon speed is taken into account.
Do the random factor & iniative factor only come into play on the first personal round or are they factored in for every round until you kill an enemy?
I understand that if you cast certain spells, while you then have to wait a full round to cast another spell, you don’t have to wait a full round before you can attack with a weapon. So if face to face with an enemy & I cast a weapon summons I can then immediately begin my round with that weapon rather than having to wait for a full cycle to elapse. Is this only for spells that aren’t attack spells (like magic missile). E.g. I assume I could cast shield and then immediately start to attack with a weapon where I a fighter/mage for example.
Does this all sound right?
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Comments
Correct, but it can be hard to tell when you're close enough to start an attack round. I've been caught out for instance in fighting gnolls, which use slow halberds - if you run too close to them when dodging that can start their attack round such that their turn to actually attack comes a few seconds later when you try and attack yourself.
Correct for random variation, but dexterity does not affect this in BG. The random factor adjusts weapon speed for someone using a weapon. Note though that missile weapons in BG don't use their stated weapon speeds from the manual - all have very quick speeds instead.
Every round.
Just to clarify, the personal rounds are specific to your character, but there are not separate rounds for different actions - like spells and melee. It's a general thing that you can attack and cast (and move and take some other actions like hide in shadows) all in the same round. You don't have to wait a full round between spells, you just are not allowed to cast 2 spells in the same round (there are a few exceptions to this, such as using Improved Alacrity). Thus if you start casting a spell with a long casting time (like Armor), you will be able to begin a new spell almost immediately that has finished as you will be in the next round.
every round lasts 6 seconds and is divided in 10 0.6 sec parts.
in each round a character, if not under improved alacrity, can performs only a magic act, for magic act is intended casting a spell, but also using a potion, activating an hla, using a wand and maybe something other class specific things like activating spins, turning undeads, opening locks and so on. i am not sure if some of those or all those class specific actions are counted as magic acts.
those actions takes some time, that is subtracted to the time of the round, so if a mage casts a spell with casting time 4, so 4*0.6=2.4 sec he has still 3.6 sec to do other things before the round ends.
he can move and he can perform some physical attacks, if his apr let him do more than one attack/round. the number of attacks in this case should be affected by the speed of the weapon, while if he uses all the round to attack he performs all the apr, even if when using a really slow weapon that is supposed to take more than 6 sec to do the apr. i am not completely sure of that, but i am quite convinced that a character that cast and then attack with more than 1 apr should chose a fast weapon to get the maximum number of attacks. if some time is remaining the character can use it to move.
afaik initiative is not implemented in the game while is used in pnp.
The random variation means that, for most encounters, you can't be certain whether you will attack first in a round. If you have a fast speed and the opponent is slow (like gnolls using a halberd for instance), you can guarantee you will strike first and be able to withdraw before they retaliate. For other encounters you can't guarantee that, but you can still heavily bias the results of an encounter - for instance in fighting Belhifet in SoD I would expect to be able to get a free hit in about 75% of the time when using a speed 0 weapon, which is more than enough to see him off.