Skip to content

Combat

Arx's melee is a physical act with a hidden dice roll underneath. The two halves never fully reconcile, and that seam is the game's most instructive failure.

The manual half

Hold the attack button, the swing charges, release to strike. Charge maps to ratioaim, which multiplies damage directly. Charge time is weapon-dependent with a 1500 ms floor, reduced by (Dexterity − 10) × 20 ms — so Dexterity buys swing rate, not swing power. A high-DEX character attacks near the floor almost immediately; the ceiling on that investment is reached early.

The stat half

attack   = max(1, Str × 0.5 − 5) + CloseCombat × 0.1 + equipment
damage   = attack × ratioaim × backstab
damage  −= damage × absorb × 0.01        // player absorb = Defense × 0.5
if critical: damage × 1.5                 // crit% = Dex × 2 + CloseCombat × 0.2 − 18
hitChance = 100 − (targetAC − attack)     // rolled AFTER the swing connects

Backstab is ×1.5 at a Stealth × 0.5 % chance, and only against NPCs flagged NPCFLAG_BACKSTAB — it is a per-enemy permission, not a positional mechanic. There is no facing check in the roll.

The tension

The hitChance roll happens after the physical swing has already visually connected. The player, who has just aimed and timed a strike correctly, receives a null result with no diegetic explanation — no parry animation, no ricochet, no armour spark that reads as "you hit but did not penetrate." The manual layer promises simulation; the stat layer silently overrules it.

Compare the design Arkane arrived at four years later in Dark Messiah, built on the same engine lineage: the to-hit roll is gone, physical contact is authoritative, and armour becomes damage reduction rather than a whiff chance. That is the correction, made by the same people, and it tells you they knew.

Read the numbers together

At starting stats (Str 6, CloseCombat 0) attack is the floor value of 1. Against a target with AC 10 that is a 91% hit chance and ~1 damage before absorb. Early melee is therefore dominated by weapon modifiers and charge timing, not by the character sheet — which is fine, but it means the first hour teaches the player that stats do not matter, right before the game starts requiring them.

Absorb is the real defensive stat

Player damage reduction is Defense × 0.5 percent. Defense 100 = 50% flat reduction on every incoming blow, on top of AC = floor(max(1, Defense × 0.1 − 1)) lowering enemy hit chance and resistPoison = Con × 2 + Defense × 0.25. Defense is quietly the strongest single skill in the game — it is also the most boring, which is a tuning problem, not a player problem.

Ranged

Projectile skill governs bows. It shares the aim-charge idiom with melee but resolves as a physical projectile, so it does not carry the same feedback contradiction — the arrow visibly misses.

Touchpoints

  • → Character Build: Strength and Close Combat feed damage; Dexterity feeds crit and swing rate; Constitution and Defense feed survival.
  • → Magic & Runes: Enchant Weapon, Curse (−5% AC and absorb per caster level on the target), and Paralyse all reach into this system.
  • → Stealth & Light: Stealth grants the backstab roll, but only where the level designer allowed it.
  • → Economy & Items: weapon durability degrades value and gear supplies most early damage.

What breaks if you remove it

Less than you would think. The game's identity survives without melee; it does not survive without magic or physical interaction. Melee is the system Arx had to have as a 2002 dungeon crawler, and it shows.