In the wake of the skills post, I thought I would shed a little light on some of the combat mechanics changes in Godfall. This is only a sample, there are other large (and potentially controversial) changes I’m not ready to talk about yet.

Stances

Godfall introduces a new skill category: Stances. These are always-on, with the catch that only one can be active at a time. They generally do not have an associated power cost or upkeep. They are powerful abilities, limited mainly by the opportunity cost of not using the others. For example, the Warrior’s Adrenaline skill is now a stance.

Stances are one half of the solution to the problem of buffs often not being worth the time necessary to cast them. I’ll talk about the other half in a later post.

Terrain

Positions on the battlefield may now have an associated terrain type. There will typically be a couple of these in every battle, on randomly assigned squares. Any character standing on terrain is effected by a passive bonus or penalty. Examples include Cover (reduced damage from ranged attacks) and Unstable Ground (penalty to quickness.)

The purpose of terrain is to mix up battles a little, both by encouraging the player to alter his preferred formation to take advantage of (or avoid) terrain, and to sometimes require different tactics to deal with enemies on terrain squares.

Mitigation

I’m making a real effort to use clearer terminology with the new game. Before, ‘resistance’ meant several wildly varying things. Now, there are three different forms of mitigation, marked by three keywords: reduction, evasion and resistance.

Reduction is a decrease in the magnitude of the damage or effect. Damage Reduction from armor is an example, and the mechanic of Resist Poison from Book of Dread would similarly now be called Poison Reduction.

Evasion is an entirely new mechanic. An evasion stat directly counters a corresponding stat on the attacker. For instance, Hit Evasion counters Accuracy. If I have 95 Accuracy and my target has 20 Hit Evasion, I now have a 75% chance to hit that target.

Resistance is a second chance to shrug off an effect that would otherwise be applied. This is the same mechanic that Resist Stun used in Book of Dread. In general, Evasion will now be more common than Resistance.