Weapons, Redux and Stance in GS4

 

Weapon Types

 

The basic types of weapons are Edged, Blunt, Two-Handed, Ranged, Thrown, Brawling, Polearms, and Rune Staves.

 

If your character has training in one weapon type, that skill will not apply to using another type of weapon.  For instance, if your character has only trained in One-Handed Edged Weapons, he can use a short sword to take advantage of that One-Handed Edged Weapon skill bonus, but using a halberd (which is a polearm) or a claidhmore (which is two-handed) will not receive any bonus.

 

Even within a basic weapon type, different weapons inflict different types of damage and have different bonuses against different types of armor.  For example, a rapier and a handaxe are both edged weapons, but there are situations where are rapier has an advantage and situations where the handaxe is superior.

Rune Staves

Unlike most weapon types, a rune staff is utilized more for defense than for offense.  A character of the spell casting professions may use this type of weapon.  Held in the right hand, skill with a rune staff is based on the wielder’s overall magical knowledge.  This arcane knowledge effectively translates into a rune staff “weapon” skill for purposes of parrying incoming attacks.  Additionally, these wooden rune staves are capable of parrying magical bolt spells and missile weapons, whereas most other weapons cannot.  When parrying these ranged attacks, rune staves provide half their normal parrying bonus.

 

In order to benefit defensively using a rune staff, it is best to have at least eight magical ranks per level.  A magical rank can be in any magical skill in the Character Manager, and each skill, regardless of cost, is weighted equally.  Eight magical ranks per level is the approximate equivalent to 1x training in two-handed weapons and provides defenses as if the user had 10 additional parry ranks.  Each additional magical rank per level will increase the caster’s effective weapon ranks by 5%.

Magical skills include:

Arcane Symbols

Elemental Lores

Elemental Mana Control

Harness Power

Magic Item Use

Mental Lores

Mental Mana Control

Sorcerous Lores

Spell Aiming

Spell Research

Spiritual Lores

Spiritual Mana Control

Damage Reduction (REDUX)

Damage Reduction (REDUX) is the inherent ability of a character to gain resistance to damage caused by melee attacks through training in certain physical skills.

The amount of Damage Reduction that a character receives is based on primary, secondary, and tertiary skills.  All three sets of skills are used to determine the overall reduction in the amount of damage that is inflicted upon the targeted character. 

 

Spending time studying spells reduces a character’s focus on the physical aspects of combat, and reduces the benefits from Damage Reduction.  Characters with two or more spells known per level will not have Damage Reduction.

Primary skill: Physical Training

Secondary skills: Two Weapon Combat, Armor Use, Shield Use, Combat Maneuvers, Multi-Opponent Combat, Dodge, Ambushing

Tertiary skills: All weapon skills

Defense Items

A rare treasure in GemStone IV, Defense Bonus (DB) items can be worn by a character to increase their defenses.  These Defense items have a limit of +50 Defense Strength (DS) on any one character, regardless of how many items that person is wearing.

Stance

The Stance scroll down button in the Combat window of StormFront allows you to choose your combat stance.  Stance is what allows your character to choose how much effort will be put into their AS and how much is reserved for their DS.  Clicking on the question mark next to the Stance scroll down button displays what those stances mean in the Story window.

 

Via the command prompt, typing the STANCE command allows your character to choose their stance.

STANCE OFFENSIVE puts your character in a the most aggressive stance, applying 100% of your of your weapon skill toward AS, with only a bare minimum left for parrying an attack.  All bonuses to your DS still apply, such as shield training, armor bonuses, defensive spells, and stats.

STANCE ADVANCE puts 90% of your weapon skill toward AS.

STANCE FORWARD puts 80% of your weapons skill toward AS.

STANCE NEUTRAL puts 70% of your weapon skill toward AS.

STANCE GUARDED puts 60% of your weapon skill toward AS.

STANCE DEFENSE puts 50% of your weapon skill toward AS.

As a character takes a more defensive stance, more effort is put into defending, whether it be evading, blocking, or parrying an incoming attack.

 

Some actions requiring a great deal of concentration, such as spell casting, will automatically change your stance to a less defensive one.