Morrowind talk:Combat

Best Race

Which are the best weapon for a Breton/Healer race? --ShakenMike 13:31, 18 February 2007 (EST)

There's really no "best" weapon, but as a Healer, you do receive a +5 initial bonus to your Blunt Weapon skill, since it's a minor skill for that class, so you might start there. However, it's only 5 points, and nothing stops you from just picking up any weapon that looks good to you. (Healers and Bretons are mostly skilled with magic, however, so you should also put some effort into learning how to use spells to defend yourself.) --TheRealLurlock ^Talk 12:22, 15 February 2007 (EST)

Ok thanks and I have some spells like fireball which always failed everytime I cast it. --ShakenMike 13:31, 18 February 2007 (EST)

Well, it helps to be skilled in Destruction, which that spell falls under. If you aren't skilled, it'll fail. At the beginning, it helps to pay trainers to raise it to a usable level. Somercy 13:20, 15 February 2007 (EST)

Did I chose the wrong race/class or make a custom type character? I'm a level 3 Breton/Healer birthsign is a mage. --ShakenMike 13:31, 18 February 2007 (EST)

Sign your remarks next time, if you would...use four tildes (~)to shortcut it. You know, nothing you do in Morrowind is ever wrong. you make your own choices and live by them. It's kinda cool like that. Somercy 16:17, 15 February 2007 (EST)

Oh sorry I'm still getting used of this site--ShakenMike 13:31, 18 February 2007 (EST)

Theory behind combat

Even though I've played through the GOTY edition twice now I still have some questions about combat. Not so much about the practical aspects, but more about the theory behind it. How is decided if I hit an enemy (or vice versa) and when I hit how many damage I do? Say you have two characters; one on the defensive (Def), the other attacking(Att). Def has an armor rating of 100 and no shield equiped, Att takes 5 swings (for convenience sake let's say he pulled his weapon all the way back to get the maximum damage) with a weapon doing 5-20 damage and has level 50 expertise in that weapon and 75 strength (All just random numbers, easy to calculate with). So 5 swings... How many times will he hit Def and how many damage will he do each time? Pinguin333 05:50, 11 January 2008 (EST)

I don't know the calculation behind the 'chance to hit', but each hit should do approximately 7 damage. The calculation (which I have just added to the article) is (Damage * Damage) / (Damage + Opponent Armor Rating). With a strength of 75, the damage (max 20) is increased by 50% (to 30), so the actual calculation in your example is (30 * 30) / (30 + 100), which comes out at 6.923. --Gaebrial 06:28, 11 January 2008 (EST)

Ok that makes sense, but is there a similar formula for the chance to hit an opponent? I guess it would involve the attackers skill in the used weapon along with his luck against the defenders agility and luck? Pinguin333 06:41, 13 January 2008 (EST)

Something like that - it's some combination of the attacker's weapon skill, the controlling attribute, and luck versus the defender's agility and luck. A few years ago (not long after Morrowind was released), somebody did a series of tests that revealed the exact formula used, and how increasing various skills or attributes affected the chance to hit, but I can't remember what it was and can't find the website (if it even still exists). --Gaebrial 09:38, 13 January 2008 (EST)

So that kind of stuff isn't released by Bethesda? That's a shame, I really wanted to know how much luck would factor in because I spend a point on luck every level and make it one of my main attributes so I start the game with 50 luck. Sure it helps a little with everything you do, but I'd like to know how much. Especially in combat because I'm thinking about playing the game again as a pure mage and I wouldn't like my spell to fail just once and get hammered by the (mostly melee) enemy. Pinguin333 10:06, 13 January 2008 (EST)

(←) The easiest way to test this would be to create a mage character, and note down their initial casting chance for various spells, then use the console to increase your luck (player->setluck 100) and see what difference it makes to the casting chance. You could do the same with your willpower and skill in that spell school. --Gaebrial 05:15, 15 January 2008 (EST)

Since the chance of casting is indicated on the spell menu, you can see how the chance changes after you get your attributes fortified by a potion/spell I found that the chance increases by 2% for each skill point (destruction, alteration...) by 1% every 4 points of the related attribute, and by 1% every 8 points of luck. I believe (but I am not sure) that luck gives an additional bonus to each skill but at half rate than the related attribute.(Focaral) — Unsigned comment by 90.133.47.96 (talk) at 20:58 on 22 March 2008

Chance to Block?

Does anyone happen to know the calculation for determining the chance to block an attack? --Xyntfos 02:23, 17 July 2008 (EDT)

Blocking with a weapon?

Playing PC-GOTY, I have been using a two-handed weapon. I notice that quite often it shows animation of me blocking incoming missle weapons with my two-handed sword. --Brf 10:03, 10 August 2008 (EDT)

That's just the character staggering when the projectile strikes. It is impossible to block with anything other than a shield in any version of Morrowind.--Playerjjjj 13:35, 11 July 2012 (UTC)Playerjjjj

Can I take them?

Is there any way to evaluate how much of a threat any given opponent is, and whether I would be equal to that threat, based on the information on this site? Revan 02:27, 7 September 2008 (EDT)

If you use a bit of common sense, yes. Look at your level, strength, and weapon, calculate how much damage you will do. Then go to the page of the creature/person you want to kill, look at their health, level, etc. It should be pretty obvious who you can kill and who you can't. - Game Lord^{Talk|Contribs} 04:41, 8 September 2008 (EDT)

Arrows

Hi there! As far as I noticed, arrows do not fly in a straight line. Try chitin arrows, they have a shorter range. Then it makes sense to aim above a far away target. Greetings, Wusel 78.52.164.70 07:27, 20 October 2008 (EDT)

Can anybody test this to confirm? I've always found marksmanship weapons to go straight on level ground, when facing downhill, they go below my sight, when facing uphill, they go above my sight. Lukish_ Tlk Cnt 07:34, 20 October 2008 (EDT)

yes, but shouldn't someone write that down? Kertaw48 20:41, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

Whatever runs arrow trajectories also seems to do the same for Destruction projectiles like Fireball and Frost; the projectiles tend to either pull "down" or dip but without a camera mod to see the projectile from the side, it's impossible to tell. - 71.247.25.250 06:44, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

I can't recall seeing this problem myself, but it is one of the things fixed by the Morrowind Code Patch. rpeh •T•C•E• 06:26, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

I've always experienced my arrows flying up and left from where I fire. Range seems to even this out, but it's still strange. I have to aim VERY far right if I get too close to a enemy.--Playerjjjj 13:40, 11 July 2012 (UTC)Playerjjjj

Fatigue?

It's not clear just how combatants' Fatigue levels factor into the chance-to-hit formula and/or the damage calculation. I'm curious whether anyone is able to provide any more info? Thanks. 75.47.106.23 04:07, 8 March 2009 (EDT)

Chance to hit formula

Fortify Agility 1000 points on self (Morrowind Code patch required) gives you 100% protection, meaning even the strongest enemies cannot hit you. Tested with Salas Valor in Morrowind: Tribunal. Fortifying agility and sanctuary by 1000 per cent doesn't prevent Valor from hitting you, yet if you fortify dexterity by 1000 per cent, he always misses. No additional sanctuary protection required.

100% sanctuary does not grant 100% protection from hits, if the enemy is very strong (at least 100 skill points primary weapon skill, high luck etc.). However, 100% sanctuary coupled with 200-300% luck is enough to reduce the chance to hit to 0, at least for most enemies. Then again, I say forget about sanctuary and luck and fortify Agility right away:

Fortify Restoration by 700-800 points for 3 sec. on self

Fortify Agility by 1000 points for 30 sec. on self

An extremely expensive combination in terms of magicka, yet guarantees 100% protection.WRFan 18:40, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

There're no flat percentage bonuses to hit. It depends on a series of variables which are mostly represented by this formula: Chance to hit = Attacker's weapon skill * 1.25 + Attacker's Attack (e.g. Warrior = 10) - Defender's Sanctuary (e.g. Thief = 10) + (Attacker's Agility - Defender's Agility) * 0.25 + (Attacker's Luck - Defender's Luck) * 0.125

This formula shows that Agility is weighed less than Sanctuary, so perhaps your spell is being resisted somehow and isn't taking the full effect. 250 Sanctuary points equals about 1000 Agility for dodge.

It applies to NPCs as well as the player, so as you will notice when plugging in the numbers, highly skilled NPCs have a very high probability to hit, as would a highly skilled player character. The best option in those cases is often to avoid letting the NPCs land hits. Using speed to swing at them and run away, or using ranged attacks will give the player the advantage over almost any NPC. Lukish_ Tlk Cnt 08:55, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

As noted elsewhere on this site, Sanctuary caps at 100, so Lukish is wrong, to the extent that 250 (or 2500) sanctuary would only be like 400 agility, since it would be capped at 100. --67.247.12.46 08:33, 18 April 2023 (UTC)

Damage "ratio"

On detailed weapons pages (e.g. the Spear of Bitter Mercy) the damage table includes a ratio. What is that? I'm guessing that it has something to do with the amount your strength modifies the base damage? It's not listed in the weapons list pages (e.g. the base weapons page) so I guess it's not too important. Tenwit 20:30, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

I found here that ratio means damage ratio and indicates amount of damage / time. (attribute speed * max damage, apparently) So it would be a derived value instead of an actual attribute. Marcel 00:35, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

Cross/Bows and Bolts/Arrows

in the weapons section both cross/bows and their projectiles have damage, but I couldn't find anywhere how the damage is computed for them? or can you use a cross/bow as a bashing weapon? — Unsigned comment by 217.132.148.254 (talk) at 17:00 on 21 May 2010

Agility and Luck

As we already know from NPC Gaenor in the Tribunal expansion, a high luck rating significantly deceases an opponent's chance to hit you, as well as controls your own chance to hit. Agility, although it doesn't effect quite as many aspects as luck, also controls your chance to dodge and hit. If you wanted a character to excel in hitting and avoiding being hit, you would probably want to high Attribute ratings for both.

My first question is, would the chance to dodge bonus be sufficient enough to be advantageous if you increase your character's luck every level? It levels slowly, which means that you probably wouldn't see much of a difference as your character develops, if any at all. How much does it add in the long-run?

My second question is Agility vs Luck. I know luck controls more aspects than agility, but which of the two has a greater impact on chance to hit and chance to dodge at 100?

I have these questions because I was going to start a character that increases luck every level, to see how much of an effect it's going to have on my game-play. At the same time, I'll have high agility, and I plan to eventually max at 100. I was just wondering what kind of effect these Attributes were going to have on a character like this. Kail Horus

Gaenor has monstrously high luck (770!), so he isn't a good example. Luck is said to have a "small effect on everything you do", so while having high luck will benefit everything, I imagine it won't benefit as much as a more "proper" skill for the intended activity (in this case, Agility for dodging)--201.14.251.195 01:48, 15 July 2011 (UTC)

The formula in should illustrate that 1/4th Agility is used to determine hits, while only 1/8th Luck is considered. The difference in NPC-stats versus player-stats varies widely, so determining which is better all throughout the game is tricky.

Luck becomes more important later in the game as primary stats become maxed for skills which require them. Before other stats are maxed, Luck is a good place to dump points if nothing else is applicable to your play-style. For instance, if a player is a trader who specializes in Speechcraft, Personality is important, but none of the other stats are particularly good to increase.

Since there are no skills governed by Luck, it only goes up one each level. After other stats are completely maxed, gaining a level only for one point of luck (and a bit of hp) can be disappointing, so getting a head start on that is good if you plan on maxing all stats eventually. Lukish_ Tlk Cnt 03:38, 15 July 2011 (UTC)

Sneak attacking

I am a little unclear on the following, and I think that someone who know the answer might want to add this to the page: Does the 4x bonuse apply to all melee weapons or just Short Blades? I have heard from some people that it is only with Short Blades (which makes more sense as it is a major skill for assassins). --Garan 05:45, 13 November 2011 (UTC)

All melee weapons. Lukish_ Tlk Cnt 14:11, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

Is there any reason the "Sneak Attack" section was removed from this page? 119.244.160.177 05:57, 28 March 2020 (GMT)

Sneak attacking with Spells

Spells cannot directly deal additional damage if a target NPC is hit and the PC is not detected, but they CAN guarantee that the next 'physical' attack on that NPC is a critical hit and deals Critical Damage! even after the PC has stopped sneaking (so long as the attack does not miss or is blocked).

Throwing Weapon Damage

I would like to direct notice to something that I think needs correcting on the page. Throwing weapons do more damage then they appear to do as they act as both a bow and a arrow. Steel throwing stars at 50 strength do 2-10 damage and appear to kill 15 or so health mud crabs in only 2 fully drawn back hits. As well as scribs(8 health) in 1 hit. I think its a bit odd that something at 100% listed damage(50 strength) is hitting for double its listed damage. At 100 strength it appears to hit for triple.

This leads me to believe that throwing weapons actually count as both a bow and ammunition. So in the case of a steel throwing star it makes perfect sense.

5 x 2 = 10 x 100%(50 str) = 10 damage.

5 x 2 = 10 x 150%(100 str) = 15 damage.

I have played with throwing weapons extensively and believe this to be correct.

Can anyone else confirm this? Rykros2005 21:07, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

Just tested it. Throwing weapons indeed do work as stated above and count as both bow and ammunition. Lazy coding, Bethesda, as always. Nice catch. Thank you, Rykros! --Nandorianen 17:01, 30 July 2012 (UTC)

Now that Skyrim prevents all underwater combat and spellcasting, it's worth mentioning that all weapons work in Morrowind. You can even shoot a bow underwater. --SamiteAlchemist 23:45, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

Sam just tested your statement, and your right lol. Now is there a mod that adds shouts to Morrowind. Just wanna see if you can shout underwater...--Billy The Daedra 05:19, 10 August 2012 (UTC)

Tests of staggering/K.O. mechanics

I've just spent an hour trying to find out the approximate chances of staggering an opponent with various weapons' weight and agility. The results are interesting.

I mostly used steel dagger with modded weight 1 and steel claymore with weight 100.

Results with dagger:

With defender's agility at 0: almost every hit was a K.O.

With defender's agility at 1: about half or more of the hits were a K.O.

With defender's agility at 10+: no K.Os.

Claymore showed almost the same results at first (1 AGI).

I was able to get up to 40 agility with some low K.O. count. Any higher - no chance anymore.

This didn't make much sense to me, seeing as most of the Morrowind's formulas are pretty straightforward and linear. I increased claymore's weight to 1000 - and it didn't improve results. So I started testing other things. Long story short, these are the conclusions.

Fatigue does not seem to matter, oddly.

Attacker's agility does not matter.

Attacker's strength does matter.

Weapon's damage does matter.

Weapon's weight does not matter.

When I increased my strength, I was able to get some K.Os. with claymore at higher defender's agility. I then made a dagger with weight 1 and damage 5000 (it became 136 in game) and claymore with weight 1000 and damage 1. I was able to get K.Os. easily with dagger and defender's agility 80, but got almost nothing with claymore.

So, again:

weapon weight does not matter for K.Os!

Only final damage output does. So high strength helps, high swing power helps and high damage-per-hit weapons help. And only agility (didn't test luck though) helps prevent falling. Everything else is a coincidence.

This is also why you never get K.O's. with a hand-to-hand combat - you don't deal any actual damage.

That's about K.Os. As for a normal staggering, you can get it from any hit if you time it right. So it seems that the article contains misinformation. Can anyone confirm these findings and then edit the page? I'm new to all this. --Nandorianen 19:48, 30 July 2012 (UTC)

I'm going ahead and rewriting the section on staggering to remove the strategy-based commentary. I'll keep it fairly generic since I'm unsure of the exact mechanics and I can't seem to find any concrete information on the subject. I'm also adding in information about Hand-to-Hand damage, which was missing previously. Spweasel (talk) 09:28, 14 January 2013 (GMT)

Missing attacks

I recently bought Morrowind GOTY on Steam, and it's hard to hit anything. I used the console to get a better sword, and it's still hard to hit anything. I've tried to aim everywhere, including the feet, stomach, and head, but I hit the enemy about 1/8th of the time. Is it just my game, or is it hard to hit everything for everyone?

It's based on skill level in the weapon class you are using. Also, fatigue greatly affects hit chance so make sure you rest before engaging. Check hit formula on this wiki for more details.

Dual Wield

Is there an option for dual wielding weapons in this game?? If there is, how do you do it?? 115.242.135.160 07:20, 11 December 2012 (GMT)

No that wasn't added until TES V:Skyrim Lord Eydvar ^{Talk|Contribs} 07:58, 11 December 2012 (GMT)

Weapon Damage Formulas

Would it be more clear if expressions replaced the paragraph describing how to calculate weapon damage?
For the sake of clarity and size I think it would have to be done in two steps: one of the following and then the armo(u)r reduction expression.

Damage (melee)

(Strength * WeaponDamage / 100 + WeaponDamage / 2) * (WeaponCondition / MaxWeaponCondition)

Damage (bow/crossbow)

(Strength * (WeaponDamage + ProjectileDamage) / 100 + WeaponDamage / 2) * (WeaponCondition / MaxWeaponCondition)

Damage (thrown)

(Strength * WeaponDamage / 50 + WeaponDamage) * (WeaponCondition / MaxWeapCondition)

Melee and bow/crossbow are basically the same but would require a footnote about projectiles if combined.
Skill and fatigue have no effect on damage from my calculations.
Condition for thrown weapons is hypothesized but wasn't tested. AxelJK (talk) 22:56, 20 January 2013 (GMT)

Those formulas need a couple tweaks, but I agree that the damage formula could be better explained if broken into chunks with formulas and explanations, sort of like what I did with the Hit Rate section. I'll do some edits to the page (and also tweak the Hit Rate section to add written descriptions) later today. Spweasel (talk) 13:46, 22 January 2013 (GMT)

Wow, thank you. I knew it could be done better but wasn't sure how. AxelJK (talk) 22:35, 27 January 2013 (GMT)

Armor Reduction - can this section be improved?

Well, first of, I did not understand how to calculate damage reduction from armor. Not sure what to do with this: (1 + Target's Armor Rating / Damage), maximum 4. I read somewhere that armor reduction in Morrowind works something like this: (a^2)/(a+d) (10^2)/(10+10) = 5 damage (10^2)/(10+20) = 3 1/3 damage Seems to fit. Oh wait, here's the link: http://www.gameskyrim.com/armor-damage-reduction-formula-stupid-skyrim-compar-t246340.html

I'm not changing it and I don't think I should because I really don't know. Maybe someone who knows.. Thanks. Love this site.

If A=Armor and D=Damage, the reduction formula is (D^2)/(D+A), not (A^2)/(A+D). This formula can also be written as (D)/(1+A/D); by using this formula, you can avoid having to square anything - just figure out what (1 + A/D) is and then divide your damage by that amount. It also makes it easier to account for the maximum reduction amount, which prevents you from ever reducing damage by more than 75% (i.e. dividing the damage by more than 4). I'll try to clarify a little on the page itself. spweasel (talk) 19:44, 26 February 2013 (GMT)

Neutering Cliff Racers/Slaughter Fish

I apologise for posting here but hope it may get picked up upon by any of the people who have created this quite simply superb resource. I've returned to game after dropping it 10 years ago, and 10 years older and middle aged now, I guess a lot more grumpy....

The two very low level creatures in the title are driving me up the wall, quite simply they are destroying any pleasure I'm getting from what is still a superb game, despite the many basic design flaws it has, this being one of the top ones.

My question: Is there anyway to; 1) Make them non-aggressive or, 2) Confine them to a single region only (for potion ingredient collection) or, 3) Simply remove them from the game completely, but allow the traders to continue selling the product for potions?

On a separate issue, I was musing over the Patch you all have created and whether to install it for my next game (as I've finally started to understand the game "do's and don'ts" and am now 100% reliant on the USEP to guide me through the thousands of choices you need to make, before I gamed without any idea of the consequences of many of the chosen actions, some of which can break your game, after several hundreds of hours of invested time. (The point of the Morag Tong is....developers????)

My other concern was the patch repairing the Merchant skill: At level 52 I have over a million gold and think the merchant system needs to be redesigned: the player, for a better experience should always have to struggle to get the next item on their wish list of enchantments and armour: The GOTY merchant system works well until about level 20-30 then you get flush with cash and the lack of money tension vanishes. I'd prefer it remained broken/The Animal Merchants were removed (It's gamey)/ Merchants actually offered super-duper weapons, but only paid a fraction of the value for those super-duper weapons you find but don't desire. Saying all that, the value of equipment needs an overall look at, within the context of normal ordinary equipment; the bonkers values of most of the uber equipment hugely unbalances the game.

Another point: I really wanted a weapon that took away health and paralysed the opponent, I got it and became super-human as a result, it would be good if the patch removed any form of health attacks from weapon enchantment, having to go into combat every 10 seconds whilst travelling and knowing the creature will snuff it instantly combines two of the worst flaws in the game: Never-ending Spam (really really Spam) starting-level creatures and over-powered enchantments.

One other thing I'd love to see you UESP folk do is list the suggested sequencing of joining guilds and the suggested order of doing the available quests with the sequence, as even with the UESP help you can easily muck-up if you join a Guild after doing many jobs for those you have already joined and done quests for, but I guess this would be quite a major project within its own right?

Anyway, you blokes have created a resource that is just superb, thank you so much for giving up your time to help others, it's really appreciated by users like me.

Toby, In not so sunny London, The UK ;)

PS: It seems the very, very old common English expression "c~ock-up" is not allowed on the site as it's considered abusive. It isn't.

Hand to Hand formula

How certain is the Hand to Hand fatigue damage formula? It doesn't factor strength, but I think that in vanilla Morrowind I used Fortify Strength to knock people down for a longer duration. Also the formula does not factor in Speed, which is the governing attribute for Hand to Hand, and I think it should have some effect. Maybe it only increases the “weapon speed” of your fists. I'm currently running Morrowind on the OpenMW engine on Linux so I can't test it at the moment, but I propose this test:

1. Take a character, set Strength to 50, set Speed to 50, set Hand to Hand to 100. Start a hand to hand fight with something.
2. Knock it down and wait for it to get up. (This step is to ensure that Fatigue is at nearly identical, low, level in both test cases)
3. As soon as it gets up, knock it down with a fully drawn back fist, and time how long it takes for it to get up again.
4. Knock it down again, open the console, set Strength to 1000.
5. As soon as it gets up, knock it down with a fully drawn back fist, and time how long it takes for it to get up again.

If strength really does factor in the equation, it should take the creature considerably longer to get up after being knocked down. If I recall correctly, boosting strength into the thousands with powerful restoration effects allowed you to knock people down for minutes. — Unsigned comment by 85.150.110.169 (talk) at 21:24 on 14 July 2015‎

Running this test, it doesn't appear that strength or speed plays a role in the amount of time an opponent will be knocked down for. I noticed fairly identical knock down times at 50 and 1000 strength and also at 50 and 1000 speed. In contrast, knock down time was greatly increased when I used the console to up my hand-to-hand to 1000 when compared to knock down time at 100 hand-to-hand. This suggests to me that the current formula is probably correct. I also looked at how fast I could swing my fists at these different attribute and skill values, and it seemed to be about the same no matter what value an attribute or the hand-to-hand skill was at, which makes sense since none of the other weapon skills increase in speed when your skill level or attribute value increases. Forfeit (talk) 23:16, 14 July 2015 (UTC)

Projectiles Colliding

Article currently says "If you throw/fire a ranged weapon directly into an incoming spell, the two projectiles collide in mid-air and cancel each other out." I think this might be a little misleading. It's not as if the spell just vanishes, it hits the projectile, and it takes effect just as if it hit the ground or a wall or any other surface. So, if the spell has a high area-of-effect, it can still hurt anything nearby, even you, if you are in its area-of-effect when you shoot it. Should this be worded differently? --Croup shrunk (talk) 21:05, 22 January 2019 (UTC)

NPC Attack Formula Differences?

Do NPCs use a different formula for determining damage? I noticed that NPCs seem to completely ignore attack speed. They never "draw" their weapon--they always just strike immediately, and it's always at the same speed no matter what weapon they use--but even so, they definitely do more than minimum damage per strike. Is their damage value per hit random within their damage range? Is it always maximum? Etc...? Vellup (talk) 04:45, 22 September 2019 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure you're correct in that, when an NPC or creature attacks with a weapon, the damage of their weapon is randomized. I guess this is because they can't charge their attacks like we can and this lets them do variable damage.

For creatures, though, perhaps the article should clarify that they actually have different skills. While creatures have the same attributes as NPCs, they have less skills. In fact they only have three: Combat, Magic, and Stealth. In my experience, any time a creature takes an action that checks a skill (such as attacking with a weapon), it will use these skills instead. For example, when a Dremora attacks with a hammer, the game checks his "Combat" skill to determine his hit chance, and not "Blunt Weapon". His "Combat" skill covers his chance to hit for most weapons, except for "Short Blade" and "Marksman", which use his "Stealth" skill.

For the average player, this fact won't really make any difference, it's all hidden from the player anyway. But, since this article goes more in-depth than others about game mechanics, maybe this should be pointed out? I'm not sure.

If you have the construction set, you can open up a creature's info, and below their "Attributes" you'll find a "Skills" column, with just "Combat", "Magic", and "Stealth". Unfortunately I don't know if you can check these numbers during actual gameplay. I don't think there are console commands for "GetCombat" or "GetStealth" or anything like that. And, in my experience with the vanilla game and vanilla engine, using "GetSkill" commands (such as "GetAthletics" or "GetAlteration" etc.) on creatures just crashes the game. Spell effects related to skills, like Drain Skill and Fortify Skill don't crash the game, but I'm not sure if they actually do anything when cast on creatures. Maybe using "Drain Longblade" or "Fortify Axe" on a creature would alter their "Combat" skill? It might be worth experimenting. --Croup shrunk (talk) 17:51, 3 October 2019 (UTC)

Edit: I experimented some more, it seems the "Combat" skill governs a creature's chance-to-hit for all melee weapons, including hand-to-hand. The "Stealth" skill only seems to be used for Marksman weapons. Using the console command "toggle combat stats" or "tcs" shows a combatant's chance to hit. A dremora has the same chance to hit with all weapons except for marksman ones.

Unrelated to the topic at hand, I noticed that an attacker has a higher chance to hit an opponent who has staggered and fallen down. I'm not sure if that's mentioned in the article or not! --Croup shrunk (talk) 18:10, 3 October 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for the info. I updated the NPC damage section based on the data you provided. Vellup (talk) 01:25, 5 October 2019 (GMT)

Criticial Damage – can be inflicted by enemies on the player character

This article's Critical Damage section only mentions it as player-inflicted sneak attack bonus, which presumably it is. However, I have experienced an enemy inflicting "Critical Damage" on the player from the rats in Bethamez. I've never really seen this mentioned anywhere on UESP or on other websites. It happened to me once without recording, and then a second time where I got it on record. I'm not sure if it's a glitch, since it seems to be associated with strange behaviour (the rat flees from my PC immediately after striking, and on the unrecorded incident, it wasn't even facing me or animating when it attacked). My game is completely unmodded, never having been modded, with only Morrowind, its expansions, and plugins installed. My difficulty was on max if it means anything.

This must be an extremely obscure occurrence in the game, glitch or intentional, especially when there is a mod called "Lucky Strike" which adds random critical hits as though they never existed in the game. If anyone wants to see the video of it happening:

Video

Anyway I thought it was a very odd thing which I had never seen before. The appropriate edit could be added on this page mentioning it (or if anyone else has experienced it, or knows more about it). — Unsigned comment by Nagit40968 (talk • contribs) at 13:59 on 16 May 2020

Missing Section: Character Creation

I noticed that the other two specializations, Magic and Stealth, have a Character Creation section. This page flows a bit differently (more organic, IMHO) but I still think it should start with a similar section listing the skills in this specialization as well as its primary and derived attributes. Maybe include the birthsigns associated with the The Warrior too?

I can write one up later but, in the meantime, just marking this page as incomplete. Salamangkero (talk) 17:51, 10 December 2022 (UTC)

Difficulty Slider and Armor Scaling

I was playing with armor rating and the games difficulty slider recently. It appears that increasing the difficulty to 100 will cause enemies to hit 6x harder and that damage occurs before your armor reduction.

Max damage reduction (75%) occurs when you have 3x as much armor as damage you're taking (100 damage hit will be reduced to 25 if you have 300 AR).

So by increasing the difficulty the armor cap also moves 6x higher. That same attack would require 1800 AR to fully mitigate.

So if you want to increase the difficulty it would be smarter to enchant for sanctuary since its positive effect doesn't get scaled down. — Unsigned comment by Iwantyoursmiles (talk • contribs) at 02:14 on 16 August 2023 (UTC)