Standard attacks use all relevant defenses again

[Rias]

Per the changelog: Defense against standard combat attacks will once again roll all relevant forms of defense (Dodge, Block, and Parry), rather than only whichever had the highest number of die sides.

The order of defenses is always Dodge, then Block, then Parry. It is still possible to choose a preferred defense method via the COMBAT DEFENSE command, which can be useful for training up a specific defense method. Note that if a preferred defense method can't be used against an incoming attack (such as Parry vs Ranged), the preference will be ignored for that attack and all applicable defense methods will be used.

This is a return to how things were done in Original CLOK, so while we know it worked well enough in principle for many years, there have been some big changes to other parts of the combat system (such as rerolls) that happened during a time when only one defensive method was ever used. There will likely be some tweaking to numbers as we get more experience and feedback with how the all-three-defenses system feels.

Now that shields are essentially an extra defense roll in addition to Dodge or Parry rather than instead of them, their inherent bonus rerolls were tuned down a bit. Per the changelog: Shield reroll bonuses have been adjusted to grant partial rerolls: Standard/Round/Heater shields: 0.2, Kite/Tower shields: 0.4. (Bucklers have no inherent reroll bonus.)

However, I still want shields to be the go-to Ranged defense method, so again per the changelog: When defending against ranged attacks, shields with an inherent block bonus will now have twice their inherent bonus and an additional +1 reroll.

As always, please report bugs via the BUG command, and give feedback on these changes here in this thread! Feel free to discuss on chat, but know that chat is largely ignored by staff so if you want the feedback to actually be seen and potentially make a difference, post a summary of any important information, points, questions, conclusions, or deductions here rather than letting it all disappear into the ephemeral ether that is chat.

[Gorth]

Unless I am misunderstanding, it appears that COMBAT DEFENSE sets only one defensive option to be used, rather than setting one to go first. Is this intended?

Also, OPTIONS 8 no longer hides die rolls, as someone pointed out on #game chat.