Combat

Tactics & Weapon Skill

In normal Ultima Online, your skill in a particular weapon type determines your hit chance and your Tactics determines your damage. In our system it is reversed and split- your skill in a particular weapon unlocks abilities and determines damage, while your Martial Tactics and UnderhandTactics determine your ability to hit.

Martial Tactics represents formal military training, and Underhand Tactics represents informal self-taught experience and the actual military experience that comes from combat.
In combat, Martial Tactics and Underhanded Tactics are compared to determine the attacker’s effective combat skill and the defender’s effective defensive skill. Against NPCs, this system is simple: the attacker uses whichever of their two tactics skills is higher, and the defender uses whichever of their two tactics skills is higher. There is no Martial-versus-Underhanded penalty in NPC combat, so a character who only trains one tactics skill is not disadvantaged against creatures or other non-player enemies.

Example

Bob has 100 Martial Tactics. Fred has 100 Underhanded Tactics and 40 Martial Tactics.
Bob swings at Fred.
Bob’s 100 Martial Tactics is used because it is higher than his Underhanded Tactics.
Because Bob is attacking with Martial Tactics, Fred’s Martial Tactics is the matching defensive skill and is counted at full value.
Fred has 40 Martial Tactics, so his matching defensive value is 40.
Fred’s Underhanded Tactics is not the matching defensive skill, so his 100 Underhanded Tactics is reduced to 60% value, giving him an effective defensive value of 60.
The system compares Fred’s 40 Martial Tactics against his reduced 60 Underhanded Tactics.
Because 60 is higher than 40, Fred defends using his reduced Underhanded Tactics value.
So the final skillcheck is Bob’s 100 Martial Tactics versus Fred’s effective 60 Underhanded Tactics.

With no other bonuses, maluses, cover, or modifiers involved, that produces:

Bob = (100 + 20) * 100 = 12000
Fred = (60 + 20) * 100 = 8000
Bob's hit chance = 12000 / (8000 * 2) = 0.75

So Bob would have a 75% hit chance before any other modifiers.

If Fred had 100 Martial Tactics instead, the final comparison would be 100 Martial Tactics versus 100 Martial Tactics, resulting in a 50% hit chance before modifiers. If Fred had no useful tactics skill at all, Bob’s chance to hit would be much higher and would usually reach the maximum hit chance.