Combat points

Combat points are how your character spends their attention during a fight. Every round you have a budget of points to split between three things:

• attack — how often you swing your weapon
• defence — how often you dodge or parry
• casting — how often you finish spells

The split is yours to decide. The right answer depends on what you are and what you're up against.

Setting your split

Type battle on its own to see your current allocation, your maximum per category, and your active combat style.

Quick presets:

battle -a attack
battle -a defence
battle -a casting

For a custom split, use battle -a <attack>,<defence>,<casting> where the three numbers are how many points go to each category. Each number is capped at your personal maximum for that category — typing battle shows the cap.

Choosing a split

A few common starting points:

• Pure melee fighter: all in attack until you're comfortable, then peel a little off into defence as you face tougher opponents.
• Tank: split between attack and defence, leaning toward defence in dangerous fights.
• Pure spellcaster: nearly everything in casting, with a sliver of defence so you survive what gets through.
• Hybrid (battle-mage, paladin, etc.): split three ways. These builds need more skill investment to make every category pull its weight.

Many players keep an alias or a trigger to switch presets fast — opening a fight aggressive, switching to defensive when low, casting-heavy when supporting a party.

Why your fighter isn't doing anything

If you are not hitting in combat, check battle — you almost certainly have no points in attack. If you are a caster and your spells never finish, you have no points in casting. This is the single most common newbie problem on Icesus. Always check battle first before assuming something is broken.

Growing your budget

Your statistics and certain skills determine how big your combat-point budget is. Wisdom and intelligence raise the total. Three skills push the per-category caps higher:

• concentrated attack — bigger attack budget
• concentrated defence — bigger defence budget
• concentrated casting — bigger casting budget

These skills are taught by most combat guilds. The deeper you are in your guild, the more points you have to play with — high-level fighters can comfortably swing fast and defend, where a starting character has to choose.

See also

• Combat
• Combat styles
• Wimpy