Mechanics (2)

Explore the core mechanics of Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire, including attack speed, casting speed, engagement, attack resolution, and penetration vs. armor rating.

Pillars of Eternity II uses its own ruleset. This section explains the mechanics behind the various systems.

Attack Speed

Attack speed is governed by how quickly a given weapon can be used (a dagger thrust is quicker than a swing from a great sword) and how long it takes a character to ready another attack (called the recovery time). Certain ranged weapons instead require time to reload before they can be used again. Reloads can be interrupted to do something else but Recovery cannot.

Wearing armour penalises Recovery Speed.

Casting Speed

Spells have their own casting and recovery time as shown in the individual spell descriptions. Casting time ranges from 0.5s to 6s. Some spells have 0 recovery time but most have recovery times around 3-4s.

Since the casting time of an average spell is longer than the attack speed of any weapon, casting most spells in melee is tricky since your attempt may be interrupted. On the other hand, if an enemy caster is preparing a slow spell, you have a decent time window in which to interrupt him.

Dual Wielding vs. One- and Two-handed

If you have a weapon in your main hand and nothing in the off hand, you receive a +12 bonus to Accuracy. If you have a second weapon in the off hand, each weapon gets -30% reduction in Recovery Time. Wielding a two-handed weapon confers no special bonus (but two-handed weapons do greater damage).

Engagement

Two opposing characters are said to be engaged if the following conditions are met for either or both:

• Melee weapon equipped
• Not currently moving
• Not already at their engagement limit (default 0 but may be increased by equipping a shield).

When combatants are so engaged, they will provoke a disengagement attack from the other combatant if they move outside melee range. Engagement is broken if a combatant is disabled or if an attacker engages with a different enemy.

Disengagement Attacks

Disengagement attacks are free actions. The attacker gains an Accuracy and Damage bonus.

Attack Resolution

Attack rolls are made using a d100 roll. The attacker adds their Accuracy score to the die roll and subtracts the target's defence score (which varies depending on the attack type). The final value determines the attack result as follows:

• <= 25: miss
• 25-49: graze (-50% damage and duration)
• 50-100: hit (normal damage and duration)
• > 100: critical hit (+25% damage and duration, 1.5x Penetration).

Note that the attacker's Accuracy must be greater than the target's defence to have any chance of scoring a critical hit, since the base critical chance is 0.

Some abilities and weapon properties have an additional percentage chance of modifying the resolved attack. For example, the Aware Inspiration confers a 50% chance of promoting a graze to a hit while the Intuitive Inspiration additionally confers a 25% chance of promoting a hit to a critical. Only one promotion can occur. That is, it is not possible to convert a graze to a hit and then to a critical.

Full Attack vs. Primary Attack

Abilities may indicate that they are activated through a character's Primary Attack or their Full Attack. The distinction only matters when the character is dual-wielding. In this case, "Primary Attack" is from the main-hand weapon while a "Full Attack" will use both weapons, applying the effect twice.

When performing a Full Attack while dual wielding, the Recovery Time of the primary weapon is cancelled (i.e. the offhand attack is made immediately after the main hand). To balance this, a -35% damage penalty is applied to each attack. This penalty does not apply when "auto-attacking" (that is leaving a character to attack their current opponent without activating any special abilities) since Recovery Time is applied to the main hand attack.

Penetration (PEN) vs. Armor Rating (AR)

Armour has a nominal Armor Rating which may be different for certain attack types. For example, Leather Armor has 5 AR against most attacks but only 3 AR against Crushing attacks. The Penetration value of an attack is checked against the AR for that attack type and a damage modifier may be applied as a result of the comparison:

If PEN is twice as high as the AR, the result is full penetration, resulting in a +30% damage boost. A critical hit multiplies the effective PEN by 1.5 and the damage bonus from the critical is cumulative with any damage bonus if this results in full penetration.

If you're a PoE veteran, this mechanic replaces the Damage Reduction mechanic from the first game.

Armour Types

The table below shows the base AR of the different armour types vs. various damage types: