Damage

Damage is a general term for the amount of health loss a creature or a spell can cause to a single creature or to a creatures stack. If a creature suffers more damage than its current health, it is eliminated, while in a stack of creatures, the topmost dies. The remainder of the damage is dealt to the next one and so forth until all damage is dealt or the whole stack is eliminated.

Creature's ability to deal damage typically has a range, which means that it causes randomly chosen damage between the minimum and maximum value. Some creatures like Nagas do not have a damage treshold meaning they always do the same amount of damage. Creatures in a stack cause individual damages, and the combined damage of the stack is calculated by adding them together. However, the final damage can deviate from the combined damage greatly because of different additions and reductions, which are covered in the next section.

Spells damage dealing follow the same rules as mentioned above. However, they do not have a range of damage, but deal damage based on individual formulas. The formulas are always linear format: Ax+B, where x equals the value of spell power while A and B are variables defined by the spell. Damage from spell cannot be reduced, although some creatures have immunities against certain types of spells. Damage can be increased, if the target creature has natural vulnerability against the spell. For example, Water Elementals are immune to Ice Bolt and Frost Ring meaning they do not suffer damage from them, but take extra 50% of damage from certain fire school spells like Fireball.

Damage calculation of creature stacks

The formula

Mathematical formula for calculating the final damage is:

DMGf = DMGi × (1 ± AD) × (1 + SS + SP + L + B + C) × (1 - R1 - R2 - R3 - R4 - R5 - R6 - R7 - R8 - R9 - R10 - R11)

Variable	Value range	Explanation
AD	-0.70...3.00	Attack to defense ratio
SS	0.00...0.50	Secondary skill bonus
SP	0.00...2.50	Specialty bonus
L	0.00 or 1.00	Luck bonus
B	0.00 or 1.00	Ballista bonus
C	special	Creature bonus

Variable AD

As we can see there are a number of variables affecting the final result. Besides the actual damage range of the creature type, the most influential variable is AD, which is an acronym for attack to defense ratio. It is calculated from the difference of the attacker's attack value and the defender's defese value. They are determined by adding up attack skills of the attacking hero and attacking creature type, and by adding up defense skill of the defending hero and defending creature type. If the attacking creature's combined attack value is higher than defending creature's combined defense value, in other words if the difference is positive, then the attacking creature recieves +5% increase to its damage for every point the attack value is higher up to 60 points, +300%. If the difference is negative, then the attacking creature recieves -2.5% penalty for its damage for every point the attck value is lower up to 28 points, -70%. If the difference is 0, then the creature recieves no bonuses or penalties.

It should be noted, that there has been some confusion wheter the bonus cap is 300% or 400%. To clarify this issue, the bonus is +300% but the damage is 400% compared to non-modified damage. To phrase the same question mathematically, bonus of +300% is "1 + 3.00 × 1" and the damage of 400% is "1 × 4.00" – in the end, they are equivalent.

Variable SS and SP

Variable SS is related to secondary skills Archery and Offense, and SP to heroes who specialize in them; Orrin, Gundula and Crag Hack. Archery and Offense cannot affect at the same time, because they are related to range and melee attacks (respectively). For ranged attacks, Archery secondary skill may give 0, 0.10, 0.25 or 0.50 depending on whether the hero has the skill and on what level the skill is. Similarly, Offense may give 0, 0.10, 0.20 or 0.30 to melee attacks.

Three heroes specialize in Archery or Offense. Orrin has Archery as a specialty while Gundula and Crag Hack has Offense. They recieve additional bonus from Archery or Offense secondary skill, that is calculated with the formula:

SP = 0.05 × hero level × SS

As can be seen from the formula, specialty bonus requires that the hero has the secondary skill in question. In other words, Orrin does not recieve his specialty bonus if he does not have Archery secondary skill; same applies to Gundula and Crag Hack with Offense. By default these heroes start with an appropriate secondary skill, but in custom maps the map-maker may change the starting skills.

Additionally, Adela and her specialty to Bless spell is calculated with SP variable. When Adela has cast Bless to a creature stack, it recieves an additional damage from the specialty, which is calculated with the formula:

SP = 0.03 × hero level ÷ creature level

Variable C

,

Variable	Value	Situtation
B1	0.05 x (A - D)	(capped at 3)Attacker's attack is skill greater than defender's defense skill
B2	0.10 / 0.25 / 0.50	Archery skill
B3	0.10 / 0.20 / 0.30	Offense skill
B4	1.00	Luck
C1	0.05 x lvl x spec	Specialty (archery / offense)
C1	0.03 x lvl / unit lvl	Bless
C2	1.00	Ballista does double damage
C3	0.05 x hex	Cavalier/Champion
C2	1.00	Attacker is an opposite elemental type
C2	0.50	Attacker 'hates' the Defender
C2	1.00	Dread knight's double damage

Example

No heroes are assumed to be present in the battle.

• 2 Nagas attack a stack of Pikemen.
• The Nagas have a single unit damage value of 20 and their Attack skill is 16.
• A Pikeman has 10 health and their Defense skill is 5.
• The base stack damage done by the stack of Nagas is 2 * 20 = 40.
• The Pikemen's Defense skill (5) is subtracted from the Nagas' Attack skill (16), which gives us 11, giving the nagas an att/def damage bonus.
• The dealt damage will after the att/def consideration thusly have the bonus percentage modificator of 5%, multiplied with the damage bonus number in this case, 11, resulting in 55% bonus percentage of the Nagas damage towards the Pikemen.
• So the damage is increased by a 55% increase and the nagas through superior attack skill have 155% damage on the Pikemen stack.
• The total damage thus is 40 * 1.55 = 62 damage points.
• 6 Pikemen will be killed, and the top Pikemen of the remaining stack will have 8 health left.

When the remaining (if any) Pikemen (attack points of 4) attack the nagas (sporting 13 points of defense):

• -22.5% damage would be dealt by the Pikemen to the 5 creature level higher naga chimera stack.
• The difference between the Pikemen attack (4) and the nagas defense (13) would mean 9 malus points with a malus point resulting in 2.5 % each malus point (the half of the bonus points).
• ((2.5)*-9)% is -22.5% damage the Pikemen can damage the nagas with.