Combat in Pascal's Wager is a third-person action system built around stamina-limited attacks, guarding, parrying and dodging. Underneath, a hidden poise / weakness system decides when enemies stagger and can be executed. Every hit drains several gauges at once, not just health. This page is the hub: it explains what one hit does and links to the detailed pages.
Combat pages#
| Topic | What it covers |
|---|---|
| Damage formula#Step by step: an attack hit | The exact damage calculation, step by step, with worked examples |
| Damage types and resistances | Physical, Fire, Poison, Arcane, Dark and Pierce, and how resistance works |
| Critical hits | Crit rate, crit damage, crit resistance, guaranteed crits |
| Poise and stagger | Poise (toughness): when attacks interrupt and stagger |
| Weakness and execution | The weakness gauge, the weakened state and executions |
| Backstab | Back attacks and backstabs |
| Parry and counter | Counter attacks, parries ("hit-hand"), projectile reflection and beat-backs |
| Guarding | Blocking, guard values and guard break |
| Stamina | Stamina costs and regeneration |
| Rage | Rage gain and rage skills |
| Dodging | Dodges and invincibility |
| Difficulty | Casual and Normal in the story, plus Hard in Arcade |
| Status effects | Bleed, Poison, Burn, Stun and the other statuses |
| Sanity | The sanity gauge and the two stages it causes: Abnormal state (70% or less) and Lunatic state (50% or less) |
| Character stats / Attributes | Where Attack, Defence, Crit and the other stats come from |
| Shields and protection | Skill shields and trophy shields, which absorb damage before health |
Combat resources#
| Gauge (property id) | Who has it | Drained by | Page |
|---|---|---|---|
| Health (5) | Everyone | Damage | Damage formula |
| Stamina (11, internally "Energy") | Heroes and enemies | Attacks, dodges, blocking hits | Stamina |
| Rage (16) | Heroes | Rage skills; gained by landing hits | Rage |
| Power (12) | Heroes | Some hero skills; gained by hits | Character stats |
| Poise (13, "Toughness") | Everyone | Each hit's poise damage | Poise and stagger |
| Weakness (17) | Everyone | Each hit's weakness damage; empty means weakened and executable | Weakness and execution |
| Sanity (8) | Heroes | Certain enemy moves, Marred enemies, dealing damage | Sanity |
What a single hit does#
Each move row in SkillData carries one value per gauge. When a hit lands (and is not fully blocked), all of them are applied together:
| Effect | Column | Terrence light attack 1 | First club enemy, light attack 1 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Health damage | BaseRate / Attack | 80% of attack + 61 | 100% of attack + 133 |
| Poise damage to the target | ToughnessSub | 12 | 51 |
| Weakness damage to the target | WeaknessSub | 10 | 27 |
| Guard break value | GuardBreak | 40 | 50 |
| Rage gained by the attacker | RageAdd | 3 | 0 |
| Power gained by the attacker | PowerAdd | 0 | 0 |
| Sanity removed from the target | SanSub | 0 | 0 |
| Rage the target gains, with the right talent | RageAddHit | 2 | 7 |
| Power the target gains, with the right talent | PowerAddHit | 4 | 14 |
Then the hit gets one of these outcomes (details on the linked pages):
| Outcome | Damage | Poise damage | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Normal hit | Full | Full | See Damage formula |
| Critical hit | ×(1 + Crit damage) | Full | Critical hits |
| Weak-point hit | ×2 (model dependent) | ×(1 + WeakToughnessMultiplier) | Weakness damage also ×(1 + WeakWeaknessMultiplier) |
| Hit from behind | ×1.25 or ×2 (move dependent) | Full | Goes through guards; Backstab |
| Blocked from the front | Reduced or 0, by guard vs guard break | 0 (weakness damage still applies) | Costs the blocker stamina; Guarding#How a blocked hit is resolved |
| Parried / deflected from the front | Reduced or 0 | 0 | Parry and counter |
Hidden mechanics#
- Every hit drains your sanity a little. In story mode (not in the Dark Forest), landing damage on an enemy costs you sanity in proportion to the share of its health you remove, scaled by a per-enemy
SanDamage(4 for the first enemies, so about 4 sanity for a full kill). The rule is in Sanity#Damage costs sanity (campaign); the "Devout" talent that cuts it by 15% is in Sanity talents and trophies. - Blocked and parried hits do no poise damage from the front, but they still deal their full weakness damage, so blocking a long string wears down the weakness gauge. Only hits from behind keep their poise damage through a guard. A failed block sets the defender's poise to 0 straight away (see Guarding#How a blocked hit is resolved).
- Your companions are untouchable in the story. Outside the maze, team members other than your own hero lose no health or sanity to any hit (see Damage formula#9. Rounding, shields and death).
- Long-range hits lose their side effects too. Moves with a distance falloff (such as Viola's shots, 3 to 15 m) scale rage gain, power gain, poise, weakness and sanity damage by the same falloff factor. The curve and the minimum hit beyond the maximum range are in Damage formula#3. Defence factor; the Rage side is in Rage.
- Rage on low health is 30%, not 50%. Trophies such as Raw Gem Amulet, Brass Mask and Flamel's Ring (logic type 125, +40%, +55% or +70% by tier) raise rage gain when your health is at or below 30%. Their internal test name says 50%, but the code and the English description both use 30%. See Rage.
- Being hit only fills your Rage with a talent. The damage code gives the target
RageAddHitrage only if the target has a "rage when hit" talent such as Terrence's "Revenge" (+50% of RageAddHit; the talent has one level only; see Rage). Likewise, power when hit needs Norwood's "Absorbing Griminess" (inferred: no other code path was found that grants it). - "Loneliness Whisper" halves, it does not roll. Its description talks about a reduced chance of losing sanity. The code simply halves the sanity damage (
SanSub) of every hit you take while you carry it. - Combo hits. From the 4th consecutive hit on the same target (combo counter above 3), talents of the "combo weakness" type add extra weakness damage. See Weakness and execution#What drains Resilience.
- Boss time challenge "perfect" runs. In the boss time-challenge mode (Obsession Challenge; inferred), any health damage to you (from enemies or traps) marks the run as not perfect.
Sources#
HeroTalenthero 10001 TalentPos 413 (Revenge:StoneLevel2, one stone, Value 500, ValueAdd 500): one level only.reference/lua_src/luascript/logic/player/animalbase.lua:16697-16792(CalculateDamage, sanity drain on dealing damage, boss challenge, CalculateTrickDamage, CalculateStatusDamage)reference/lua_src/luascript/logic/playervalue/animalbase_value.lua:2109-2200(per-hit values, distance falloff),:2376-2390(no poise damage when blocked, combo weakness),:2496-2607(back/block/parry outcomes),:2709-2799(rage, power and sanity effects, HPHalfRageAdd at 30%, ResistSubSan halving)reference/lua_src/luascript/structdata/ms_itemdata.luaandes_trophydata.luarows 67007-69512 (LogicParam 400, 550 and 700 for the three tiers);logic/battle/battledata.lua:18-22(difficulty ids; GameTextUI_COMMON_GAMEMODE_HARDCORE= "Hard")animalbase_value.lua:976-990(team members immune in story mode),:2406-2425(weakness through blocks);logic/player/animalbase.lua:7465-7485(failed block zeroes poise)reference/lua_src/gamedata/playerdefine/animalbase_define.lua:73(SkillTouchHitComboMin = 3)reference/lua_src/luascript/structdata/ms_herodata.lua:18-61(property ids),structdata/ms_herotalent.lua(types 5, 14, 26, 92, 94)es_skilldata.luarows 10001/1/1 and 20001/1/1 (RageAdd, PowerAdd, SanSub, ToughnessSub, WeaknessSub, RageAddHit, PowerAddHit, GuardBreak)es_herotalent.luarows 11402/12402/13402/14402/15402 (Devout), 11405 (Revenge), 14206 (Absorbing Griminess)es_trophydata.luarows 60027 (Loneliness Whisper), 67007, 67011, 67012 (LogicType 125, LogicParam 400), 67072; GameTextData.TrophyData 67007, 60027es_storymonster.luaSanDamage column (StoryId 1, StoryMonsterId 1001 = 4)
Categories:Combat