Avowed combat

Combat is core to the gameplay in Avowed. This article covers the mechanics, modes and features of combat.

Note that many mechanics have their own articles which go into significantly more detail.

Overview

Avowed's combat occurs in a first-person (optionally third person) perspective, placing the player directly in the role of their character. Players engage in dynamic real-time encounters, where they can make use of a variety of melee weapons (swords, maces, shields, etc.), ranged weapons (bows and arrows and firearms), magical implements (wands, scepters, and grimoires), throwable items (grenades, spears), in combination with cast abilities and spells. The player may approach combat encounters any way they desire, and can mix-and-match combat styles at a whim. Players are free to dual-wield one-handed weapons, and wield both magic and melee simultaneously.

The combat system incorporates different types of attacks, as well as methods of blocking and parrying. Weapon weight, attack speed, and action speed, Stamina and Essence management play a big role in combat, all influenced by your gear and your character stats. These mechanics can influence the flow of combat, encouraging strategic thinking and skillful execution over button mashing.

Enemies must be approached with different strategies, and each has their own strengths and weaknesses. For example, some enemies hold shields that absorb hits, some are resistant to certain types of damage, some stand back and shoot at you from a range, and others charge directly at you. The game provides a range of different unit types to provide a constant challenge, and convince players to mix up their approach to different encounters.

Initiating combat

The player may transition between exploration and combat seamlessly. Enemies are visible within the game world, and approaching or attacking them will initiate combat in most cases. However, some enemies may be neutral or even friendly, allowing for interaction beyond violence.

There are generally no set or confined locations for combat encounters, and players have the freedom to engage enemies how they see fit. This allows for strategic approaches, like utilizing the environment to lure enemies into hazards or into a more vulnerable location, or using ranged attacks before they can get close, or buffing the party with abilities or consumables before entering combat. There is no penalty for initiating combat in this way, and players can disengage from most encounters by creating distance between themselves and the enemy.

Within settlements, the game is restrictive on where you can engage combat, and who can and can't be killed. You won't be able to aggro an entire town or go on a killing spree, and quest-critical characters won't be able to be killed.

Less aggressive options are also available, and Avowed and employs dialogue solutions to be able to talk your way out of an encounter, or stealth options to avoid it entirely. However completing the game as a pacifist - without killing enemies - is not possible.

Enemies are able to detect party members based on line of sight and noise they make, and call to their allies to help them if they detect you, so the player has the option to crouch down, hide in tall grass or behind cover, or use the ranger ability Shadowing Beyond to go invisible to avoid attention.

Combat basics

This section is a basic overview of the actions the player can perform in combat.

Attacking

The player may perform different types of attacks, including basic, power, and special attacks.

Basic attacks can be performed using your primary weapon with left click, or using your secondary weapon (when wielding two one-handed weapons) with right click. Basic attacks deal a moderate amount of damage, are fast and don't require much Stamina. Basic attacks are aren't effective against shielded units.

Power attacks can be performed by holding and releasing left click (or right click with your secondary weapon). These attacks deal a significant amount of damage - typically the same damage as a Critical Hit, but are slower and require considerably more Stamina. Power attacks are able to stagger enemies, and can break through the Blocks of shielded or blocking units. Likewise, the player may be pushed back, knocked down, or staggered by enemy power attacks. Power attacks may be interrupted by attacks while winding up.

Special Attacks are finishers that may be performed on enemies with full Stun. They typically deal massive damage and can be accompanied with other effects. Performing successive attacks on a target can build up their Stun, which is represented by the bar underneath their health. Once full, the target becomes temporarily stunned, leaving them open to a special attack, which is performed automatically by attacking them.

Stealth attacks are automatically dealt when attacking an enemy that is unaware of your presence when you're in Stealth. They deal a significant amount of damage. Killing an enemy with a stealth attack will prevent them from alerting any nearby allies to come to their aid.

Attacks deal a fixed amount of damage, as opposed to a roll within a range, although different types of attack will yield different amounts of damage, as will Critical Hits.

Every weapon shares these modes of attack, for example, you can channel a powerful wand attack in the same way that you can charge up a heavy swing with a sword, in the same way that you can nock back a powerful shot with a bow.

All enemies have Weak Points, that are visualized as red squares that appear while wielding a ranged weapon, such a bow or firearm. These points can be hit to instantly deal a Critical Hit. When killing an enemy, a red skull appears in the center of your reticule, indicating that the enemy is dead.

Blocking

Attacks may be blocked by holding right click. Blocking prevents the attack from landing, negating its damage entirely. You can only block when your off-hand is free (i.e. when not dual wielding), or with a shield in your off-hand which increases blocking capability significantly. Additionally, only a subset of weapon types can block, which puts certain weapons at a defensive disadvantage in combat.

Blocking comes at the cost of some Stamina for every hit successfully deflected. The amount of Stamina depleted is based on the Block Efficiency of your equipped weapon or shield, and weapons with a low Block Efficiency incur a high Stamina cost when blocking. You can hold a block for as long as you have Stamina available, but your Stamina regeneration is paused while doing so.

Enemies can block attacks from the player (and their companions) in the same way that the player can block attacks from enemies. Attacking a Blocking enemy causes no Damage, but does accumulate Stun. Blocks may be broken using a power attack, filling up an enemy's Stun, dealing explosive damage, or using abilities like a fighter's Charge. Alternatively, attacking the enemy from a different angle may be enough to hit around their block, as blocks only occur if your attack physically collides with their shield.

When a character is actively blocking, their health bar turns a violet color (their current health is still visible as two shades are used), and a shield icon appears over it.

Certain types of attack are Unblockable, and are unable to be avoided by blocking. Unblockable enemy attacks are represented with a red circle that briefly appears while the enemy is readying their attack, these attacks may only be Dodged.

The following abilities modify the Block mechanic:

• With the level 1 fighter ability Shield Bash, attacking while blocking stuns, pushes back, and interrupts enemies.
  • With the level 10 ranger ability Arrow Deflection, arrows and other projectiles can be blocked when parrying.
• With the level 10 fighter ability Unbreakable, the Stamina cost of blocking is reduced by 30/50/60%.
• With the level 15 fighter ability Reflect, blocks made with a shield or wand reflect the projectile back at the attacker.

Parrying

With the level 5 ranger ability Parry, perfectly-timed blocks made against melee attacks can be parried, which causes the enemy to be knocked back for a short time and dealt Stun, opening up a window for an immediate counter-attack.

A successful parry consumes the same amount of Stamina as a regular attack, and is not affected by your Block Efficiency.

All weapons and shields have Parry Efficiency which determines the amount of Stun dealt upon parrying. When equipping both a weapon and a shield, you Parry Efficiency is determined using the equipped shield only.

Dodging

Dodging and dashing involves a quick burst of speed in a direction. It can be used to close gaps between enemies, reach distant platforms, escape dangerous situations, or to quickly reposition. It is often used during combat as an evasive movement, to avoid enemy attacks or projectiles. It may also be employed as an aggressive manuever, allowing the player stay close to enemies and attack them in between their attacks.

A dodge may can be triggered by pressing the jump button while moving in a lateral (side-to-side) or backward direction, or a combination of either. When dodging, the player character performs a short 1-2 meter dash in the desired direction.

Performing a dodge consumes a small amount of Stamina, which can be impoved via the Evasive ability in the ranger ability tree.

Buffs to Dodge Distance

Type		Source	Modifier	Notes
Clothing	Boots	Boots of the Bricklayer	+10%
	Boots	Blackwing Boots	+10%
	Boots	Councilor's Shoes (Politician's Sidestep)	+25%
	Boots	Deerskin Boots	+10%
	Boots	Imp Catchers	+10%
	Boots	Tranton Family Greaves (Outlaw's Escape)	+20%
	Boots	Shadowdancer's Boots (Ephemeral Evasion)	+40%
	Boots	Trickster's Boots	+10%
	Boots	Vailian Boots (Duelist's Dance)	+20%
	Boots	Wildwalker Boots	+10%
	Boots	Wolf Boots	+10%
Weapons	Great Hammer	Forge's Friend (Steel Yourself)	+30%	For 10 seconds on Parry
	Spear	Giant's Slumber (Defensive Dance)	+20%	For 20 seconds on Parry

Abilities

Main article: Avowed abilities

Abilities are skills that provide offensive, defensive, and supporting effects for the player and their companions. Active abilities may be cast during combat via Quick Slots and the Action Radial.

The player may also equip a grimoire in their off-hand to access an additional set of spells. Readying the grimoire by holding the attack key ("blocking" with the grimoire) quickly

Consumables

Main article: Avowed consumables

Consumable items may be used via Quick Slots and the Action Radial, while some consumables have a dedicated slot in the HUD. Health Potions can be consumed to heal your health and prevent you from dying (Z key on PC). Essence Potions heal your Essence so you can cast more abilities (X key on PC). Throwables can be tossed at enemies and the environment to cause an effect in an AoE. A throwable can be equipped via the Action Radial, where it is readied by pressing the Q key, and thrown with left click.

Interface

Action Radial

The Action Radial allows you to cast your Abilities, comsume Consumables, equip throwables, and use companion commands. It can be open in or out of combat, by holding the action button (E on PC, LB On Console). Combat is paused while the radial menu is open, giving you time to make a selection.

Quick Slots

All actions in the Radial may be bound to Quick Slots (keys 1 through 6 on PC, D-Pad on Console), giving you quick and direct access to them, while some actions have dedicated slots (Health Potions, Essence Potions, and throwables).

Companions

During combat, companions will fight autonomously and assist the party without intervention, but may also be issued basic orders as an extension of the player. You can ask them to interact with the environment in some way, perform a basic task, or cast a context-aware ability that's relevant to their associated archetype and that are unique to those companions.

As an example, Kai is able to perform a taunt, which draws aggressive enemies towards him and away from other party members.

Mechanics

This section covers some overarching concepts, mechanics, and statistics that are at the core of the combat system.

Health

Main article: Health (Avowed)

Health represents a character's ability to withstand damage, acting as a measure of vitality. You lose health by sustaining attacks and taking damage. Health is recovered through the use of consumable items and abilities with healing effects. When your health reaches zero, you die.

Your maximum health is determined by your Constitution attribute, with each point adding +5% to your health pool.

Certain abilities, such as Corrosive Siphon may grant Temporary Health, which allows the player's health to extend beyond its maximum, but only for a certain amount of time. Damage inflicted to the character will hit your temporary health before it reaches your normal health.

The player health is shown as a red bar in the bottom left of the UI. The health of your companions is shown on the left side of the screen, under their name. Lesser enemies display their current health over their head, while the health of greater enemies will be shown at the top of the screen while the party is currently engaged with them. Healing is indicated by the bar filling with yellow before turning red.

Stamina

Main article: Stamina

Stamina is a resource that determines your physical endurance in combat. It is consumed when you exhert any physically-demanding action, including attacks, jumping, running, vaulting, dodging, and other movement actions. The amount of stamina required depends on the effort exherted. Stamina regenerates over time, while you're not actively performing an action. Your maximum stamina increases with Resolve, with each point granting +5 to your maximum stamina pool. Wearing heavier armor reduces your maximum stamina.

Essence

Main article: Essence

Essence is a resource that determines your magical capacity in combat. It is expended when casting abilities and spells. Stronger abilities typically cost more essence than weaker ones. Essence regenerates passively over time, but you may immediately replenish it by drinking Essence Potions, or by collecting the Essence Fragments dropped from defeated enemies. Your maximum essence increases with Intellect, with each point granting +5 maximum essence. Wearing heavier armor reduces your maximum essence.

Damage

Main article: Damage (Avowed)

Damage refers to both the effectiveness of an attack in reducing a target's health, as well as the loss of health inflicted itself.

Outgoing attack damage (meaning, prior to any sort of reduction) is determined by the damage value on the source of the attack (the weapon or ability), and the attacker's Might attribute. Might increases damage from all sources.

Damage can be categorized into Physical Damage, Elemental Damage, and Explosive Damage.

Damage Reduction

Main article: Damage Reduction (Avowed)

Damage Reduction (also called DR) refers to a general decrease in incoming damage, expressed as a percentage-based reduction on every attack. It is primarily determined by the armor worn by the character recieving the damage. Some items specify Additional Damage Reduction, which is a form of Damage Reduction that reduces damage given a fixed value that is subtracted from every attack.

Quality

Main article: Quality (Avowed)

Quality is used as an indicator of the effectiveness of all items and enemies in combat. Five quality levels are available: Common, Fine, Exceptional, Superb, and Legendary.

Quality is also the basis of the upgrading system in Avowed. Upgrading a weapon, armor, shield, or grimoires will increase its strength accordingly.

Attack Speed

Main article: Attack Speed (Avowed)

Attack speed is the rate at which you perform physical attacks and abilities. It is the primary method of determining how quickly a character can deliver consecutive attack. A higher attack speed allows for more frequent hits within a given period.

Light weapons tend to be faster, consume less stamina, while heavier weapons hit slower and require more stamina, but deal more damage per swing. Likewise, certain abilities take longer to channel and cast.

The Dexterity attribute increases your attack speed. Equipment and abilities can provide both buffs and debuffs to attack speed.

Reload Speed

Main article: Reload Speed (Avowed)

Reload speed is similar to Attack Speed, but refers to the rate at which you reload firearms, an action which occurs after the actual attack. A higher reload speed allows for more frequent shots within a given perience. It is measured separately to Attack Speed, but is influenced by it.

Action Speed

Main article: Action Speed (Avowed)

Action speed refers to the overall speed of a character's non-core character actions, and governs the animation speed of these actions, making them faster or slower. These actions include:

• Equipping and unequipping weapons, armor, or other gear, also has its own Equip Speed.
• Reloading firearms.
• Using consumable items like potions, or throwables.
• Performing parkour moves like climbing, vaulting, mantling, and dodging.

During combat it can reduce down-time by allowing for quicker swaps between weapons, consumable use, and reloads, minimizing the amount of time you might be vulnerable to attack or interruption of actions, and improving the overall flow.

Action speed is primarily governed by Dexterity. Equipment and abilities can provide both buffs and debuffs to attack speed.

Cast Speed

Main article: Cast Speed (Avowed)

Cast Speed is the rate at which a character casts/uses a spell or ability, during which they may be vulnerable to interruption by incoming attacks. While a character is casting, they cannot perform any other action (other than moving), without forfieting the cast. Most cast times are very short, but in particular, wizard spells have longer cast times than other abilities.

It's important to note that cast speed and cast time are inversely related. As cast speed increases, cast time decreases, making spells and abilities quicker to execute. The game uses the two interchangably, depending on the effect.

Cooldown

Main article: Cooldown (Avowed)

Cooldown refers to a period of time during which a specific ability, item, or action cannot be used again. This timer is typically initiated after the ability is used. Cooldowns prevent the player from using repeat, uninterrupted actions against enemies, and must be managed in order to maximize effectiveness.

Certain items, equipment, and abilities provide bonuses to cooldown reduction.

Range

Main article: Range (Avowed)

Attack range, or just range, is the distance between a character and their target at which they can effectively inflict damage.

Effects

This section covers things that happen to enemies and characters in the party as a result of actions made by other combatants.

Critical Hit

Main article: Critical Hit (Avowed)

All attacks with weapons have a chance to be a critical hit when they strike, which deals increased damage to the enemy, at a base of +50%. The likelihood that an attack results in a critical is based on the weapon used, as well as the Perception attribute of the wielder.

When an attack crits, the damage done by the attack is shown in a yellow circle.

Status effects

Main article: Status effects (Avowed)

Status effects are temporary alterations to a character's attributes, stats, or general state. Effects can be beneficial or detrimental, and affect a wide rance of aspects. They can be applied via combat, items, equipment, or envrionmental interactions, and typically last for a certain amount of time, or until dispelled.

Examples of status effects include Poison and Bleed (deals damage over time), Burning (continuous damage).

Taunt

Taunt is a combat mechanic that allows characters to direct enemy aggression towards themselves. By taunting an enemy, the player can force it to prioritize attacks on the taunting character and away from vulnerable party members. This can be used by the player to draw aggro away from vulnerable party members or by enemies to force players to focus on them. When a character is subject to a taunt, they receive the status effect Taunted, which lasts for a short amount of time.

Abilities like Into the Fray employ a taunt mechanic.

Stun

Main article: Stun (Avowed)

Different weapon attacks have varying degrees of stunning potential, which is determined by their Stun stat. Stun is built up on enemies as a result of successive attacks made against them. Once a threshold is reached, the enemy is temporarily stunned, and leaving them open to a powerful attack.

Stun is represented via a yellow bar underneath an enemy's health. Accumulated Stun will start to deteriorate after a few seconds if the enemy are not attacked with another attack that deals Stun.

Accumulation

Main article: Accumulation

Attacks of a particular type/element (Physical, Fire, Frost, Poison, and Shock) can accumulate on enemies, triggering specific status effects upon reaching a threshold. For example, an enemy that accumulates enough Fire damage will recieve an "Ignited" status, and an enemy that takes enough physical damage will recieve a "Bleed" status for an amount of time.

Resistance

Main article: Accumulation § Resistance

Resistance is a measure of a character's ability to defend themselves against the application of a status effect. Having a higher resistance increases the character's survivability, and is important when facing enemies that deal damage of a particular type.

Implements

This section is about implements of combat, items that are integral to combat or that assist or directly influence combat in some way.

Loadouts

Your loadout is what weapons you wield into combat. You can quickly switch between two different loadouts mid-encounter, consisting of different sets of preassigned weapons, for example two one-handed weapons, a one-handed weapon and a shield, or a two-handed weapon.

Weapons

Main article: Avowed weapons

Abilities

Main article: Avowed abilities

Grimoires

Main article: Avowed grimoires

Armor

Main article: Avowed armor

Shields

Main article: Avowed shields

See: Avowed combat § Blocking and parrying

Consumables

Main article: Avowed consumables

Throwables

Main article: Avowed throwables

Behind the scenes

• Developers cited games like Warhammer: Vermintide and Vermintide 2 as an inspiration for the combat feel of Avowed.'
• The animation system in Avowed is built in a way where the animations for first-person and third person are separated. The first-person mesh is made out just arms, and the third-person mesh contains the full body, and the animations have been tweaked to be more suitable for each mode.
• Accumulation statuses used to be called "Burn", "Shock", and "Freeze", but this was changed to "Ignited", "Shocked", and "Frozen" for clarification.