Basic Calculation

1. roll the weapon's damage dice
2. apply any slay or brand multiplier
3. apply any critical hit bonuses
4. apply bonuses to damage from all equipped items
5. repeat for all the blows you get

Brands and Slays

Some remarkable weapons do extra damage to various kinds of monsters; a Dagger of Fire, for instance, would do extra damage to creatures not immune to fire. Slays, in contrast, do extra damage to particular monster races, so wield that Mace of Orc Slaying if you come upon any orcs. Only the best applicable quality is used; they do not combine.

See the object attributes section for how powerful individual slays and brands are.

Critical Hits

The number of critical hits you get depends on your total bonuses to melee skill, your level, and your weapon weight. Their power depends on weapon weight. A weak critical hit might double base damage and add 5; a powerful one might triple it and add 20.

For most weapons, critical hits are rare, and make little difference to average damage. For heavy wargear with good base damage dice, however, critical hits can be significant.

Old missile weapons

Basic Calculation

1. roll the missile's damage dice
2. add the damage bonuses from both the missile weapon and the ammunition, but not from anything else
3. apply the missile launcher multiplier
4. apply any slay or brand multiplier
5. apply any critical hit bonuses

Base damage

Unlike in melee, launcher, slay/brand, and critical hit multiplers are all applied after the bonus to damage, which is applied directly to the result of the base damage dice.

Critical hits

The number of critical hits you get depends on your total bonuses to missile skill, your level, and your missile weight, but they are always rare. Their power depends on missile weight. Almost all critical hits multiply damage by 2 and add 5.