Year of the Dragon: Through May 28th, claim free Expansion Pack (excluding Vecna Unleashed) or a Greater Elixir of Discovery! Speak to Xatheral in the Hall of Heroes. edit

Thank you for your patience while we continue to upgrade DDOwiki to the latest MediaWiki LTS version. If you find any errors on the site, please visit the Discord chat server and let us know.

Game mechanicsNewbie guideIn developmentDDO StoreSocial Media


ChallengesClassesCollectablesCraftingEnhancementsEpic DestiniesFavorFeats

GlossaryItemsMapsMonstersPlacesQuestsRacesReincarnationSkillsSpells


Please create an account or log in to remove ads, build a reputation, and unlock more editing privileges and then visit DDO wiki's IRC Chat/Discord if you need any help!

Game mechanics

From DDO wiki
Jump to navigation Jump to search

Your Character[edit]

  • Abilities - The strengths and weaknesses that define your characters, such as Strength and Intelligence.
  • Carrying capacity - How much weight your character can carry.
  • Classes - The role which your character will predominantly play.
  • Feats - Major new actions or advantages for your character.
  • Skills - How adept your character is at various tasks.
  • Enhancements - Minor new actions, advantages, and upgrades to your character's existing abilities.
  • Hit points - A finite value used to determine how much damage a character can withstand before dying.
  • Healing Amplification - Increases the amount of hit points restored when receiving healing spells or healing by other methods.
  • Run speed - How fast your character can run.
  • Player character conditions - Usually temporary, harmful and require certain actions to be taken to remove of them.

Attacking a Target[edit]

  • Attack bonus - Determines likelihood of hitting a target with melee or ranged weapons based on Base Attack Bonus and other modifiers.
  • Attack sequence - A chain of attack animations that depends on your character's Base Attack Bonus, fighting style, and whether you are stationary or moving.
  • Attack roll - Represents your attempt to strike your opponent.
  • Base Attack Bonus - Represents a character or monster's skill at fighting that comes purely from his or her profession, training, and personal experience.
  • Critical hit - A hit with an increased damage multiplier scored by rolling in the threat range on the d20 damage roll.
  • Critical hit multiplier - The number by which the base damage is multiplied upon a confirmed critical hit.
  • Damage - Damage reduces a target's current hit points.
  • Damage roll - Determines the amount of damage done after a successful attack roll.
  • Doublestrike - A chance to make an additional attack roll with the main hand weapon any time a main hand melee attack is made.
  • Fighting styles - The three main styles of melee fighting are sword and board, two-handed fighting and two weapon fighting.
  • Flanking - When attacking with a melee weapon, attackers receive a bonus for attacking from behind.
  • Grazing hit - Allows attacks to deal reduced damage instead of missing entirely if the total attack roll isn't enough to hit.
  • Glancing blow - An additional hit caused with a two-handed weapon that can strike multiple enemies. (Replaced by Strikethrough in Update 45.)
  • Melee special attack - A special attack that uses swings in the attack sequence to initiate a variety of single-target combat feats in addition to normal weapon damage.
  • Shield bashing - The act of attacking with a shield.
  • Sneak attack - Additional damage done by rogues under a specific set of circumstances.
  • Strikethrough - An additional hit caused with a two-handed weapon that can strike additional enemies.
  • Threat range - The range of the d20 damage roll where a critical hit can be scored. Actual range is determined by the weapon type of the attacker.
  • Weapon dice multiplier - A multiplier applied to the base damage die of particular weapons.
  • Vorpal Strike - Refers to rolling a natural 20, and confirming the critical hit.
  • Melee Power
  • Ranged Power

Defense[edit]

  • Active blocking - Produced by holding the block key. While blocking, a character gains +2 Armor Class, has increased DR, and is immune to most special attack and weapon effects.
  • Armor class - The likelihood you will be hit by melee and ranged weapons.
  • Armor check penalty - The skill penalties assessed for using armors.
  • Damage Reduction - Allows a certain amount of damage to be subtracted from each hit taken.
  • Dodge bonus - The chance of you completely bypassing physical attacks.
  • Guards - Effects that damage/debilitate your opponent as he attacks you.
  • Maximum dexterity bonus - The largest Armor Class bonus you can get from your Dexterity while wearing that armor.
  • Physical Resistance Rating - How much bludgeoning, piercing, or slashing damage is negated when you are hit.
  • Magical Resistance Rating
  • Saving throw - Chance to resist magical attacks
  • Spell resistance - Chance to avoid being affected by spells

Spellcasting[edit]

  • Casting ability - Different abilities benefit different spellcasters.
  • Arcane spell failure - The chance that an arcane spell will fail to be cast due to interference from the caster's armor or shield.
  • Spell - A spell is an activated magical effect produced directly by a creature.
  • Spell components - Spells have one or more components that are required in order to successfully cast them.
  • Spell critical - Percent chance for spells to score a critical hit. Base spell critical chance is 0%.
  • Spell Lore - Gives a bonus to your spell critical chance and increase the spell critical multiplier.
  • Spell point - The amount of magical energy your character has to expend on spells before needing to rest.
  • Spell Power - Determines how much damage you deal with spells.
  • Spell Resistance - An extra roll that the caster has to make for his magic to "land" on targets which possess it.
  • Spell-like ability - An ability that works exactly like a spell of the same name yet costs no (or very few) spell points.
  • Spell Penetration - Spell Penetration is the act of trying to penetrate Spell Resistance (SR).

Questing[edit]

  • Death - A condition brought about at -10 HP.
  • Death penalty - A temporary debuff on a character which was recently resurrected.
  • Delving Bonus - A special kind of experience point bonus which encourages players to run a larger variety of quests on harder difficulties.
  • Dungeon Alert - A mechanic designed to reduce server load by limiting the number of enemies which can be safely handled by a party.
  • Dungeon Scaling - The mechanism that automatically adjusts the difficulty of quests depending on the number of players in the group.
  • Hireling - NPC adventurers that can aid you in quests.
  • Instance - A game area where players can encounter enemies or other players.
  • Quest - Adventures which reward XP and loot.
  • Epic (quest type)
  • Raid - A raid is a highly difficult and tactically challenging quest designed for 12 players.
  • Raid loot mechanic - The likelihood of receiving the item you want from a raid.
  • Raid timer - Most raids have a timer, or "cooldown" period, that starts after receiving end reward from the raid quest-giver NPC.
  • Ransack - Looting a chest too often within a certain span of time can temporarily reduce the quality and amount of treasure that chest generates for you.
  • Reaper - Reaper Difficulty or Reaper Mode is the highest difficulty in DDO introduced in Update 34.
  • Recall - A teleportation method available during a quest or while outside in a wilderness adventure area.
  • Repair (equipment) - Equipment can be damaged during questing and must be repaired at vendors.
  • Resource management - The process of managing finite resources (often spell points or clickies) throughout a quest.
  • Resting - The act of using a shrine.
  • Saga - A group of quests or even story arcs that characters can complete for an additional reward.
  • Sneak - Using Invisibility or creeping around using the Sneak toggle which relies on or your passive Hide and Move Silently skills.
  • Secret door - A door that appears to be an ordinary part of the wall, and can only be found by using special abilities.
  • Shrine - Monoliths found in quests that can be used to replenish hit points, spell points, and special abilities.
  • Social panel - An element of the UI used to help form parties.
  • Trap - Mechanical or magical effect built into a dungeon which are designed to impede the progress of the party.
  • Trapmaking - A feat made available to Rogues and Artificers that grants the ability to craft traps.

Monsters[edit]

  • Challenge rating - Relative danger of a monster.
  • Creature type - Defines features and traits for certain group of races.
  • Epic Ward - Epic enemies have massive amounts of experience against adventurers that form an Epic Ward against many attack types.
  • Monster attack bonus - A monster's bonus to attack rolls, helps determine the monster's likelihood of hitting you.

Leveling and Reincarnation[edit]

  • Action Point - Points gained in the process of increasing in level that are spent on enhancements.
  • Build point - Points spent to increase ability scores during the character creation process.
  • Class trainer - The NPC you speak to when you are ready to level your character.
  • Epic Destinies - A major part of an advancement system that players can use for their level 20+ characters.
  • Epic levels - An Epic level is not added to a class, but is a generic level in and of itself.
  • Experience points - Points earned via questing, which are required to level your character.
  • Experience points after Reincarnation(s) - Experience points required to level is increased after your True Reincarnation (TR).
  • Level - Can refer to many things: class level, Player Character level, caster level, spell level, or dungeon level.
  • Level cap - Level cap refers to the maximum Level a character can reach within a game.
  • Path - A predefined build intended for the use of inexperienced players.
  • Reincarnation - Allows players to change certain decisions made in their character's advancement or to create an all-new more powerful hero.
  • Respec - An MMO term that means re-specifying part or all of your character's current build.
  • Veteran Status - Allows you to start creating new characters at level 4 or level 7.

Dice Rolls[edit]

  • Ability check - A roll against an action's difficulty class, using an Ability modifier as a modifier.
  • Attack roll - Represents your attempt to strike your opponent.
  • D20 - Refers to a 20 sided dice.
  • Damage roll - This is the amount of damage that is done after a successful attack roll.
  • Difficulty class - A number associated with an action that represents how hard that action is to do.
  • Modifier - A number that changes a roll or a granted ability. It is usually tied to an ability score.
  • Natural 1 - A natural 1 is obtained when you roll 1 on the d20. On an attack roll or a saving throw, a natural 1 means a failure.
  • Natural 20 - A natural 20 is obtained when you roll 20 on the d20.
  • Skill check - A roll against an action's difficulty class, using a skill as a modifier.
  • Confirmation roll - A roll that is made to confirm a critical threat is a critical hit.
  • Vorpal Strike - Refers to rolling a natural 20, and confirming the critical hit.

Guilds[edit]

  • Guild Airships - A location where access is limited only to guild members or people who are temporarily invited.

Game Economy[edit]

  • Auction House - An automated way of buying and selling items with other players with in-game coin.
  • Base price modifier - Affects an item's price range and its minimum level requirement.
  • Bind - Definitions of various bind statuses of items.
  • Broker - A special type of vendor NPC which pays more for your items than other vendors do.
  • Currency - Usually refers to the in-game coin system, although other items are often used as currency by players.
  • Shard Exchange - A variant of the Auction House that uses Astral Shards as the only currency.
  • Daily Dice
  • DDO Point
  • Trade - directly between characters