Fighting Skills

Discworld MUD help files: http://discworld.atuin.net/lpc/playing/documentation.c?path=/concepts/combat

However peaceful you plan your life to be, you will need some fighting skills of some sort, sooner or later. My advice would be to learn at least one melee skill and one defence. The established complementary skill options are as follows:

dagger & dodge, for dextrous, athletic types (and the one I chose, as the skill-set is shared by the more creative, intellectual activities I prefer);
sword & parry, for the more warrior-oriented;
mace & block; this latter option is rarely used, and generally favoured by wizards to complement offensive and defensive magic.

Before getting too carried away by advancing your fighting skills, however, remember that the more you advance fighting.points (which you will need for GP in order to use fighting commands), the higher your Guild Level.

From the moment your Guild Level reaches 50, you will have to pay for Godmother services with a life.

You can advance your chosen fighting skill set quite some way before hitting Guild Level 50, but here would be a good place to point out that, while fighting.points is the skill leaf which pushes the Guild Level up for us, advancing the other leaves will, over time, have the same effect. So pay your Guild Level careful attention, and only go beyond this point if you're very sure you no longer need Godmother services, or you can afford to pay for them¹.

The tree is shown here (along with the command that yields it) with the stat dependencies breakdown for each leaf skill. As mentioned in The Rearrange, this information is extremely useful when considering bonuses.

As a point of interest, note well that fighting.special uses a lot of Intelligence, and both fighting.melee.dagger and fighting.defence.dodge use a lot of Dexterity. This means you need to consider your rearrange very carefully in terms of fighting skills - there's potentially a very serious trade-off here between power and strategy.

skills fighting stats
SKILL                       Stats
fighting                    CDDSS 
fighting.defence            DDSSW 
fighting.defence.blocking   DDSSW 
fighting.defence.dodging    DDDDW 
fighting.defence.parrying   DDDSW 
fighting.melee              CDDSS 
fighting.melee.axe          CDSSS 
fighting.melee.dagger       DDDDS 
fighting.melee.flail        CDDSS 
fighting.melee.heavy-sword  CDSSS 
fighting.melee.mace         CCDSS 
fighting.melee.misc         CDDSS 
fighting.melee.polearm      CCSSS 
fighting.melee.sword        DDDSS 
fighting.points             DSSCC 
fighting.range              DDDSS 
fighting.range.bow          DDSSS 
fighting.range.fired        DDDDS 
fighting.range.thrown       DDDSS 
fighting.special            CDSII 
fighting.special.mounted    CCDDW 
fighting.special.tactics    WWIII 
fighting.special.unarmed    DDIII 
fighting.special.weapon     SDIII 
fighting.unarmed            DDSSW 
fighting.unarmed.grappling  DDSSW 
fighting.unarmed.striking   DDSWW

NB: The layout of the skill trees as seen here is given by typing options output skills = list. If you do this, but then decide you prefer the default table layout, you may return to it by typing options output skills = branched.

Learned Fighting Commands Available to All Players

Command	Skill	Level
Bob	fighting.special.unarmed	Unknown
Punch	fighting.special.unarmed	10
Kick	fighting.special.unarmed	10
Bash	fighting.special.weapon	15
Chop	fighting.special.weapon	15
Feint	fighting.special.weapon	15
Hack	fighting.special.weapon	15
Pierce	fighting.special.weapon	15
Riposte	fighting.special.weapon	15
Shove	fighting.special.tactics	15
Slash	fighting.special.weapon	15
Slice	fighting.special.weapon	15
Stab	fighting.special.weapon	15
Trip	fighting.special.tactics	15
Beat	fighting.special.weapon	20
Crush	fighting.special.weapon	50
Impale	fighting.special.weapon	50
Iai	fighting.special.unarmed & fighting.special.weapon	70/70

Natural Fighting Commands Available to All Players

None that I know of. However, dancing apparently uses fighting.unarmed.grappling and may be TM'ed by learning to dance.

However, as yet, learning to dance is an option offered only to Assassins enrolled at the Conlegium Sicariorum (and perhaps their colleagues from Forn Parts).

Skills & Commands Home

Personally, I find the Godmother a very handy taxi service back to Bois whenever I get bored of where I am. And at a mere level 21, I can call her up with impunity any time I like.