Dodging

The Dodging skill determines how well your character can avoid blows, beams and missiles fired by monsters.

Useful Info

Dodging skill provides a bonus to EV, equal to:<ref>Template:Source ref</ref>

(8 + 0.8 × Dodging × Dex) / (20 - size)

Size is a factor dependent on your species' body size. Humans are 0, Spriggans are +4, and Trolls are -2. (See Evasion for a full list.)

This bonus is then reduced by encumbrance, if any.

Encumbrance

Armour encumbrance will directly lower the bonus from Dodging. This factor is not reduced by Armour skill, but it is reduced by strength.

• If (encumbrance - 3) ≥ strength:

Modifier = 0.5 * Str / (encumbrance - 3)

• If (encumbrance - 3) < strength:

Modifier = 1 - ((encumbrance - 3) / (2 * Str))

In either case, the modifier is multiplied directly with Dodging bonus, to get the final EV bonus.

If you are paralysed, petrified, or asleep, your Dodging skill is completely ineffective. The only thing that contributes to EV in this case is your size.

Strategy

The usual skill advice in Crawl is to "train your killing skills to competency first, then train your defenses". Dodging an extra attack won't help if you have to use a consumable to beat every other fight. It's perfectly reasonable to turn Dodging off at the start, then turn it back on later on when you feel skilled enough at killing stuff.

Dodging is more effective when you have higher dexterity and you are wearing lighter armour. Still, even a brute in crystal plate armour will eventually want to train a few levels of Dodging, since the early levels of a skill are cheap.

See also

• Evasion

History

• Prior to 0.32, EV was not tracked to 2 decimal places; only whole points of EV mattered.
• Prior to 0.27, there was a stepdown on dexterity: if dex >= 24, adj_dex = 14 + 10 * log2(1 + (dex - 14)/10). This reduced the impact of dexterity at high DEX values. Also, there was a separate stepdown if EV >= 30, documented in Evasion.
• Prior to 0.6, characters could only train Dodging when wearing light armour and would train Armour only when wearing heavy armour.

References

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