Glossary

For those of you who aren’t familiar with PC RPGs or the d20 combat system, this Glossary will hopefully provide you with a small reference that you can refer to while reading this guide, or playing the game, when you encounter a term or acronym that’s unfamiliar to you. While the d20 system has been greatly improved since the days of Advanced Dungeons and Dragons 2nd Edition (you won’t see any THAC0’s, for instance), the system is still fairly hardcore when compared to the rules of most console RPGs.

Attack

Also known as the attack roll, attack bonus, or to-hit roll.

In order to damage an opponent in combat, you must first successfully hit them, and the attack number of your characters determines their chances to do so. The attack number, which is displayed on your character’s equipment screen, depends on a number of factors, including a character’s level and class, their Dexterity attribute, the type of weapon used, and what special Feats you’ve selected. This positive number is what is added to the random number the game generates to determine whether or not your character hits their opponent.

For instance, suppose two of your characters both attack an opponent with a Defense of 15. One of your characters has no attack bonus, while the other character has an attack bonus of +10. Since your attack roll needs to match or exceed the Defense of your target to land a hit, the first character will need to roll a natural (unmodified) 15 or better, while the latter character will only need to roll a five or better (since five plus 10 is 15).

Damage Resistance (DR)

Damage resistance is quite handy in KOTOR, since it can reduce or eliminate the amount of damage a character takes when an enemy successfully attacks him or her. Damage resistance is usually gained through the use of an item, such as an energy shield, and (whether the game tells you this or not) is represented by a number, such as (5/- vs. Fire). The number before the slash is the amount of damage that is ignored; in this case, the first five points of damage from every fire-based attack would be ignored by the character, so that, if an attack was supposed to deal 10 points of fire damage to your whole party, that character would only take five, while the other characters would take full damage. The value after the slash normally represents the kind of weapon that can overcome the damage resistance, but, for the purposes of KOTOR, you won’t have to worry about your DR being overcome.

Difficulty Check (DC)

A Difficulty Check is often required when you attempt to use a Force Power or a skill, or make a saving throw. This translates the conceptual difficulty of a task into a number that can be matched to a die roll generated by the game.

To illustrate by way of an example, assume you have a character with a Security skill of 10 that is attempting to pick a lock during the middle of a battle. The lock is rather intricate, so the DC is set to 25, meaning that your character must roll a 15 or higher to succeed in the lock-picking attempt.

Defense

A character or monster’s Defense rating is an aggregate of any bonuses from armor, their Dexterity attribute, and any Feats or Force Powers that are active. Every character in the game has a base Defense of 10, to which the aforementioned factors are added to form that character’s overall Defense. See the Attack listing above to get a brief example of how Defense works in combat.

Note that the Defense score of your characters does not reduce the damage they take; it merely makes them more difficult to hit. Should an enemy’s attack roll exceed your Defense, the damage calculation takes place without regard to your Defense score.

Non-Player Character (NPC)

NPCs are characters that are controlled by the computer. Since KOTOR only allows you to control one party member at a time, your teammates are, technically speaking, often considered to be NPCs, but for the purposes of this guide, we’ve attempted to reserve the "NPC" term for characters that are never under your control, such as townsfolk, combat opponents, and merchants. Your teammates will usually be referred to as, well, teammates, or party members.

Player Character (PC)

This term is used to refer to the character that you created at the beginning of the game; the character that is always in your party and is the focal point for the story that unfolds in KOTOR.

Saving Throw

A saving throw is what represents your character’s ability to escape harm, or, failing that, minimize it through defensive actions. Every threat that forces your character to make a saving throw will have its own unique Difficulty Check.

There are three different kinds of saving throws: throws for Will correspond to a character’s ability to resist mental intrusion and mind-affecting attacks; throws for Fortitude represent a character’s natural resistance to poison and physical harm; and throws for Reflex test a character’s ability to avoid the brunt of explosive damage by diving out of the way.

For instance, assume a Thermal Detonator is thrown into a room where two of your characters are standing. Some damage from the explosion is inevitable for both characters, but one of them has a much higher Dexterity than the other, giving them an advantage when it comes to quickly moving out of range of the explosion. The DC check of a Thermal Detonator is 15 against a character’s Reflex save. The less dexterous member of your party rolls a 10, which is unmodified by Dexterity, meaning that that character will take the full 60 points of damage from the Detonator. The other character rolls a 10 as well, but adds his Reflex bonus to the save, which just happens to be +5, meaning that he quickly finds cover before the explosion and only takes half damage.