Base Damage

Base Damage is the raw weapon damage range the engine rolls before any modifier is applied. Every weapon in Britannia has a fixed Min / Max base value that defines its swing range — a Halberd's 18 – 26, a Dagger's 1 – 12, a War Mace's 13 – 20. Every damage formula in the game starts from a single uniform roll inside this range; every modifier — Tactics, Anatomy, Strength, Lumberjacking, Damage Increase, Slayer, Exceptional, Powder of Fortifying — is applied multiplicatively on top of that base roll. Knowing the Min / Max of the weapon in the off-hand is the foundation of every melee build's DPS calculation.

The base value is a property of the weapon definition, not the weapon's per-instance properties. Two War Hammers crafted by different smiths have the same base range, even if one has +50% Damage Increase and the other has none. The Damage Increase is a multiplier; the base is what's being multiplied.

The damage formula

The full formula for a melee or archery hit:

Roll       = uniform(BaseMin, BaseMax)              ← uniform roll inside the weapon's base range
Bonus_pct  = Tactics_pct + Anatomy_pct + Strength_pct + Lumberjack_pct
             + DamageIncrease_pct                    ← capped at 300% total
Damage     = Roll × (1 + Bonus_pct / 100)
Damage    *= Slayer_multiplier                       ← 2× or 3× if Slayer-tagged
Damage    *= ExceptionalArmsLore_multiplier          ← 1.30 to 1.35 for Exceptional crafted weapons
Damage     = apply_resistances(Damage, weapon_split, target_resists)

The order matters: the base roll happens first, then every multiplier compounds on top of it, then the resistances are applied after all multipliers.

Weapon Min / Max reference

A representative slice of the canonical Min / Max table for the most-used weapons. The full ladder ranges from the 1 – 7 weakest farming tool up to the 19 – 27 heaviest two-handed weapons.

One-handed swords (Swordsmanship)

Two-handed swords (Swordsmanship)

One-handed maces (Mace Fighting)

Two-handed maces (Mace Fighting)

Fencing (Fencing)

Archery (Archery)

Throwing (Throwing, Gargoyle-only)

The Strength + skills "above-the-cap" stack

Five separate skill / stat contributions add to the multiplicative bonus, each computed independently before being summed:

Tactics

Tactics is the universal melee multiplier — every successful hit multiplies by the Tactics bonus.

Anatomy

Anatomy is the second universal melee multiplier:

Strength

The character's Strength stat contributes directly:

Lumberjacking (axe-class only)

Lumberjacking buffs damage only on axe-class weapons:

This is the canonical reason the Sampire archetype (axe + Lumberjacking + Bushido + Necromancy) outdamages every non-axe melee build at parity scrolls.

Damage Increase (capped)

Damage Increase from gear, jewellery, talismans, and consumables, capped at +100% from item sources.

The 300% total cap

The sum of Tactics_pct + Anatomy_pct + Strength_pct + Lumberjack_pct + DamageIncrease_pct is capped at 300%. A swing with all five maxed:

Adding +58% DI from Bard Inspire Mastery in a party brings the total to 354.25% — but the cap clips it to 300%. This is why a fully-buffed Sampire in a Bard-buffed party damage is bounded at roughly 4× the base roll, no matter how much further Inspire stacking adds.

Slayer multipliers (separate from the cap)

Slayer and Holy weapon multipliers are applied after the 300% cap, separately:

A Sampire on an Exorcism (Holy) Slayer axe in a Doom Champ Spawn against Doom's Bone Daemon (matching Holy) does:

Damage = Roll × (1 + 3.00) × 3.0   = up to 12× the base roll

Exceptional bonus (crafting-time only)

Crafted weapons made with the Exceptional tag receive an extra +30% to +35% damage bonus, multiplied separately on top of all other modifiers:

This is the canonical reason Exceptional-marked weapons are the foundation of every serious melee build — the 30–35% multiplier doesn't count against the 300% cap or any other budget.

How weapons are picked for a build

Veterans choose between three competing axes:

The base Min / Max range alone doesn't determine the best weapon — swing speed, special move set, and Slayer fit all interact. But every comparison starts from the base damage range.

Damage Modifier (the post-resist sibling)

Damage Modifier — found on Quivers and Bard Mastery Inspire — applies a percentage after the target's resistances have been calculated. It is a separate property from Damage Increase and stacks independently. A Quiver with +10% Damage Modifier on an archery build adds 10% to post-resist damage, not to the pre-resist multiplier stack.

See also

• Damage Increase — the +100% item-cap multiplier (counts against 300% total)
• Damage Types — Physical / Fire / Cold / Poison / Energy distribution of the multiplied roll
• Tactics — the universal +68.75%@GM melee multiplier
• Anatomy — the +55%@GM universal multiplier
• Strength (statistic) — the STR×0.3 stack contributor
• Lumberjacking — the +30%@GM axe-class stack
• Resistances — the post-multiplier defensive layer
• Slayer — the post-cap 2× / 3× weapon multiplier
• Exceptional — the +30–35% craft-time multiplier