Making rogues and warriors near you not suck.
Well, in a nutshell, DF Redux is the combat band-aid that keeps rogues and warriors from getting their asses handed to them. By training in certain physical skills, you can reduce the amount of physical damage that you take when you get hit. You also incur a penalty to your redux ranks based on the number of spells your character knows.
For example:
Let's say that I have trained religiously in my physical skills for years, and have a huge amount of redux. Here's what a combat clip might look like.
An Amtrak screams down the track toward you!
AS: +800 vs DS: +100 with AvD: +24 + d100 roll: +92 = +816
... and hit for 9 points of damage!
Holy crap! That was scary!
You need to change your pants!
You collapse to the ground with a girlish groan. I do believe you've
caught the vapors.
Here's what the same hit might look like without redux.
An Amtrak screams down the track toward you!
AS: +800 vs DS: +100 with AvD: +24 + d100 roll: +92 = +816
... and hit for 713 points of damage!
You explode in a hail of yucky goo!
Mmmm, goo.
Your goo collapses to the ground with a girlish groan.
That isn't exactly a very accurate representation, but you get the point.
There are two categories of redux skills. The first are called primary skills, and the others are called secondary skills.
Primary skills are made up of the following:
Armor Training, Shield Training, Combat Manuevers, Climbing, Swimming, Multi Opponent, Combat Ambush, Physical Training, and Two Weapon Combat.
Secondary skills are made up of the following:
Edged Weapons, Blunt Weapons, Brawling, Two Handed Weapons, Pole Arms. Note that Thrown and Ranged weapons do NOT count towards redux.
First, you need to add up your Primary Ranks, and then add up your Secondary Ranks.
Then, you need to determine your spell penalty. The formula for this is Spell Penalty = n(n + 1). You must do this for each spell circle seperately, then add them together.
Redux Divisor = [(Primary Skills * 1.6) + (Secondary Skills * .5) - Spell Penalty] / 350
Once you know the divisor, go to the next part.
Damage Taken = 1 / Redux Divisor
At level 100, Geki will have 963 Primary Ranks, 202 Secondary Ranks, and knows up through 413 in the MnE circle.
His Spell Penalty is 13(13 + 1), or 182.
Plugging this into the first part of the formula, we get [(963 * 1.6) + (202 * .5) - 182] / 350 = 4.16857
Taking the inverse of this gives us 1/4.16857, or about .24, which would be 24%.
This means that Geki will be taking only 24% of the damage he would normally take, or a 76% Damage Reduction.
Keep in mind that this formula is not exact, though it is a pretty good approximation. I have yet to see one that works better, but if you have, feel free to send it my way.