The main activity in Diablo and Hellfire is fighting. You either fight against the monsters or against other players. This chapter will briefly explain how your characters stats and the items you wear affect your character while fighting. For a more detailed explanation on battle between players and monsters, see chapter 5.6.5.

When someone or something attacks you, the first step is to see if it hits you or not. Formulas for the chance of hitting a player can be found in chapter 2.1.4 (players), 4.3 (traps) and 5.1 (monsters).

When you are hit by a melee weapon, an arrow, or magic (while not having any resistance), you will try to block the attack (in Hellfire you will try to block even if you have resistance). See chapter 4 for information about what spells can be blocked. To block the attack you must have a shield. A Monk can also block with a staff and with at least one hand bare. If you fail to block or you can't block you will get hit, which will result in damage and the possibility of having to do a hit recovery (getting stunned). For formulas for monsters hitting players, see chapter 5.1.

• There exists a bug so that the bonus is always 0, except during the first game a character play. For information about what the bonus should be, see table under To Hit %, chapter 2.1.4.
• You can only block while standing still or while doing a melee attack.
• Monsters can never block attacks against them.

Damage done by players is composed of two parts, character damage and weapon damage. The character damage is based on your character's stats and can be calculated with the formulas below. To that damage you add the damage of any weapon, or weapons in the case of the Bard, you have equipped. For information about damage from spells, see chapter 4.

• All Bow character damage is doubled for player versus player except for Rogues.
• There are quite a few bugs associated with fire and lightning arrows which makes them often deal erroneous damage (way too high or no additional damage at all). For more information, see chapter 6.1.6.
• For the Monk, other weapons include just having a shield equiped.
• For the Bard, damage enhancements from the king's and merciless series of prefixes (+% damage) are added together if they occur on both weapons. It is then applied to the sum of both weapons' damage. Damage from enhancements of the slaughter series is only applicable to the weapon it comes on.
• The Barbarian can use a maul and two-handed swords in one hand.
• The Barbarian's bonus for not using a shield does not apply if he is using a staff.
• Magic damage is halved in player versus player.

As already stated, you add weapon damage to the damage above to get the final damage. Some "weapons" don't have any damage listed and are given below. Shield damage only applies if you wear no other weapon and hand/feet damage only applies if you have no other weapon or shield equipped.

• The special damage for a Monk using his feet or just a shield will never be below those values listed for non Monks (min and max damage checked separately).

The table below shows maximum naked character damage for various types of weapons. As character damage is based on a character's level, it (in the table below) only applies to level 50 characters. On top of the listed damage you should then add weapon damage and possibly modify either or both character damage and weapon damage.

Various things affect the amount of damage a character does. Mostly those things are related to various prefixes, suffixes, or unique properties, but a few exceptions exist. Critical Hits are explained below and type of monster is explained in chapter 5.1. The modifications to the damage can either modify weapon damage alone or your total damage; that is, both your character damage and your weapon damage. In the table below is a list of all modifications that apply to your total damage. They are each cumulative with each other and are applied on top of each other.

Warriors and Barbarians have the ability to do a critical hit while doing melee attacks. The chance for a critical hit is clvl% and a critical hit does twice the damage.

All the new characters in Hellfire have the ability to hit up to three monsters at a time in certain circumstances. It works by dealing ¼^th of the damage to the monsters beside the one you swing at. A separate To Hit check is done for each of those monsters. The To Hit is lowered accordingly to the formula in chapter 2.1.4 under To Hit %. The adjacent quarter damage is done in the following situations:

• A Monk using a staff.
• A Bard using two swords.
• A Barbarian using an axe, a two-handed sword or a maul, without having a shield equipped at the same time.

Adjacent quarter damage can never hit a player, only monsters.

A very important factor is how quickly you swing different weapons. A faster weapon not only causes more damage per unit of time, but also helps you stun lock your enemies more easily. Below are listed values for how quickly each character class swings each weapon. Only the Barbarian has different weapon speed for clubs and swords, for all other classes they are identical. The value given is the time in seconds it takes to do one swing.

The speed with which the arrows travel also varies with character class. Below is given the speed of arrows for all characters as well as some other factors affecting the speed of an arrow. The actual value is just a value given for comparison with other traveling effects, such as spells. The higher the number, the faster it will be. Arrows from monsters will always have a speed of 32. For the speed of arrows from traps, see chapter 4.3.