As long as we have someone like PortableGorilla looking under the hood at how the Bane engine really works, I thought I'd ask a few questions I've always been curious about, just in case he (or anyone else) wanted to take a crack at them. First, how does combat actually work? I assume it is similar to magic resistance, using a combination of the attacker’s miss chance (or THAC0, for monsters), weapon skill level, the difference in levels between attacker and defender, the defender’s armor class, and a random number roll (most likely, another 1d100). But how are these put together?
Second, a number of spells do not have a readily measurable effect (unlike damage or healing spells). How do these actually function in the game: weaken, slow, haste, armorplate, armormelt, bless, and anti-magic all come to mind in this regard.