How important is dodge/evasion?

[Eldakar]

I was wondering how important it is and how do max evasion/dodge chars defence compares to those with 0 points invested.

[Wildan]

Zero investment in dodge/evasion results in 95% hitchance for the enemy unless it's reduced by external factors such as darkness, distance, burst penalty, move and shoot penalty etc (flat amount).

Basic precision is 70% - the enemy has the same attack skill vs your defense skill. It can be reduced by 60% max if your defense is twice as high. So if enemy has 140 melee skill, then you'd need 280 in dodge to bring his hitchance down to 10% which is lowest possible. That's why the arena boss is so hard to hit unless stunned, incapped, immobilized or have his exceptionally high dodge negated by any other means. For the same reason are traps and sledgehammer Pummel so effective against him.

Beware that both dodge and evasion (along with stealth and MP) are reduced by armor penalty (the same amount in %), so having 280 (or any) points in dodge is pointless for a 80% armor penalty character, leaving only 56 effective points as defense. I usually don't bother rasing dodge at all if late game I can't have 150+ effective points together with tabbis/syphoner armor. Otherwise dangerous enemies will hit regardless. One exception is the Uncanny Dodge feat that works well even with little dodge.

Evasion on the other hand is always useful even with medicore values because in worst case, if it doesn't help much to avoid ranged attacks at least it always reduces AoE damage to some degree and anything is welcome against one-hit killers like high tier frag grenades/mines.

[Eldakar]

Hmm, but since there is so much enemies that stun, incappacitate, immobilize you then mayby its just waste of points.

[MirddinEmris]

Well, at  least some of those attacks that gives such debuffs need to hit you first, so having evasion/dodge in that case is not pointless. And from my experience unless i play with high Con character, being stunned is almost always means death anyway.

Those skills are useful, but they are far from necessary.

There are several way of defending yourself in Underrail - big Con (preferably with feats like Thick Skull), good armor and/or shield (it is advised to have several armor outfits and both high and low frequency shields to deal with different enemies), dodge/evasion and stealth. And of course having good offence) Any character that wants to survive must have at least one or more of those defenses.

[Eldakar]

So decent char will have around 220-250 evasion with right equipment in the end right? How about gun or melee skill that enemies have? Whats highest you can encounter?

Btw i got idea for this thread from Rpg codex where guy stated that evasion/dodge is useless.

http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/underrail-the-incline-awakens-released.105387/page-231

[MirddinEmris]

So decent char will have around 220-250 evasion with right equipment in the end right? How about gun or melee skill that enemies have? Whats highest you can encounter?

Btw i got idea for this thread from Rpg codex where guy stated that evasion/dodge is useless.

http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/underrail-the-incline-awakens-released.105387/page-231

Well, you see unlike armor and shield you can't see the effect of dodge and evasion directly, since enemy just miss you and we are prone to remember times when our character got hit a lot more than all those time the enemy missed. That is why many people will say that dodge and evasion are useless. They aren't. If you want proof remember your fight with arena boss and how hard it was to hit him. That is the effect of those skills.

[Wildan]

Btw i got idea for this thread from Rpg codex where guy stated that evasion/dodge is useless.

http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/underrail-the-incline-awakens-released.105387/page-231

Almost too painful to read some of the nonsense he spews out. I honestly believe he's mentally challenged and has no other choice than to rely on savescumming in every encounter.

To sum the answer up: Comparison between 0 and max effect of dodge/evasion is getting hit 19 out 20 times vs. 2 out of 20, or roughly 10 times less shield/health.

[Eldakar]

So 0 dodge and 0 evasion char with full plate is not a good idea. Good to know. I guess 0 stealth is also bad idea since monsters will get always first turn unless you have high agility.

[MirddinEmris]

So 0 dodge and 0 evasion char with full plate is not a good idea. Good to know. I guess 0 stealth is also bad idea since monsters will get always first turn unless you have high agility.

That depends. Good armor  + good shield is decent, if you add high Con to that, it'a solid. Not every character can have high dodge and evasion.

There are of course tricks and tactics to have decent defense without big investment. Infused siphoner leather armor, tabi, all of those can increase your dodge and evasion. Uncanny dodge needs only 40 skill points to purchase and allows you to automatically evade next several melee attacks (number depends on your dodge) which is good, since enemies use special attacks (like crippling strike) first. Evasive maneuvers requires 50 points in evasion and on activation eat all your movement points giving you 3x their amount to evasion for next 2 turns. With cooldown of 3 turns it means that you can have really high evasion for 2/3 time with meager investment. Movement points are really easy to increase For unarmed characters there is Deflection feat that gives 30% of your melee skill to dodge.

Hope it was useful

[Wildan]

So 0 dodge and 0 evasion char with full plate is not a good idea. Good to know. I guess 0 stealth is also bad idea since monsters will get always first turn unless you have high agility.

If by full plate you mean metal armor crafted with multiple plates (very high armor penalty) then ofcourse it makes sense to leave defensive skills at 0 because they will be reduced below usefulness anyway. Check my first post again where I explained how armor penalty plays a role, no need for sarcasm. 

Metal armor doesn't neccessarily has to be that restrictive however. With Armor Sloping selfcrafted TiChrome and Supersteel variants paired with Nimble can get the penalty low enough to still be worth investing in both dodge and evasion. That character will not dodge/evade as good as a 0 penalty Nimble guy but it's a good mixture of both ends of the defense spectrum - Damage avoidance vs. damage mitigation. We can't be exceptionally good in both.

There is also a different damage reduction that gets applied after the armor: Conditioning (10-15+%), Stoicism (1-24%), lifting belt (10%), aegis (15%), morphine shot (50%), mushroom brew (10%) and ancient rathound leather (2 x 5%). Naturally it's more of an all or nothing approach. 10 - 15% reduction is of no big help but if you can combine most of those you can become almost immune to mechanical damage and reduce a big deal of everything else too (drugs have a rather short duration though and morphine shot can kill you). Most characters can't make a optimal use of this but there are exceptions like DEX-independent sledgehammer wielders or max CON assault riffle/sniper guys in full ancient rathound leather gear.

There are indeed lots of enemies capable of stun, incap etc. but certainly not so many to render dodge/evasion useless. With good use of stealth and game experience in general it becomes easy to determine who should be taken out first. Enemies are not randomized (I wish they were to some degree though).