Glossary
For those of you who aren't familiar with PC RPGs or the d20 combat system, this Glossary will hopefully provide you with a small reference that you can refer to while reading this guide, or playing the game, when you encounter a term or acronym that's unfamiliar to you. While the d20 system has been greatly improved since the days of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd Edition (you won't see any THAC0's, for instance), the system is still fairly hardcore when compared to the rules of most console RPGs.
The game takes care of all of these dice rolls and calculations, but if you ever want to pop the hood and see what's really going on in battle, go to the Messages menu in the Options screen and hit X to show the feedback.
You can find a boatload of stats in the Feedback display.
Attack
Also known as the attack roll, attack bonus, or to-hit roll.
In order to damage an opponent in combat, you must first successfully hit them, and the attack number of your characters determines their chances to do so. The attack number, which is displayed on your character's equipment screen, depends on a number of factors, including a character's level and class, their dexterity attribute, the type of weapon used, and what special feats you've selected. This positive number is what is added to the random number the game generates to determine whether or not your character hits their opponent.
For instance, suppose two of your characters both attack an opponent with a defense of 15. One of your characters has no attack bonus, while the other character has an attack bonus of +10. Since your attack roll needs to match or exceed the defense of your target to land a hit, the first character will need to roll a natural (unmodified) 15 or better, while the latter character will only need to roll a five or better (since five plus 10 is 15).
Damage Resistance (DR)
Damage resistance is quite handy in KOTOR, since it can reduce or eliminate the amount of damage a character takes when an enemy successfully attacks him or her. Damage resistance is usually gained through the use of an item, such as an energy shield, and (whether the game tells you this or not) is represented by a number, such as (5/- vs. Fire). The number before the slash is the amount of damage that is ignored; in this case, the first five points of damage from every fire-based attack would be ignored by the character, so that, if an attack was supposed to deal 10 points of fire damage to your whole party, that character would only take five, while the other characters would take full damage. The value after the slash normally represents the kind of weapon that can overcome the damage resistance, but, for the purposes of KOTOR, you won't have to worry about your DR being overcome.
Difficulty Check (DC)
A difficulty check is often required when you attempt to use a Force power or a skill, or make a saving throw. This translates the conceptual difficulty of a task into a number that can be matched to a die roll generated by the game.
To illustrate by way of an example, assume you have a character with a security skill of 10 that is attempting to pick a lock during the middle of a battle. The lock is rather intricate, so the DC is set to 25, meaning that your character must roll a 15 or higher to succeed in the lock-picking attempt.