Project: War Dance

 Shown as a meter in game. See images tab.

- As long as you are not stunned, incoming damage is reduced depending on the amount of posture remaining. This mechanic is called "composure", or more colloquially "darktide". The reduced damage becomes internal damage, which will be applied again if you are stunned. 
- Composure reduces more damage at higher style, works better against projectiles, and will nullify environmental damage by consuming posture instead. Allowing poison or fire to remain on you, however, will rapidly drain your posture and induce internal damage buildup, which will put you dangerously close to a oneshot should a stray hit come your way.
- Internal damage can be reduced by dealing damage, in a manner similar to Bloodborne's rallying.
- Sneak to block. Blocking is identical to blocking in vanilla, except it is omnidirectional. It is omnidirectional because look is highly mutable and a primary driver of movement in Minecraft, making directional blocking clunky to use in practice. I will not be providing an option to make it direction-based.
- Blocks apply counterstrike to the attacker and knock them back slightly. Counterstrike increases posture damage taken and can stack. Blocking also charges up a Guard Counter, so it is also an offensive action.
- Every registered weapon (including shields and fists) have a defense rating. The higher of the two defense ratings in your available hands will always be used to block the attack. Defense rating changes how much of the attack's posture damage is immediately rallyable.
- Some weapons have a defense rating over 1, in which case blocking could actually cause you to gain more rally than you have lost (subject to the cap of max rally)
- Blocking right as an attack is about to land (~0.5 seconds by default) changes the block to a parry. Parries reflect health damage onto the attacker as internal damage and deal posture damage back to them, which can breach. Parries also create a small shockwave that deals some internal damage and non-breaching posture damage in an area around you, knocking mobs back.
- Block rating works the other way around with parries; the lower the block rating, the higher your riposte damage will be, up to double. However, your best hand is still used to calculate parry damage.
- Parrying can be done when your posture is full; blocking cannot. Just like in Sekiro.
- Parry does not apply counterstrike and does not charge guard counter faster. Parry is not a direct upgrade to block and I will not provide options to make it be so.
- Projectiles can also be blocked and parried. They can be configured to still trigger their non-damage effects on impact (e.g. a grenade will explode), or be deleted outright (e.g. shulker bullets). By default, blocking will drop the projectile in front of you and parrying will send it back to its shooter. This includes spells, splash potions, and other more unique projectiles.

- Pressing shift+R by default enters combat mode.
- In combat mode, normal key function is overridden with PWD key functions where applicable. (so if middle click was set to use skills, it would kick instead of pick block or whatever else it's set to!)
- relevant HUDs and your offhand (if it is empty) also only show up in combat mode. The one exception is posture, since it's rather essential to not dying.

Spirit

- Spirit is a blue bar on your HUD that is gained through melee attacks and spent on skills, breaching moves, and ranged attacks.
- Ranged damage is reduced and deals no knockback if you lack the spirit to fund them. In this way it is sort of a universal ammo gauge.
- Higher style and some skills will allow you to generate spirit faster, and an attribute causes all spirit consumption to refund a bit of the spirit spent. On the converse, spamming the same melee hit will cause its spirit generation to drop to nearly nothing.

Style

Adrenaline

Dual Wielding

- Only "weapons" and "shields" can be swung, and only in combat mode (to prevent accidentally hitting villagers), so buckets and ender pearls will function as normal.
- The exception to the "weapon" rule is fists: they can be swung in the offhand in combat mode.

 - In combat mode, weapon usage is altered dramatically. I like to joke that this is a weapon skinwalking mod, as it alters many functions of existing weapons.
- First and foremost, there are now eight possible ways to attack with each weapon. 
1. by default you will perform standing attacks.
2. sprinting, swimming, or dodging will cause you to perform sprint attacks.
3. falling downwards makes you perform falling attacks.
4. jumping, flying upwards or being in aerial mode makes you perform aerial attacks.
5. holding sneak (guard) until you hear a ding will change your next attack into a guard counter.
6. normal tossing is suppressed in combat mode, because why would you want to toss your sword as an item? Holding Q while attacking will perform a throw attack (which might not actually throw the item, depends on its moveset information)
7. swapping hands is suppressed in combat mode, F+attack executes a draw attack with the new weapon you are drawing from your quiver.
8. lastly, picking up a thrown weapon (by timeout, attacking it with an empty hand, or grabbing it with your grapple) will cause you to automatically perform a pickup flourish.

Each and every weapon, and even non-weapons such as shovels and hoes, will behave differently in each of these states. The changes are too all-encompassing to be listed exhaustively here. Instead, open your trance menu (\) and select the labeled thought bubble to study the blade.

 - You can set up your quiver by entering your trance menu (\ by default) and selecting the labeled thought bubble.
- Your quiver has 7 slots to hold weapons. Placed weapons will remember their slots and automatically return to that slot on pickup, if possible.
- When throwing, you can mouse over a weapon in the on-screen quiver radial menu to instantly swap to that weapon after throwing your current one.
- When draw attacking, you can do the same to swap to that weapon and execute its draw attack.
- In either case, selecting the barrier icon will cause you to swap to an empty hand.

- Movement key+alt (default) in combat mode will execute a dodge. Without movement input, dodging defaults to backwards. You can dodge in the air.
- The player performs a small jump with large horizontal velocity, ending about 5 blocks from where they begin. The cooldown is configurable.
- While dodging you are immune to all melee and projectile attacks for 10 ticks.
- Pressing both sprint and sneak will perform a slide forward with the same effect as dodge, but compresses your model down to swimming size. Useful for getting through crawl-holes.
- Dodging just as an attack is about to reach you executes a perfect dodge, which activates a very short localized time slow effect. Mobs will move in slow motion and cannot block or attack. This is colloquially known as "Steve time".
- I-frame times can be adjusted in the configs.

- Jumping in the air sets you to aerial mode for about 1.5 seconds, shown by a little wing on your crosshair. Gravity is reduced during aerial mode.
- Armor can grant additional air jumps. You can roughly track how many jumps you have left using the wing HUD.
- While airborne, dodge into a wall directly to cling to it. While clinging, you can move along the wall, and even onto adjacent walls or the ceiling. Jump to leap off and reset your air jump count.
- Alternatively, dodge into a wall sideways to slide along the wall. Good for parkour and swift engagements. You will start to cling if you are about to fall off or hit a wall during the slide.
- Combat mode increases your step height, and step-up applies even in the air. If you dodge onto a platform from aerial mode, you will not be able to fall off that platform for a brief moment (unless you jump again). This means you can make some otherwise impossible jumps or precisely control your landing even while moving at high speeds.

- Middle mouse button in combat mode to kick.
- Kick consumes 12 posture to deal 12 posture damage, light health damage, and good knockback.
- Kick counts as its own category for combo. A fresh kick will nearly immediately refund its own cost; a stale kick is a gamble at best.
- Kicking a wall while airborne will boost you up slightly.
- The kick damage attribute increases... kick damage.

- Press c by default in combat mode to launch a grappling hook. The grappling hook flies straight forward and attaches to the first block, mob, or thrown weapon it hits.
- While hooked you will swing around the hooked mob or block. This can allow you to catch up with flying mobs or swing around on the nether roof. Vertical motion is slightly damped for more stylish horizontal swings. Overall feels a bit like Titanfall.
- Press c again to zip to the target location, or hold sneak while pressing c to pull the target back to you.
- If you grappled a thrown weapon, you will pick it back up and perform a pickup flourish when you reach it or it reaches you. The weapon will be tucked back into your quiver if your hands are not empty.
- Zipping to a block will boost you up slightly at the end and place you in aerial mode. If you pull a block, you will yank a copy of the block to you, replacing your next kick with a block throw that hits at range and knocks back enemies.
- Zipping to a mob will cause you to kick the mob. This can breach if you have max spirit and is referred to as a dropkick. Pulling a mob will cause you to slowly reel it in, depending on how heavy the mob is. Since pulling involves sneaking, you can prepare a guard counter to land just as the mob comes in range.
- Grappling is as quintessential to vertical movement as the arrow keys are to horizontal movement. I will not be providing the option to disable or gate this feature.

- You are considered to be two-handing if your offhand is bound, if you are wielding a two-handed item (which also happens to bind your offhand), or if your offhand item is not an item or a shield.

- Two-handing confers many buffs. Item-specific two-handing bonuses may be checked in the tooltip.
- The price for these buffs is, of course, that you don't have the extra attack or defense from your offhand.

- Fatal damage puts you at death's door, knocking you down, resetting your combo, and causing your max health to start draining down to 1. During this time you are invulnerable to damage but also cannot heal in any way.
- Reach A rank again during death's door to stop the drain. If you hit death's door repeatedly during a single fight, your health will keep draining lower and lower.
- If you let your max health get drained down to 1, death's door will be disabled until you recover to full health again. Considering that you are literally at 1 health, it may be wise to retreat.
- When out of combat for a while, or while affected by effects marked as comfortable, you will slowly recover lost hearts.

- I highly recommend installing my other mod, Armor Curve, to nerf vanilla damage reduction. These stats don't really add onto your ability to not die per se, but I think armor curve is neat. 

- Armor can have different attributes that slightly modify the aforementioned mechanics and in an attempt to break the diamond/netherite monotony. Every piece has one unique attribute to encourage mixing and matching. The overall change on feel in gameplay will be outlined below:
- leather increases aerial mobility and spirit efficiency. It also has nearly no stealth impact. For the discerning assassin and ranger.
- chain increases luck and other opportunistic attributes. Good for a mercenary or rogue who engages and disengages constantly while seeking their lucky break.
- iron increases your block window, rally regeneration, and death's door duration, for the stout warrior locked in back-and-forth combat.
- gold adds skill effectiveness and improves generation of various resources, for a skill-based sifu style
- diamond is juggernaut-oriented, boasting higher max posture and internal damage recovery to trade blows and stun safely.
- netherite amplifies counterstrike and block power for the tanks to amp up their guard counters.

Completely moved to Cloak and Dagger!

- Manuals and scrolls may be used to learn new skills. Scrolls are found in random dungeon chests and are also given out as rewards for particularly impressive feats while using certain skills. Manuals will automatically overwrite your skill loadout with the loadout stored in the manual, ignoring ones you have not yet learned (unless the manual is set to autolearn).

- Manuals can be generated with the command /wardance manualize [true/false] for autolearning. You can also enter the meditation screen with a valid written book in your hand to convert said written book into a manual. Scrolls can be NBT'd to give a random skill or a fixed skill.

- When you first spawn into the world you are given a random hand-crafted manual. The manual is intentionally incomplete so you may fill it up with other skills you find around the world, and each is crafted to demonstrate some basic skill synergies. You don't have to use the manual if you don't want to, of course.

- Skills must be first set in the skill screen, then brought up in combat mode with the R key as a radial menu. You have 5 active slots, 5 passive slots, and 1 "style" slot.

- When you first enter you are greeted with a screen with a single slot dead center for your stance/art/style. The center info screen gives a welcome message and basic instructions on how to pick a style, and the styles are listed on the left.
- After you pick a style, the slot moves into the bottom right corner and the skill screen appears for you to select your skills. You can pick another style by clicking that slot, but picking another style will clear currently selected skills.
- Each skill has a color, and each style only supports up to a certain number of colors.
- Above the skill selection scroll bar is a list of filter options. You may filter by color or revert to default, which shows all equippable skills. The colors that you currently have are tinted instead of white.
- Each color tab has extra tooltips on mousing over that show their names and short descriptions:
    white: expertise. Simple but effective skills.
    red: dominance. You are mighty. Crush your foes.
    green: resolution. Never give, never fall. Be as steady as a wall.
    gray: subterfuge. The deadliest strike is the one unseen.
    azure: fervor. Implacable, unstoppable. Death rains down in a thousand cuts.
    cyan: perception. See all, reach all. None can escape your grasp.
    violet: decay. What order has built, entropy shall destroy.

    gold: generosity/avarice. A somewhat conflicted category that is built around both group buffs and personal greed.

- All skill icons are taken from Lorc's site game-icons.net.

- This mod uses datapacks to determine the combat stats of weapons. Place your data under <namespace>/war_stats. For an example, see this json for the vanilla stats. Two-handing bonuses should be placed under <namespace>/war_twohanding, and follow the Attributizer format. It is possible to create stats for an item tag in this manner by prefixing the key with "#", in which case the stats will be applied to any items with the tag that have not been already explicitly defined.

- Different sweeps can be datapacked to occur under different circumstances. See the example vanilla jsons and this document.

- Armor stats and shield attack speed reduction are provided by Attributizer. For an example, see this json for the vanilla stats provided.

- Special cases of mob parrying (e.g. iron golem having an innate shield against projectiles) can be defined with a json datapack. See this github file for an example that gives the spider a harder shell.

- Use /wardance toggle to turn off specific features (such as parrying or sweep attacks) for specific players.

- When attacking, a number is rolled between 0 and (attacker luck-target luck), with damage increased or decreased accordingly. The luck bonus can be adjusted or disabled in the config.