Earlier this year (2004) the Dragonrealms combat system was given a pretty significant rewrite with respect to how combinations worked and how they factor into balance and position. Gone are the olden days of simply doing parry jab draw slice until the critter was dead. Ushered in are the drawn out lengthy combos where many mistakes will leave you in a position you'd rather not be in. While I may personally disagree with the implementation of this new system, it does appear to be here to stay and so we must learn and adapt to it if we're to continue to play.

It should be noted that the old combat system was fairly limited in its number of moves of any value and that this new system does allow for a significant number of new moves to be used. It would also seem that combinations are more closely tied to the type of weapon you're using. So, your MB combo may not be the same as your ME combo and that may not be the same as your LE combo.

The GMs posted several lists of combinations that seem to be optimal for the weapon type. Due to how the balance gains work, many of these combinations can be shortened down to three moves or lengthened almost indefinitely, though you'll almost certainly want to have a combination that's not more than a half a dozen moves or so, just for the sake of memorization.

It should be noted that dancing now is somewhat more difficult than it was in the past. It would seem that you need to deal an almost constant amount of damage with the new combinations in order to maintain any sort of balance. While this may not be universally true, it's almost inarguable that it was easier before. A combination I tend to use with ME in order to dance is parry feint draw this seems to do a fairly small amount of damage, save of course for the draw, which will slice even on a jabber making this more useful for a sabre than for an iltesh or scimitar. Similarly, HE and 2HE combinations can be limited to the same three steps so you needn't deal out the big damage as with a sweep or chop.

For ME/HE/2HE, I've also been told of another combination that seems to work well. Feint, Draw, Sweep, Slice, Chop then continously Draw, Sweep, Slice Chop. You shouldn't need to end with a parry or dodge and should be able to keep this up endlessly and stay nimbly or incredibly balanced.

• parry and dodge appear to be interchangeable in all sequences, the interaction between them being balance-neutral
• broken lines indicate useful balance-neutral paths
• it maybe assumed that skipping a step will be balance-positive and skipping two steps will be balance-neutral; this is not always the case but a reliable general rule (some useful exceptions marked)

sweep may be used anywhere in the sequence but has no balance-positive follow-up