Spoilers

Creature special attacks

Attack cooldowns

A creature action is one step of its turn. Speed can give a creature more than one action. Dragon breath, scratch, tail strikes and blink escapes have separate cooldowns. These cooldowns count creature actions. A dragon can use another ready attack while one ability recovers. The ordinary speed loop stops after a melee attack, while breath can use another action step.

Dragon breath

The broad sweep and narrow flame jet use different patterns. Both start from the centre of the dragon's body and skip its own tiles. Standing in several affected tiles does not multiply a single breath hit. Evasion can avoid the hit, and armour and blocking can reduce or prevent it. An unblocked breath can still apply Blistered after temporary health or a Rinded shield absorbs all its damage. Status resistance can prevent the burn. Being Blistered before the hit increases fire breath damage by 50% before armour.

Blocks, dodges and contact effects

A block stops a hit's damage, but some contact effects still happen. A draining enemy can recover health from a blocked attack against your active character. A withering touch can still apply Sapped, and a tail strike can still push you. Dodging the melee attack returns before those effects. In co-op, a blow aimed at the other character uses a separate route that requires a positive damage result before shields absorb it. Drain and Sapped only proceed after that check.

Reflection and healing suppression

Melee reflection directly removes health from your character. It can kill you through armour and shields. Ranged attacks and spells avoid this reflection. A healing suppression aura has a different purpose. While a living source is close enough, it prevents passive Terroir healing and ordinary melee lifesteal. Ranged lifesteal, rest healing and healing consumables bypass the aura. Walls do not block its range.