Dominions 5 Wiki

Repel is how Dominions represents the effectiveness of long weapons, such as halberds, pikes, and the like. If a unit attacks an enemy who has a longer weapon than the attacker, the defender may actually repel the attack and prevent it from happening. This occurs as follows:

• Any defender that has a longer weapon than the one used by its attacker makes a repel attack automatically upon being attacked. The defender makes one repel roll for each such weapon. Note: Size helps with weapon length: size 4+ gives +1 length.
• Attack and defense rolls are made. The repeller's attack roll is reduced by 1 per point of harassment penalty they have.
• If the result is a hit the attacker must pass a morale check or immediately abort his attack. This check is Attacker's Morale + 10 + attacker's size - repeller's size + DRN vs 10 + DRN + (the amount the repeller won their initial attack roll by).
• Whether or not the attacker passes the morale check, the defender’s attack generates damage and protection rolls. If damage is inflicted, the attacker takes one point of damage.
• If the attacker passes the morale check, he may make his attack. If he does not, the repeller gains +1 harassment penalty.

This simulates the defender successfully placing his longer weapon between himself and the attacker. All of this occurs before the attacker’s strike is resolved. Note that units with low morale are more likely to be repelled, and thus using long weapons against low-morale troops is very effective. Also, units with claws and bites (weapon length zero) are easier to repel.

The result of the repel attack roll is carried over to the morale check. This means that units with low defense will often get repelled even if their morale is high. In theory it's even possible for thugs with extremely high attack values to repel mindless units (who has morale 50 and are normally immune to repel) but that is unlikely to happen in a normal game.

Bear in mind that the defender gets one repel roll per weapon regardless of the number of attacks of that weapon. So a Dancing Trident is just as good at repelling as a Stone Bird