Avadon: The Black Fortress — Turn-Based Combat, Action Points, and Vitality in Spiderweb's Party RPG

A Spy's Game of Squares and Turns

Avadon: The Black Fortress is a turn-based fantasy role-playing game from Spiderweb Software. You create an adventurer and work as a Hand of Avadon through the war-torn land of Lynaeus, taking missions, fighting foes, and finding magical artifacts. The combat deliberately rewards cunning and tactical skill rather than fast reflexes: when battle begins, the action stops and waits for your decisions.

What makes the game distinctive is how tightly its battle decisions are budgeted. A character's turn is measured in action points, movement and attacks draw on the same pool, and special abilities cost vitality that only recovers through rest or potions. Around that core, Avadon layers a party of up to five Hands, four character classes, sequential resistance math, trainer-led respecs, and a scavenging loop built on scarabs, runestones, and a junk bag for town selling.

Rounds, Turns, and the Action-Point Economy

Combat starts when you press the Start Combat button or when something attacks you. Battle then splits into rounds, and each character receives one turn per round. Faster characters act first; high Dexterity and the hasted condition both push a character earlier in the order. Each turn grants a base of 8 action points, reduced if the character is encumbered by heavy armor. Every square of movement costs one action point, so closing distance and taking actions compete for the same budget.

Enemies interfere with that budget directly. If you move out of a square adjacent to an enemy, you are stopped and cannot move again during that turn; a few creatures, usually those unable to move themselves, do not hinder movement this way. Abilities are chosen through the Use Ability button and, once used, stay unavailable for a cooldown period of several turns. Pressing End Combat ends the fight immediately if no enemies are visible; otherwise it ends after the current round, and a nearby foe restarts combat at once. The result is a battlefield where positioning, cooldown timing, and armor weight are all part of the same calculation rather than separate minigames.

Vitality, Health, and Layered Resistances

A character's maximum health is the base value for that character plus five times their level plus five times their Endurance; player characters usually carry a base of 40, while everyone else has a base of 1. Vitality measures how tired a character is and is spent whenever an ability is used. A character's starting vitality equals 10 plus 1.5 times Endurance plus level. As vitality approaches zero, the character can no longer use abilities. Returning to Avadon or drinking a Potion of Vitality restores it.

Avadon resolves harm through several attack types: melee, missile, mental, fire magic, cold magic, lightning magic, curse magic, poison, and acid. Each type carries a percentage resistance showing how much of that sort of attack is blocked, and the character information window displays these values; higher is better, and full protection is never reached. Armor and skills stack sequentially rather than adding up: two pieces each giving 50 percent physical protection first block half the damage, then half of what remains, for 75 percent total.

Leveling, Specialization, and Party Training

When a character gains enough experience to reach a new level, that level-up raises health and vitality, automatically increases one of the character's basic attributes, and makes the character more effective in combat. The button beside a portrait shows a question mark normally, but when a level is waiting that button turns into a plus sign; pressing it trains the character. The ability list on the right shows what can be improved, and when leveling you can increase abilities directly. Skills also carry attached abilities that grow stronger as the skill is trained, and training a skill to 7 or 8 grants those abilities a large bonus.

Specializations let a character, as levels accumulate, focus on different sets of skills. The ability display marks these investments: a pink number below an ability shows a specialization bonus, while a blue number above it shows a skill boost from an item. If a build turns out wrong, Trainer Leala in the Beraza Woods resets the character's skills so the points can be spent again. Party members beyond the starting character also gain experience alongside the main character, and while in Avadon you can view their inventories and statistics and train them when they level.

Scarabs, Runes, Potions, and the Junk Bag

Potions, scrolls, and enchanted crystals are found throughout the journey; potions help the character who drinks them, while scrolls and crystals tend to affect enemies or the whole party. Scarabs are special magical items the Hands of Avadon can equip, improving statistics and granting special abilities. At level one each character can equip one scarab, and every seven levels they gain capacity for another. Enchanted anvils, such as the one in Nicodemus's workshop in Avadon, open the inventory when used, and runestones found while traveling combine with a weapon or armor piece at the forge to make it stronger; blessed and emerald runestones are two examples.

Selecting the bag icon opens the inventory screen, where you pick up and drop items, use potions, and ready weapons and armor; pressing a number key from one to five targets an individual character. The party also carries a junk bag for items meant to be sold back in town. Select Open Junk Bag on the inventory window to open it, or hold the Command key (Control on Windows) and click an item to move it into the bag. Back in town, choosing Sell All In Bag instantly sells everything the junk bag holds.

Abilities, Targeting, and Lockpicking in the Field

Abilities in Avadon are invoked through the Use Ability button, which opens a selection window; hovering the cursor over an entry reveals exactly what it does before you commit to it. Some abilities require targeting: a spell aimed at a foe asks you to select that foe. After an ability is used it becomes unavailable for a cooldown period of several turns, so the same tool cannot be fired every round. The manual's Healing Chant example shows how the spell effect bonus scales outcomes, adding extra random healing rolls rather than a flat number.

Field objects respond to interaction rather than a single universal command. Clicking a box generally opens the Inventory screen with the container's contents listed in the lower right corner, while a book or sign displays its text and a wheel turns. A trap is disarmed only if your skills are high enough; otherwise, as the manual warns, you may have a problem. Locked doors and boxes without a key can be opened with lockpicks, and each lockpick used to pick a lock breaks, so opening a stubborn lock can consume many of them.

How Avadon Arrived: Publisher and Platforms

Avadon: The Black Fortress is a Spiderweb Software role-playing game, and the studio appears as both its developer and publisher. The game's Steam product record lists three supported platforms: Windows, macOS, and Linux. That same store listing carries the year 2011 as its Steam product date, which is when the product record was issued rather than a verified statement of the game's original release.

The catalog classifies the title under the indie and RPG genres, placing it alongside other independently produced role-playing releases rather than a large-studio line. Because Spiderweb Software handles both development and publishing itself, the same company name appears on both sides of the product listing. Together these store details establish the game's identity, its maker, and the desktop platforms it shipped for, without implying anything about edition contents, distribution arrangements, or how the retail offering compared across the three operating systems.

Starting Guidance from the Manual

Treat the 8-point action pool as a per-turn budget rather than a refillable bar: weigh each square of movement against what you want to do when you arrive, and remember that heavy armor reduces the pool before the first step. Because abilities sit on cooldowns of several turns, alternate them rather than planning to spam one tool every round. The manual also warns not to neglect characters you rarely field; give them equipment and train them when they gain levels, because you may later have reason to bring them along.

Carry lockpicks with the expectation that each attempt destroys one, so a stubborn lock can drain a stockpile. Use the junk bag as you travel to keep sellable clutter out of the working inventory, then empty it with Sell All In Bag once you are back in town. Return to Avadon when vitality runs low, and spend specialization points deliberately, since Trainer Leala in the Beraza Woods can reset them if the build disappoints.

First published Oct 22, 2026.