Note: The chapter Monster Editor may also have some information relative to this section and may help you understand some of it.
Creating battles is both easy and fun. Once you enter the battle editor, simply click on the monster you wish to be in a battle and then click on the screen to position the monster.
Imagine that the party will appear in the center of the battle you are creating.
If you would like the monsters to appear some distance away from the party you can do so by filling in a distance from 1 to 30 in the field labeled Distance. The monsters will appear as they are relative to each other, but in a random direction a distance of 1 to X away. Where X is the value you put in the distance field.
In addition, you may select a string that is displayed before the battle and a string that will be displayed after the battle in the treasure collection screen.
Limitations of battles: You are limited to placing 100 monsters per battle. If you create a battle with more than 100 monsters, all those monsters in excess of 100 will be omitted from battle. Note: The physical limit in a battle is 100 monsters. If you create such a battle, no creature spawning or creature summons spells will be able to bring more monsters into the fray. Try and stay below 75 in order to allow for such occurrences.
Positioning: It makes no difference if the monsters overlap in the battle display. During combat setup, all monsters will be shifted so they don't overlap each other or other objects such as walls, trees and mountains. You can pack them together like sardines as you create the battle and it won't hurt a thing.
Note: Notice that if you click on the lower right portion of a monster that is already in the battle, the monster list on the right will adjust to show that monster. As you can see below, a large four square dragon has one square that determines where it is actually located.
 
Figure 4.0
Deleting Monsters From Battles: To remove a monster from the battle, select “Erase Mode” from the bottom center of the battle screen and click on the lower right portion of the monster in the battle scene to remove that monster from the battle. You need to click on the lower right hand portion of the monster to remove it from battle. If the monster is tall or wide then the bottom right portion is the area you must click to remove it.
 
Figure 4.1
 
Figure 4.2
A typical monster is shown in Figure 4.2. As you can see, this monster will take up four squares on the field of battle, but when you place or erase this monster, the square that determines the monster's starting position is the lower right square.
Allies: To add a monster that will be friendly in battle, check the Force Friends checkbox at the bottom of the screen. As long as Force Friends is checked, all monsters you place in the battle will be friendly to the party regardless of their normal alliance as defined by the monster editor. These placed with the Force Friends feature are easily seen as they will be drawn with a gray box behind them. In addition all monsters with a TRAITOR value of 0 will also be friendly. (See Anatomy of a Monster for more info about Traitor Value)
Using Force Friends you can have creatures start a battle allied with the party who normally would be hostile towards the party.
Battle Macro: This has to be one of the single coolest features of Divinity. Battle Macros are really just an Extra Action Point that can be activated at the end of each round to perform cool stuff like summon new monsters, kill off a character, blast the landscape with a spell or just colorful text between rounds.
At the end of each round a check is made to see if a Battle Macro is assigned to that battle. If one is, the Extra Action Point (or Battle Macro) with that ID is activated.
If you want the Macro only to activate on specific conditions you can script the first few codes of the Macro using Codes 126 or 127 to determine if you want to actually activate the Macro. You can also use other codes as well but 126 and 127 are most often used.
If the conditions are all met, then any valid codes in the remainder of the Extra Action Point are executed prior to the next battle round.
Common uses of the Battle Macro are for bringing in reinforcements for either side, checking to see if a Boss Creature is still alive and perhaps destroying some enemy troops or causing them to run in fear if it has been slain, etc. There are many other uses but those are just a couple of the most common.
