Quick Answer: How Many Dudes explains almost none of its own rules in-game, which is why the community trades a lot of half-right folklore. This glossary pulls the mechanics straight from the official Dudex (the developers' own wiki) — how Cleave, Toughness and the Diminishing Stats actually work, every enemy Trait, and the combat terms your Dudes' abilities are built on. If a mechanic is not in the Dudex, it is not stated here.
Version note: Written August 6, 2026, updated August 15 for v1.0.12-rc.5. Definitions, stats and Traits are quoted from the official Dudex at howmanydudes.com; the deflection, taunt-trigger and Manager sections come from developer forum answers and long-running player testing, linked inline. Where a widely-repeated "mechanic" has no source at all, this guide says so rather than guessing.
Late rounds are where every stat interaction and enemy Trait compounds at once. The game explains none of it on screen. (Screenshot: Butterscotch Shenanigans)
Core Combat Terms
These are the words the Dude abilities and Relics are written in. Knowing them is the difference between reading a Relic and understanding it.
- Direct Damage — the damage from a Dude's own Attack, as opposed to secondary effects. Most "when he deals Direct Damage" triggers key off this.
- Primary Target — the single enemy a Dude is attacking. Cleave and some effects branch off from it to nearby enemies.
- Cleave — a chance to hit an additional target near your Primary Target. Every 100% Cleave is a guaranteed extra hit.
- DPS — damage per second while attacking, defined as Attack Speed × Attack Power. Several abilities scale off DPS rather than raw Attack Power.
- Throw / Stun — displacement effects. Many enemies Throw your Dudes across the map; some Stun them. A few enemy types (see Traits) are immune to both.
- Taunt — forces enemies to focus a Dude. Countered by Taunt Resistance, the chance to ignore a Taunt.
- Dash — a Dude or enemy quickly closing distance to a target, usually to attack or protect.
- Piercing — how enemy attacks bypass your Toughness. Several enemy Traits grant Piercing (see below).
- Temporary Health — a temporary buffer some Dudes grant; note the Primal Rage enemy Trait specifically destroys it.
- Transferred / Deflection — damage redirection. Deflection is a chance to take no damage and instead redirect 50% of it as Direct Damage to an ally with high current HP (that ally can still Block or Evade it).
- Stored & Expelled — the delayed-damage system behind the Lich, Manager, Mummy and Warlock. Damage is Stored, then Expelled later. For the Lich's Enthrall, the Dudex states plainly: "70% of his incoming damage gets Stored in his Thralls," then every 3 seconds it is Expelled as True Damage; if that is Fatal, the Thrall is Healed 50% HP and gains a stack of Revenant. (This corrects a common community claim of "100% of max HP" — the official figure is 70% of incoming damage.)
- Knocked Out — a Dude downed in battle; some effects trigger on a Dude being Knocked Out or failing to recover.
The Stat System
Every Dude has baseline stats that shift as you collect Relics and Trinkets. The full official list:
| Stat | What it does |
|---|---|
| Attack Power | Damage per Attack |
| Attack Speed | Attacks per second |
| Max HP | How much damage you can take |
| DPS | Attack Speed × Attack Power |
| Toughness | Reduces all incoming damage (Diminishing) |
| Block Chance | Chance to Block incoming Direct Damage entirely (Diminishing) |
| Evasion | Chance to Evade incoming damage entirely (Diminishing) |
| Deflection | Chance to redirect 50% of damage to a high-HP ally as Direct Damage (Diminishing) |
| Miss Chance | Chance your damage fails to connect (Diminishing) |
| Crit Chance | Chance to land a Critical Hit (Diminishing) |
| Crit Damage | Extra damage on Critical Hits |
| Cleave | Chance at an extra hit near your Primary Target (100% = one guaranteed) |
| Cleave Damage Down | Reduces Cleave damage dealt (Diminishing) |
| Lifesteal | Chance on Direct Damage to Heal for the damage dealt |
| Regeneration | Passively Heal this % of Max HP each second |
| Healing Received / Resistance | Increases / reduces incoming Healing |
| Run Speed | Movement speed |
| Taunt Resistance | Chance to ignore a Taunt |
| Vulnerability | Increases all incoming damage |
| Crit Exposure / Vulnerability | Increases chance to receive / damage taken from Crits |
The Diminishing Stat Rule
The single most useful hidden mechanic: several defensive stats are flagged Diminishing Stats — Block Chance, Cleave Damage Down, Crit Chance, Deflection, Evasion, Miss Chance and Toughness. Each additional point is worth less than the last. The practical read: stacking one defensive stat to the moon has sharp diminishing returns; spreading across Toughness, Evasion and Block is more efficient than piling everything into one. The game never tells you which stats diminish — the Dudex does.
Enemy Traits: The "Bonus Horrors"
Most enemies just hit you. Some carry Traits — extra rules the game does not surface. Knowing them tells you why a run suddenly falls apart. Grouped by what they do:
Knockback & displacement — these Throw your formation apart:
| Trait | Effect |
|---|---|
| Backhand | 25% chance to Throw its Primary Target an extreme distance |
| Charger / Hangry | Charges across the field, damaging and Throwing Dudes it passes |
| Cavitation Bubble | 5% chance to explode, Throwing all nearby Dudes |
| Quack Blast | Shockwave that Throws Dudes in its path |
| Shotgun Shell | Blasts that damage and Throw Dudes beside it |
| Starburst | 20% chance to launch a star, damaging and Throwing nearby Dudes |
| Tail Whip | 20% chance to Throw its target into another enemy of the same type |
| Pounce | Throws a Dude away, then pounces on him |
| Trample | Walking over Dudes damages and briefly Stuns them |
Armour-piercing & anti-heal — these beat Toughness and healing:
| Trait | Effect |
|---|---|
| Sharp Claws / Knife Wielder | 25% / 15% Piercing |
| Sharp Horn / Quills | 15% / 10% Piercing (Quills also reflects damage) |
| Plagued | Stacks up to 10% reduced Healing Received on the target |
| Rotten | Rot Cloud: 25% less Healing Received for 3s |
| Snap | Removes fingers: stacking −1% Attack Power, permanent |
| Venom / Toxic Secretion | Stacking Vulnerability on the target / on its attacker |
| Peck / Mudslinger | Apply Miss Chance to your Dudes |
Enrage at low HP — punish a slow kill:
| Trait | Effect |
|---|---|
| Panicky | Below 30% HP, runs around damaging and Throwing Dudes |
| Primal Rage | Below 30% HP, destroys nearby Temporary Health, then +20% Attack Power |
| Slashing Rampage | Below 50% HP, Dashes between 5 Dudes for 60% DPS each |
Immunities & control resistance — plans that fail against them:
| Trait | Effect |
|---|---|
| Huge / Stable / Tripod | Cannot be Thrown or Stunned |
| Evasive | Cannot be targeted by Cleave |
| Don't Care | 80% Taunt Resistance |
| Food Thief | Cannot be Taunted; hunts Dudes who have eaten food |
Pack & synergy — stronger in numbers:
| Trait | Effect |
|---|---|
| Apes Together Strong | +1% Attack Power per Gorilla-type enemy active |
| Pack Mentality | Transfers 30% of damage taken to 2 allies of the same type |
| Body Positivity | 99% of head damage is Transferred to its last body segment until none remain |
| Proud | On a Lion's death, all Lions gain stacking Attack Power |
| Swarmer | +Run Speed and Attack Speed per nearby ally of the same type |
Hunters & specials — they come for specific Dudes:
| Trait | Effect |
|---|---|
| Hunter | Dashes to injured Dudes, attacks for 2s, immune to Taunts meanwhile |
| Bite Instinct | Reflexively Attacks any Dude Thrown near it |
| Phased | 20% chance on Attack to teleport to a random Dude and hit instantly |
| Pinch | 10% chance to latch on for 3s, dealing 75% DPS twice a second |
| Hellfire | 20% chance to launch Hellfire, hitting all Dudes near the impact |
| Marrow Eater | Grows stronger each time a Dude is Knocked Out and fails to recover |
The pattern worth internalising: many Traits reward killing fast (enrage-at-low-HP, Marrow Eater, Swarmer) and several defeat crowd-clear (Evasive dodges Cleave, Huge/Stable/Tripod ignore knockback). When a wave feels unfair, it is usually one of these Traits, not a difficulty spike.
When Taunt Looks Broken, Check Cleave First
A worked example of the section above, because it caught an experienced player for days. Samurais were dying instantly in a run stacked with taunt — battle-start taunt, a General taunting, a Pirate and a psionic Dude taunting on top — against small groups with no Taunt Resistance. Taunt looked bugged.
It was Cleave. The reporter closed his own thread after more play: the Samurai's dash carries it into a space where a monster is already swinging, it catches a stray hit there, and its small health pool does the rest. A developer had independently landed on cleave as the next best guess and offered to test it. Two other explanations got ruled out along the way and are worth carrying: Generals do not taunt themselves — they make another Dude taunt, so a General in your line-up can be the reason your Samurais hold aggro; and the enemy's Don't Care trait is the thing to check before blaming taunt at all.
The general rule: a fragile Dude that dies "for no reason" is usually standing where damage already is. Read positioning and Cleave before you read the ability as broken.
The Deflection Stack: Why Psionic Walls Hold
The Dudex gives you the headline number — Deflection redirects 50% of a hit to a high-HP ally as Direct Damage — but not how it layers with the Psionic kit, which is where the tanking archetype actually comes from. Long-running player testing on the forums fills in the rest, and one contributor attributes the key ruling to a developer:
- The redirected hit is already halved. A 100-damage hit arrives on the ally as 50.
- Neural Net cuts the remainder by 40%, so a 100-damage hit lands as 30. That is 70% off the original, not 40%.
- Toughness does not reduce deflected damage. The Deflection tooltip explicitly allows Evade and Block on the redirected hit and pointedly does not mention Toughness. This is the one point still under dispute on the forum — a second player reads Toughness as applying to all incoming damage and wants developer confirmation. Build as if it does not apply and you will not be disappointed either way.
- A Dude cannot deflect to himself, but he can deflect to another Dude of the same type — which is what makes a stack of Psionics pass the same hit around.
- Face Tattoo funnels all deflected damage to a random high-HP Psionic rather than spreading it.
The same testing flags a matching hole on the Lich: Toughness does not reduce the Enthrall Expel either. That damage bypasses negation and avoidance by design.
Practical build rule: on a deflection team, spend your defensive budget on Evasion and Block, not Toughness. Toughness protects the Dude taking the original hit; it does nothing for the Dude the hit lands on.
What Actually Makes a Dude Taunt
Taunt is not a stat you raise — it is a set of triggers, and they differ per family. A developer laid out the three sources: some Dudes taunt inherently, some Relics grant a taunt, and Blacksheep forces the last Roster Dude to taunt — Roster Dudes only, so Skeledudes and Echoes never get picked for it.
A veteran player mapped the per-family triggers. Treat this as field notes rather than documentation, but it lines up with the developer's framing:
| Family | What triggers their taunt | What to feed it |
|---|---|---|
| Knight | Every X seconds inherently; with the right Relic, a chance on every direct hit | Attack Speed, then Crit to survive |
| Pirate | Battle start, plus on Evades and direct Crits | Evasion and Crit |
| Psionic | Battle start, plus when they Deflect or take deflected damage | Deflection (see above) |
| Construction Worker | Direct hits | Attack Speed — still struggles to hold aggro outside bosses |
| Lich | No inherent taunt until their two taunting Relics; then roughly every 4 seconds when Enthrall pops, plus battle start | External taunt sources early |
| Warlock | Battle start with a Relic, plus when they Expel stored damage on a direct hit | Attack Speed |
| Zombie | A chance on every Heal received — and healing is everywhere | Any healing source |
The trap this explains: the Ancient Sword Relic reads like "summon a Skeledude every time a Dude taunts," and players conclude it is broken when the Skeledudes barely appear. It is a 5% chance — one taunt in twenty — and it sits on a 1-second Global Cooldown. The original reporter accepted that read and concluded he had been triggering taunt constantly all along. Before you call a taunt build broken, check the Relic's percentage.
When Managers Fire Their Stored Damage
Managers mark four non-Manager Interns, store a portion of their damage, then dump it on a target — and the timing looks random enough that players assume it is. It is not: the payload goes off near-instantly, the moment an Intern deals damage, per a developer answer relayed on the forum. There is no threshold to reach and no timer to play around. You raise Manager DPS by raising your Interns' damage and attack speed, not by waiting.
"Dismiss" Closes the Window — It Does Not Fire the Dude
An interface trap rather than a mechanic, and it is worth knowing before it costs you a run. Click a Dude's portrait during a battle and the view zooms in on them, showing their buffs and details, with a Dismiss button at the bottom. The word reads like a roster action, so players hunt for another way out rather than press it.
Dismiss is the close button for that panel. Two players confirmed it to a third who could not escape the detail view on August 9, and one of them suggested the obvious rename to "close". Your Dude stays exactly where it was. A developer asked the reporter for a screenshot the next time it happens, so the wording may yet change.
Relic Timing: Global Cooldown
Some Relics fire on a Global Cooldown rather than per-Dude — the Dudex uses phrasings like "with a 1 second Global Cooldown" and "Once per battle Global Cooldown." That means the effect is limited across your whole team, not per individual Dude, so stacking more copies of that Dude does not multiply how often it triggers. Check a Relic's wording for "Global Cooldown" before you build around spamming it.
What the Dudex Does Not Cover
To keep this honest: a few widely-repeated "mechanics" have no entry in the official Dudex, and are left out on purpose —
- No enemy health-bar colour table. The Dudex documents Enemy Types and Traits, not a colour-coded HP system.
- No "Fedora" Relic. There is no Fedora in the Dudex's Relic list.
- No documented lethal-damage / death-prevention trigger order.
If you see those stated as fact elsewhere, they are community guesses, not developer documentation. Everything on this page is traceable to the official Dudex — see the linked pages in the version note above.