Matching variable words in a string - regex

Question

This will sound extremely nerdy, but I play this online game that writes its in-game events to a log file. There's a program I'm using that is capable of reading this log file, and it's also capable of interpreting regex. My goal is to write a regex command that analyzes a certain string from this log file and then spits out certain parts of the string onto my screen.
The string that gets written to the log file has the following syntax (variables in bold):
NAME hits/bashes/crushes/claws/whatever NEWNAME for NUMBER points of damage.
If it matters, NUMBER will never contain commas or spaces, and the action verb (hits, bashes, whatever) will only ever be a single word without any special characters, spaces, numbers, etc.
What I'd like this program to do is interpret the regex code that I enter and spit out a result that says: NAME attacks NEWNAME
The catch is, NAME and NEWNAME can have the following range of possibilities (names and examples picked at random):
Kevin
Kevin's pet
Kevin from Oregon
Kevin from Oregon's pet
Kevin from Oregon`s pet (note the grave accent there instead of the apostrophe)
It's pretty simple if it's just something like Kevin hits Josh for 10728 points of damage. In this case, my regex is the following code block (please note that the program interprets the {N} wildcard on its own as any number without the need for regex):
(?<char1>\w+) \w+ (?<char2>\w+) for {N} points of damage.
...and my output reads...
${char1} attacks ${char2}
Whenever the game outputs that string of Kevin hits Josh for 10728 points of damage. to the log file, the program I'm using picks up on it and correctly outputs Kevin attacks Josh to my screen.
However, using that regex line results in a failure when spaces, apostrophes, grave accents, and/or any combination of the three are present in either NAME or NEWNAME.
I tried to alter the regex line to read...
(?<char1>[a-zA-Z0-9_ ]+) \w+ (?<char2>[a-zA-Z0-9_ ]+) for {N} points of damage.
...but when I encounter the string Kevin bashes Josh of Texas for 2132344 points of damage., for example, the output to my screen winds up being:
Kevin bashes Josh attacks Texas.
I'm trying different things but ultimately not coming up with something that's spitting out the proper format of NAME attacks NEWNAME when those two variables contain spaces, apostrophes, grave accents, and/or any combination of the three.
Any help or tips on what I'm doing wrong or how I can further alter that regex line would be extremely appreciated!

Answer 1

This is going to sound even nerdier, but I think the question isn't the regex, it's what tool you use the regex in.
Your biggest problem thus far has been the names. I suggest ignoring the names, and focusing only on the elements you know are there. The names are what's left.
I tried this myself using GNU sed:
sed -e 's/for [[:digit:]]\+ points of damage//' -e 's/hits\|bashes\|crushes/attacks/'
You see, first we can eliminate the end of the sentence, which is wholly superfluous. Then, we simply switch the verb to "attacks".
If the program uses a synonym for "attacks" that you don't have yet, you'll still have reasonable output; you can then fix your regex to include the new synonym.
You are guaranteed trouble if somebody's name includes "bashes" (or whatever) in it.
The second sed expression should be improved to be relevant only at a word boundary, but I'll leave that as an exercise for the reader. :)