What Does "Damage Resisted" Mean?

[NobleNick]

Hello, fellow adventurers,

Hmmm.... Well, I am a little puzzled by the messages I get when fighting some of the creatures in the Black Wolf Temple (site of Kresselack's tomb). My message screen will fill up with lines something like this:

Wight takes 3 hp piercing damage from Sashi (3 hp resisted)
Wight takes 4 hp slashing damage from Grimm (2 hp resisted)
Wight takes 6 hp piercing damage from ConjOui (4 hp resisted)
Wight takes 5 hp crushing damage from Clarisse (3 hp resisted)
Wight takes 2 hp piercing damage from Krevok (1 hp resisted)
Wight takes 7 hp slashing damage from Croix
Wight death
party gets XXX experience points

My question: What is happening when damage gets resisted? (Is the damage not done at all or is it damage that will soon be regenerated, or what?)

It seems to me that the damage I deal out (minus the "resisted" damage) is not enough to do some of these guys in, yet they seem to die as quickly as if they are taking the full damage. What is happening, here?

[marco]

what that means is exactly what it says, 'x' damaged resisted. what ever each hit computes out to be, then the resisted amount is deducted. this also works when the hits are against you. if you read sometimes it will read "critical hit diverted by helm (something like that)". Also don't forget the + to hit and + damage. all this is factored together then whatever + to defense the creature has is what the resistence is made up of.

[Morgalas Everhate]

I wondered the same myself, I think it means that you did say 3 damage (2 resisted) means perhaps you did 5 total but said monster has 40% say piercing damage resistance thus your arrow did not to much to a skeleton, yet a mace would bash easily thru a skeleton. But your right it doesn't seem to really feel like its doing what it says.

dunno??

[Darkman]

It took me a while to figure this out as well, but I'm pretty sure Morgalas Everhate has it right.

"Wight takes 3 hp piercing damage from Sashi (3 hp resisted)"

The first number is the amount of actual damage that the creature takes and the number in parenthesis is the amount that the creature DOES NOT take, as in resists. So if you add the two numbers together then you'll get the amount of damage you would have done if the creature didn't have resistances. Apparently a lot of the undead creatures have 50% resistance to slashing & piercing attacks which is why you get the same number of actual damage and resisted damage.

So in other words, if the number of damage taken and damage resisted are the same, that doesn't mean that they negate each other for no damage. Rather it means that the monster took half damage from the original amount.

[NobleNick]

Thanks, guys!

Darkman, I think you are right, since that would explain why the monster went down about when I would expect, from totalling up the "damage taken." (I also found a post outside this forum that corroborates what you said; but for a different "AD&D-like" game.)

Interesting note: I also found out the the "damage resisted" occurs in the original (unexpanded) IWD; but you don't get the more detailed message, telling you what is going on, unless you have HoW installed: Just one more reason (I think I'm up to about 23, now) why I am glad I have HoW.