fully resisted hit, yet still monster death?

[maciek]

Can someone fill me in a bit more in-depth on how the monster resistances work? Let's take a particular example in hand. My paladin is whacking at some Bladed skeletons with a great sword. Obviously this is not as hurtful as if she was using a hammer. Hence some of the damage is resisted; to wit, "Bladed skeleton: takes 9 points damage from Paladin (8 resisted)". Now, what EXACTLY does that mean? I was under the impression that this means, under normal circumstances, the skeleton would take 9 points damage, but since he is somewhat impervious to the weapon used, he only takes 9-8=1 point of damage. But this does not seem to be the case. Often times my party is working on hordes of skeletons with bladed weapons (oh, how I wish not just my dwarven cleric had skill in blunt weapons!), and I frequently get this:
"Bladed skeleton: takes 12 points damage (12 points resisted)"
"Bladed skeleton: Death"

What the??? Apparently 0 points of damage caused the death? Can someone explain?

[ 07-07-2004, 12:41 PM: Message edited by: maciek ]

[pritchke]

I noticed this as well so I always thought that the sum of the two is the actual damage you would have dealt if not for resistance. So the Bladed Skeleton takes 12 damage out of a possible 24, with 12 being resisted. At least this is the way I deduced it to work.

[ 07-07-2004, 12:52 PM: Message edited by: pritchke ]

[maciek]

Hmmm, I'll have to keep a closer eye next time and see if that is perhaps what is happening. My current gut feeling is that this cannot be right: the sums sound too high, the weapon used is not capable of dishing out that much damage. Also, IIRC, in "Foo takes X points damage (Y points resisted)", Y is ALWAYS less than or equal to X... if the original damge was indeed X+Y, I'd expect to sometimes see something like "Skeleton takes 1 poinst damage (4 points resisted), but I never do.

I hope not, but I get the feeling that what happens is that the full damage is applied first, and only THEN is any resisted damage "put back". Which of course would be quite silly, since, if you have a weapon powerful enough, you can kill the creature with one swing, totally bypassing the resistance (scenario: 30HP monster, you take one swing, do 32 points damage, and death occurs, totally ignoring that normally the monster would resist 29 of those points) Even if one doesn't have such a powerful weapon, it would still provide a cheesy shortcut to the "monster HP whittling down" process, with the last blow prematurely terminating the struggle.

[ 07-07-2004, 01:40 PM: Message edited by: maciek ]

[Aerich]

It works the way pritchke described.

In the above example, the paladin would normally do 17 damage to a creature without slashing resistance, but does 9 to skeletal enemies; 8 was resisted due to the 50% slashing resistance. 17 is not too high, because there are damage bonuses for weapon specialization, Strength, and magical weapons. A 1d10 for a two-handed sword + 2 for specialization + 3-6 (I assume) for Strength + at least 1 for magical weapon gets you to 17 quite easily.

It is not the case that the full weapon damage is applied first and some taken back. The computer calculates the regular damage (17), applies the modifier (-50% = 8), *then* applies it to the creature.

The reason you don't see the second number (damage resisted) as larger than the first (damage taken) is because you don't normally fight creatures that have better than 50% resistance to the various attack forms. Resistances take a set percentage off of damage, and there is no random aspect to it (except for magic resistance and one-shot spells like Chromatic Orb).

[ 07-07-2004, 01:54 PM: Message edited by: Aerich ]

[Roboghost]

Drowned Undead (Burial Isle) are something like 90% missile resistant, so...

A 21 point damage hit will look something like:

3 damage (18 resist)

Notice it will round up if it is an odd number--in your favor if you are whacking someone AND in your favor they are hitting you (the game programmers were nice to us on this one!):

So if you were 10% missile resistant, then it would look like this for a 21 point missile hit to you:

18 damage (3 resist).

[maciek]

Yay, the world makes sense again! Thanks to all who replied. Aerich, yes, the 50% or so fixed percentage resistance gives the numbers much more sense. I was just unaware my paladdin was gettin so much damage in! [img]smile.gif[/img] It's possible I was remembering the critical hits, as obviously those would stand out more, and that would definitely explain a lot in terms of damage dished out.

Roboghost, heh, I didn't make it that far yet, haven't met Drowned Undead... I imagine I would have clued in by then.