Help me With D&D3 rules

[Farcus]

Hi i'm new to the D&D3 system , i used to play D&D2 on BG2+Expan which was very fun and challangeing but now that i moved to D&D3 i wonder if there is any website that is on the web that has some great info on how combat,armour and all the small details for D&D3 which revolves around NWN. Thx ahead of time, and i check google and didn't came up with any good sites.

[SpiritWarrior]

Welcome to the forums [img]smile.gif[/img] . Check out the manual for NWN's as it goes through much of the basic 3e system at the back. Also look here www.wizards.com for more quick info.

[Illumina Drathiran'ar]

The most important things for you to know are:
Higher AC is better now, and
THAC0 is gone. It's replaced by Base Attack Bonus.

[Timber Loftis]

And, also very important: all characters can multi class now. A very common sense change. Be careful, though, if your levels are more than 2 apart, you incur XP penalties. There are exceptions to this (the "favored class" for each race is not counted), but just make sure you take a look at it.

[Timber Loftis]

While we're at it, can somebody tell me how to read the damage resistance stat. It's gibberish to me.

[ScottG]

its on page 115 and 116 of the US manual..

Damage IMMUNITY is a percentage reduction of the amount of a type of damage when you actually receive damage. i.e. w/out any other type of damage modifiers and hit with a slashing wepon for 20 pts. of slashing damage while having 25% IMMUNITY to slasing damage you will only receive 15 points of damage. IF however your hit with 20 points of blunt damage then you will receive 20 points of blunt damage because you don't have any immunity to that type of damage.

Damage REDUCTION works on blunt, slashing, and piercing damage types (NOT elemental damage or magical damage or negative energy, etc.). HOWEVER it is also dependent on a weapon's magical modifier and states a threashold where you will not receive damage IF its within the weapons modifier range. i.e. 20/+3 means that if a weapon hits you that is +3 or less then the first 20 in damage will be disregarded. IF however your hit with a +4 weapon (or better) for 20 points of damage then then you will have NO damage resistance i.e. you'll take 20 points of damage.

Damage RESISTANCE is a bit trickier because its different depending on if its a natural ability or if its an item ability. An item ability will be like an IMMUNITY in that damage resistance will be specified based on damage TYPE. i.e. armor with a magical damage resistance to slashing will only protect against slasing, NOT for blunt damage (or any other type of damage). Additionally though it is NOT based on a weapon's modifier. i.e. if ANY type of weapon hits you (be it +1 or +50) you will not take damage to the amount specified. So if an opponent hits you with 20 in slashing damage with a +10 weapon and you have 20/- in slashing resistance then you will not receive ANY damage. If he hits again for 30 slashing damage you will only take 10. IF his weapon has slashing AND piercing type damage then and he hits for 20 then you will take 20 - becuase you couldn't resist the piercing element of the damage (only the slashing). Now it changes slightly for a natural resistance. Barbarians and Dwarven Defenders can also receive this naturally - when they do so the amount is for all types of physical damage (i.e. slash, blunt, and piercing). So a Level 6 dwarven defender will receive 3/- from slashing, blunt, and piercing damage - or if their hit with any of these damage types they will disregard the first 3 points of damage.

Note: whenever you see a #/- it will always be RESISTANCE, and whenever you see a #/+# then it will always be REDUCTION. Also the damage reduction spells like stoneskin are all based on REDUCTION AND will ONLY "absorb" an amount of damage until the spell expires.

Interaction between the 3 types:

Reduction and Resistance are "rolled" at essentially the same time. i.e. if you have slasing resistance of 5/- AND damage reduction of 15/+3 and your hit by an opponent (with a +3 weapon) for 20 in slashing damage then you will receive 5 points of slashing damage. In this instance your damage resistance was superceded by your damage reduction so that effectivly you were only protected by your damage reduction. However if your opponent instead hit you with a +4 weapon for 20 points of slashing damage then obviously your damage reduction would be void and you would only be relying on your slashing damage resistance of 5 so that you would take slasing damage of 15.

With an immunity percentage however is rolled BEFORE the others. So if you have a 25% immunity to damage, and damage reduction of 15/+3, and slashing damage resistance of 5/-, then the first 25% of the slashing damage is removed BEFORE you calculate your reduction/resistance. i.e. if your opponent hits you for 20 slashing damage with a +3 weapon then you will take NO slashing damage. (calculate your 25% of 20 damage = 15 in slashing damage and ALL of it is reduced by your damage reduction.) If your opponent were to hit you with a +4 weapon then you would receive 10 points of slashing damage. (calculate your 25% of 20 damage = 15 slashing damage and only 5 is resisted from your slashing damage resistance.)

[Timber Loftis]

Whoa. No wonder I didn't understand. Thanks so much, now I grok. I think it's overly complicated and unweildy without a computer crunching the numbers, but I grok.