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Resistances


Slarti

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One of the nicest new features of A5 is that the resistances displayed in the character skills window are calculated accurately -- for the first time since, well, ever. Taking advantage of this, I've done some exploring in the area of resistances and have discovered the following.

 

Every resistance listed here is applied as if it is a single extra piece of armor; it multiplies with other resistances. So if you wear a 50% armor suit of armor and have Thick Skin, you have 55% armor total. Similarly, having 2 points of Strength provides one 6% stun resistance, not two discrete 3% stun resistances.

 

EQUIPMENT:

Armor provides half its value in armor rating to the fire/cold/electric/poison/acid resistances. The last two are new and were not given by armor in past games.

 

When I say "armor" in the below lists however, I only refer to the armor rating and other resistances are not affected at half or any value.

 

Hostile effect resistance provides points to every resistance AND to the armor rating.

 

TRAITS:

Strong Will - 50% mental resistance

Thick Skin - 10% armor

Divinely Touched - 20% armor (!!!)

Good Constitution - 4% H.E.R.

...additional poison and acid resistance of about 28%

 

Slith - 20% fire, poison and acid resistance

...and bonus HP. I can't figure out the math - is it really a flat bonus of 4 HP at any level and endurance skill?

 

SPELLS:

Enduring Shield - 3% armor, fire/cold/elec/pois/acid resists

Enduring Armor - 6% armor, fire/cold/elec/pois/acid resists

 

SKILLS:

Strength - 3%/pt stun resist

Endurance - 3%/pt pois/acid resists (a change)

Dexterity - nothing (a change)

Intelligence - 3%/pt mental resist

Arcane Lore - 2%/pt mental resist

 

Hardiness - 2%/pt armor, fire/cold/elec/pois/acid resists

Resistance - 3%/pt fire/cold/elec/pois/acid resists

Luck - 1%/pt H.E.R.

 

One more thing -- there appears to be a hard cap of 90% on every resist stat. I have only tested this a little, so I can't be positive, but that appears to be the case.

 

Conclusions:

- Divinely Touched is even more overpowered than we thought.

- Sliths are not really more survivable than Nephils. If anything the Nephil dodge bonus from gymnastics is more valuable.

- Hardiness is much, much better than we thought. 6 skill points reduce ALL your damage by 8%. 20 reduce it by 16%.

- Buying those 3 points of Resistance is definitely worth it.

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I think you are wrong here -

 

Quote:
Augmentation - increases HP by 50%
This is a shifting increase that declines as you go up levels if you list it as a percentage. I found in playing for endurance 2 you got 21 extra health and increased slightly with more endurance (it was more like 25-33% of actual health) and it never got to be a much larger percentage. Still those health points are significant all through out the game.

 

The slith HP bonus seems right. It's nice at the start, but Sliths by the end game are 2 levels behind nephils which are 2 levels behind humans for the same XP penalty from traits.

 

I never got past the upper 80% for armor/resistances, but in my game where I put hardiness at 8 for fighters and trained reistance, the goal was to reduce damage to a manageable level. I want something that can be dealt with by regeneration. Having 75 to 85% damage absorbed is reasonable for the last part of the game and needed because of area effect spells.

 

Goro's Giant quest in chapter 8 routinely had 100+ damage past armor and this was having 75% absorbed. I was running with all characters wearing blessed breastplate (34%) as the main piece of armor.

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I stand corrected. It looks like Augmentation always gives 50% of your HP back if you have 2 Endurance and are Human, but doesn't scale with Endurance or the Slith HP "bonus". If I'm right, this means it gives

 

19 + Level

 

While the regular HP formula is

 

38 + ( (Level + 1) * (Endurance / 2) )

 

and the Slith bonus is

 

4

 

Actually, I think the second one at least is more complicated, because there is a slight variation in return on endurance. There's a fraction in there somewhere, possibly a 9/8.

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  • 3 years later...

Bzzzt! Nope, Resistance definitely adds 4% per point. You may be noticing a difference of 3%, but that's because the total modifier from Resistance, just like the modifier from an individual piece of armor, is multiplied on. Thus, if your visible Fire Resistance was 25%, and you increase Resistance by 1, your visible Fire Resistance will become 28%.

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Originally Posted By: CRISIS on INFINITE SLARTIES
Bzzzt! Nope, Resistance definitely adds 4% per point.


Not in my version. Resistance definitely adds only 3% per point. On an unarmoured PC with no hardiness, a single point of resistance raises fire/ice/energy res. from 0% to 3%. 20 Resistance and the preq hardiness also results in significantly less than 80% resistance.

As an aside, resistance and hardiness *definitely* increase one's chance of resisting curse/slow/weaken, although even when both stats are maxed out, it doesn't kick in for more than 1/3rd of the time.
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Originally Posted By: CRISIS on INFINITE SLARTIES
No idea. A5 was 4 years ago.

I know that Protection has been either 20% or 25% in every game I've tested. Arcane/Prismatic Shield I want to say 20% too. Not sure about the others.


The fact that Avernum 5 has been out for 4 years made me think that somebody (most likely you!) had already determined the values.

Here's what I got:

Steel skin = 20% to resist physical and magical/elemental damage

Protection = 20% to resist physical and magical/elemental damage

Prismatic shield = Ranges from 10 to 50% bonus to resist magic/elemental damage

Bladeshield (also a component of Arcane Shield) = 20% resist magic/elements, 40% resist physical

Battle fury = 30% resist magic + elements + physical

All the resistances granted by spell protections are nice and flat. Ergo. The 20% armour from Protection always amounts to 20% damage reduction on each individual strike, with little variation between damage blocked for each strike. This is the opposite of physical protection provided by armour/hardiness, where there is an enormous amount of variation between damage blocked for each strike. While the *average* damage reduction is 20%, the damage blocked each strike is scattered widely around the mean.

The exception to this is prismatic shield, which has huge variation (10-50%!)

Also note that the resistances provided from spells/battle disciplines are *multiplicative* with each other, *and* with resistances provided by armour/skills. They are also subtracted from in Torment. Ergo. The resistances provided by spells/disciplines are an invisible resistance bonus added to your character sheet.
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Originally Posted By: Brocktree
The fact that Avernum 5 has been out for 4 years made me think that somebody (most likely you!) had already determined the values.
It's possible that somebody did figure that out at some point. The thing is, since most SW games have variations of the same stats, spells, and game mechanics, with slight tweaks, it is really hard to keep track of exactly what changed when for older games. Since A5, there was G5 and then A6. Avadon is different in some ways, but that's at least three games with easily conflatable mechanics details.

Quote:
They are also subtracted from in Torment.
Subtracted? What do you mean by this?
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Originally Posted By: CRISIS on INFINITE SLARTIES

Subtracted? What do you mean by this?


PCs gain an invisible penalty of approximately 36% to all resistances on Torment. For example, even when under Steel Skin and Protection, they will take full damage from physical attacks if they have no other sources of damage reduction.

Tormented PCs can still reach 90% damage reduction, but require an additional 36% damage reduction to do so.
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By subtraction, do you actually mean subtraction (50% total resistance blocks 14% damage) or damage increase (50% total resistance blocks 32% damage). Because if you actually mean subtraction, another 36% in resistance wouldn't enable you to reach 90%.

 

Also, are you sure this is Torment-specific, and not just variation in the routine that decides how much damage to block with resistance? Alternately, are you sure this isn't just a damage bonus for enemies on Torment?

 

Edit: Not doubting you, just trying to plumb this out.

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Originally Posted By: CRISIS on INFINITE SLARTIES
By subtraction, do you actually mean subtraction (50% total resistance blocks 14% damage) or damage increase (50% total resistance blocks 32% damage). Because if you actually mean subtraction, another 36% in resistance wouldn't enable you to reach 90%.


I strongly suspect the former explanation. In order to actually start blocking damage on Torment, you need to go over a resistance threshold of 36% (multiplicative). That's why a Divinely Touched PC doesn't block any physical damage at the start of the game, despite having 20% armour off the bat.

However, interestingly enough, you can still resist 90% physical damage if you pump resistance stats. Indeed, I was protected against *96%* magical damage when I had high resistance stats. So the game must apply the 90% (?) damage cap after all the bonuses/penalties are accounted for. This is what happens to resistance bonuses that don't show up on the character sheet (Protection, Battle Rage, Steel Skin)


Quote:

Also, are you sure this is Torment-specific, and not just variation in the routine that decides how much damage to block with resistance?


I'm sure it's Torment specific, and not due to variation. If your resistance to damage is under 36%, you never block damage on Torment. This is not true on other difficulties.

Quote:

Alternately, are you sure this isn't just a damage bonus for enemies on Torment?


Enemies on Torment get a damage bonus. However, the amount of damage your characters block (as shown on the readout screen) also changes.

Quote:

Edit: Not doubting you, just trying to plumb this out.


No, I understand. I've made observations. But what matters is the interpretation.
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