Can someone explain Damage Reduction in BG2?

Ferozban

hello guys,

i wanted to ask if someone knows exactly how damage is reduced on hit.

i mean the amount of damage you do is pretty simply calculated. (weapon base+bonus damage+profiences+item bonuses+class bonuses like kensai or assa + stg bonus = XX to YY damage)
but of course you dont actually allways do that damage. mostly you do less or against peasants you might actually do more damage than you'd normally do.

so there is some kind of damage reduction or amplification on your opponents.

i know that in the D&D universe armor class only calculated if your hit or not. to my knowleadge it has nothing to do with damage reduction.

can someone explain how damage reduction works in bg2 and how it is calculated or what it depends on?

regards feroz

Mitchfork

Some enemies (like Skeletons) have damage resistance, which subtracts some percentage of damage from certain sources (slashing, crushing, missile, fire, etc.). There are also certain items and spells that will grant this. In the Enhanced Editions enemies with damage resistance display the raw and subtracted damage (e.g. "Abdel did 6 damage to Skeleton (12-6)") so you know when an enemy is resisting your attack.

I don't know of anything that "amplifies" damage but a critical hit will do double the normal damage if the target isn't immune to crits, so that might be what you're seeing.

And, just like you said, normal AC has no effect on the damage you take from a successful hit.

Ferozban

A critical hit is not what i mean with damage amplification. the game tells you if you made a critical hit or not. i mean the normal damage. try some normal attacks against some peasants. you'll see that you sometimes do more damage than you actually should.

in regards to the resistances:
i know what you mean when the combat log says (31-27)=4 damage to the demilich for example.
but for instance if i do a normal attack against korgan for example. i do less damage then my minimum damage.
and thats what i'm asking about. why is that?

i add some pictures to make my case here:

Ferozban

and here against a peasent: more damage than i should have done (more than my max damage)




so there is something odd about this. and i had hoped that someone can explain how this works.

PS: this is the unmodded vanilla version of the game

Mitchfork

Are you playing on a difficulty below Core? That'll reduce the damage that you take, even from friendly attacks. If you're seeing it against enemies (or are playing on Core), then I don't know what's causing it. I'm also curious where that 3 damage came from- Staff of the Magi doesn't deal bonus damage as I recall. If that's a separate hit then I really don't know enough to say what's going on, there should be no way to take that little damage even on Easy.

Ferozban

my weapon is the staff of the ram +6 it looks the same as staff of magi apparently in bg2ee. the staff of ram has an additional 1d4 damage.

i acutally noticed that i played on a dificulty one below CORE rules. where you would oly receive 2/3 of the damage. that explained why i would do less damage when trying to hit my own.

now i switched it and i play on core rules now. now it works fine. now i dont do less damage then i should.


but now i still do more damage than i should against a few of my own characters. strangely enough this phenomenon only goes for korgan and neera and peasants. against all of the others (even monsters) i do exactly the damage i should do.
i tried it with every of my characters for like 10 minutes. and only korgan and neera and peasants receive slightly more damage.




my damage should be 28-33, but i clearly do more than 33 damage with each hit.
why is that?
again to emphathise it, this only counts for korgan and neera and peasants. all the other characters and other opponents receive the right amount of damage.

Lathlaer

Off Topic: this is hilarious but I use the exact same picture for my sorceress

Mitchfork

Actually, I just remembered something- I think that you get bonus damage if you're attacking an unarmed opponent, but I'm not sure how much this is. Could be accounting for the extra that you're getting against peasants. Somebody else should confirm this though, I'm not sharp on the particulars.

enqenq

Unarmed maybe, but one wearing a ranged weapon against a melee attack, definitely.

Ferozban

Thank you Mitchfork, That was the issue. They are UNARMED!
before i hit neera i switched her to Fists because she was invisible due to the staff of magi
before i hit korgan i tried something with his weapon and took it from him, so he was weaponless as well
and peasants are unarmed to begin with

so thank you for clearing that up.

you do about 1-6 more damage than your max damage against unarmed opponents apparently.


ok i guess that is the end of that thread everything cleared up.

thanks for the good and qualitfied help.