Protection From Fire spell allows you to heal from incoming fire damage?

Ian579

In the fire giant cave in Throne of Bhaal, my character had Protection From Fire casted on him, and he kept getting healed while standing on larva despite the his animation and voice ("Argh!") looked like he kept suffering from lava damage. Is that working as intended?

Grond0

It is. Protection against weapon damage can only go up to 100%, but protection against elemental damage can go to 127% - allowing you to heal from the elemental effects. You must have had some other form of fire protection in addition to the 100% protection from fire, but using those lava pools to heal is a well-known tactic for that temple.

Ulb

Yes, you will absorb damage (i.e.: heal) for any resistance above 100%. Without EEex the max is 127% I believe (or maybe it is 123%, not sure).

Ian579

Thanks. Well... so it's not working as intended, is it?

Grond0

I'm not sure what you mean. It is working exactly as intended - right from the original game's release you could use resistance against elemental damage to heal yourself. Of course you can debate whether that was a good design decision, but that's the way the game was designed.

Ian579

Grond0 wrote: »

I'm not sure what you mean. It is working exactly as intended - right from the original game's release you could use resistance against elemental damage to heal yourself. Of course you can debate whether that was a good design decision, but that's the way the game was designed.

I mean "protection" is suppose to just protect you from damage and no further. And if there is suppose to be such a special healing effect, the description of the spell definitely should have mentioned it. So it's likely that the healing effect is an oversight by developers.

argent77

"Protection" is used in the broadest sense in these games. Resistance effects change depending on the percentage value. It generally goes from amplification (negative percentage) -> resistance (between 0 and 100%) -> immunity (=100%) -> absorption (>100%). Some damage types may be capped at 100% though (such as physical resistance).

Aewyrven

Good thing you didnt cast "protection from larva " otherwise you would have been screwed...

MartinW

Ian579 wrote: »

Grond0 wrote: »

I'm not sure what you mean. It is working exactly as intended - right from the original game's release you could use resistance against elemental damage to heal yourself. Of course you can debate whether that was a good design decision, but that's the way the game was designed.

I mean "protection" is suppose to just protect you from damage and no further. And if there is suppose to be such a special healing effect, the description of the spell definitely should have mentioned it. So it's likely that the healing effect is an oversight by developers.

But protection itself doesn't heal you. Stacked protections do it and it is also capped at 127. So everything worked as designed imo, and gives your mages ability to be off-healers too (for example channel agganazar from several wands through your tank with 127 FR)

Ian579

MartinW wrote: »

Ian579 wrote: »

Grond0 wrote: »

I'm not sure what you mean. It is working exactly as intended - right from the original game's release you could use resistance against elemental damage to heal yourself. Of course you can debate whether that was a good design decision, but that's the way the game was designed.

I mean "protection" is suppose to just protect you from damage and no further. And if there is suppose to be such a special healing effect, the description of the spell definitely should have mentioned it. So it's likely that the healing effect is an oversight by developers.

But protection itself doesn't heal you. Stacked protections do it and it is also capped at 127. So everything worked as designed imo, and gives your mages ability to be off-healers too (for example channel agganazar from several wands through your tank with 127 FR)

In my opinion, those protections never mean to heal players. The healing is apparently a developer oversight.

MartinW

Ian579 wrote: »

MartinW wrote: »

Ian579 wrote: »

Grond0 wrote: »

I'm not sure what you mean. It is working exactly as intended - right from the original game's release you could use resistance against elemental damage to heal yourself. Of course you can debate whether that was a good design decision, but that's the way the game was designed.

I mean "protection" is suppose to just protect you from damage and no further. And if there is suppose to be such a special healing effect, the description of the spell definitely should have mentioned it. So it's likely that the healing effect is an oversight by developers.

But protection itself doesn't heal you. Stacked protections do it and it is also capped at 127. So everything worked as designed imo, and gives your mages ability to be off-healers too (for example channel agganazar from several wands through your tank with 127 FR)

In my opinion, those protections never mean to heal players. The healing is apparently a developer oversight.

But some monsters are healed that way, why playable characters cannot? That is my favorite part of D&D - everybody exists within same rule set. If your enemy can use contingency - you can too. If enemy mages launch spell triggers - you can too.
If it was oversight, it won't be capped and can be heavily exploited by stacking 200+ resistances... but it is capped, so it is just another nice part of game depth. What is real oversight is using consumables (and items) by clones...

Zaxares

It's probably a combination of both. Some monsters like Iron Golems are healed by fire damage, so Bioware needed to code in a way to implement this, and the easiest way to do it was just have the Fire Resist stat heal if it's over 100. It's debatable if this mechanic should be extended to players as well, although personally as a DM I'd be fine with allowing it.

Grond0

While any DM is free to adopt their own rules, I don't think there's any doubt the healing mechanic in Baldur's Gate is deliberate. The ability to heal can be seen as part of the whole continuum of how resistance works. In the same way as disallowing healing, a design decision could have been taken not to allow negative resistance - but some creatures and items can do this by lowering resistance - thus increasing the normal maximum damage from an attack.

gorgonzola

the fact that the resistance to physical damage is capped at 100%, so it is impossible to having an healing effect by being hit by weapons, while all the elemental resistances are capped to 127% so for all them it is possible to heal for the 27% of the elemental damage taken seems to me a clue that the decision is deliberate, not the result of an overlook.

i agree that to use the word resistance is misleading, but as long as we know how the mechanics of the elemental resistance work i don't see a problem.

and yes the way elemental resistances work open a set of abuses or power uses of it, depends on player judgment, making the high level mages potentially the best healers in the game as there is plenty of fire resistance items and they have a fire resistance spell, but they can have also infinite PI if they use the spell trap trick and every PI can cast a lot of fire based spells and use fire based wands for free, so a high level mage can completely heal the whole party completely for free (even if at that level probably to wish for rest is much quicker).

Ian579

I'm not sure how the coding of the game works, but this healing effect is too good to me and I don't take such an undocumented effect for granted. Players get healed by incoming fire damage makes sense to me only after they transform into fire elementals.