Dodging
A few abilities and effects provide a percentage chance to dodge attacks. Dodging is similar to defense,
except that it is absolute. Whereas defense can be overcome with a high attack score, a chance to dodge
applies regardless of the aggressor’s attack score.
DA MAGE
The damage inflicted by a basic attack is a combination of the weapon’s damage rating and the attacking
character’s primary attribute—strength for warriors, magic for mages, and dexterity for warriors.
However, while swings from a warrior’s weapon or shots from a rogue’s bow are very powerful, they are
also slow. By contrast, a rogue wielding two daggers may not cause much damage with each hit, but the
strikes come at blinding speed. These differences are why the Attributes and Inventory screens also indicate
damage per second (DPS) for the character’s equipped weapons.
Weapon damage is important even for characters who concentrate on using spells or talents because
damage inflicted by abilities is almost always a multiple of the character’s basic attack damage.
Armor
Armor mitigates physical damage—if a character’s armor is rated at 10%, the character suffers 10% less
damage from physical attacks than they would otherwise. Like attack and defense, the armor percentage
is calculated relative to an opponent of the same level, so the percentage degrades if characters do not
continually find better armor.
Keep in mind that armor is completely ineffective against the different types of elemental damage, which are
instead counteracted by specific resistances.
Elemental Damage
There are five types of elemental damage—fire, cold, electricity, nature, and spirit. Most offensive spells
produce one of the types of elemental damage, and some weapons inflict elemental damage instead of
physical damage. Weapons that have been enchanted by runes (see p. 22) may inflict several different types
of damage simultaneously.
If you enable damage numbers in the Interface Options screen, you can identify different types of damage by
the color the text appears in:
Damage to your party is red, no matter the type
Physical damage is white
Fire damage is orange
Cold damage is blue
Electricity damage is yellow
Nature damage is medium green
Spirit damage is purple
Healing is bright green prefaced by a + symbol
Elemental Resistances
Each type of elemental damage is counteracted by a specific resistance in the same way that armor
counteracts physical damage. For example, characters with 10% fire resistance suffer 10% less fire
damage. As with armor, party members’ elemental resistances change based on enemies’ rank and
relative level.
If enemies have significant resistance to a certain type of damage, a small shield appears next to their name
whenever they’re hit by that element.
Magic Resistance
Whenever an attack’s source is magical, the victim’s magic resistance score is added to their elemental or
physical resistance. Just like physical or elemental resistances, magic resistance counteracts a percentage
of the damage that an attack would have inflicted.
Magic resistance also reduces the duration of hostile magical effects on a character. Thus, with 20% magic
resistance and 10% fire resistance, a character would suffer 30% less damage from magical fire attacks,
20% less damage from magical cold attacks, and a magical paralysis effect would last for 20% less time.
Damage Resistance
Just as magic resistance applies to all damage inflicted by magic, regardless of the elemental type, damage
resistance is a further layer of protection that applies to all damage of any type. For magical attacks, it
is cumulative with magic resistance and elemental resistance or armor; for non-magical attacks, it is
cumulative with just the basic damage resistance, which is usually armor.
Critical Hits
Every attack has a small possibility of generating a critical hit, as indicated by the critical chance percentage
shown on a character’s attributes screen. When the character does succeed in landing a critical hit, it inflicts
bonus damage beyond what a normal attack would produce, as indicated by the critical damage percentage
shown on the same screen.
You know you’ve landed a critical hit when you see an opponent’s health bar flash white.
Flanking
An attacker is more likely to score a critical hit when striking anywhere at an opponent’s back half, including
hits that are just slightly past the opponent’s side. This is true for all combatants, so don’t let enemies get
behind your party members!
