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!
FORCE AND FORTITUDE
Basic attacks and many spells or talents produce physical or elemental force. Every combatant has a specific
level of force they can withstand, based on fortitude, which is determined by a character’s strength attribute,
and maximum health, which is determined by the constitution attribute. When the force of an attack exceeds
what the combatant can withstand, physical force results in effects like knocking a character to the ground, and
elemental force results in effects like setting the character aflame. In one way or another, when combatants are
overcome by force, the effect interrupts their current attacks and may delay them from returning to combat for
up to a few seconds.
Spell and talent descriptions indicate elemental or physical force with numbers like 4x. That means the ability
produces four times as much force as it does damage. If the damage the ability inflicts is fairly small, then
4x force might not be a significant effect—perhaps only enough to push an enemy back for a second—but for
high-damage abilities, 4x force could easily knock an enemy completely down.
ENEMY RANKS
As previously explained, some statistics like attack, defense, and armor percentages are displayed relative to
a normal-rank enemy of the same level as the character. There are five ranks of enemies, although these are
usually simplified to just normal foes, lieutenants, and bosses. The length of enemy health bars indicates their
relative threat—normal enemies have short health bars, lieutenants’ are somewhat longer, and bosses have
very long health bars.
Higher-ranked enemies gain several advantages. Notably, the party’s attack, defense, armor, and resistance
percentages are lower when fighting a lieutenant or boss than they are when fighting normal enemies. To see
the precise percentages, select one of those statistics in the Attributes screen and press the F button to view
more details.
Some spell or talent descriptions also list effect chances with the note “vs. normal enemy.” The likelihood of
applying those effects is much lower against a high-ranking enemy.
