Hellfire/plasma issues

[Tobias]

water, ice, gravity, inertia, time, plasma, mana, force, and arrow

I thought fire reduced plasma damage, and cold reduced ice damage ( maybe even water?)

Incomplete and wrong list follows, maybe I will get around to looking it up. And there really should be a current and definite list somewhere.

But more interesting what are the unresistable status effects?

gravity(slow?),interia(slow ?), time (everything).

And what status effects are resisted by resists of a different name?

water(conf?),plasma(sound/stun?),ice(sound/stun?),force(stun?)

[Tobias]

I found it, in spells1.c took me some time to find.


Ice (cold damage, sound and shard effect)
Plasma (unresistable damage, sound effect) maybe this should be fire damage?)
Water (unresistable damage, sound and conf effect)
Force (unresistable damage, sound effect)
Ineritia(unresistable dam, slow effect)
Gravity(unres dam, sound effect, clvl resists teleport)
Time(unres effect and damge)

It looks like creating a stun effect resistance cleans this up nicely.
The only unresistable effects are now:
Time ( of course), inerita , gravity teleport(max 40% resist chance).

[Timo Pietilä]

I found it, in spells1.c took me some time to find.


Ice (cold damage, sound and shard effect)
Plasma (unresistable damage, sound effect) maybe this should be fire damage?)
Water (unresistable damage, sound and conf effect)
Force (unresistable damage, sound effect)
Ineritia(unresistable dam, slow effect)
Gravity(unres dam, sound effect, clvl resists teleport)
Time(unres effect and damge)

It looks like creating a stun effect resistance cleans this up nicely.
The only unresistable effects are now:
Time ( of course), inerita , gravity teleport(max 40% resist chance).

Gravity also slows.

Problem with plasma is that it is charged particles by definition, so it might not be hot (usually it is) it just electrocutes whatever it hits (that is the reason it destroys wands). Three-point damage, fire, electricity and sound (sound actually doesn't make much sense unless you count plasma as practically solid blast that has impact damage)

[Tobias]

Gravity also slows.

Problem with plasma is that it is charged particles by definition, so it might not be hot (usually it is) it just electrocutes whatever it hits (that is the reason it destroys wands). Three-point damage, fire, electricity and sound (sound actually doesn't make much sense unless you count plasma as practically solid blast that has impact damage)

I am not sure if you can get low temperature plasma at atmospheric pressure (unless you use some strange virtual temperature effects) . But it could also cause elec damage.

I noticed that I was looking at the 3.2.0 code, here plasma has no elec effect.

In the nightly a lot seems to have changes. I found monster/list-spell-effects.h where the status effects are assigned. But I can't find where damage resist is assigned to plasma and ice. Or where elec effect is assigned to plasma.

[Derakon]

Ice attacks are hitting you with a physical block of ice. It's more like being attacked by a big ol' pillar of glass than by a snowball -- the physical impact and cutting is what's hurting you, not the cold. Cold resistance thus shouldn't apply.

[SSK]

Ice attacks are hitting you with a physical block of ice. It's more like being attacked by a big ol' pillar of glass than by a snowball -- the physical impact and cutting is what's hurting you, not the cold. Cold resistance thus shouldn't apply.

I think one of the things that's needed then is a terminology update:

1) I like the solution of applying sound resist to the stunning effects of all stuff--but then anything with sound resist should also be given a "protection from stun" label so it will be transparent to users

2) If say Ice is going to act like a shard and not like cold, perhaps the monster memory should say "Bolt of ice shards" and the UI should say "You are hit by a shard of ice!" Then the user may get this is shards damage rather than cold damage. Similarly for the other attacks that have damage somewhat at odds with the sound of their name: How about "You are zapped by a bolt of plasma!" Rather than "The XXX breathes hellfire!"

[Philip]

BTW, on plasma, AFAIK O has it that it's part unresistable, part electrical and part fire. You can never resist all the damage, but Imfire and Imelec should go some way towards doing so, and (not sure about this) might prevent inventory destruction. (is the "undocumented feature" with immunity not protecting stuff fixed?)

[Timo Pietilä]

I think one of the things that's needed then is a terminology update:

1) I like the solution of applying sound resist to the stunning effects of all stuff--but then anything with sound resist should also be given a "protection from stun" label so it will be transparent to users

"sound effect" is stunning. Sound resist doesn't actually protect you from that unless source is sound. Same with confusion and chaos, other sources of confusion than chaos doesn't get protected by chaos. Blindness, same.

There are now items with protection to stunning in nightly editions.

[Magnate]

(is the "undocumented feature" with immunity not protecting stuff fixed?)

Yes. If anyone gets inventory destruction from an element to which they are immune, please start a new thread and post a save file.

[Magnate]

"sound effect" is stunning. Sound resist doesn't actually protect you from that unless source is sound. Same with confusion and chaos, other sources of confusion than chaos doesn't get protected by chaos. Blindness, same.

There are now items with protection to stunning in nightly editions.

Let's make this clear:

"resistance" refers to damage. Sound is a source of damage (think ears bleeding etc.). So, resistance to sound reduces the damage you take from sound. Some forms of damage are harder to describe/imagine than others (e.g. light and darkness don't immediately strike you as damaging, but this is fantasy after all). There is no resistance to damage from plasma (or time, gravity, force, inertia or mana). Yet.

"protection" refers to effects other than damage. Stunning is one such effect - it reduces your melee abilities, increases spell failure etc. etc. So, protection from stunning (pStun) prevents this happening. Other protections are fear, blindness and confusion. Hold life is also effectively a protection, but is not yet categorised as such. Perhaps it should be pDrain. Similarly, FA is effectively protection from slowing and paralysis (pSlow?). Ho hum.

Now, this is the tricky bit: resistance to a damage form protects against the side effects *of that form of damage*. So resistance to sound protects you against stunning from sound, but does not protect you against stunning from ice.

The four base elements are complicated by the existence of immunities. But their only non-damaging side effect is inventory destruction. The wrinkle in the above logic is that resistance to a base element does not prevent inventory destruction (though it makes it less likely), but immunity does (now).

Ice is a bastardised element, because it's cold damage with side effects of cutting and stunning. Although cold resistance (or immunity) reduce the damage, they do not cover the side effects. There is (as yet) no pCuts, so ice will always cause cuts (whereas Shards won't, if you have the resist). But there is pStun, so ice will not cause stunning if you have it.

I hope that's clear ;-)

[Philip]

Yes. If anyone gets inventory destruction from an element to which they are immune, please start a new thread and post a save file.

Sorry, I was unclear in my wording. I thought there was a bug in O which is what I was referring to, not a V one. I know there used to be a bug and I think it was O.