Damage reduction

From NWNWiki

This article is about the effect; for other uses, see Damage reduction (disambiguation).

Damage reduction represents a creature's ability to ignore a certain amount of physical damage from a single hit.

When damage reduction is expressed in the form "20/+3" or "+3 soak 20 damage", this indicates the amount of damage ignored (20) and the power of the weapon needed to penetrate the effect (+3). Thus a creature with 20/+3 damage reduction ignores the first 20 points of damage from any weapon that does not have an enhancement bonus of +3 or greater.

Another type of damage reduction is expressed as 20/-. The '-' means that all enchantments are affected. Even with a +20 weapon, the first 20 points of damage are ignored.

Non-physical damage, such as from elemental or magical attacks, is unaffected by damage reduction.

Damage reduction is an ability of the barbarian, monk and dwarven defender classes, and some feats and spells provide it as well. Some druid/shifter forms also include the effect.

[edit] Notes

• The attack bonus property on a weapon will work as well as enhancement bonus for purposes of bypassing damage reduction - i.e. a weapon with a +5 attack bonus will bypass 20/+5 damage reduction.

• Damage reduction stacks with damage resistance. So an Ironskin Ring, which provides 10/+5 damage reduction, will stack with a Greater Brawler's Belt, which provides 20/- bludgeoning resistance, resulting in a total of 30 damage ignored from each bludgeoning attack made with less than a +5 enhancement.

• Damage reduction stacks with damage immunity. Immunity is calculated first.

• Damage reduction does not stack with itself. The only exceptions to this are

1. the barbarian-, dwarven defender- and epic- damage reduction feats (i.e. the sources of x/- damage reduction) stacking with each other and
2. the perfect self and epic damage reduction feats stacking with each other.

• The damage reduction that is used is the one with the highest amount of reduction (e.g. 20/+5 is higher reduction than 5/+20) so long as the attacking character is not using a high enough enhancement to penetrate it. In the event of a tie, the first of these applied to the character takes precedence.