Resistances and Saving Throws - hyvanmielenpelit/GnollHack GitHub Wiki

gnoll-resistances-4k-512

Overview

GnollHack has seven kinds of resistances to magical attacks:

Full Resistances
Partial Resistances
Magic Resistance
Magic Cancellation
Wisdom-Based Saving Throw
Constitution-Based Saving Throw
Reflection

These resistances work similarly for players and monsters with small differences.

1. Full Resistances

Bisection Resistance — Immunity to bisection attacks (namely, The Tsurugi of Muramasa)
Charm Resistance — Immunity to nymph stealing and seduction attacks
Curse Resistance — Immunity to cursing of items in the inventory
Death Resistance — Immunity to death attacks
Disintegration Resistance — Immunity to disintegration attacks
Flash Resistance — Immunity to blinding attacks
Drain Resistance — Immunity to level drain attacks
Free Action — Immunity to paralysis attacks
Full Acid Resistance — Immunity to acid attacks
Full Cold Resistance — Immunity to cold attacks, also protects equipment from cold attacks
Full Fire Resistance — Immunity to fire attacks, also protects equipment from fire attacks
Full Magic Missile Resistance — Immunity to magic missiles and striking
Full Shock Resistance — Immunity to lightning attacks, also protects equipment from lightning attacks
Hallucination Resistance — Immunity to hallucination
Lycanthropy Resistance — Immunity to lycanthropy
Mind Shielding — Immunity to telepathic attacks of tentacled ones
Poison Resistance — Immunity to poison attacks
Sickness Resistance — Immunity to sickness attacks, including mummy rot
Sleep Resistance — Immunity to sleep attacks
Sliming Resistance — Immunity to sliming attacks (namely, the green slime)
Stoning Resistance — Immunity to petrification attacks

2. Partial Resistances

50% or 75% Acid Resistance — Reduces acid damage by 50% or 75%
50% or 75% Cold Resistance — Reduces cold damage by 50% or 75%, and has a 50% or 75% chance to protect equipment from cold attacks
50% or 75% Fire Resistance — Reduces fire damage by 50% or 75%, and has a 50% or 75% chance to protect equipment from fire attacks
50% or 75% Magic Missile Resistance — Reduces magic missile and striking damage by 50% or 75%
50% or 75% Shock Resistance — Reduces lightning damage by 50% or 75%, and has a 50% or 75% chance to protect equipment from lightning attacks

3. Magic Resistance

Magic Resistance is very important to get in GnollHack, preferably before dungeon level 8, when polymorph traps start to appear. It protects you from the following things:

Polymorph traps
Some other polymorph effects (see below)
Anti-magic traps
Monster spells

Additionally, unique monsters are shielded from cancellation spells and effects by Magic Resistance (see below).

Nerfs to Magic Resistance

Contrary to NetHack, Magic Resistance does not protect you from:

Death attacks — such as the Finger of Death spell, or the wand of death
- You need Death Resistance to be safe from death attacks
Magic missiles — such as the Magic Missile spell, or the wand of magic missile
- You need Full Magic Missile Resistance to be immune to magic missiles
Striking — such as the Force Bolt spell or the wand of striking
- You need Full Magic Missile Resistance to be immune to striking
Curses — Magic Resistance used to halve the effect of incoming curses but it does not do it anymore
- You need Curse Resistance to be immune to cursing

Chance to Work

If a player gets Magic Resistance from an item, it has always a 100% chance to work.

However, monsters' Magic Resistance has a percentage chance to work. The magic resistance is listed in the monsters' stats.

Cancellation Attacks and Magic Resistance

Cancellation attacks prevent players and monsters from using spells and wands.

They can be resisted as follows:

Cancellation spell or effect against a normal monster bypasses magic resistance and has a 100% chance to work. However, unique monsters are still shielded from cancellation by magic resistance.
Disjunction spell or effect bypasses every monster's magic resistance, including unique ones, and thus has always a 100% chance to work.
Cancellation attacks against a player, such as the gaze attack of a gazer, bypass magic resistance and have a 100% chance to work.

Additionally, it is good to remember the following things about cancellation:

If you zap a wand of cancellation or cast a cancellation spell at yourself or at items, it will set items' beautitude to Uncursed, set the enchantment to +0, make most potions into water, blank scrolls and spellbooks, and set items' charges to 0.
Putting a wand of cancellation into a bag of holding will destroy the bag.

Polymorph and Magic Resistance

Magic resistance protects from:

Wand of polymorph zapped at monsters
Polymorph traps
Polymorph spell cast at monsters
Polymorph from being hit with a wielded potion of polymorph

Magic resistance does not protect you from:

Polymorph from ring of polymorph
Wand of polymorph zapped at yourself
Polymorph spell cast at yourself
Polymorph from drinking a potion of polymorph

4. Magic Cancellation

Magic Cancellation protects you from magical or semi-magical touch attacks. You get Magic Cancellation (MC) from armor. Contrary to NetHack, it stacks and the effect is on the scale 0–25, which gives you a % chance to resist magical or semi-magical touch attacks. The chance is listed in the status bar. MC protects you from:

Life drain attacks (which drain an experience level)
Lycanthropy
Nymph stealing attacks (but nymphs' attack gives a big penalty to MC, so it has a bigger than normal chance to work)
Mummy rot
Paralysis attacks
Seduction attacks
Stoning (petrification) touch attacks
Terminal illness attacks

Magic Cancellation Chance

The Magic Cancellation formula is the following:

0: 0%
1: 10%
2: 20%
3: 30%
4: 40%
5: 50%
6: 55%
7: 60%
8: 65%
9: 70%
10: 75%
11: 80%
12: 82%
13: 84%
14: 86%
15: 88%
16: 90%
17: 91%
18: 92%
19: 93%
20: 94%
21: 95%
22: 96%
23: 97%
24: 98%
25 and above: 99%

Modifiers to Magic Cancellation

Monster attacks can incur a bonus or penalty to MC depending on the monster difficulty. Attacks of higher level monsters usually incur more penalty to MC than those of lower level monsters.

Magic Cancellation from Enchantments

When you enchant an armor, you get +1 MC for every +3 enchantment. Therefore, it is very useful to enchant armor to at least +3. The same rule applies to divine protection that you can buy from a priest NPC by making a major contribution to the temple.

Intelligence Drain Attacks

Magic Cancellation does not protect you from the intelligence drain attacks of tentacled ones. Instead, you need a helmet to block 90% of these attacks. Additionally, you can wear a nose ring of cerebral safeguarding or a ring of sustain ability to become immune to the intelligence drain attacks.

Note that the intelligence drain attacks also cause amnesia, which makes you forget items' identification, spells, and the layout of dungeon levels.

5. Wisdom-Based Saving Throw

Contrary to NetHack, charm, sleep, and other mind-affecting spells and effects, such as fear, do not check against the magic resistance of monsters. Instead, monsters need to make a wisdom-based saving throw to resist the effect. The chance of resisting is equal to:

-30% + 5% x Wisdom

Thus, a monster with Wisdom 10 has a 20% chance of resisting and a monster with Wisdom 20 has a 70% chance of resisting such a spell or effect.

Spells cast with the Skilled or higher spell school skill incur a -15% penalty to the wisdom-based saving throw per skill level above Basic. A spell cast at an Unskilled skill level incurs a +15% bonus to the wisdom-based saving throw.

Blessed items with mind-affecting effects, such a blessed scroll of taming or a blessed wand of sleep, incur a -25% penalty to the wisdom-based saving throw. Similarly, cursed items with mind-affecting effects – if there is no separate cursed effect – such as is the case with a cursed wand of sleep, incur a +25% bonus to the wisdom-based saving throw.

6. Constitution-Based Saving Throw

Some spells, such as Power Words, check against the constitution of the target. The chance of resisting is:

-30% + 5% x Constitution

Thus, a monster with Constitution 10 has a 20% chance of resisting and a monster with Constitution 20 has a 70% chance of resisting such a spell or effect.

Spells cast with the Skilled or higher spell school skill incur a -15% penalty to the constitution-based saving throw per skill level above Basic. A spell cast at an Unskilled skill level incurs a +15% bonus to the constitution-based saving throw.

7. Reflection

Reflection gives a complete immunity to ray attacks, such as most wands and dragon breath. The rays reflect back to the caster.

Advice on Getting Resistances

Generally, magic resistance and reflection are considered most important to get for a player. However, poison resistance, sleep resistance, free action, and death resistance are generally very important as well, because they can shield you from some insta-death attacks and situations. Additionally, drain resistance is important against some level-draining undead.

Full elemental resistances are also useful against some item-destruction effects (such as shocking spheres) but are generally not considered as must-haves.