Shattered Kingdoms

I understand that there's a desire to have the racial weaknesses work, but weapons that do damage types are overpowering. They're not overpowering in the aspect that they do additional damage, such as a life drain attack versus an elf or a light attack versus a deep-elf, but rather, if there is a mechanic that reduces the damage from these attacks, it is either non-existant or doesn't help very much.

I'll use the example of two human mercs using a khopesh since the volume of attacks is easier to calculate. If we give merc A a khopesh made out of adamantite, and merc B a khopesh made out of energy that does a light attack, merc B will do more damage than merc A. Typically the outcome will favor merc B.

Let's say for example that there are no defensive skills that will help such as parry or dodge, and that there is no chance for either merc to miss. Both mercs are suited in adamantite plate with no magical protection. For purposes of argument, these plates are absorbing 10 points of damage, and both mercs are doing 20 points of damage. However, merc B is using a khopesh that does type:light damage, and it is considered magical, so the game is checking for magical protection enchantments to calculate damage reduced. The game finds that there isn't any such thing to protect either mercenaries. So merc A is doing 10 points of damage a hit, and merc B is doing 20 points of damage a hit, which makes merc A do 30 damage a round and merc B do 60. Now I'm not going to do the math to figure out how many rounds it'll take for a victory to occur if both mercs have 500 hps, but it is clear that merc B has a clear cut advantage in that he's doing MORE damage than the other merc just because of the damage type. This is the hidden weakness of these weapons.

For this reason, I'll claim that giants are weak to type:light damage too. So are humans, and just about every other race in the game. Unless they expressly have a resistance to type:light damage, they're also weak to it. A race like a deep-elf is just a bit more weaker to the damage type than the rest of the races. It's also a double blow to the deep-elf character. They must take additional damage to such a weapon without the benefit of their armor to absorb some of that blow.

The armor code needs to be rewritten to take into better account the effects of these weapons. At the current point, they are completely broken, and overpowering.

Are you proposing MP act as a buffer to energy type damage?

Warlocks won't have any possible recourse, then.

No, I am not.

physical armor doesn't decrease damage done by special damage types? I didn't know that.

There may or may not be a mechanic that deals with it, but it definitely doesn't decrease damage as much as normal armor, if there is. This becomes readily apparent in certain situations.

Cat, human, Nair = Elf, Human, Negative Energy Weapon.

Cat's can't shave. It's in their nature to have lots of hair.

Elves can't prevent negative energy weapons from harming them. It's in their nature to be sensitive to bad mojo.