Oblivion:Reflect Damage

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	Reflect Damage
School	Mysticism
Type	Defensive (No enchanting)
Effect ID	REDG
Base Cost	2.5
Barter Factor	400
Availability (Click on any item for details)
Custom Potions Apparel Birthsign: 'The Tower'

Reflect Damage M% for D seconds

Reflect M% of melee physical damage back at the attacker during the next D seconds. This includes both damage due to normal weapons and damage from creature attacks. Reflect Damage also absorbs M% of melee physical damage which means that 100% of Reflect Damage (see below) is going to make you immune to melee physical attacks. When Reflect Damage is active, you will notice that the health of your opponents slightly goes down as they hit you (particularly evident when they attack you first: their health indicator immediately appears). Reflect Damage works for percentages over 100, e.g. with 300% Reflect Damage, 3 times the amount of damage that would have been dealt by the attacker is dealt to the attacker.

Although many alchemy ingredients and readymade loot items are found with this effect, Reflect Damage is not available as an effect to enchant items with, and only obtainable for spellcrafting by creating a character born with The Tower birthsign or during a quest from the Shivering Isles expansion.

[edit] Reflect Damage 100%

Gives you the following benefits:

• Makes you immune to normal melee attacks be it non-enchanted weapons, bare fists or creature attacks.
• Your opponents will be taking 100% of their own damage in melee combat providing they are unarmed or have non-enchanted weapons while you'll be watching them kill themselves!
• Your armor (if you're wearing any) will never be damaged from normal melee attacks.
• Your armor rating will be ignored when you are hit by normal melee weapons.

However,

• Ranged weapons, weapon enchantments, traps and falling damage will still affect you as usual.
• Reflect Damage prevents armor skill gains for melee attacks; you will only get skill gains with ranged weapon attacks.
• While you do not receive a bounty for assault, if a person kills himself with his own reflected damage, you will be guilty of murder, along with all of its side-effects (including the 1000 gold bounty and triggering the Dark Brotherhood questline).

Here's a list of items which are most useful in building up that superb 100% bonus:

• Ring of the Iron Fist (33% Reflect Damage)
• Necklace of Swords or Amulet of Axes (33% Reflect Damage)
• Escutcheon of Chorrol is a leveled item that you can acquire as a reward for the quest Sins of the Father; do the quest when you're at least level 25 to get the 35% Reflect Damage version.
• The Raiment of the Crimson Scar is a leveled item that you can obtain by purchasing all the upgrades for Deepscorn Hollow; wait until level 25 if you want the 35% Reflect Damage version.

Assembling three of these items together will give you a total bonus of at least 101% Reflect Damage. The main difficulty is that the ring and both amulets are all random, leveled loot. The quickest way to acquire them is to take advantage of the Blind Moth Prelate glitch. See the Temple of the Ancestor Moths notes section.

• Custom potions can be used to help reach 100% Reflect Damage. However, it is not normally possible to reach 100% Reflect Damage using only potions: the maximum magnitude for a Reflect Damage potion is 24%, so four potions gives at most 96% Reflect Damage. Higher values are only possible if you exploit the glitch that allows you to drink more than four potions at once.

[edit] Notes

• Reflect Damage is a difficult spell to acquire. Normally, you won't be able to find it anywhere in the game. Only those born under The Sign of The Tower are able to cast Reflect Damage and use this spell effect to create custom spells at the Spellmaking Altar (Tower Warden is a Greater Power which has Reflect Damage 5% for 120 seconds on Self). Without mods/expansions, this is the only way to gain access to the Reflect Damage spell effect (wearing enchanted items does not make this effect available at the Spellmaking Altar).
• If you have the expansion Shivering Isles, there is another way to acquire the Reflect Damage spell effect. During the main quest Rebuilding the Gatekeeper, choose the Heart of Wound Sharing body part when selecting parts for the new Gatekeeper. This allows you to acquire the Heart of Wound Sharing Gatekeeper Gift, providing access to the Reflect Damage spell effect.
• Reflect Damage enchantments can be very satisfying when being attacked by wimpy, annoying creatures. For example, at high character levels rats and mud crabs hardly seem worth the trouble of attacking them (if you are a spellcaster and your hot-keyed spells all do 60+ points of damage, is it worth wasting any one of them on a rat?). With Reflect Damage you can just watch inferior creatures, such as the ones mentioned earlier, kill themselves without any action on your part.
• However, custom Reflect Damage enchantments are not possible: this effect is disabled at the Enchanting Altar.

[edit] See also

Related effects:

• Resist Normal Weapons, Weakness to Normal Weapons
• Reflect Spell
• Shield, Fire Shield, Frost Shield, Shock Shield

[edit] Alchemy Ingredients

The following alchemy ingredients can be used to create a potion of Reflect Damage:

Journeyman Human Skin Green Stain Cup Cap Scamp Skin

Expert Daedra Venin Flour Strawberry

Note that, with the exception of Flour, all of these ingredients have a side effect of damage health at the Expert level. The Damage Health effect can be avoided by using flour as one of the ingredients. Using a Master Alembic, available as dungeon loot at character level 17 and above, reduces the Damage Health effect to 1 damage over 1 second.