Oblivion talk:The Complete Damage Formula

The UESPWiki – Your source for The Elder Scrolls since 1995

Contents 1 Spell Damage 2 Modifiable Settings 3 FDamageWeaponMult 4 General 5 Hand-To-Hand? 6 ModifiedSkill ?

[edit] Spell Damage

Good question from a recent ESF thread: what about the two GMSTs "fMagicResistTargetWillpowerBase" and "fMagicResistTargetWillpowerMult"? Do these have any effect? Sorry, forgot to sign in! --Dev akm 17:00, 31 May 2007 (EDT)

[edit] Modifiable Settings

This new section looks great! Good job! Checking the results of the formula now. Only problem I see right away is the formula doesn't quite agree with the one at the top of the page (it has an extra /2 at the end). I'll post more feedback later. behippo has agreed to help double-check it. --Dev akm 13:32, 13 April 2007 (EDT)

Thanks! The /2 in the equation at the top of the page is from the fact that two parameters (fDamageWeaponConditionBase and fDamageWeaponConditionMult) are both 0.5. So in the equation at the bottom that explicitly shows all the parameters, it's not supposed to appear. --Nephele^Talk 14:03, 13 April 2007 (EDT)

[edit] FDamageWeaponMult

How does FDamageWeaponMult play into these calculations? I didn't see anything about it here. Thanks! --Dev akm 13:07, 12 April 2007 (EDT)

Hmmm, that's a pretty good question :) If the default value of FDamageWeaponMult was 1, everything would make sense. But as it stands, I don't really see how it can fit into the equations. Possibilities seem to be that:

1. It's ignored
2. It's somehow been merged into one of the other factors on this page, or
3. There's invisible factor of 2 that's been thrown in and counteracts it (at least for the default value).

I think at one point I checked these equations against the CS settings, and all of the factors seemed to be directly related to various damage-type settings without any missing factors of 2), which would argue against option #2. But I should do that again (and actually document it in the article this time around!) to be sure. If someone wanted to experiment with a mod, we could confirm or deny #1 (maybe you've already done that?)

Looks like this might take some more investigation... or does anyone else have any ideas how to make sense of this? --Nephele^Talk 14:55, 12 April 2007 (EDT)

Ugh! I had just finished created a whole new section decoding all the equations into their CS settings, then my browser crashed.... Anyway, the result was #2 is correct, my memory was wrong. fDamageWeaponMult is currently rolled into the Damage equation, in a somewhat ugly way. The attribute-based section has been divided by 10; the skill-based section has been multiplied by 5, so all in all there is a hidden factor of 0.5 in the equation. I'll get around to recreating the new section that got zapped at some point today (before I forget everything I figured out), but figured I'd provide a quick answer here first. --Nephele^Talk 15:56, 12 April 2007 (EDT)

Awesome! Thanks for the quick response! I'm basically trying to sort out some really strange problems where people are seeing very wild damage values on weapons (like wildly higher than what's in the CS, even without the repair value being munged), so I'm trying to track down which game settings alter it and how. While you're at it, did you figure out how FDamageSkillBase and fDamageSkillMult play in there as well? Thanks! --Dev akm 16:03, 12 April 2007 (EDT)

Also looks like the CS Wiki and this page are out of sync regarding how the related attribute value is calculated. The FDamageStrengthBase claims the formula is:

  ( fDamageStrengthBase / 10 ) * ( attribute ) * ( fDamageStrengthMult / 1000 )

Where this page suggest + attrib instead of * attrib. Which is correct? :) --Dev akm 16:11, 12 April 2007 (EDT)

Argh! Are these related, too? FDamageWeaponConditionBase and FDamageWeaponConditionMult ... --Dev akm 16:22, 12 April 2007 (EDT)

Check the version of the page destroyed by my browser for all the answers...

OK, not too helpful ;) I had worked all those details out there, so I'll go ahead and reconstruct it. But really all I did was make educated guesses about how the variables would fit into the existing equations and make them still work out properly. Since I was able to do it without any unaccounted for factors, it seemed like a reasonable guess. Really verifying it would require putting together some mods that change those settings and seeing whether the final answer makes sense, which I definitely can not do right now. But perhaps if I give you a starting point, you could then see whether or not the equation works?

I will try to do that. I may enlist the help of the OBSE crew, if I can, just to give an added layer of accuracy.--Dev akm 17:36, 12 April 2007 (EDT)

As for the strength equation, I'm pretty sure it has to be addition rather than multiplication. With addition at 100 skill and 100 strength (and default settings) you end up doing damage that's 1.0625*Base. If it was multiplication, you'd end up doing only 0.31875*Base damage. Given that people definitely end up doing damage near base values with maxed attributes, the latter answer doesn't work too well. --Nephele^Talk 17:06, 12 April 2007 (EDT)

Agreed! I suspect the formula is wrong on the CS Wiki.--Dev akm 17:36, 12 April 2007 (EDT)

[edit] General

What about if the opponent blocks it with their shield (and their block skill is such that they would take damage)? How do you calculate armor absorbtion? How does enchanged damage (fire damage on a sword) work?

I also relize this is duplicated information, but I think it is highly desirable to be able to go to one page and step through calculating your damage -- Lorenz03Tx

Yep, I can see your point. Between all the resist/weakness effects, shield effects, reflect spell, reflect damage, spell absorption, on top of just plain old bashing and armor, there are alot of things that can come into play. And I think having it all in one place will help to figure out how all those things interact.

One answer: Elemental damage (fire, frost, shock) is not affected by armor; it's only affected by resist fire/frost/shock (which is also part of the fire/frost/shock shield spells). But I'm confused about the resist effects: I'm not sure whether they reduce the percentage of each attack, or alternatively whether sometimes you get full damage, other times no damage (I think at least sometimes it's the latter, because occasionally on the screen a message will flash up about "frost damage resisted").

Another question: how does reflect damage come into all of this: do you reflect a fraction of the damage, and then the armor kicks in or the other way around. In other words, if you have 85% armor and 10% reflect damage and someone hits you with a 20 pt attack, how much damage do you take, and how much damage does your attacker take? I'm guessing that the reflect damage happens first, so your enemy takes 2 pts, then you take 0.15*18=2.7 pts. Because if was the other way around (the enemy would only take 10% of 3pts damage, i.e. 0.3), it doesn't seem feasible for a rat to be killed just from reflected damage (which is my favorite part of reflect damage: having those pesky annoying critters just kill themselves without me having to do anything). But I'm not sure. --Nephele 13:03, 22 July 2006 (EDT)

Weakness/Resistances affect the magnitude of effects, shield effects affect the combined armor. Reflect Spell/Spell Absorption are a % chance of that action. Reflect damage is a percentage of the total damage which is resisted by you and dealt to the attacker. Internally the game tracks health to the hundredths so you could kill somebody by hitting them with .01 damage repeatedly. Tedrek 11:42, 30 September 2006 (EDT)

I'm pretty sure damage reflection happens before armor reduction. Accoring to the WIKI article on rats they have 4 hitpoints and 2 attack points. If you'd have 100% damage reflection they'd take either 2 or 0.3 points of damage (reflection first vs armor rating first). With the second option a rat would need to make 14 hits in order to kill itself. In my games rats kill themselves in 5 hits or so with 85% armor rating and an unknown amount of damage reflection. So it has to be that damage reflection happens before armor rating is taken into account, unless I had 1333% damage reflection.

[edit] Hand-To-Hand?

How is damange calculated for just punching people? --Rlpowell 18:28, 14 August 2006 (EDT)

The equation I've seen is:

Damage = 1 + ModifiedSkill/100 * Strength/100 * 10

I haven't verified it at all; it would be interesting to get confirmation of whether the equation works, and if so, add it to this page. --Nephele 21:21, 14 August 2006 (EDT)

The TESCSWiki provides an equation for hand to hand damage that reduces to

Damage = 1 + ModifiedSkill/100 * Strength/100 * 10.5

It also discusses fatigue damage done by hand to hand. This equation almost matches the one that I had previously quoted, has a more definitive source, and shows how the equation relates to known CS settings. So I'm going to assume that it's correct. If anyone would like to test it in-game, I'd be interested in hearing whether or not it really works. --17:39, 8 February 2007 (EST)

The Fatigue modifier seems quite odd to me. By modifying the damage with this formula, you'll get less than half as mush damage... Pascal 13:39, 9 September 2006 (EDT)

A couple of notes about my additions. The OpponentWeaponResistance is not very well tested (like at all) and could be quite wrong. Fatigue when using Bows was not well tested but appears to be correct, not that it should matter at skills over 25, as is the calculation for weapon damage. Finally, it is unclear how many steps the game uses internally for these calculations and whether rounding occurs internally which would make this formula occasionally wrong. In reply to the last, the fatigue formula as written scales damage between 100% and 50%, it never goes below 50% of the possible damage due to fatigue. Tedrek 11:42, 30 September 2006 (EDT)

Do you get a sneak attack bonus when using hand to hand combat, for example when killing someone in their sleep?86.131.89.148 04:02, 27 April 2008 (EDT)

Yes. You get exactly the same bonus for H2H as you do for any other weapon. –Rpeh^{•T•C•E•} 03:56, 30 April 2008 (EDT)

[edit] ModifiedSkill ?

Hi. Is "ModifiedSkill" defined somewhere? Is it the same thing as "EffectiveSkill" [1]? Thanks in advance, - Laisren 11:06, 27 March 2008 (EDT)

I've changed the article to spell out the definition of Modified Skill in more detail. But, yes, it is basically the same as CSWiki's effective skill. --Nephele^Talk 12:08, 27 March 2008 (EDT)