resistances-and-saving-throws

👉 This guide covers the various kinds of magical and elemental resistances in GnollHack, and how to get them from items and monster corpses.

📖 Overview

GnollHack has seven kinds of resistances to magical attacks:

  1. Full Resistances
  2. Partial Resistances
  3. Magic Resistance
  4. Magic Cancellation
  5. Wisdom-Based Saving Throw
  6. Constitution-Based Saving Throw
  7. Reflection

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

🛡️ 1. Full Resistances

Full resistances completely protect you from the specific elemental or magical attack. Extrinsic properties are granted by equipment, while intrinsic properties can be permanently gained by eating specific monster corpses.

Bisection Resistance

Immunity to bisection attacks (namely, The Tsurugi of Muramasa)

Granted by Items:

Granted by Corpses:

  • None

Charm Resistance

Immunity to nymph stealing and seduction attacks

Granted by Items:

Granted by Corpses:

  • None

Curse Resistance

Immunity to cursing of items in the inventory

Granted by Items:

Granted by Corpses:

  • None

Death Resistance

Immunity to death attacks

Granted by Items:

Granted by Corpses:

  • None

Disintegration Resistance

Immunity to disintegration attacks

Granted by Items:

Granted by Corpses:

Drain Resistance

Immunity to level drain attacks

Granted by Items:

Granted by Corpses:

  • None

Flash Resistance

Immunity to blinding attacks

Granted by Items:

Granted by Corpses:

  • None

Free Action

Immunity to paralysis attacks

Granted by Items:

Granted by Corpses:

  • None

Full Acid Resistance

Immunity to acid attacks

Granted by Items:

Granted by Corpses:

  • None

Full Cold Resistance

Immunity to cold attacks, protects equipment

Granted by Items:

Granted by Corpses:

  • None

Full Fire Resistance

Immunity to fire attacks, protects equipment

Granted by Items:

Granted by Corpses:

  • None

Full Magic Missile Resistance

Immunity to magic missiles and striking

Granted by Items:

Granted by Corpses:

  • None

Full Shock Resistance

Immunity to lightning attacks, protects equipment

Granted by Items:

Granted by Corpses:

  • None

Hallucination Resistance

Immunity to hallucination

Granted by Items:

Granted by Corpses:

  • None

Lycanthropy Resistance

Immunity to lycanthropy

Granted by Items:

  • None

Granted by Corpses:

  • None

Mind Shielding

Immunity to telepathic attacks of tentacled ones

Granted by Items:

Granted by Corpses:

  • None

Poison Resistance

Immunity to poison attacks

Granted by Items:

Granted by Corpses:

Polymorph Resistance

Immunity to polymorph traps

Granted by Items:

Granted by Corpses:

  • None

Sickness Resistance

Immunity to sickness attacks, including mummy rot

Granted by Items:

Granted by Corpses:

  • None

Sleep Resistance

Immunity to sleep attacks

Granted by Items:

Granted by Corpses:

Sliming Resistance

Immunity to sliming attacks (namely, the green slime)

Granted by Items:

Granted by Corpses:

  • None

Stoning Resistance

Immunity to petrification attacks

Granted by Items:

Granted by Corpses:

  • None

🛡️ 2. Partial Resistances

Partial resistances reduce the elemental damage you take by a percentage and offer a chance to protect your equipment.

50% or 75% Acid Resistance

Reduces acid damage

Granted by Items:

Granted by Corpses: (All 50%)

50% or 75% Cold Resistance

Reduces cold damage, chance to protect equipment

Granted by Items:

Granted by Corpses: (All 50%)

50% or 75% Fire Resistance

Reduces fire damage, chance to protect equipment

Granted by Items:

Granted by Corpses: (All 50%)

50% or 75% Magic Missile Resistance

Reduces magic missile and striking damage

Granted by Items:

Granted by Corpses:

  • None

50% or 75% Shock Resistance

Reduces lightning damage, chance to protect equipment

Granted by Items:

Granted by Corpses: (All 50%)

🔮 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).

🛡️ Sources of Magic Resistance

You can get Magic Resistance from the following extrinsic items:

⚠️ 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' beatitude 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:

Magic resistance does not protect you from:

🛡️ 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:

  • Confusion touch attacks
  • Disenchantment touch attacks
  • Drain energy (mana) touch attacks
  • Life drain attacks (which drain an experience level)
  • Lycanthropy
  • Mummy rot
  • Nymph stealing attacks (but nymphs' attack gives a big penalty to MC, so it has a bigger than normal chance to work)
  • Paralysis attacks
  • Seduction attacks
  • Sleep touch attacks
  • Sliming touch attacks
  • Slow touch attacks
  • Stat drain touch attacks (strength, dexterity, and constitution)
  • Steal amulet and steal gold touch attacks
  • Stoning (petrification) touch attacks
  • Stun touch attacks
  • Teleportation touch attacks
  • Terminal illness attacks
  • Wound legs touch attacks

🎲 Magic Cancellation Chance

The Magic Cancellation formula is the following:

MC Chance to Resist
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. Additionally, some special accessories, such as a brooch of shielding or an ioun stone of protection, grant bonuses to Magic Cancellation.

🧠 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 as 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, and some potion effects, such as sickness and poison, 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.

🛡️ Sources of Reflection

You can get Reflection from the following extrinsic items:

💡 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.

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