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In games there may be the idea of resistance/weakness to certain types of attacks. For example, some games have triangles where A beats B, B beats C, and C beats A. Others may implement this in the form of elemental affinities like fire/earth/water/wind that are popular in certain kinds of games.

Now, I can understand what it means to have 0% fire resistance. It means when you take damage from a fire-based attack, you take full damage.

Similarly, if you have 50% fire resistance, then it's like wearing some fire-resistant clothing and the amount of damage you receive is reduced.

At 100% fire resistance, you are fully fire-proof. No amount of fire will do any damage to you (disregarding of laws of physics and thermodynamics at this point)

On the flipside, you have an attack that deals 0% fire damage, or perhaps 50% fire damage and 50% something else. Or maybe 100% fire damage.

What I am having a hard time grasping is what happens when you have 200% fire resistance, or 200% fire damage rate.

Some games cap the rates at 100% using perhaps a call to a min function. Other games assume that you can absorb the excess amounts (eg: 120% means you absorb 20% of the damage).

But are there any solid arguments for why any rates beyond 100% make sense?

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  • \$\begingroup\$ I think it makes more sense to think of it this way: The displayed "resistance" is the real resistance plus the absorption. If you have 80% resistance but you then absorb 20% of the attack, you end up with what appears to be 100% resistance. \$\endgroup\$
    – jmegaffin
    Commented Mar 2, 2014 at 4:54
  • \$\begingroup\$ I normally avoid the percentage scale and use a modifier instead. So you boost resistance by increasing the modifier. The damage can taken then can be calculated by foo(modifier_value, damage_value); where foo could simply return damage_value / modifier_value. It could also simply return 0 for a modifier higher than a certain threshold. The advantage is that you can stack a lot of buffs with deminishing returns without maximizing your resistance which makes the gameplay more flexible. \$\endgroup\$
    – AturSams
    Commented Mar 2, 2014 at 9:24
  • \$\begingroup\$ If you actually want fire to heal the character you can then use a negative modifier which results in a health boost. \$\endgroup\$
    – AturSams
    Commented Mar 2, 2014 at 9:24
  • \$\begingroup\$ Sounds pretty opinion based. What kind of arguments are you looking for? Logical explanations for how this mechanic would make sense? \$\endgroup\$
    – House
    Commented Mar 3, 2014 at 20:48
  • \$\begingroup\$ Yes. I write game engine functionality and certain calculations involving rates above 100% need to be treated different from rates <= 100% so I'm looking for different explanations of it to see what kind of things I might need to consider. \$\endgroup\$
    – MxLDevs
    Commented Mar 3, 2014 at 21:17

2 Answers 2

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Ultimately, it's your game, and you decide how you want it to play out.

I like the explanation given by some games (like Epic Fantasy Battle) that "a resistance of more than 100% is absorption."

For example, a fire resistance of 100% means you take 0 damage; 200% means you absorb the full damage and are healed by that amount.

Or alternatively, you can choose to model your game without resistances over 100%.

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In some games you cannot reach 100% due to the amounts equipment give you. In other games this gets just capped at a certain percentage like 75% or 100%. Then there are some that lets you heal since you have such an affinity with that particular element.

For solid arguments as to why any resistance above 100% makes sense would be a creature of fire itself that gets healed for 50% of the damage a offensive fire spell does. Of course when a meteor is involved the discussion starts again. You could make a meteor spell like this a 75% fire spell and 25% earth spell for instance.

Another example would be a healing spell. In some games this healing spell does damage to undead. If the resistance of this spell goes over 100% it could turn to damage.

In the end you decide what happens in your game, some things do not have to make complete sense as long as they add to the game experience. A guy that can shoot fireballs at ugly looking demons does not make much sense to me if i think really seriously about that.

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