How damage types work

[martixy 13]

I was trying to figure out why Bastila was dying so quickly to sand people even tho I gave her Brejik's armband and belt (supposedly effective vs melee attacks). The 2da reference thread had nothing useful, but it wasn't hard to figure out.

Damage types:

The game has 13 damage types and each weapon can have one or more of these types.

baseitems.2da has a column called damageflags. It's a bitfield that says which type of damage a weapon deals by default. In order of least significant bit to most significant (right to left) it goes like this:

0	1	Bludgeoning
1	2	Piercing
2	4	Slashing
3	8	Universal
4	16	Acid
5	32	Cold
6	64	Light side
7	128	Electrical
8	256	Fire
9	512	Dark side
10	1024	Sonic
11	2048	Ion
12	4096	Energy

The value itself is stored as a simple decimal integer (tho some other columns use hex - bioware just being inconsistent). The values in the second column are what you'd find in baseitems.damageflags - to have multiple damage types, add those numbers together and put the resulting sum in that column.

These types are used anywhere where damage comes in play - for example in all item properties related to damage, including damage bonus, damage immunity, damage penalty, damage resistance and so forth.

Weapons by damage type:

Disclaimer: This is using the weapon rebalance mod which changes disruptors from 7 (Bludgeoning+Piercing+Slashing) to 8 (Universal damage). It's a change that makes sense. Highly recommended.

Quarter_Staff			Bludgeoning
Stun_Baton			Bludgeoning
Long_Sword			Slashing
Vibro_Sword			Slashing
Short_Sword			Piercing
Vibro_Blade			Piercing
Double_Bladed_Sword		Slashing
Vibro_Double_Blade		Slashing
Lightsaber			Energy
Double_Bladed_Lightsaber	Energy
Short_Lightsaber		Energy
Blaster_Pistol			Energy
Heavy_Blaster			Energy
Hold_Out_Blaster		Energy
Ion_Blaster			Ion
Disrupter_Pistol		Universal
Sonic_Pistol			Sonic
Ion_Rifle			Ion
Bowcaster			Energy
Blaster_Carbine			Energy
Disrupter_Rifle			Universal
Sonic_Rifle			Sonic
Repeating_Blaster		Energy
Heavy_Repeating_Blaster		Energy
Blaster_Rifle			Energy
Ghaffi_Stick			Piercing
Wookie_Warblade			Slashing
Gammorean_Battleaxe		Slashing
Creature_Item_Slash		Slashing
Creature_Item_Pierce		Piercing
Creature_Weapon_Sl_Prc		Piercing

Or transposed:

0	Bludgeoning	Quarter_Staff, Stun_Baton
1	Piercing	Short_Sword, Vibro_Blade, Ghaffi_Stick, Creature_Item_Pierce, Creature_Weapon_Sl_Prc
2	Slashing	Long_Sword, Vibro_Sword, Double_Bladed_Sword, Vibro_Double_Blade, Wookie_Warblade, Gammorean_Battleaxe, Creature_Item_Slash
3	Universal	Disrupter_Pistol, Disrupter_Rifle
4	Acid		
5	Cold		
6	Light side	
7	Electrical	
8	Fire		
9	Dark side	
10	Sonic		Sonic_Pistol, Sonic_Rifle
11	Ion		Ion_Blaster, Ion_Rifle
12	Energy		Lightsaber, Double_Bladed_Lightsaber, Short_Lightsaber, Blaster_Pistol, Heavy_Blaster, Hold_Out_Blaster, Bowcaster, Blaster_Carbine, Repeating_Blaster, Heavy_Repeating_Blaster, Blaster_Rifle

(Who TF decided a tab size of 8 is a good idea? Also this forum needs a table feature.)

So I have my answer now. Gaffi sticks are Piercing damage, and Brejik's stuff protects only v Bludgeoning/Slashing. I feel like this is false advertising. I've been bamboozled.

Also, if you have Damage resistance Universal 5/-, it doesn't mean you resist 5 points of any kind of damage, it means you resist 5 points of the damage type "Universal", which is semantically just confusing as heck.

Edited May 5, 2022 by martixy
Oversight due to me using a mod

[Salk 374]

Hello!

Thanks for the report about damage types.

A question: does protection against damage type Universal mean you are protected only against weapons that do Universal damage (disruptors)?

EDIT: Taking a quick look at K1's baseitems.2da's damageflags column, I noticed that the Universal damage number there is 7, rather than 8, and that many items do not have a damage type at all. The only used values are 1, 2, 4, 7 (?), 1024, 2048, 4096.

 

Edited May 5, 2022 by Salk

[JCarter426 1,215]

It's a bitmask, so 7 is 1 + 2 + 4, i.e. bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing.

My memory is hazy, but I remember universal damage being different in each game. In KOTOR 1, weapons that say they deal universal damage like disruptors actually deal physical damage, and this damage can be absorbed by items that provide damage resistance to bludgeoning, piercing, or slashing like Brejik's armband. Whereas in KOTOR 2, they deal acid damage. I don't recall whether the universal damage type is actually used.

[martixy 13]

9 hours ago, Salk said:

Hello!

Thanks for the report about damage types.

A question: does protection against damage type Universal mean you are protected only against weapons that do Universal damage (disruptors)?

EDIT: Taking a quick look at K1's baseitems.2da's damageflags column, I noticed that the Universal damage number there is 7, rather than 8, and that many items do not have a damage type at all. The only used values are 1, 2, 4, 7 (?), 1024, 2048, 4096.

 

Oh. Indeed. Oops. I guess I was looking at my override rather than the base game(K1).

The weapon rebalance mod changes them.

 

Like I already said:

Quote

baseitems.2da has a column called damageflags. It's a bitfield that says which type of damage a weapon deals by default.

...to have multiple damage types, add those numbers together and put the resulting sum in that column.

Which means 7 is 1+2+4, so bludgeoning+piercing+slashing.

[Salk 374]

Interesting, JC!

6 hours ago, JCarter426 said:

In KOTOR 1, weapons that say they deal universal damage like disruptors actually deal physical damage, and this damage can be absorbed by items that provide damage resistance to bludgeoning, piercing, or slashing like Brejik's armband.

Does this mean that a K1 item protecting against any of the physical damage types (bludgeoning, piercing, slashing) would protect against universal?

[martixy 13]

You misunderstand. No weapon in base K1 deals universal damage.

 

But the normal non-modded disruptors make me think I should also test whether a multi-damage type is blocked by protecting against one of the types it deals, or all of them.

 

Btw, if you wanna see more of this in action check out how broken vanilla K1 forceshields.2da is. (The windows calculator in programmer mode is helpful here.)

Base shields protect vs "Light side" instead of electrical (somebody made a mistake by 1 position) and also vs Ion. The community patch fixes that particular oversight.

 

It makes me wonder something. Disruptors do say:

Quote

Unlike typical blasters, disruptors ignore most types of personal energy shields.

But not all. Given their previous damage type of essentially "melee" damage, one could argue Mandalorian shields are meant to block disruptors. Meaning that in a certain sense, the weapon rebalance mod makes them buggy.

I however think that the current situation of slightly lower damage, but unblockable by shields gives them a decent niche to fill.

Edited May 5, 2022 by martixy
Extra info

[JCarter426 1,215]

Protection against any physical damage protects against all three, as far as I recall. It would be worth testing whether that has to do with how the damage bitmask works, or whether that is hard-coded for those types.

If it were the former, that would seem backwards to me. It would mean the more types of damage a weapon deals, the weaker it is, essentially.