Armor Resistances, Penetration & Weapon Types

Resistances List

List of basic resistances used in Skyrim. These show the maximum effective resistance applicable. Any resistance over this value will not be taken into account during damage calculations.

Armor Resistance

About AR (Armor Resistance) Values

• 1 point reduces incoming physical damage by 0.1%. So 800 AR will reach the 80% cap when not considering Armor Penetration.
• 1 point of Armor Penetration (AP) effectively reduces target AR by 1%. This means striking target with 500 AR with 10 AP makes the effective AR 450, making the target take 45% reduced damage not 50%.
• The AR cap applies after applying AP.

Armor Penetration

Melee attacks and ranged attacks can penetrate armor, which reduces the effective armor rating and thus damage reduction of the target.

• Per point of armor penetration will bypass 1% of the target’s armor rating with ranged attacks and melee power attacks. Standard melee attacks will bypass 0.5% of the target’s armor rating per point of armor penetration. The maximum which can be bypassed at most 80% of the target’s armor rating.

• In ranged combat the ammunition used plays a key role for armor penetration. You can see the arrow guide here

Magic/Elemental Resistances

• Magic Resistance protects against all magic damage including elemental magic such as fire, frost and Shock .
• The effect of magic resistance is multiplicative when combined with elemental resistance. Let’s say you have 90% magic and fire resist. This will mean that you only receive (100%-90%) * (100%-90%)= (10% * 10%) = 1% fire damage, which is equal to 99% fire resistance. This also means that your effective resistances raises exponential as your resistance %’s become higher.
• Magic resistance protects you from Shouts, Fears and other none elemental spells E.g those in the illusion tree.
• Unlike Vanilla, NPC’s can have both elemental resistance and magic resistances.

Poison Resistance

• Resist Poison increases the target’s resistance to damage from poisons up to a maximum of 90%. E.G Resist Poison 50% will halve any poison damage the target takes, Resist Poison 150% will mean the target still takes 10% of the damage.
• The Resist Poison effect must be applied before poison damage is taken, so the player or any follower who knocks back a resist poison potion will only resist new poison attacks, not ones currently in effect(Damage over times).
• Poison shouts, such as those performed by a poison dragon or the afflicted ignore poison resistance for the initial attack. The damage over time aspect is still however affected. As this shout is slow, the best way to avoid this is to not be in front of them, taking several steps to the side makes the attack dodgable .
• High Poison resistance prevents Paralyse attacks from taking effect, E.G 45% is enough to stop all but the biggest frostbite spiders & Falmer from paralyzing you.

Damage Types

Damage Types implemented by Requiem. Weapons are assigned one damage type, and Creatures are Sometimes given extra Damage Type Resistances that function as extra Armor Rating against each damage types.

---

Damage Reductions

Certain enemies have abilities which reduce incoming damage by specific weapon types to the stated percentage. This also ties in closely with the material protection section, which grants damage increases or reductions based on the type of materials weapons are made out of.

Examples

• 75% damage reduction on Blunt would mean a warhammer which states in your inventory that it does 100 damage will be reduced to 75 damage.
• 85% damage reduction on slash would reduce all damage by Swords, War Axes, Greatswords or Battleaxes to 85% of the stated damage in the inventory.

Material Protection

Some enemies have additional protection or vulnerability to Weapon materials such as Silver or Daedric, or if they take reduced damage from conventional materials.

Example

• Almost all undead are vulnerable to silver weaponry in some fashion and take additional damage from silver melee weapons.
• Draugr will shrug off any arrows made from conventional metals such as iron or steel reducing the damage to 10% of the stated damage in the inventory in addition to the AR they gain from ranged attacks. With weaker metals, this makes you seem like you are only doing 3-5 damage per arrow.

---