4e Damage question

[tcrudisi]

I'm a bit confused about the order to do adding, subtracting, dividing, and multiplying when it comes to damage.

Let's say a Hunter uses a melee ability that does 3d8+10 fire and necrotic damage.

The target, an undead, has resistance 10 necrotic and 5 fire. It's also Insubstantial. Just to make things more complicated, that undead is standing beside a Pack Zombie which has Lurching Sacrifice.

Lurching Sacrifice (immediate interrupt; encounter): This power triggers automatically when a nonminion ally adjacent to a pack zombie is hit by a melee attack. The pack zombie is destroyed, and the damage dealt to the ally is reduced by 5.

So the question: How do you do the math? What's the correct order? Thanks in advance!

[SadisticFishing]

Okay, first, preventing necrotic and fire damage requires both resistances. So you'd take the lower. Assume you roll 15 on the dice, making a total of 25 damage.

Fire resist = 5, Necrotic resist = 10, the lower: 5.

20 damage.

Reduce this by another 5 for the pack zombie.

15 damage.

Really simple, no multiplication or division required.

[Mando Knight]

Really simple, no multiplication or division required.

But it's insubstantial. Divide by 2. The question is, is the damage (25-10)/2 or (25-5)/2-5 or (25)/2-10?

[Hzurr]

I don't have a rule to back it up, but I'd half the initial damage due to being insubstantial. So 25/2 - 10. My argument is that they were only quasi-in the real world when it's hit, and even the part of it that was hit naturally resists 5 of that.

The zombie, I'm putting at the end, because I feel like it.

[tcrudisi]

Insubstantial reduces damage taken by half. At what step is this factored in?

[Tengu_temp]

I don't know if I'm correct, but I'd put all the multiplications at the end of the equation.

[Fax Celestis]

If it's he same as 3.5 (which it's probably not), the math always happens in the fashion most advantageous to the players. The reasoning here is that the players will be on the receiving end of math for the entire game, whereas the monsters will only be on the receiving end for one fight.

[Douglas]

As I recall the FAQ ruling was that the math always happens in the way most advantageous to whoever has the abilities in question. How fire resistance and vulnerability interact does not depend on whether the creature with them is a PC or not, it's always resistance first, then vulnerability.

In this case, the abilities in question are insubstantial, resistance, and the zombie's thing. The most favorable way to combine them for the side that has them is to divide first, then subtract. (25/2) - 10 = 2 damage (always round down).

[Colmarr]

[QUOTE=douglas;5608503]As I recall the FAQ ruling was that the math always happens in the way most advantageous to whoever has the abilities in question. How fire resistance and vulnerability interact does not depend on whether the creature with them is a PC or not, it's always resistance first, then vulnerability.[QUOTE]

I agree to a point. The pack zombie's ability is not an ability of the target, and shouldn't be considered until the damage done to the target is taken into account.

So I get 25 (damage) / 2 (insubstantial) - 5 (resistance) = 7 damage to the target.

Lurching sacrifice then kicks in and the target ends up taking 2hp damage.

EDIT: After re-checking your post, I realised that your "-10" was my "-5 -5", so maybe we agree entirely after all

[Malek]

You first apply vulnerability/resistance, then cut it in a half with insubstantial: source.

[Kalirren]

...dammit, I hate the damage rules. Why couldn't they have made it nice and explicit like they did in M:tG, and have damage be first -assigned-, then be -dealt-, then be -taken-?

The reason why I object is that with a name like "Lurching Sacrifice", I imagine the zombie going *lurch* and soaking the blow for the nonminion ally, and I'd expect that the "damage reduced by 5" effect to mean that damage assigned to the target is reduced by 5, not that damage the target takes is reduced by 5.

Thus you'd have 25 damage initially assigned; Lurching Sacrifice automatically activates as an immediate interrupt = 20 damage assigned; 20 damage assigned - 5 lowest resistance = 15 damage dealt; 15 damage dealt/2 insubstantial = 7 damage taken.

Nice, clean, unambiguous. I think.

[Artanis]

I can understand them not doing that, because it makes it less likely to do something that screws things up. Mix up "dealt" and "taken" in one line that the editors miss, and you can (theoretically) wind up with some seriously screwy stuff. Just look at all the confusion surrounding Rain of Blows, which could be fixed by adding or changing just one word.

HOWEVER.

I agree that it would be nice if it was more clear. Sometimes things can be a real bitch to find, and the rule about making things as advantageous to the target as possible is one such thing (I still can't find it ). If they made things like that more clear and more obvious, it'd clear stuff up.