Magic Resistance

[danr]

Okay, I'm going to pop the cork on this board with a question instead of just a lame "Test Post".

One thing that's not quite clear to me is what magic resistance does - is this resistance to enchantments, or any and all magic used against the player (including wands?), or just certain effects? If a monster casts Teleport on me, will MR reduce the chance of the spell working? Will it help against fireballs?

[Napkin]

I think "Teleport Other" is an enchantment spell too - MR should help.

[MrMisterMonkey]

Effects don't have to be spells in the Enchantments school to check MR; Teleport Other, for example, is actually Translocations.

[galehar]

Okay, I'm going to pop the cork on this board with a question instead of just a lame "Test Post".

One thing that's not quite clear to me is what magic resistance does - is this resistance to enchantments, or any and all magic used against the player (including wands?), or just certain effects? If a monster casts Teleport on me, will MR reduce the chance of the spell working? Will it help against fireballs?

It protects against hostile enchantments which include some wands (slow, paralysis, disintegration,...). The most nasty things it protects against are probably paralysis and banishment (only the banish spell, not distortion, miscasts,...)

[casmith789]

It also protects against mesmerisation, confuse/sleep/paralysis spells. MR is really an odd name, though, as it doesn't prevent magic damage (save disintegration).

[MrMisterMonkey]

Disintegration (curiously enough, Disintegrate has a ?/S entry as a level 6 Tmut spell), pain (checks rN too), agony (checks rN too), possibly others

MR also protects monsters from polymorph, but players need rMut for that.

[danr]

Is there any rhyme or reason to this? Other resistances are pretty clear - fire, rElec, etc. Is this documented somewhere?

[tormodpwns]

MR is generally not too useful because effects like TELE are easily cancelled with a scroll of teleportation, spells like Slow are not too common on enemies, and enemy spell power is generally weak (I had a level 15 DSIE with just a robe of MR that could resist Aizul's sleep consistently).

One thing it's useful for, though, is paralysis, because it's cast by orc sorcerers and ogre mages and can be very dangerous if your MR fails.

[MrMisterMonkey]

Also banishment, particularly on Lom Lobon's level (if you get banished you can't return to kill Lom or get the rune).

Also confusion on mummies, since you can't quaff healing or anything like that.