The skill Resisting Spells, sometimes referred to as Magic Resist, gives you some basic resistances (physical, fire, cold, poison, energy), even when you are not wearing any armor at all. The formula to calculate your basic resistances is (Resist skill – 40) / 3 * 2 rounded down to the nearest whole number. At 100 skill points, this gives you 40 points in all five resistances, at 120 skill points it gives 44 points in all five resistances.
These resistances are not cumulative with armor resistances.
If you wear an armor that has 30 in all resistances, and you have 40 points in all resistances because of your Resisting
Spells skill, then your final resistances will be 40 (and not 70).
When resisting magic attacks your resistance is figured in with the magery of the person or creature casting at you. If your resistance is very low (below 40) then it becomes extremely difficult (but not impossible) to resist almost anything cast by a magic casting monster or grandmaster mage.
The skill does not resist all magic attacks, in fact it defends only against non-damaging offensive spells (de-buffs). Nor does it completely “absorb” spell damage, it only lessens the effect. For stat decreasing spells this means you lose less stat points when hit, and for duration spells this means the duration of the spell is shortened. The exception to this rule is the poison spell, which can be fully resisted. For Blood Oath, the amount of damage you receive is lessened by a percentage if you resist the spell. The formula used is: Percentage of damage resisted = (Resist Spells/20) + 10
The full list of spells the skill is effective against is:
Magery Spells
- Clumsy
- Curse
- Feeblemind
- Mana Drain
- Mana Vampire
- Paralyze
- Paralyze Field
- Poison
- Poison Field
- Weaken
Necromancer Spells
- Blood Oath
- Corpse Skin
- Mind Rot
- Pain Spike
Spellweaving Spells
- Essence of Wind
- Thunderstorm
Mysticism Spells
- Bombard (stun chance, pvp only)
- Mass Sleep
- Nether Cyclone
- Purge Magic
- Sleep
- Spell Plague
The weapon special move ‘Force of Nature’, in addition to 15-35 delayed direct damage, applies a stun to the target for two seconds which can be reduced by magic resist every 12th hit.