Negative Damage - Noob question
 

I was wondering what the mechanics were for negative damage from spells.
In many of my battles, I have noticed against certain enemies, whenever I have scored a hit with a battlefield spell, the damage comes up to be negative, which adds to the creatures HP, instead of deducting it.

Some specific examples, was when I was MA Shinuyama, I was taking on a bunch of MA Machaka Black Hunter spiders. I scored several hits with both Fireball and Shadowbolt, but it caused negative damage, leading to the Black Hunters HP shooting upwards.
I checked the Black Hunters specs, they did not have any elemental resists, nor did they have 'luck' cast on them. They were completely unbuffed.

So how does this happen?

The province the battle occurred in, did have Luck 3 though. Is this a factor?

Re: Negative Damage - Noob question
 

It happens with creatures with multiple forms. With the Machaka spiders, the rider will have normal human hp ~10, when you kill him the spider, which has 50+ hp will be left. The negative damage just reflects this transition. The creature has gone to its second and now has more hp. You are still making progress.

Various Machaka spider riders, Skinshifters, Jaguar Warriors, Cave Knights. There are others.

Re: Negative Damage - Noob question
 

Jeff hits the nail on the head. You are doing positive damage, the victim just has multiple forms. The Hydra has at least 3 forms it goes through before dying. The game just throws up a number that states the HP change. However, I am pretty sure damage carries over.

However, more generally negative damage (which can occur due to random rolls) is just interpreted as zero damage.

Re: Negative Damage - Noob question
 

I'm not sure that damage carries over. The standard wisdom says it doesn't. I know you can't one-shot a hydra, even with Soul Slay for 999-damage. On the other hand, I'd swear I've seen things knocked into their second forms not at full hp. I've never actually tested it, so maybe they'd all been hit again after switching, but that's not what it seemed like.

Re: Negative Damage - Noob question
 

Do afflictions carry over? (not a very experienced player here)

It could've been never healing wound or something.

Re: Negative Damage - Noob question
 

I don't know why, but some afflictions do seem to carry over, while others don't. For example Feeblminded seems to carry over, but Disease doesn't. At least that is what I have experienced with Machakan Black Sorcerors (who transform to black spider when hurt; btw an excellent way to get rid of old age caused disease).

Re: Negative Damage - Noob question
 

On afflictions carrying over: actually, here's what's in Baalz' guide to EA Mictlan:

One bonus not a lot of people know about is that when shape shifting involuntarily (as the Jaguar Warriors do when critically wounded, and at the end of combat when the shift back to human) there is a pretty good chance to heal afflictions.

They are obviously meant to heal, but maybe not all kinds of them? May the fact feeblemind stays have something to do with the nature of the affliction, it being 'mental', not 'physical'?

Re: Negative Damage - Noob question
 

well, i assume it just does a heal check, and some afflictions have a lot lower chance of healing than others.

Re: Negative Damage - Noob question
 

Here's a thing I've seen toooo many times: Demilich's minions don't quite manage to kill the earth elemental trying to assassinate their master; the demilich goes off script; he casts Disintegrate a few times, succeeding once and "killing" one form of the elemental; the smaller elemental crushes him.

In that case a spell that's supposed to kill something doesn't kill it at all due to the form change... but the damage is approximately (or maybe exactly--is that how Disintegrate works?) the target's HP count, and not 999, so it only seems a little weird that the target doesn't die, and not highly weird as with the Soul Slay example.

Dang now I want to test this stuff (but it's too late for such shenanigans tonight)

Re: Negative Damage - Noob question
 

Ok now that we know that damage wont move from one form to the other and that afflictions do move with somekind of healing chanse im wondering what happens to fatigue and status effects (horror mark, curse, Buffs like luck or etheriality and poison)???

I would guess that all or atleast most of the status stuff move from form to form. I have no idea about fatigue but if it stays then thunderstrike is pretty much the ideal spell to smack non air elementals :D

I would run test for this things but i don't have time today. If nobody knows then i will do the test in the near future... For the greater good ;)

Re: Negative Damage - Noob question
 

I believe all the status effects stay. Even when it makes no sense. Machaka often winds up treating its former prophet's spider as a prophet for example. And a spider rider killed by poison will leave his mount suffering poison damage, even though it's immune to poison.

Re: Negative Damage - Noob question
 

I tested the hit point change. I tried hitting an earth elemental (sent via Earth Attack) with a 70-ish strength Kick attack. At large sizes, the elemental always changed from its maximal HP at its current size to its maximal HP at the next size down. But at around size 3, it started to take more damage than that. Once, for instance, I saw it change from 26/26 HP at size 3 to 1/18 HP at size 2. The number that appeared over it was 25, suggesting that that number is just (old HP) - (new HP). But later, the same elemental went from 1/18 to 1/10 in one hit, and the number that rose from it was 2. I don't understand that. Maybe its never-healing wound was involved (it had one of those; the penalty for the affliction changed from -3 to -2 due to the size change). I don't know. But damage does seem to carry over, at least sometimes.

Later, I tried casting Opposition on assassinating earth elementals. Once I got that spell to bring a healthy, size-5 elemental to 1 HP at size 4. Maybe the damage carries over but is cut off just before it would otherwise trigger a second size change. I mean, I guess only one form change per unit per attack is allowed.

Next, I tried casting Soul Slay on several Lamia Queens. As with Opposition on the earth elementals, this spell always brought its targets from perfect health in their first form to 1 HP in their second form.

Finally, I tried burdening a Lamia Queen with quickness, a curse, a horror mark, barkskin, and soul vortex before slaying her soul. Her second form still had all of these attributes.

Re: Negative Damage - Noob question
 

That makes a lot of sense. So damage does carry over, but can never cause a second death.

edit: does this also apply to phoenix pyre?

Re: Negative Damage - Noob question
 

Btw did you notice fatigue resetting to 0 on form change? =P

I wonder if this sometime rule work for elixir too, e.g. soulslaying something with elixir will leave it with 1 hp.

Re: Negative Damage - Noob question
 

Since my test game is all set up now to hit Lamia Queens with extremely penetrating Soul Slay attacks, I tried these other things as well. According to a few brief tests:

Fatigue does not change when the form changes.

Losing all HP while Phoenix Pyre is active does not trigger any form change until AFTER the Phoenix Pyre effect has taken place. So, the unit may go to -983 HP or some such (the red damage bar goes all the way out the window!) and then become reborn with full HP, all in its first form. When I tested this with a fire-empowered Lamia Queen, that's what happened--then, the Lamia Queen was struck by another soul slaying, and this time she was too tired to be reborn, so she exploded and changed form instead (and also lost all but one of her hit points, after the form change, as in my prior tests). And after that... my Soul Slay caster went off his script and enslaved her mind, and she turned into a non-commanding, second-form Lamia Queen, which quickly regenerated (as lamias do) to 50/28 HP! That surprised me. But her new nation had Gift of Health going, so it makes sense.

Losing one's soul with an Elixir of Life in hand also does not cause a form change. It just causes afflictions (due to the great wound), refills HP, and destroys the item. This all happens very fast, unlike with Phoenix Pyre which has an explosion in between the wounding and the healing, and so you don't get to see any -983 or whatever. A damage number doesn't even rise from the unit.

One more thing I learned by accident: Stream of Life can cause a unit to go berserk while also "killing" it! ...Or it can cause a unit to become feebleminded, without wounding it or causing it to go berserk (my unit was probably healed when this happened, but I couldn't tell because she was already healthy). A strange spell.

Re: Negative Damage - Noob question
 

Interesting stuff :)

The way that damage carryover works makes me wonder bit is it :bug: or WAD... I mean why does it stop to 1 hp and not at full for the new form. Also those elemental tests suggests that it is working difrently on bigger targets than on small ones.

The fact that fatigue stays after the form change has some interesting effects too. For an example it makes fatigue spells much better against skinshifters and jaguars. Rain fire on them and they just change shape and fight harder but make them sleep and its game over for them :D

Poison is also probably better choise against jaguar warrioirs than i thought. If i can build enough poison to kill the first form then the second might go down aswell from the remaining green steam... Skinshifters have regen so poison is probably not so good against them.

I always thought that second shapes are not working with phoenix pyre. I guess i have only tried it with chayots. Not too many shapeshifters in game that have fire magic :p

All this shapeshifter info will be handy soon. im going to play as pangaea against LA Mitclan next. I will try those fatigue/poison tactics to see if they work or fail miserably ;)