[jeffr]

One thing I do during a battle replay to try and determine what is going on is to periodically right click on a unit I'm interested in. This will pause the replay and give you the unit's current status: hitpoints left, current spell effects (fire shield, paralysis, etc.) and weapons (if it's an enemy commander). If you right click on a specific stat (hitpoints, attack, etc.) at the top of the dialog, it will tell you how that number was arrived at).

So, for example, if you see that your defense is 0 and you are wondering why, right click and you might see that you have been blinded or are paralyzed.

Another use is to track the status of a particulary important unit in the battle (say, your pretender). I've watched my units lose hitpoints but then gain them back via regeneration, etc. It helps explain what's going on.

So, if you wanted to find out what Barksin did exactly, right click on the unit after it is cast. You'll find that it's basic protection (it's protection without armor, i.e it's skin/hide/whatever), has risen to 10. This has probably raised it's overall protection value by some value slightly less than 10, depending on the armor it is wearing. There is a description of how protection is calculated in the rulebook or one of the dom2 pdf guides on the net. It has also been made 25% more receptive to fire damage. The spell effects guide also has this info.