Protection and Defense

[GrudgeBringer]

Just a quick question I never really thought of.

Is Protection and defense 30 the cut off point for them?

I mean if you have a protection 24 and have an item (or 2) and would make it 32 does it only get the benefit of 30 and you waste that extra 2 Protection?

OR is 30 only the highest number it will go to but the benefits can go higher?

Example...I have a Pretender that if I put Monolith armour should get a boost that puts it over 30 where if I use Jade Armour it hits 30 on the nose.

Besides the other benefits or detriments these have all things being equal it would serve me to use the Jade if the most protection is what I was striving for.

I take it Defense works the same way.

As long as we are going down that route how about a top for attack etc?

[Fantomen]

Protection can go up to 40.

[Micah]

And the GUI shows it capping at 40, so I don't see where all these other claims are coming from regarding ineffective additions, unless testing shows that it really caps lower, but I've never heard such...

[Jack_Trowell]

Don't forget that there are diminuting returns on protection when you combine natural protection with protection from armor.

If you add an armor with 10 protection to an unit with base 2 protection, the result should be 11 protection total, not 12 at you would expect.

I think that the formula is something like (greater protection value (between natural and armor)) + (lesser protection value)/2, but it might be something more complex.

[Amorphous]

As far as I know, the formula is
ap + np - (ap*np/40)
where ap is protection from armour and np natural protection.

There are different protection values for the head and body slots, though, so you have to click the protection displayed in the unit info screen to see the proper ones. The single displayed number is some sort of weighted average.

[Agema]

As per Amorphous' equation, getting over 30 protection is often difficult in practice. You generally need the spell invulnerability or some really massive armour (Aseftik's, Monolith). Most thug builds would probably top-out somewhere in the 20s.

I don't think Defence tops out either, but it stacks linearly.

Not including shield, starting at a maximum base skill of 15 (and not including shield): Quickness (+3), weapon bonus (up to +4), Chainmail of displacement (+3), gets you to 25. Experience can add up to +4, there are items that add to Defence presuming they stack (bracers +2, cat charm +4?) and heroic ability (+ whatever).

I would expect here again over 30 Def is vanishingly unlikely. That will partly be because there are much better ways to equip an SC rather than Def boosters: 30Def is made useless by all sorts of spells like earth meld, tangle vines, paralyze, and so on, and due to -2Def per attack, it quickly degrades if the SC is swarmed by many attackers.

[Ironhawk]

I dont know if physical att/def ever maxxes out. But I know that you cant get more than... I think 25 in either attack or defense from a weapon. Mod commands cap out at something like that even if you try to go over.

[chrispedersen]

Originally Posted by Agema

As per Amorphous' equation, getting over 30 protection is often difficult in practice. You generally need the spell invulnerability or some really massive armour (Aseftik's, Monolith). Most thug builds would probably top-out somewhere in the 20s.

I don't think Defence tops out either, but it stacks linearly.

Not including shield, starting at a maximum base skill of 15 (and not including shield): Quickness (+3), weapon bonus (up to +4), Chainmail of displacement (+3), gets you to 25. Experience can add up to +4, there are items that add to Defence presuming they stack (bracers +2, cat charm +4?) and heroic ability (+ whatever).

I would expect here again over 30 Def is vanishingly unlikely. That will partly be because there are much better ways to equip an SC rather than Def boosters: 30Def is made useless by all sorts of spells like earth meld, tangle vines, paralyze, and so on, and due to -2Def per attack, it quickly degrades if the SC is swarmed by many attackers.

Really heavy Armor is more degraded by the fatigue bypass of protection (imo) than the -2 def.

[Gregstrom]

Don't forget Def is boosted by levels in W. To boost Prot to hefty levels, you can trick yourself out with Fire Helm, Bracers, Cat Charm, good torso armour and an E9 bless. Adding Ironskin/Invulnerability is just gravy at that point.

[Quitti]

Cat charm doesn't affect protection - second bracers do though afaik. Cat charm does give defense though.