Wards, shields and other effects
What damage shields, wards, fortitudes, taunts and the other lasting effects do.
| Effect | What it does |
|---|---|
| Damage shield | Anyone who hits you in melee takes damage back, of the shield's element. |
| Ward (Protection from …) | Damage of the warded element (cold, lightning, unholy, mental, poison…) reaches you at half strength, damage over time included. |
| Fortitude | No single blow of the listed kinds can take more than a share of your maximum health. |
| Cheaper or dearer casting | Every power you cast costs a percentage less (or more, while frenzied). |
| Attack and defence rating | A physical blow lands harder the more your attack rating beats the target's defence rating, up to a quarter more; and softer the other way, up to a quarter less. |
| Skill blessings and curses | Powers of the affected school are stronger or weaker by half a percent per skill point. |
| Calm and lull | A calmed creature or NPC lets go of its target and forgets you; a lulled one only notices enemies much closer to it. |
| Taunt | The target turns on you. A shot or swing that sheds threat makes the target let you go instead. |
| Dispel | Strips the named kind of effect from a player or a creature, including with a weapon power's hit. |
| Fear and confusion | On a player: you are driven away from the caster (fear) or stagger off in one direction (confusion) for at most 3 seconds, while your camera stays yours. Charm on a player stops you attacking for 4 seconds. A second of these within 15 seconds lasts half as long; a third is shrugged off. |
| Shield Block, Wall of Steel | While active, blocking with your shield (or parrying with your weapon) costs no stamina, does not stagger you, and holds even against blows that would smash a guard aside. |
| Evasion | While active, a physical blow that lands within a moment of your dodge step misses you. |
| Backstab and similar | Blows that ignore passive defence go round shields, parries and evasion. |
| Companions | Summoning powers (familiars, elementals, a Wildspear's wolves, the Necromancer's dead, golems and the like) call one companion at a time. It follows you, fights whoever hits you or whatever you are fighting, never your group, and leaves when its time runs out, when you die, or when you travel far from it. What it kills counts as your kill; a slain companion leaves nothing behind. Powers aimed at a companion always land on your own. A helpful power meant for a player (a blessing, a ward, a gift of your own health) can also be cast on your companion or a groupmate's; a harmful one never touches a companion. |
| Curses on a creature | A creature has no skills, attributes, mana or stamina of its own, so curses read differently on it. Block, Dodge and Parry curses lower its defence and weapon-skill curses its attack. Constitution changes its health. Draining its stamina, or slowing its stamina recovery, slows its swings for a few seconds. Draining a spellcasting creature's mana breaks its concentration for a moment, and slowing its mana recovery or raising its power cost makes it cast less often. Curses on Intelligence, Spirit, the schools of magic or spell damage weaken the spells it casts. Curses on health recovery make healing do less for it. Drains that work over time keep draining a creature just as they do a player. |
| Shield forms | Shield Bash, Shield Slam and the rest need a shield in your off hand. Like weapon forms, they land with your next hit. |
| Slay | Slay Rat and its kin make your weapon hit that kind of creature harder: rats, giants and ogres, or dragons and drakes. |
| Shape-changing | Wolf Shape, Bear Shape, Rat Shape, Wolfskin and the Wild Huntress's Blessing put you in a beast's body until the power ends or is stripped. Everyone sees the beast. Your strength, armour and weapon still count as before, and the power's own bonuses apply on top. Wings of the Seraphim gives you wings; a Nephilim's Mundane Eidolon folds theirs away. A Sanguimancer's Crimson Pact puts another player in a ghoul's body, slow but hard to wound; it cannot take hold of a centaur, a dwarf or a vampire. |
| Weapon coatings | Poison Blade, Consecrate Weapon, Anoint Blade and Hone Weapon work on the weapon in your hand, so you need one to cast them: coatings now and then cast their effect on whoever you hit, a honed edge adds damage. Changing weapons ends them. Weapons whose prefix or suffix carries such an effect now trigger it too. |
Teleporting powers (Translocation, Greater Translocation, Passwall, Infiltrate) carry you to the ground under your crosshair when you begin the cast, up to about 300 metres away. They refuse, at no cost, if you are not aiming at open ground you can see with room to stand on it, if the place is dead ground, or (Passwall, Infiltrate) if you are not hidden. Greater Translocation offers nearby group members the same jump.
Recall spells (Astral Tether) return you to your bind point, the same place a Scroll of Recall takes you. Greater Astral Tether also offers a recall to each group member standing near you; each of them chooses whether to go, and goes to their own bind point.
Building powers are cast at a building you have selected. Sacred Reinforcement mends it, at once and over time; Demolishing Spell burns it, under the same siege rules as any other damage; Sacred Fortification makes it shrug off a share of siege damage for a while, and Undermine Foundations makes it take more; Counterward strips what was laid on it. Claim Mine, aimed at a mine tower, starts its claim at twice the usual pace.
Peek and Steal (Thief) work on someone within a few steps of you. Peek opens their pack in a window: their gold and every loose thing they carry, never what they wear. For 30 seconds after, each row has a Steal button showing your chance of lifting it; press one to cast Steal at that thing. Gold comes away as a share of their purse, an item one at a time. The chance falls the more a thing is worth, and rises the higher your level is above theirs. One Steal spends the look, so Peek again before another. You never rob your own group. Either power can fail; a failure tells the target who tried, and their companion turns on you.
Hiding (Hide, Sneak, Invisibility and the like) turns you into a ripple in the air: you see the world bending through your own body, and moving makes the ripple stronger. A player whose detection (Detect Hidden and the like) sees through your hiding sees the same ripple with a bright blue edge. Everyone else sees you shimmer, flash and fade away, and sees you flash back into view when your hiding ends, for instance when you attack. A hidden body casts no shadow.