by *teker* » Thu Feb 15, 2018 12:57 pm
This may be part of a biggest question - what order should damage bonuses and reductions be applied? I looked at this once and was hesitant to mess with it due to the changes in gameplay that would occur. The short answer to your question is that your aerial servant gets applied before the tumbling defense so you would only see it when your servant is down.
Here's a list of how damage is modified before it is applied to the victim (not all are applicable to a given attack):
Original attack damage roll calculated (weapon, barehand, spell, mob attack, etc)
Add bonus damage for barehanded monk (based on monk level)
Add bonus damage for warrior melee attack (based on warrior level)
Add Berserk skill bonus
Add Frenzy skill bonus
Add Weapon Damage bonus
Add victim Excruciating Pain bonus
Add Focus skill bonus
Check Ethereal
Add Critical Hit or Massive Critical Hit bonus
Subtract damage if victim has Aerial Servant
Add damage if victim is fishing
Subtract victim damage reduction
Subtract damage for tumbling defense, oghams psalm of discipline
Subtract damage for victim shield of thorns
Subtract damage for victim sanctuary/aegis or wall of flesh/flesh golem or shield of faith/morning glory
Subtract damage for victim defy pain or endure pain
Subtract damage for victim fluidity or greater fluidity
Check victim mirror images
Subtract damage for victim spell shield
Check victim reflection
Check victim spectral shield
Check victim resist fire/cold
Apply damage to victim
The order of things doesn't really make sense to me - it seems like things like further from the victim should apply first (attacker bonuses, mirror, wall of flesh, shield of thorns, etc). Things closer to the victim would apply last (damage reduction, excruciating pain, etc).
In response to your specific question about aerial servant I would ask - should the servant behave like a dumb wall and stand in front of all melee attacks? Or is its magical nature smart and fast enough to only stand in front of an attack after a tumbling or similar maneuver fails?
The other issue I see is with reflection. When a spell is reflected the attacker and victim are flipped but the list doesn't get re-run. So the damage will be reduced if the original victim has sanctuary but not if the original caster has it. That seems backwards to me - it seems more logical to me that the reflection would occur before sanctuary check and that the caster's sanctuary would be the one that affects the final damage amount.