Role-playing Games Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for gamemasters and players of tabletop, paper-and-pencil role-playing games. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
Case: A Warden has Resist 5 All Damage from some Warden feature/power. He also has Resist 10 Necrotic from his armor.
He is hit by 30 Necrotic damage from a single attack.
Does he take 15 damage, negating 10 Necrotic for the armor and then 5 untyped for the feature/power, or does he take 20 damage, negating only the 10 for his highest resist?
I know that different resistances to the same damage type do not stack, but do I consider 'All' a unique damage type or a general resistance?
Your Warden takes 20 damage
Basically this is a case of specific beats general. If you have Resist 5 all, it's like having Resist 5 for every keyword of damage. If you have a higher specific resistance then that is applied, if any resistance is lower than your Resist All amount then that is ignored and you use the All.
They do not stack because same typed resistances don't stack (you use whatever is higher), and Resist All is just short hand for saying you have resistance in every category. (leaving you with same typed resistances of 5 and 10 in this case).
This is explicitly stated in the RC on page 224 Under the section "Not Cumulative Resistances" in the example
...if a creature has resist 5 cold and then gains resist 2 to all damage, the creature still has resist 5 cold, not resist 7 cold.
