Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Help Tips & Tricks Damage Immunity?

Yesterday I had a fight in Szarr's palace which involved also a kind of werewolf. They are from the description immune to all physical damage. I had three casters and only Jaheira as Fighter, so not much of a problem. To the end of the fight I had one weapon throw of Jaheira left without good use, so I moved her to the remaining werewolf. I thought that at least the necrotic damage (it's the Sword of Chaos) would apply, better a bit than nothing. I was quite surprised that it also dealt the full 20 physical damage of the damage roll.

Is this a bug? Or do physical weapons which also have elemental damage overcome physical immunity?

Do you have a screenshot of the description of the creature? Or the specific text? I just played through the palace and Lae’zel was able to beat up on pretty much everybody.

I have a picture, the language is not English but you can see the symbol, and the German word "Immunität" for immunity is similar to the English word. It is not resistance but immunity shown.





You see the symbol of immunity to all physical damages for the werewolf, nevertheless the creature was hit by Jaheira with physical damage.

Is it immune to all physical damage or non magical physical damage?

It is immune to slashing, piercing and blunt damage. The sword has slashing and psychic damage, and it applied it's slashing damage too, accordding to the combat log. So I wonder wether the slashing damage immunity is bugged. Or is immunity totally overridden if a weapon does some other damage (here: psychic) than the damage against which the immunity exists?

The sword should be a none magical source too. If an attack does more than one type of damage usually only the one the enemy is immune against gets removed. There are things that counter resistances to none magical damage (Diluted oil of sharpness) but not immunity as far as I know. Did you click on the log to see the math?

Yes, according to the log it applies slashing damage. Which is weird.

A question: It says "from non-magical attacks" If the sword has a +1 weapon enchantment, is it still non-magical?

Once upon a time, D&D made a big distinction between swords and magic swords. As an example, you could attack a Gargoyle with a sword and to zero damage but if you had a magic sword, you'd do full damage. I haven't studied recent rules before playing BG3 but it's possible this explains the mechanic.

Could it be invulnerability as opposed immunity? When granted invulnerabilty through armor and such it gives you resistance to non magical attacks. But any magical weapon bypasses it and does full damage, and that includes just a +1 weapon.

It says "non-magical attacks". I'm not sure if it explicitly means "non-magical damage" one-to-one, but I interpret it that way, and therefore magical weapons, perhaps even enchanted ones like Shillelagh, should bypass immunity, as others have said.


That's true at least for an AD&D example from the predecessor where it was the other way around: Magic Golem.

I haven't tested it yet, but I also think that it means that if you take your Salami to a werewolf fight, it won't do you any good because it does not cause magical damage, just non-magical bludgeoning damage against which the werewolves are immune. If you however cast Shillelagh on it, you can trash the werewolves with your sausage, which now causes magical damage.

As a german I can read that tooltip just fine. That immunity is obviously for non-magical weapons only.

Opponents that can only be hurt by magical weapons, this concept is so old, its for example mentioned in Lord of the Rings. So it predates D&D.


In BG1 you had this, too. And in the BG1 addon you had Werewolves(!) that required silver(?) weapons. Or was it cold iron ? Some special material, anyway. Made fights against them a nuisance unless you knew what to do.

And in BG2 you had a lot of opponents that even needed +2, +3 and in some cases even +4 weapons; the later was IIRC only Demiliches ? There was also a spell called "Absolute Immunity" that required +5 weapons to break. I think in one case you even needed +6 weapons - but I cant recall right now when that was the case. There was also "Protection from magical weapons" which however could easily be destroyed with a simple Dispel Magic.

And you would only get four +6 weapons total in BG2 - a greatsword only for paladins, a halberd, a spear and a quarterstaff. And that exclusively happened in the addon ToB. In my games the greatsword always went to Keldorn (except if I was playing Paladin myself), the Halberd to Minsc (or whatever other character I took with me), the spear obviously went to Jaheira (dont think I ever not had Jaheira with me, I never played Druid), and the Quarterstaff could be wielded by anyone anyway.

This is by the way a really good example of what a complete PITA AD&D was when it came to weapons. You had to plan ahead many levels before what weapons you would use in the end. You had nobody with the right weapon skil, well you would suck using this weapon.

And there was no Withers for respecs either.

Fortunately there was a spell to get +6 weapons ("Melf's Magic Meteors") quite early and quite easily.


So in this regard BG3 is actually very, very simple by comparison.

And its sort of a good thing because otherwise Open Hand Monk would be extremely hampered against certain opponents.