Resistance

The six Resistances are main attributes of characters in Rift: Planes of Telara.

All magical attacks in Rift correspond to one of the six planar elements: Life, Death, Air, Earth, Fire, and Water. Spells also produce damage of the same element- for example, an Air-based spell causes its target to take Air damage.

Resistances are a measure of how much damage a character can mitigate from each type of spell. This mitigation has two forms: damage resist and damage reduction.

Damage Resist
A character has a chance of resisting the effects of a spell; that is, a the spell may do less damage, or last for a shorter period of time, or it may even do no damage at all. The chance of such a resistance is calculated according to the following formula:

1 point of resistance equals 0.1% chance to resist spells of that damage type.

For example, a character with 100 points of Fire resistance has a 10% chance of not taking damage, or reducing the damage taken, from a Fire-based spell.

Damage Reduction
If a character is affected by a spell, that character will take damage of the appropriate type. The amount of damage that the character takes is modified by the value of her corresponding resistance. This reduction is calculated according to the following formula:

1 point of resistance equals .05% reduction in damage of that type.

For example, a character with 100 points of Life resistance will mitigate (100*0.05%) = 5% Life damage. If that character gets hit by a spell of 20 points of Life damage, she will take (20 * 95%) = 19 points of damage.