Damage is mostly used to reduce the hit points of a unit in an attempt to kill them. It is applied as a result of successful attacks and combat spells. It has a number of possible types and additional modifiers, all of which are indicated on the details window for each weapon or spell. The actual damage inflicted is the result of the damage roll minus the defender's protection roll, both of which are DRNs. A wide range of abilities and spell effects may alter the damage calculation in some way both before and after this protection roll.

The different damage types have a variety of properties besides simply reducing the victim's hit points. An instance of damage can have additional properties such as being magic damage, being armor piercing or negating, which are not specifically tied to the damage type. For example, many fire evocations tend to inflict magical armor piercing fire damage. This means that ethereal targets cannot avoid the damage (as it is magical), that protection is reduced by half (due to the armor piercing property), and that fire resistance applies due to the fire component.

A weapon which inflicts multiple types of physical damage, usually both slashing and piercing, will choose randomly between them.

The following table briefly describes the damage types:

Damage Type	Specific resistances	Overview
Blunt damage	Blunt resistant, reduces damage by half after protection	50% more damage against a target's head, after protection, and 25% more damage for the purposes of breaking shields.
Slashing damage	Slash resistant, reduces damage by half after protection	Inflicts 25% more damage after protection, and 50% more damage for the purposes of breaking shields. Will sever limbs or heads when hitting them if the the damage inflicted exceeds 50% of the target's hit points.
Piercing damage	Piercing resistant, reduces damage by half after protection	Reduces the target's protection by 20% for the purposes of calculating damage. This should not be confused with the armor piercing damage.
Fire damage	Fire resistance, reduces damage by the amount listed	May cause the target to become set on fire.
Cold damage	Cold resistance, reduces damage by the amount listed	May cause the target to become frozen.
Shock damage	Shock resistance, reduces damage by the amount listed	May cause the target to become stunned.
Poison damage	Poison resistance, reduces damage by the amount listed	Unlike the other damage types, the hit point reduction from the damage is applied over time.
Acid damage	None	May rust the target's weapon or armor.
Salt damage	None	Inflicts no damage on units without Salt Vulnerability, but may still stun other units.

Damage can also have a number of additional properties:

Name	Overview
Armor Negating	Completely ignores the target's protection. Depending on the damage type, effects such as elemental and physical resistances still apply.
Armor Piercing	Reduces the target's protection by 50%. This stacks with piercing damage for a combined reduction of 60%.
Fatigue Damage	Adds to the target's fatigue instead of lowering their hit points, though hit point damage from excessive fatigue will apply. Elemental resistances count double against this type of damage.
Magical Damage	The damage is considered from a magical source. Etherealness and invulnerability do not apply.
Life draining	Restores the attacker's hit points by half the damage inflicted, and fatigue by double the damage inflicted. Inanimate units can steal life, but not have life stolen from them.
Partial life drain	As the above, but is capped at 5 points of life draining.
Paralysis damage	Rather than dealing hit point damage, the damage is instead converted into some number of rounds of paralysis.
Soul Slaying	This applies the same effect as the soul slay spell.