Damage (DX)

This page describes the mechanics of the damage system in Deus Ex.

Base damage
See Weapons (DX) and individual weapon pages for the base damage values of the weapons in the game. Note that for some weapons, the in-game inventory interface does not correctly display the true damage of the weapon.

Some weapons inflict multiple instances of a base damage. For example, a value of "20x5" (for the Dragon's Tooth Sword) indicates that a base damage of 20 is inflicted 5 times. A base damage of 20x5 is generally equivalent to a hypothetical base damage of 100. However, when attacking objects that have a minimum damage threshold (as described below), only the individual per-hit damage (which is 20 in the case of the Dragon's Tooth Sword) is measured against the minimum damage threshold.

Damage types
Damage types are categories of damage that the player can inflict and/or receive. The damage type of an incoming attack affects the final damage taken when the target has resistance against the incoming damage type (as described below). Some damage types are subject to special rules or special gameplay mechanics. For example, the "NanoVirus" damage type (from the scramble grenade) is used only for its special effect, and is never used to inflict any actual damage. For the player only, the damage that is received from the "Shot" and "AutoShot" damage types depends on the difficulty level.

Percentage-based bonuses
Weapon skill and the Targeting and Combat Strength augmentations provide percentage bonuses that extend the weapon's base damage. The bonuses for Targeting and Combat Strength apply only if these augmentations have been activated.

The total percentage bonus is applied to the base damage. For example, with a +240% bonus, the Dragon's Tooth Sword's 20 base damage is modified to 68.

Note that in the in-game inventory interface, the bonuses for weapon skill and targeting are incorrectly displayed at half of their actual values, and the bonus from combat strength is not displayed at all.

Situational modifiers
Against humanoid targets, damage is further modified if one of the following conditions applied. The stunned state should not be confused with the "stunned" damage type. The "stunned" damage type (inflicted by the riot prod) is only one of multiple damage types that will place humanoids in the stunned state. Tear gas (from the pepper gun or gas grenade) and halon gas (from the fire extinguisher) will also place humanoids in the stunned state.

Body part modifiers
Against humanoid targets, damage is further modified based on the body part of the target that is hit. A target dies when head or torso health reaches zero. When limb health reaches zero, further damage taken by the limb is rerouted to the torso. As shown above, the riot prod and baton do not benefit from the normal x8 multiplier for headshots. This is because the "stunned" and "KnockedOut" damage types (the damage types inflicted by the riot prod and baton, respectively) are excepted from the x8 multiplier for headshots. Consequently, for these weapons, attacks to the head are less effective than attacks to other body parts.

Body part and situational multipliers stack multiplicatively. For example, with a weapon other than the riot prod or baton, a headshot from behind at point blank range would result in a combined multiplier of 80x.

Explosions
Certain weapons launch projectiles that explode over a blast radius. These weapons include the LAM, LAW, GEP gun, plasma rifle, and PS20. The assault rifle's 20mm HE round is also a projectile with a blast radius. Whether or not a projectile is explosive is governed by the bExplodes property, which is not to be confused with the "exploded" damage type. For example, the plasma rifle and PS20 do not inflict damage of the "exploded" damage type, but the projectiles that they launch (i.e., plasma bolts) explode over a blast radius and behave like other explosive projectiles.

The damage caused by explosions is based on the weapon's base damage (or, more accurately, the projectile's base damage), but is subject to additional rules and calculations.

In summary, when an explosive projective explodes, it creates 5 separate explosions with successively larger radiuses, from 1/5 of the projectile's blast radius to the projectile's full blast radius. Each of the 5 sub-explosions has a base damage that is 40% of the projectile's base damage, further scaled by a factor (in the range of 0 to 1) that depends on the size of the projectile's blast radius, the distance between the impact location and the target, and the collision radius of the target. As a result, the target can be hit up to 5 times by an exploding projectile, but each hit deals damage that is less than the original base damage of the weapon.

Due to the manner in which damage from explosions is calculated, weapons that launch explosive projectiles tend to do more damage than what their base damage would otherwise suggest.

Calculation steps

 * Calculate the damage and radiuses of the 5 separate explosions for the exploding projectile.
 * The damage of each explosion: (base damage × 2) / 5
 * The radiuses of the five explosions: (projectile's blast radius / 5) × {1, 2, 3, 4, 5}
 * That is, the five explosions have radiuses that are 1/5, 2/5, 3/5, 4/5 and 5/5 of the blast radius.
 * Measure the length of the vector from where the explosion occurred to the location of the target taking damage, with a minimum value of 1. Subtract the target's collision radius from the vector length, and divide the result by the previously calculated explosion radiuses, with a minimum value of 0.
 * Subtract the above values from 1 to compute the damage scaling factors.
 * For each of the five explosions, the damage that the target takes is the explosion's damage (which is the same for all five explosions) multiplied by the respective damage scaling factor (which differs among the explosions). These values are subject to the floor function (e.g., a value of 2.8 is rounded down to 2).
 * The values calculated from the above step are then subject to the damage modifiers described above.

Example

 * The plasma bolt has a base damage of 8 and a blast radius of 300.
 * The damage of each of the five explosions is (8 × 2) / 5 = 3.2.
 * The blast radiuses of the five explosions are 60, 120, 160, 240, and 300.
 * Assume that the vector length is 32 and that the collision radius of the target is 20 (note that 20 is the collision radius of a common trooper).
 * Vector length: 32 - 20 = 12
 * 12 / {60, 120, 160, 240, 300} = {0.2, 0.1, 0.075, 0.05, 0.04}
 * Damage scaling factors:
 * 1 - {0.2, 0.1, 0.075, 0.05, 0.04} = {0.8, 0.9, 0.925, 0.95, 0.96}
 * Damage taken by the target:
 * 3.2 × {0.8, 0.9, 0.925, 0.95, 0.96} = {2.56, 2.88, 2.96, 3.04, 3.07}
 * Integer values: {2, 2, 2, 3, 3}
 * Apply damage modifiers (if applicable)
 * For example, if all of the above damages are headshots (with a 8x multiplier for damage), the resulting damage would be 8 × (2 + 2 + 2 + 3 + 3) = 96

Resistance
The final damage is multiplied by a "% damage taken" value corresponding to the target's resistance to the particular damage type. For example, the MJ12 Commando has a resistance (% damage taken) value of 50% for the poison damage type. Therefore, the MJ12 Commando only takes 50% of damage from the mini-crossbow's tranquilizer darts, which inflict poison damage. A "% damage taken" value of 0% indicates that the target is fully immune to the given damage type.

When two sources of resistance are active, they are applied as sequential percentage reductions. For example, the combination of ballistic armor at the untrained level (50% resistance) and tech 4 Ballistic Protection (65% resistance) results in a total damage reduction to 17.5% of the original damage.

Minimum damage threshold
Many world objects have a minimum damage threshold. Objects with a minimum damage threshold do not receive damage unless the attack meets or exceeds the minimum damage threshold.

Turrets, cameras, and alarm panels have a minimum damage threshold of 50. These objects can only be harmed by non-sabot attacks that do at least 50 damage. The sabot damage type, which is inflicted by sabot rounds of shotguns, is not subject to the minimum damage threshold of these devices. Therefore, turrets, cameras, and alarm panels can be destroyed by repeated hits from sabot rounds.

Other destructible objects, such as locked doors, may also have a minimum damage threshold. The minimum damage threshold is a hidden attribute and is not the same as door strength. However, doors with a high door strength are more likely to also have a high minimum damage threshold.