# Help understanding monster\_attacks

**URL:** <https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/help-understanding-monster-attacks/18705>\
**Category:** The Toolbox\
**Created:** [February 6, 2019, 5:25am UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/help-understanding-monster-attacks/18705 "2019-02-06T05:25:36Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![TheMurderUnicorn](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.cataclysmdda.org/themurderunicorn/32/5706_2.png) [@TheMurderUnicorn](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/TheMurderUnicorn)\
**Post date:** [February 6, 2019, 5:25am UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/help-understanding-monster-attacks/18705/1 "2019-02-06T05:25:36Z")

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Creating new monster\_attacks. Couldn’t find documentation on these specific questions and couldn’t understand the code.

Could someone explain how armor\_penetration and armor\_multiplier work? Within a monster\_attack, I mean. I played with it a lot but it had no obvious effect.

Also, can you not set a minimum damage for attacks? You can set “damage\_max\_instance”, which determines the max damage, but “damage\_min\_instance” doesn’t do anything obvious that I could see. Is the minimum damage always just 1? When damage\_max\_instance is set to include multiple damage types it still seems to be 1. IE: If the attack deals a max of 5 blunt and 5 piercing, you’d think it would deal a minimum of 2 damage, 1 of each. But it seems to deal only 1 point of an undetermined type.

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**Author:** ![Junknown](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/9fc348/32.png) [@Junknown](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/Junknown)\
**Post date:** [February 6, 2019, 8:08am UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/help-understanding-monster-attacks/18705/2 "2019-02-06T08:08:52Z")

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I believe armor\_multiplier does exactly what it implies: multiplies the players armor value by armor\_value before calculating the damage of the attack. So if you have 12 bash\_armor and 14 cut\_armor and get attacked with an attack with armor\_multiplier 0.5 the game would calculate the damage as if you had 6 bash\_armor and 7 cut\_armor.

I’m not 100% sure it works the way I described, so take the above with a grain of salt.

Edit:

I have done some experimenting with armor\_penetration and armor\_multiplier and seems like the former reduces your armor value by a flat amount while the latter works as I described above.

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**Author:** ![KiBoy](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.cataclysmdda.org/kiboy/32/5863_2.png) [@KiBoy](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/KiBoy)\
**Post date:** [February 6, 2019, 11:20am UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/help-understanding-monster-attacks/18705/3 "2019-02-06T11:20:35Z")

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The only thing armor\_penetration related to monsters I can think of is the Predator Zombies’ torso attack, which ignores armor.

No clue about armor\_multiplier… Maybe check military zombies for it? Or this might have something to do with skeleton zombies and their cutting resistance.

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**Author:** ![TheMurderUnicorn](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.cataclysmdda.org/themurderunicorn/32/5706_2.png) [@TheMurderUnicorn](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/TheMurderUnicorn)\
**Post date:** [February 6, 2019, 8:47pm UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/help-understanding-monster-attacks/18705/4 "2019-02-06T20:47:55Z")

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Alright. That makes sense. This is sort of what I expected was the answer, but I really wanted to be sure. I’d rather learn something for sure than figure it all out and be wrong.

Thanks for your inputs.

I’m still curious about minimum damage, though. If the minimum damage is always one, but the attack consists of multiple types of damage, how does it choose which damage type to deliver?

Although . . . I guess it doesn’t really matter, does it? It’s just one point of damage – it’s not like people die everyday to 1 hp loss. I’ma just mark your post as the solution.