What spells/effects are stopped by Magic Resistance?

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I've read that if you take Viconia in your party, she can get up to 80% magic resistance by combining items.

However, no one has apparently thought about using the Human Flesh +5 armor on her. She'll suffer a couple of points in AC, but I'd say that 100% magic resistance more than makes up for it. (65 base, +5 amulet, +10 Ring of Gaxx, +20 Human Flesh, 95% if you replace Ring of Gaxx with Shield of the Lost and use Gaxx on someone else.)

Question remains - what benefits would 100% magic resistance bring? Apart from spells like Breach that explicitly state that they ignore magic resistance, what other effects can get through?

 

I'm would add two more spells to the list: dispel magic and remove magic. From my experience (although I don't know for certain) these spells certainly appear to by-pass magic resistance. The example I'll use is Keldorn. His dispel magic consistently dispels effects on drow and dragons, and these are just two examples of enemies that have a high enough magic resistance that they should avoid the effects of the spell with some regularity.

 

Every single damage spell, both one-target and area-effect, are stopped by MR. I think the only exception to this is Skulltrap, but then again this is probably a bug (there's no reason why it should skip MR).

Certain Divination spells that reveal invisbility don't take MR into account either: Detect Illusion (mage 3), Oracle (mage 5), True Sight (priest 5 & mage 6)

The same applies to ALL spells that remove protections. This is straight from the SOA manual: Spell Thrust (mage 3), Secret Word (mage 4), Breach (mage 5), Lower Resistance (mage 5) (obviously!), Pierce Magic (mage 6), Ruby Ray of Reverseal (mage 7), Khelben's Warding Whip (mage 7), Pierce Shield (mage 8), Spellstrike (mage 9)

Demilich Imprisonment will also disregard it. In fact, I think even the spell does (though this isn't mentionned in the manual). I'm also not sure if things like the Disintigrate effect of Black Blade of Disaster can go through MR.

Beneficial and "neutral" spells will also disregard MR.

Aside from those differences, I think every single spell or spell-like effect in the game is subject to magic resistance.

Hope this helps.

 

What about dragon's breath and fireshields? Do they ignore MR? (I doubt it, but since we're mapping what MR is good for, no need to rely on intuition alone.)

 

Really not sure about Dragon's Breath and fireshields. I think your best bet would be to check the spell files. Unfortunately I don't have the game installed right now, so I can't help you with this.

It would make sense for Dispel and Remove Magic to bypass it too, since all protection-removing spells do. Again, I suggest checking the .spl files themselves.

 

It will NOT protect dragon's breath. The only way to avoid or reduce the damage from dragon's breath (other than the most obvious of making a saving throw) is to have resistances to the appropriate type of element that the dragon's breath weapon uses. For example, you need resistance to fire for red dragons, resistance to acid for black dragons.

Fireshields are again, elemental and so MR does not count, unless the creature in question is also resistant to the elemental damage. For example, an adamantine golem will not take damage from a fireshield, not because of his MR, but because he's resistant to fire as well.

 

Is Melf's Minute Meteors stopped by MR?

 

Nope, Melf's MM ignores MR.

 

Also the 5th level priest spell Magic Resistance - it sets the MR of a creature to a set level, possibly lowering it when the creatures MR is above the level that the spell would give.