How do negative stats work? If I gave a guy -20 at lv0, and he equipped a mace with 10, would he do any melee damage? What if he had Maces lv0, which gives +2? Would my -20 cancel that out? Or an imaginary buff which gives +5? I know resistances can go into negative numbers, but can anything else?
Negative damage is weird for a couple of reasons. Like you might expect, damage can't go below zero, but the game does keep track of how negative your damage goes, so if you give someone -20 and then later give him +3, he still ends up with zero net damage. BUT! Basic damage types (Crushing, Blasting, and Slashing) all interact not only with themselves but with Melee Power as well. So if you have a dude with 3 12 and you give him -20 , he will only deal 3 with his attacks. HOWEVER! If you hit a dude that happens to have, for example, 3 iterations of Hack on (-18), that same 312-20 will deal -- and don't blame me if I have this wrong 'cause this is really fucked up -- 85. Because the Melee Power is effectively only reduced by 2 (to 10), and there's Slashing involved in the equation now, so the Melee Power gets split evenly between all basic damage types involved in the attack (55) and then the 3 from the weapon is added back on. Non-basic damage types act basically exactly like you'd predict.
