Talk:Rippling Force Mail

Do you need to lose hit points to trigger Force Absorption?

Does Force Absorption trigger when being attacked / hit with physical damage or only when you actually lose hit points? This would be relevant for damage negation effects like Force Conduit itself, Heavy Armor Master or Arcane Ward. - A

If you reduce the incoming physical damage to 0, you will not get Force Conduit stacks. If an attack does, say, 7 slashing and 2 fire damage which is reduced to 0 slashing and 2 fire, you will not gain Force Conduit charges since you have not taken physical damage. Also, losing temporary hit points can still trigger Force Absorption just fine. NtCarlson (talk) 20:19, 27 December 2023 (CET)

I believe you are mistaken. The armor itself does stack nicely with Heavy Armor Mastery (HAM) as well as Force Conduit (FC). If you use the armor without HAM, you will gain more stacks of FC on average, not less because you'd be taking more damage on average. Ripply Force Mail can never be "potentially useless" in this way because if you didn't have it, you wouldn't be gaining any stacks of FC from taking damage. If anything, it's a nice way to compliment the damage reduction from HAM since you'd be reducing physical damage by at least 5 from the first hit you took, then at least 6 from the next, and so on. Zombieminthara (talk) 06:40, 30 August 2024 (CEST)

Got it, thank you! So, while Force Conduit itself stacks beautifully with damage reduction from Heavy Armour (/Master) and Arcane Ward, Rippling Force Mail does not, since it makes acquiring stacks significantly less likely and potentially useless, if too many turns pass between gaining stacks. - A