Damage channel

Damage channel is an umbrella damage category which specifies how damage is applied, including its modifiers. There are 3 distinct damage channels in the game.
Damage channel	Enabled by 	Damage increased by	Damage decreased by
Fire 	Flaming attacks 	fire weakness 	
* Fire resistance
* Ward save
Magical 	Magical attacks 	 	
* Missile resistance (for magical missile damage only)
* Ward save
Physical 	Physical attacks (default)	 	
* Missile resistance (for physical missile damage only)
* Physical resistance
* Ward save
== Special rules ==
There are a few rules damage channels abide by, namely:
* The physical damage channel is the default for most units in the game. Unless damage is specifically described as magical, the unit will always have physical attacks that cause physical damage.
* Ward save (can also be written in game as "Damage Resistance", they are the same thing) reduces damage from any damage channel and is the only universal damage mitigation in the game.
* A unit must always cause damage in either the magical damage channel or the default physical damage channel.
* Damage channels can be temporarily or permanently replaced by abilities, skills and ancillaries, such as items and banners.
== Fire damage channel rules ==
The fire damage channel has a unique behaviour and operates under the following conditions:
* It is always used cumulatively with one other damage channel.
** In other words, it can be seen as increasing the damage of the original damage channel against units with fire weakness, or decreasing the damage of the original damage channel against units with fire resistance.
** An attacker with flaming attacks that usually deals 50 damage per hit will instead deal 62 (50 + 50*0.25) damage against a defender with 25% fire weakness (or 125% of the attack base damage).
** An attacker with flaming attacks that usually deals 50 damage per hit will still deal 50 (50 + 50*0.00) damage against a defender without fire weakness (or 100% of the attack base damage).
* For example, thefireball spell causes magical damage and fire damage.
** This is to say damage is considered to be both magical and fire so modifiers to both damage types apply.
** Thus, a fireball hitting a unit with 10% magic resistance and 25% fire weakness will receive an additional 15% (25-10) damage (or 115% of the spell base damage).
*This works the same way with physical flaming attacks, such as the missile attack of Outriders (Grenade Launcher): Their damage can be modified by Ward save, Physical Resistance, Missile Resistance, Fire Resistance and Fire Weakness. However, if a unit that is hit has neither Fire Weakness nor any Fire Resistance, the attack works as if it did not have fire damage attached at all.
== Contact effects ==
Contact effects like Poison! do not interact with damage channels and work seperately.
== TWW3 changes ==
* The TWW3 devs have announced changes to how the magic damage channel will operate with the introduction of separate spell damage mechanics (tbc).
Is there going to be a difference between spell resistance and magic resistance in WARHAMMER III?Magic resistance has been changed into spell resistance in WARHAMMER III. We needed to change the way magic resistance interacted with magical attacks to make Daemons play well, so magical attacks now bypass physical resistance and are no longer resisted by magic resistance. Spell resistance now only affects spell damage. We changed the term to signal that something has changed there.Source: Total War Discord Q&A archive: your questions answered on Kislev and Khorne blog