Can you protect from lightning? And other gripes.

I'm on Drakensang mountain and those bloody %^#@!!! critters keep on using lightning on my party! ~ 25 VP a shots * 6 or 7 - enough to kill them pronto, esp since you have to close with them to stop them doing that.

I'm trying to buff my party to absorb/resist damage. Part of the problem is that I don't know what various stats like Resist Magic mean - is 13 good? Is Psychic Focus even worth trying? How does it work? is it a percentage chance to resist (in which case 13 is crap)? Does it subtract off damage? And the magic shield - the one meant to absorb damage. Does it collapse after absorbing N points, or will it take N points from every damage spell directed at it? There is no clear description and the rules are very poorly explained in the manual that comes with the standard game. And in the game itself (which has more 'explanation' ironically) This is most frustrating to someone who understand the rules in D&D and go actually build and level up a character sensibly under that rule-set.

And this last slog up the mountain is tedious…reminds of me of the slugfest that was DS2 (at the end…of sweet lord…let it end)

EDIT: And getting back to in-game descriptions: what do all those spell stats mean? They are not explained anywhere! When I do the calculation I almost always get different numbers for given spell points. I;d love to know what's actually going on. I'm sorry, but that;s just crap.

If you don't know what these stats mean, you could try watching the console what it says during mgic use. You could begin a new game in Avestrue and just watch.

Here are a few explanations regarding combat & talents, but I cannot find anything regarding magic:

http://www.chromatrix.com/html/combat.html
http://www.chromatrix.com/html/talents.html

You can find more explanations there, too, but they were written for TDE mobile games, although they should reflect the 4th edition in general.

We also had a list, a collection of links with explaining/background material here somewhere …

If you want a hint about a tactic that help me a lot against those bastards :

On Resist Magic (in the PnP):
It is only applied for spells that work on the mind of the receiver.
So in the PnP only spells with the traits "influence", "control", "illusion" and "communication".
A lightning has the traits "damage" (it damages the victim), "power" (it isn't an elemental ray but one of pure magic power) and "influence" (it works directly on the mind/the brain of the victim, not on his body).
So Magical Resistance would apply.

Now here's how it works in practice.
Say you have a resist magic value of 6.
The enemy has a "lighning" spell-prowess of 8.
SInce lightning has the trait "influence", the Resist Magic value is applied.
Basically it is just substracted from the spell-prowess of the magic-wielder, so in our case he'd only have a prowess of 2 when trying to cast a spell on someone with Resist Magic 6.

Quite simple actually.
Hope this was what you meant.

And since I only know the German version:
Could you list the magical stats/abbreviations you don't understand?
Maybe we can interpret them together