Damage

Any creature, including all party members and neutral characters, might suffer damage – which lowers their hit points and may eventually lead to their death.

Damage is dealt by weapons when fighting, by spells, traps or during other events.

On the wiki, damage is sometimes referred to as "DMG" or "dmg".

Types
There are numerous types of damage. In general, it has to be distinguished between physical, elemental and magical damage, poison and stunning damage.

Creatures can have resistances to types of damage. Technically, there exists no "immunity". If a resistance exceeds one hundred percent, the creature will get hit points restored when exposed to the specific type of damage.

Physical damage
Physical damage is typically dealt with weapons, including fists. Different types of weapons cause different types of physical damage, some of them even two: A creature may be resistant to one or more of these.
 * blunt and spiked weapons typically deal crushing damage;
 * large swords and axes slashing damage;
 * small swords, spears and halberds piercing damage;
 * all ranged weapons, including throwing variants of axes, daggers and hammers, deal missile damage which is in terms of game mechanics handled the same way as piercing damage.

Elemental damage
Elemental damage usually is caused by spells or as bonus damage from weapons on top of their physical damage. As there are four elemental planes, there are four types of elemental damage: A creature may be resistant to one or more of these.
 * acid – connected to the Elemental Plane of Earth;
 * cold – connected to the Elemental Plane of Water;
 * electricity – connected to the Elemental Plane of Air;
 * fire – connected to the Elemental Plane of Fire.

Magical damage
Some spells, such as a Magic Missile, deal magical damage, which only* can be avoided by a creature's magic resistance or a specific "magic/magical damage resistance," granted by some items. Often, it is not distinguished between these two resistances. * Unless a saving throw is allowed.

In theory, there are two forms of fire and cold damage: the elemental variant, as described above, and magical fire and cold damage. A creature may have specific resistances to these, too, as well as some items or spells may give them. In fact, these two types of damage aren't caused by any weapon, spell, trap or anything else in the Baldur's Gate series, regardless edition. (See also the notes.)

Poison damage
Poison damage is a specific type of damage, caused by poison and in most cases applied multiple as an over time effect. Often a saving throw can counter this, and it can be cured by spells or potions. A specific resistance can only be gained via items, though certain creatures are equipped with these by default.

Stunning damage
Stunning damage isn't used in the Baldur's Gate series.