ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

So there was I, happily rampaging through the arena with my Accursed Cornac, when comes this Paladin of light guy [name might be off] . I charge him, attacks and a couple of turns, my life drops from 800 to 100, apparently due to some kind of reflected damage.

I assume this was reflected damage because the damage i received scaled with the power of my attacks. When I rested next to him, i received almost no damage from his normal attacks.

I managed to finish him thanks to an infusion of acid explosion, but died a few turns later to the boss [i still had the original healing infusion and couldn't regenerate fast enough]

More generally, how do you deal with reflected damage ? Especially as a melee fighter ? I want to be ready for that guy when i meet him again

Turn off his talent that does this.

Sun Paladins have two sources of damage reflection: Martyrdom, which is a status effect placed on you that deals a percentage of the damage you deal back to yourself, and Retribution, which is a sustain that absorbs half of all damage the Paladin takes up to a set amount, at which point it explodes around them for the amount it absorbed.

If you have the Martyr status effect, don't attack too hard; if the enemy has Retribution, keep your health up until it blows; if the problem is damage-when-hit, use single powerful attacks like Slash instead of multiple low-damage attacks like Frenzy.

AFAIK, DoT is never reflected (?) - so If nothing else works, you could switch to a backup weapon with lots of DoT on it while you're status'ed. Not great, but still better than nothing.