It does refer to the number of dice. The total is the total determines the total damage. The attacker does not get to add talk. The defender subtracts talk + intelligence from the damage and then subtracts it from talk. So, say she rolled a 4 and an 8 for a total of 12 and you had 6 talk and 2 intelligence. You'd take 4 damage to talk. The roll against talk doesn't come into play until you've been reduced to 0 talk.<br/><br/>I hope that makes sense.