After some poking around I changed the base Secretary Halberd edict provide 3,000 damage - making the in-game result 99,999 pretty much everywhere (Grazes hit for 33k) -, and noticed bosses were still taking paltry amount of damage (often less than 1,000). Later on, I noticed the same behavior from elite non-boss enemies (the orange and purple name ones), sometimes being hit for as little as 200.
Can somebody point me in the direction of which part of damage calculation makes the game behave like that? Is the edict itself being ignored somehow? Is there some separate damage reduction property for "not small fry" enemies? What is going on here?