In Bard's Tale 3 (for the Commodore 64), sometimes I am attacked with the message "phazing her". What does this mean?

"Phazing" is just flavor text, like "draining." It appears to actually be a different damage type in the game, named next to 'critical-hit,' etc, however it does not have any additional effects. The only enemy that uses "phazing" damage are the Vortexes, which are found in Battle 2, and do 145-203 damage.