Possible Hold Person Bug? (BG1 + BG2)

Caldegan

Here's a picture of my current situation with this spell:


Hold Person
This spell holds 1-4 humans, demihumans, or humanoid creatures rigidly immobile and in place for five or more rounds. The Hold Person spell affects any bipedal human, demihuman, or humanoid of man-size or smaller, including brownies, dryads, dwarves, elves, gnolls, gnomes, goblins, half-elves, halflings, half-orcs, hobgoblins, humans, kobolds, lizard men, nixies, orcs, pixies, sprites, troglodytes, and others. Thus, a 10th-level fighter could be held, while an ogre could not. The effect selects the enemies closest to the target and holds them. Enemies making saving throws are totally unaffected by the spell. Undead creatures cannot be held. Held creatures cannot move or speak, but remain aware of events around them and can use abilities not requiring motion or speech. Being held does not prevent the worsening of the subjects' condition due to wounds, disease, or poison.

Expected behavior:
Enemy attacks held CHARNAME and rolls normally. Armor Class bonuses, THAC0 modifiers, and physical damage resistance are calculated in determining the damage taken (if any at all).
Enemy casts spell on held CHARNAME (e.g. Magic Missile) and CHARNAME is allowed a saving throw as normally.

Observed behavior:
Enemy attacks held CHARNAME gets an automatic hit every time, with no attack roll shown in the dialog box, just “[ENEMY] did [x] damage to [CHARNAME]”.
Enemy casts spell on held CHARNAME (e.g. Magic Missile) and CHARNAME is not allowed a saving throw.

Nowhere in this description does it state that attacks made upon a held creature negate armor class, physical damage resistance, and completely ignore the use of attack rolls and THAC0 modifiers. It would make sense if it had said “a held creature receives a -4 AC penalty and those attacking held creature receive +4 to their attack rolls” but alas, it does not. This happens the other way around, too; any time CHARNAME casts Hold Person upon an enemy, he does not roll to hit, and AC, THAC0, and resistance modifiers are not considered.

Have any of you experienced this glitch? Is it a glitch at all, or am I just not reading the description correctly?
(This also happens with the Stinking Cloud, Command, Stun, and every other immobilizing or unconscious-rendering effects.)

AstroBryGuy

Your "expected behavior" is D&D 3E (+4 to attack rolls for helpless opponent). However in 2nd Edition, held opponents are automatically hit (Table 51 of the 2E PHB).

Jarrakul

Hold Person (as well as all other paralysis/stun/sleep effects) is behaving the way it's supposed to, but not the way it's written. The problem is in the description, not the mechanic. However, note that Hold Person is not (based on my experience) affecting saves. Keep in mind that the game simply does not show failed saving throws. If you run some more extensive testing and find that paralysis is rendering saves impossible, I'm pretty sure that is a bug. It's certainly not what's happening on my system.

The reasoning behind the auto-hit is that defending require moving, which is explicitly impossible whole Held. Therefore enemies automatically hit, as though they were attacking a fence. The problem is that the connection between moving and defending has to be inferred, rather than being explicit in the description. That part, at least, should be corrected.

Corvino

As @Jarrakul says, attacking a held target is more like chopping wood than attacking an opponent. They're unable to move and any exposed points stay exactly were they were. In 2E, it's auto-hit, as intended.

There was that time my brother managed to embed an axe in his foot while messing around with firewood, but c'mon, that's a one off.

Caldegan

Jarrakul said:

Hold Person (as well as all other paralysis/stun/sleep effects) is behaving the way it's supposed to, but not the way it's written. The problem is in the description, not the mechanic. However, note that Hold Person is not (based on my experience) affecting saves. Keep in mind that the game simply does not show failed saving throws. If you run some more extensive testing and find that paralysis is rendering saves impossible, I'm pretty sure that is a bug. It's certainly not what's happening on my system.

The reasoning behind the auto-hit is that defending require moving, which is explicitly impossible whole Held. Therefore enemies automatically hit, as though they were attacking a fence. The problem is that the connection between moving and defending has to be inferred, rather than being explicit in the description. That part, at least, should be corrected.

That's what I had figured. I've never had the chance to play DnD PnP so I had no idea this was true for 2E. I would like to see a change in the writing of the description because as it is, it fails to address that very important point.

Jarrakul

I was about the say that my 2E Player's Handbook didn't actually specify, but I found it. The rules for attacking sleeping or held targets are in the Combat chapter, so theoretically the spell doesn't need to specify (but it should, and BG still needs to because it lacks a good general reference for combat modifiers). And yes, PnP does proscribe automatic hits against held or sleeping opponents.

pixie359

I think maybe rather than in the spell descriptions, it could be a note in the load screens as it's a universal rule. 'Sleeping, stunned or held targets will always be hit when attacked with weapons'.

alnair

@pixie359 Load screens? What load screens?