Strange cases of Perma-Death from Spells

Charlatan

Hello !

I am currently happily playing BG in a way I personally call a "Playtrue". This basically is a Hardcore Run on Hard Difficulty with clear rules set by myself. It narrows down to make the playthrough an authentic and "realistic" story not influenced by quickloads and metagaming.


Now I just had two party members die and wonder if that case was actually a bug.. In Cloakwood the Level 9 Mage Kysus had a fit of crazy luck and managed to fireball my group, killing Xzar and Baeloth.

The damage, however, doesn't seem justified to permakill either of them. My 20/24 HP Xzar was hit by a mere 22 and my 46/46 Baeloth didn't save and was hit twice: once for 20, once for 36.



This is not the first Time I see this behave strange.. My previous attempt (the first attempt) I reloaded after the strange event of a L5 Lightning Bolt hitting Montaron for 22 + 26 (48), which frankly isn't possible even on Hard Difficulty, seeing as a L5 Lightning Bolt deals 5d6 damage = 5-30 +50% from Hard = 8-45

the_spyder

Yeah, I hate when death is permanent.

Charlatan

Logical, but this is more about unusual cases where the permanence may be a bug.

I don't see how the above example with xzar (20hp killed by 22 damage) should be permanent.

the_spyder

So I guess my question is "what are you calling "PermaKill"? Are you meaning that the character died and needed to be resurrected? Or are you saying that they died and couldn't be brought back at all?

If you mean the first, you are probably thinking of the way Neverwinter Nights (or merely 3rd Edition) works in that having negative hit points greater than -10 meant that they were unconscious and could be revived. That isn't the case in Baldur's gate. If you hit negative hit points, your character dies. Period. In that, if Xzar had 20 hit points and took 22, he's dead jim. There are no healing packs nor binding of wounds. They go negative, they are corpses. 'Bleeding', the effect I think you are thinking will happen, wasn't implemented in BG.

If you meant the second situation such that, after taking the damage, the character's icon no longer shows on the right side of your HUD, that's something different indeed. There are certain spell effects (and critical hits) which can 'Chunk' a character and make the un-resurrectable. Was Xzar frozen or stoned? Probably not as you would have expressed it. If he had been, he could be shattered and be gone for good. Likewise if a killing blow happens to be a critical hit and does enough damage, that can also permanently remove the character from your party. But again, from your explanation, that doesn't sound like the case.

regarding the Lightning bolt effect, understand that Lightning bolts bounce. That means that damage isn't simply a one time hit like fireball. If it bounces back and hits you, you take the damage again, and again, and again depending on how many bounces cross your character. You can literally be hit 5 or 6 times in places if the spell is fired in confined environs. When you reach BG2, you will find that out very quickly as there are some confined space battles where this can happen. Using Lightning bolt can be loads of fun, and VERY dangerous if not used properly.

Hope that helps.

Charlatan

Thanks for the elaboration, but I am aware of the differences between NWN and BG, and with Permadeath and Permakilled I indeed mean the more brutal kind of deaths in BG & IWD that prevent ressurection and remove the dead person from the party.

I was at the first fight above Cloakwood Mine with 4 assassins - 2 Fighters 2 Mages. No one was Petrified or Frozen. No one was chunked either, Baeloth and Xzar dropped dead regularily without any gore.

I've only seen enemies get chunked, usually by massive overkills. Can't say I'd call the 2 points of exceeding damage Xzar took as Overkill, though.

I mean, I've had a bear crit Xzar earlier for a whooping 32 once when he only had 16/16 HP and he did neither get chunked nor permanently died ! The temple had no issues ressing him back.


As for Lightning Bolt:

I've seen it ricochet from the target itself a few times. Is it possible it instantly hit Montaron multiple times in the same spot ? I'm wondering because this was actually in an open overland area with barely any obstacles.

The double damage it always does should, just like with Fireball, represent the save-able portion of damage it causes ?

the_spyder

From what you describe, the game would appear to not be acting as it should. I would suggest that you post all of the above, including what version of the game you are playing, what platform you are playing on and any MODs that you currently have running on the Bug report forum. If you took screen shots at the time (or can replicate the issue and take screen shots now), that would be even more helpful. Maybe they can help further. In any event, if you are experiencing this type of thing, chances are others are as well and it needs to be reviewed by the Bug team.

As far as Monty dying via a lightning bolt, I've seen bolts bounce off of the only tree in the area and come back to hit the same target more than once. It's rare, but it can happen. I have also seen multiple effects go off at the same time such that maybe he was hit simultaneously by something else?

Still, if you think that there is a problem, again see if you can replicate it and get a screen shot. You never know, you may have found a big issue.

Charlatan

Thanks for your time Spyder, after the next event yesterday I definitly will take this to the Bug Forum. The Details are pretty simple anyway, its a fresh vanilla installation with merely a handful of .wav files in the override (the old BG1 spell chants)

Playing around and testing this, I just had a 8 HP Edwin get critted for 28 damage and he was neither chunked, nor permanently killed, while a 16/30 Kagain was blown to bits by a 26 damage hit.

At the very least, this warrants an elaboration on how the permadeath threshold exactly works. Gonna make a screenshot next time, but hopefully that won't happen since this would send me onwards to playtrue-playthrough attempt 3

lunar

Perma death from massive damage are not always consistent. Sometimes a little bit of extra damage is enough to chunk, sometimes even a damage that would drop the victim to -20 does not chunk. Maybe it has a random percentile rule based on the extra damage done, and the constitution of the victim. Xzar is very fragile with low CON, IIRC. So is Aerie and Viconia and they die chunky deaths pretty easily. But that may be because they have so little hitpoints to begin with witj so low con scores.

Fire and lightning has a bigger tendency to chunk. Especially if you blow the saving throw and the second half of the damage kills you, odds of a perma-death increase.

All damages that can be saved for half do damage in two ticks. If you save, you will get the first tick only. Example, Edwin saves vs fireball that does 10d6 damage:

Enemy mage did 16 damage to Edwin (first 5d6 damage)
Edwin-save vs spells (second half of the damage is blocked)

Edwin blows his save:

Enemy mage did 16 damage to Edwin (first 5d6 damage)
Enemy mage did 27 damage to Edwin (second 5d6 damage)
Edwin-death

See, half of a spells damage are not equal halves in game play, first 5d6 can do moderate damage while the second hit of the damage can be bigger. And since the first hit drops the hp of the victim, the second hit can perma-kill more easily.

Cold damage is even more brutal, you can get frozen deaths even with low amounts of cold damage, if the cold damage is what kills the victim. Play around with chill touch and you can freeze/shatter some enemies with only 2-3 cold damage.

the_spyder

@lunar - thanks very much for all of that. Very insightful.

I was going to chime in on the fact that the actual amount of damage isn't the thing that Perma-kills key off of, but I think you covered it quite nicely. I agree that there probably is a random chance of Perma-Death, particularly at the harder levels.

And I had suspected that the "Half" damage might be calculated separately, which would explain the other anomalies that @Charlatan expressed. Now we know.

Charlatan

@lunar & @the_spyder‌

Thanks for the time of both of you ! With these new Insights, it all makes sense.

My third attempt of finishing BG1 on hard + hardcore run without any quickloads to change an outcome is soon drawing to an end, gonna hit Sarevok soon. Wish me luck ! :>

Gespenst

the_spyder said:

There are certain spell effects (and critical hits) which can 'Chunk' a character and make the un-resurrectable. Was Xzar frozen or stoned? Probably not as you would have expressed it. If he had been, he could be shattered and be gone for good. Likewise if a killing blow happens to be a critical hit and does enough damage, that can also permanently remove the character from your party.

Huh, that's interesting was there nothing like a "Resurection" or "True Resurrection" spell in 2e? Or was it just not included in BG?

the_spyder

I can't say for sure, but I would suspect that the game developers wanted to have some form of perma-death, particularly for core and harder rules. There should be 'Some' chance of un-recoverable death after all (sans using power word reset).

I personally subscribe to the Steven Brust universe theory in that, 'if you want to make someone unresurrectable, stick a blade in their eye.' With raise dead being so prevalent, there has to be something that makes it a hindrance. Otherwise, what's the point in killing anyone anyway? And isn't that the mistake that NWN2 made? ::::ducks:::::

Charlatan

Hm whats the nwn2 mistake ?

Its on my list aswell, for playtrue

the_spyder

One of the complaints about NWN2 was that characters would go down in combat, but then stand right back up afterwards. Basically you only died if everyone in the group died. Or am I thinking about Dragon Age? I get those two mixed up sometimes.

In either case, both games are still phenomenal and WELL worth playing. You just have to go in with the mind set that the game mechanics are like that. Accepting the rules as provided, means you don't get hung up on small things and miss the big picture of a great game.

And the thing with NWN2 is that it is very modable. There are loads of MODs out there from other players. And the online community used to be quite robust. I played for years on several persistent worlds that were loads of fun. One of them was actually a lovingly crafted replica of the Baldur's gate setting.

Charlatan

I think you mean Dragon Age, played that one. Nice indeed, even if a step downward from Forgotten Realms.

But seriously after blasts like BG, IWD, NWN, your next game CAN only go downwards. :>

Belanos

Charlatan said:

Hello !
The damage, however, doesn't seem justified to permakill either of them. My 20/24 HP Xzar was hit by a mere 22 and my 46/46 Baeloth didn't save and was hit twice: once for 20, once for 36.

Baeloth would make sense. A character can become permanently dead if they reach -10 of their max hitpoints. So getting hit twice for those amounts would make it 56, and -10 of his max. Xzar doesn't quite make sense though. Maybe it was the type of spell he was hit by.