The three OTHER LV. 7 Arcane Summons (No Love for Mordenkainen)

justfeelinathome

Warning: In case you can't see, this turned into a rather large wall of text... I apologize upfront.

With the advent of Siege around the corner, I'm rolling up a third character to take through the game and eventually BG II. He'll be, to complement my cavalier and avenger, an evil dragon disciple. To mix things up a little I decided to go with a more fire-based spell list, since I saw the idea come up on the forums and really liked it, when I first saw it (please link the OP, if you know him, so I can say thanks!), combined with the possibility to reach 125 % Fire Resistance without Items.

As I grew tired of having Mordenkainen's Sword as the go-to summon for all arcane casters asides Planetar, I decided I'd use the newly open spell slot for one of the three more exotic summons: Djinni, Efreeti or Hakeashar. Since I later decided Harkeashar is to situational for my taste, I wanted to compare the other two. Upon examining both of the summons by ctrl+q I was surprised by a few things, the last one in particular:

1. They give access to the same spell list (Hakeashar too): 2 x Magic Missile, 1 x Agannazar's Scorcher, 1 x Melf’s Acid Arrow, 1 x Stinking Cloud, 1x Ghost Armor and 1 x Lightning Bolt.
2. While these are the spells listed, their AI uses other casts as well, when engaging in combat (does someone have a complete list, maybe? I've seen: Shadow Door by Djinni; Fire Shield (Red), Fire Ball and Flame Arrow by the Efreeti).
3. The raw stats imply that the Djinni is strictly worse than the Efreeti: 59 hit points vs 80; Armor Class of 4 vs AC 2 (thus rendering Ghost Armor obsolete); Identical Thac0 of 8 and 1 APR; Efreeti's Saving Throws are lower in every aspect by 2, or by 3 (against Breath); and, finally, no resistances on the Djinni's side vs 125 % against Fire and Magic Fire by the Efreeti. The only thing that is a little ambiguous is the Djinni's damage output of 13-27 vs an on average higher 11-32 by Efreeti.

I can understand when a higher level spell obliterates one of a lower level, but this is a huge difference on one spell level. While thematically I've already decided to go with the genie from the elemental plane of fire, I was curious about your opinions on some of these points, or, essentially: Why would anyone pick Djinni over Efreeti?

1. Are both summons working as intended? Are there any known bugs? (I'm still stuck at 1.3, until the weekend)
2. Is one of the unlisted spells maybe a Saving Grace for the Air-Elemental Version?
3. ...Nothing to comment about this, is there?

Finally, I'd like to note that there is an inconsistency (again, I'm still at 1.3!) with the two summons: Djinni get's to enjoy the benefits of his two points of "Blunt weapon" proficiency, while Efreeti has the same, but doesn't get boni for it. I think one should match the other, either both should profit or neither. I'd love to check if this is still in-game, but alas, I can't.

So... are Djinni lovers on this forum? If so, why? *rubbs magic lamp* All good spirits out there, I beg of ye, come forth!  

lunar

It may be a purely rp fluff. Efreeti are known to be evil, while djinnis are less so. And evil is stronger in this case. I also noticed efreet's duration is a few round longer. In all aspects, efreet > djinni.

Item wise, there is the efreet summoning lamp which can be used 1/day. One of the more useful items, that is. There is also djinni summoning ring which is very, very inferiour:it uses up a precious ring slot, you need to equip and unequip it to use, also if djinni ever dies, the ring is destroyed.

For a rebalancing, djinni should have a more distinct air flavour, like the haste spell and immunity to lightning and/or gas based attacks like cloudkill, stinking cloud, etc.

justfeelinathome

I wholeheartedly agree. I completely forgot about mentioning the duration and had not known (or dismissed) the existence of that ring. (Chaotic) Good vs (Lawful) Evil should end with pros and cons for both sides, not with one simply being better. We have fantasy movies for that and they got it the wrong way round.

One has to wonder, though, if the spells were created intentionally this way. Another instance where Bioware offered a arguably worse option for one and the same slot is when upgrading the golem manual from Clay to Juggernaut. There's still more room for debate there.

Tresset

Yeah, the Djinn is kinda useless compared to the Efreet.

As a side note I really like the detail you go into here. Sounds a lot like the kind of thing I would do.

justtravelinthrough said:

One has to wonder, though, if the spells were created intentionally this way. Another instance where Bioware offered a arguably worse option for one and the same slot is when upgrading the golem manual from Clay to Juggernaut. There's still more room for debate there.

The clay golem may have better immunities, but the juggernaut is far and away the more powerful option. I always choose the Juggernaut, but I actually use the flesh golem most often (for obvious reasons).

justfeelinathome

Tresset said:

The clay golem may have better immunities, but the juggernaut is far and away the more powerful option. I always choose the Juggernaut, but I actually use the flesh golem most often (for obvious reasons).

TBH I don't know their statts at present, I just remember that it was a fan-favorite debate even back in the day and the consensus by the majority seemed to be that Clay is more useful than Juggernaut and never payed much attention to the latter. And yes, one tends to get the upgrades relatively late anyway, so the question hallway seemed marginal to me.

Nuin

IIRC, the Djinn is more defensive (gets spells like Stoneskin and PfMW, casts them on its own ) while the Efreet is offensive (I seem to remember that the latter likes to cast Fireball, which can backfire spectacularly if you have other summons up). The nice thing about them is that they can assume gaseous form if they don't get killed instantly, like vampires. They are immune to just about anything except stat drain and magic damage (? I forget) during this time.

justfeelinathome

That would be cool, and while I've seen Stoneskin used by a Djinn before, it was only by a hostile one (Trademeet, I believe). So, if the summoned Djinn (and i say if because I didn't see him use them) has access to those spells, there is likely a bug keeping him from using them. I'll check again to see how the Djinn behaves in combat this time around.

EDIT: Upon checking again with the Djinn, he didn't decide to use Stone Skin or any other Spell asides Shadow Door. Upon turning the summon hostile with a spell, however two Contingencies (Globe of Invulnerability & Stoneskin) popped up, as well as a, I think, manualy casted Protection from Magic Weapons. With these powerful new spells, the Djinn could stand up to the Efreet. Once I get access to 2.0 I'll check in on the summons again to file a bug report about this strange behavior.

The gasous forms are similarly only triggered when Djinn or Efreet was turned hostile. 

Tresset

The Trademeet genies are Dao which is why they use stoneskin. Dao are the genies of earth, just like how Efreet are fire genies and Djinn are air genies.

justfeelinathome

@Tresset Please check my edited Comment. Djinn DOES appear to have the spells, he's only stingy with using them for the summoner.

bob_veng

honestly, i don't believe that the stoneskin casting doesn't work when he's controlled and starts working when he's hostile

it should be tested more

justfeelinathome

@bob_veng care to explain why you don't believe me? What testing method would you suggest?

I agree that the scenario is strange, but Djinn simply refuses to use stoneskin (and the other two) even when near death.

bob_veng

how many attempts have you made?

edit: also, there's been a misunderstanding, i didn't say i don't believe you

justfeelinathome

I tried once in the Starting Dungeon (5 instances of summoning it in total), on most of the mobs and then went on to Throne of Bhaals beginning to see if it behaves differently. When the summon wasn't death spelled, there, too, it only used shadow door and auto-attack. I believe I summoned it around 7 or 8 times there.

Glad to here you believe me. Any ideas what could be the problem?

Tresset

Odd... It appears that the Djinn has a couple of protections that it only casts when it is hostile towards the player. It also says that it is casting Stoneskin when it is actually casting Protection from Magical Weapons. I have a hunch that these may be bugs in the script. @CamDawg, what do you think of this?

justfeelinathome

@Tresset Thank you 1000x for using True Sight on the game for me! My level of Meta-Sorcery isn't quite there, yet.

CamDawg

@Tresset One for Redmine. The string is definitely wrong, and IMO both of those contingencies should work for a summoned djinni.

CamDawg

Reported as #21815, 21816.