Chill Touch

JDow

Just been looking at what this spell does (testing it in-game). Surprised.

It's an attack that uses your fists.

When you cast it, you have 10 rounds (1 turn) in which you can make as many hits as you're able to.

NOTE: If you're a Bard and not in combat, once you cast Chill Touch you can put your chainmail back on; start a fight; and you have 10 rounds of (hopefully) landing hits while protected by your chainmail!

When rolling to-hit, you get a +4 bonus. So it's like you have fists +4. (Edit: <- wrong there's no +4 THAC0 bonus)

If you hit you do:

fist damage (d.2) plus
any modifiers (e.g., +2 because you have 18 strength) plus
a +4 damage bonus (Edit: <- wrong there's no +4 damage bonus)

On top of this (assuming you hit), your enemy has to make a save throw (pretty sure it's vs. Spell) or they also take:

d.8 of cold damage
and -2 to their THAC0

So it's a pretty powerful spell. (Edit: But not as powerful as 1st thought).


Before posting this I looked to see if there was already a post on this. I couldn't reply to the one I found but my testing had 2 points of difference with that post.

(1) They said the spell description was wrong and that you take the d.8 cold damage automatically if you hit (it's just the -2 THAC0 you save for). That's not the case. I've seen attacks where they take the physical damage, but save successfully and don't take the cold damage (the cold damage is always written in blue and the physical damage in white). So the description IS correct.

(2) Although the post mentioned the +4 THAC0 bonus, it didn't mention the +4 bonus added to the fist damage - which is very significant. (Edit: <- there's now no +4 THAC0 bonus, and there's no +4 damage bonus)

Hope you find this useful. Thanks.

ThacoBell

The touch spells are FANTASTIC for fighter/mages. Kinda meh for pure mages.

Grond0

Chill touch has been changed significantly in EE (and changed in different updates), which is why you'll see posts in the past referring to different amounts of damage and the fact that there's no save against cold damage.

In the past there was also a +4 THAC0 bonus when using chill touch, which along with weapon damage and cold damage made it a pretty useful spell. However, the spell now does not offer a THAC0 bonus (I imagine the +4 to hit / +4 to damage you refer to was because you were attacking something without a melee weapon equipped).

Other than at early levels a character would normally be attacking with a magic weapon. This means that in most cases when attacking with chill touch you will have less chance to hit and do less average damage when you do hit. My experience of the spell is that it is therefore not normally worth using, other than in niche situations - I sometimes play with a sorcerer restricted to only killing things in melee and chill touch can be worthwhile there due to the fact you can dual wield using chill touch without suffering the normal penalties.

One other point to make about chill touch is that it's possible for the cold damage done by it to chunk enemies - so be careful about using the spell against something if you want their equipment .

JDow

Grond0 said:

(I imagine the +4 to hit / +4 to damage you refer to was because you were attacking something without a melee weapon equipped).

Had to go back to testing. Yes, you are right, the +4 to-hit and +4 damage only occur when I attacked someone unarmed; not when I attack someone melee armed. That changes things quite a bit!

lunar

In the original bg2 the cold damage had no save. In ee, a succesful save negates the cold damage entirely. In pnp a save blocks the damage and the damage is only 1d4, but it drains strength on a failed save instead. -2 to hit is better for some opponents with no exceptional strength, though stat draining is open to abuse since it can kill in bg engine. So the devs were right to change it and beef up the damage a bit.

I once froze a victim with the chill touch, the punch damage knocked it out and the cold damage caused frozen death for the 1 hp victim. It was kinda neat. I always wanted a spell that causes frozen death with a touch.