I am happy to report that since I've started saving and restarting the games every now and again (more when more fireball's have been cast), I've not had one instance of these instant death scenarios since. At least we know what it is now, as well as the solution to the elusive multiple fire particles bug.
I don't recall seeing it in any patch notes, but this appears to be fixed as of 2.6. Sitting in the fireball trap level of durlag's tower used to produce the bug within twenty minutes or so, as of 2.6 it didn't happen in any time frame I had the patience to test.
The underlying bug still exists in v2.6 — the game will end/crash when the 32,768th game object is created. I can't seem to find it in any patch notes, but Beamdog specifically fixed the bug for fireballs in v2.5.17.0 by recycling their objects internally.
Huh. I hadn't noticed this thread before. Good to have an explanation for why my ironman runs of the last segment of BGEE never work all the way.
In my experience, there's a warning sign that comes far enough ahead to be useful: the party's selection circles disappear, leaving only the X-like destination marker. If that comes up, you should probably save and end the session; loading a save resets the object count.
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In my experience, there's a warning sign that comes far enough ahead to be useful: the party's selection circles disappear, leaving only the X-like destination marker. If that comes up, you should probably save and end the session; loading a save resets the object count.