Lightning Bolt Bounce

grisbossk

I've never seen anything like this. No wall nearby, Khalid got triple hits from it. My party is around Level 6. Crazy Silke. What level is she? My bolt can't do that much damage. Let alone bounce like chain lightning on a steroid. The good thing is I don't have to deal with Garrick. So I got that going for me, which is nice.

lunar

I think it only hit Khalid twice. The first 2 damage rows are from the single, first hit. Any spell that allows a save for half damage does its damage in 2 rows. The second damage row is not shown if save is done. Here Khalid failed and took full damage from the first hit.

So the lightning bounced from Khalid to Garrick to Khalid again to Tessilan. Though I have no idea how Silke got electrocuted first. Silke is lvl 9 or 10, IIRC. So her lightning bolt can hit for some very high damage. Khalid also suffers bonus damage as you are playing on hard difficulty, if I am not mistaken.

sarevok57

well actually, Khalid only got hit twice, because here is how spells that deal half damage on a successful save work:

lets say you have the lightning bolt spell and you are level 6, so the spell will deal 6d6 damage, and if your target succeeds on their save they will take half damage, so you would think the you would roll 6d6 and get a 21 and if the target succeeds they would only take 10, but this is not who the IE is programed

what happens is that all spells ( or effects) that have a save for half damage, are made so that half of the damage cannot be saved against and the 2nd half is fully saved against if successful

so how a level 6 lightning bolt is programed is that 3d6 of the damage cannot be saved against, and the second 3d6 if they pass their save will not deal damage

hence the reason why Khalid took 2 electricity damages because he failed his save, if Khalid passed his save, he only would have taken one of the electricity damages

now the reason why the 27 damage was the only one that displayed ( and not a second one) is because the first one was enough to kill Khalid, this is also an IE design, this can also be seen with the long sword +2 where if the final hit will deal enough damage to kill the target, they will not suffer the one point of frost damage

sometimes the IE is programmed in silly ways, but the thing to remember is that this game came out in the late 90s originally so when they made this engine they had to be creative on how they did things no doubt, and that's why sometimes things like arbitrary but in reality are working as intended

blackchimes

I think, but don't quote me on that, that lightining bolts sometimes bounce off of characters as well.

Grond0

lunar said:

So the lightning bounced from Khalid to Garrick to Khalid again to Tessilan. Though I have no idea how Silke got electrocuted first.

I imagine the reason why Silke was hit was that Khalid was attempting to melee her. Lightning bolts are not a point projectile, but a line and if you try and cast it at something too close that line will be generated so that it overlaps the caster.

JuliusBorisov

This has been a known bug - https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/47470/19975-bolts-from-wand-of-lightning-should-not-change-direction-after-hitting-targets. If it's not fixed yet, report it according to the instructions here - https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/49845/how-to-report-bugs#latest.

grisbossk

@lunar & @sarevok57 : Thanks. That actually explains a lot. As Julius mentioned apparently the bolt aren't supposed to bounced of characters. It changed its directions three times went down to Khalid, then Garrick and back to Tesillan which all at different angle (not a straight line).