How high is a dragon's intelligence score?!

johntyl

I changed into a Mindflayer using my F/T and I cast two time traps and spammed Greater Whirlwind but the red dragon Saladrex in Watcher's Keep doesn't seem to die no matter how many times I 'devoured' his brain.

Exactly how high is a dragon's intelligence or can their brains not be devoured? (FYI: I did devour Irenicus brains once and even that worked)

sarevok57

so his intelligence is:

17

and I did some searching, and as far as I know, he gets no immunities to your attacks, while in mind flayer form you natural weapon acts as a +2 weapon and as far as I could tell he is not immune to +2 weapons, he doesn't cast any protection from weapon spells based on his scripts

some possibilities I see are:

- his AC is -13 so you might be missing him
- stoneskin for whatever reason could be getting in the way
- perhaps while in the timestop, intelligence drain might not work

this is also based off of an unmodded game, so if you have some mods installed, perhaps there could be something there that might be making saladrex immune to the mind flayer touch or some such

but other than that, saladrex really has no immunity as far as I can see from the mind flayer attack, so something must be going on somewhere

johntyl

@sarevok57 I'm playing with SCS installed, but not sure if they made dragons immune to devour brain.

I'm definitely hitting him as you can see in my snapshot. I began my first attack with my Carsomyr to dispel any protections then changed to mindflayer form. Even when his contingency Stoneskin came into effect, I think devour brain still takes effect but without the attendant damage. I tried attacking him without timestop and still he doesn't die

I'm surprised that dragons have such low intelligence. I thought they are exceptionally intelligent creatures since you know... they are dragons

sarevok57

it must be SCS messing it up, I just tested it out on my unmodded game, made a sorcerer, cast time stop, then shape change mind flayer, whacked him a few times, and down he went without a hitch

johntyl

@sarevok57 Thanks for the testing! It probably means SCS made all the bigshots/semi-bosses/bosses immune to intelligence drain. I wonder if liches/demi-liches are included

sarevok57

well the demilich would be for sure, since it requires +4 weapons or higher to hit, but then again, I don't use SCS so I have no clue

Lord_Tansheron

I think I do remember something about certain boss-level enemies being immune to stat drains under SCS.

Arunsun

SCS's main point is to prevent the usual cheesing and AI exploits that make the game too easy for experienced players, so even if I don't know every single component by heart it certainly wouldn't surprise me that one of them prevents the player from using ability drain from bosses. Killing a dragon through his stoneskin with 4 hits with a polymorph that has 4 APR is very much what I would call cheesing, on just about the same level as Balduran shield vs Beholders.