What does "Ghost Dust" innate ability of the Dust Mephit Familiar do?

Oxford_Guy

I'm thinking of running a neutral evil or lawful evil fighter/mage in my first BGEE run-through and have been looking at the evil familiars (or at least how they are in SOA, they might, and perhaps should, be toned-down in BGEE, assuming they're available at all). Anyway, the neutral evil familiar is the Dust Mephit, this can cast the very useful "Glitterdust" spell one a day, but also have "Ghost Dust" as an innate they can use twice a day. I'm not exactly sure what this does, though, as there does not seem to be a corresponding spell - can anyone clarify?

I've tried using it, and it *seems* to be a party friendly group disabling spell, those enemies who fail the save are said to be "Irritated by ghost dust", so it obviously does *something*, but I'm not clear what this is.

The Imp familiar that lawful evil gets can polymorph, which is very cool, but confers less HP to the PC in SOA, and let's face it, your familiar will be in your pack most of the time, so those HP are probably the main benefit of familiars, which is one of the reasons I'm considering neutral evil over lawful evil (also easier to RP, I think).

ajwz

I have never used any familiars special ability in my entire baldur's gate life.
I remember only one time I actually bothered to let one out of my backpack to help in particularly difficult fight. I carefully kept it alive in the fight itself, but then promptly forgot about it afterwards, and it ended up dying off screen to what I can only assume was probably an umberhulk.

Shin

Hmm.. are you sure you mean ghost dust and not glass dust?

allhailsteve

I think it's like insect plague but far less effective - it's supposed to break the concentration of spellcasters.

LadyRhian

According to the Planescape Monstrous Compendium, it increases AC by 4 and attacks by 2 for 3 rounds. Which is, worsens both.

elminster

Shin said:

Hmm.. are you sure you mean ghost dust and not glass dust?

Perhaps maybe even ghost busters?

Worg

elminster said:

Shin said:

Hmm.. are you sure you mean ghost dust and not glass dust?

Perhaps maybe even ghost busters?

Ah, now I get it. You are thinking of Gozer the Gozerian dust. It causes the awakening of the gatekeeper and keymaster. Nasty stuff. Pretty powerful for a familiar.

Oxford_Guy

Shin said:

Hmm.. are you sure you mean ghost dust and not glass dust?

Ah yes, you're correct, sorry.

Oxford_Guy

LadyRhian said:

According to the Planescape Monstrous Compendium, it increases AC by 4 and attacks by 2 for 3 rounds. Which is, worsens both.

Okay, thanks, that's actually quite useful, do you know what the save modifier is (if any)?

Shin

@Oxford_Guy It's an AOE that penalizes AC by 4 and thac0 by 2, save vs breath to avoid. Lasts 30 seconds and doesn't affect party members/allies.

Oxford_Guy

Shin said:

@Oxford_Guy It's an AOE that penalizes AC by 4 and thac0 by 2, save vs breath to avoid. Lasts 30 seconds and doesn't affect party members/allies.

Thanks, did you find this info. out in the Monstrous Compendium too? Might have to get this...

Shin

Nah, checked the game files, glass dust is handled as a spell that some dust mephits have.

LadyRhian

@Oxford_Guy In Pen and Paper, they can breathe this three times a day. It lasts 3 rounds, and if you make your save, you scratch the itch and you're fine. Anything with a thick, scaly or insensitive skin is immune. I am thinking that would probably include stoneskin/ironskin.

Oxford_Guy

Shin said:

Nah, checked the game files, glass dust is handled as a spell that some dust mephits have.

How do you check this kind if thing? I have Shadowkeeper, but couldn't get InfinityExplorer(?) to work

Shin

Oxford_Guy said:

Shin said:

Nah, checked the game files, glass dust is handled as a spell that some dust mephits have.

How do you check this kind if thing? I have Shadowkeeper, but couldn't get InfinityExplorer(?) to work

Near Infinity is a very good tool for it, DLTCEP as well.

Jalily

@Shin How do you check it in Near Infinity? I can find the spell, but its effects don't tell me anything meaningful.

Oxford_Guy

Shin said:

Oxford_Guy said:

Shin said:

Nah, checked the game files, glass dust is handled as a spell that some dust mephits have.

How do you check this kind if thing? I have Shadowkeeper, but couldn't get InfinityExplorer(?) to work

Near Infinity is a very good tool for it, DLTCEP as well.

Near Infinity, that's the one, never could get it to work, despite installing Java, setting Path etc. :-(

DLTCEP I don't know, will look that up

Shin

@Jalily The area of effect is determined by the projectile (.PRO file that controls friendly fire, explosion size, travel speed etc) and the effects in this case (on the version I'm looking at) come from the .EFF files listed under effects. Each of those calls another resource spell with a separate effect. One for AC, one for thac0, one to display the portrait icon and one to display the 'irradiated' string.

Jalily

@Shin Thanks, that helps a lot. I'm having trouble finding .EFF files in general though. The ones for Glass Dust are helpfully named after the spell file, but something like, say, Chromatic Orb doesn't appear to have those, and I can't find where its .EFF files are listed. Where should I be looking?

Shin

@Jalily Yeah, it's generally impractical to search directly for .EFF files or other .SPL files triggered by a certain casting. It's easier to find the mother spell and follow the references outward from there.

Chromatic Orb for instance is SPWI118.SPL (on a vanilla BG1 install). It's got a relatively straightforward structure:

First, if you look at SPWI118.SPL you'll see 7 spell abilities listed as ranged, each one corresponding to a level range, as Chromatic Orb changes with the level of the caster. These abilities are ordered by the "minimum level" field, with the highest possible eligible level version being the one actually cast.

Second, looking at one of these spell abilities e.g. the max level one (minimum level 7 in BG1) you'll see it doesn't reference any .EFF or .SPL files but contains its 6 effects directly. One effect for damage, one for stun and the remaining four for lightning effects, string, sound and icon display.

This is basically the easiest way to handle it. The Spell Revisions mod for BG2 changes this spell, and instead makes it reference 8 other spells - one for each possible out of 7 orb colours with their own effects, and a final one that does the raw damage depending on caster level. In this case each of the colour-oriented daughter spells is named after the orb colour (white orb, red orb etc) whereas the spell that deals the damage is unnamed and thus can't be searched for by name.

Jalily

@Shin Thanks. I found the effects, but how do you get the saves and the amount of damage? (I know what they're supposed to be, I'd just like to check this and other spells to make sure their descriptions are accurate.) All the effects say Dice size 6 and # dice thrown 0, and damage is always this:

Effect: Type: Damage (12),Target: Preset target (2),Power: 1,Amount: 0,Mode: Normal (0),

DLTCEP just gives me "HP: Damage [12] (0x0 0x400000)" for most of them. ?

Shin

@Jalily The parameters of a given effect are listed inside the effect itself. You can double click on the damage line to open it in a new window and see the contents. It'll contain the damage type, dice size and number of dice (these parameters are listed in spell abilities etc as well, as you've seen, but for spells it's the ones inside the damage effect that counts for actual damage done by that ability) and also whether it will bypass resistance and if there's a save/savebonus against it.

A level 10 Fireball for instance will have a minimum level of 10 and two damage effects - one with 5d6 fire damage without save, and one with 5d6 fire damage and a breath save.

Jalily

@Shin Thank you so much! I'm off to fix...things. (Duration's in seconds, right?)

Oxford_Guy

I've decided to restrict my familiar's use of Glitterdust and Ghostdust until my fighter/mage is either:

1) Able to cast Level 2 spells (which is what Gliiterdust is) i.e. Level 3/3

or perhaps even

2) Until she learns the spell (though depends how difficult it will be to find the scroll, don't want to over-nerf either). Actually maybe I'll let my familar use Glass Dust when I get to Level 3/3, then Gliiterdust when my fighter/mage learns the spell.

This is because I can see that being able cast Glitterdust and Ghostdust from Level 1 is over-powered, so am trying to balance things a little, am still going to use my familiar (though perhaps mostly kept in my pack) to get the extra 12HP, though.