Does the Cleric's Holy Word spell no longer stack?

alastair93

Just been playing around with the first fight in ToB, and even after casting two Holy Word spells next to Illasera, she can still keep casting ~75% of the time.

Did the 2.5 patch nerf the stackability of the spell?

CamDawg

Illasera is level 20 so Holy Word causes deafness, which includes a 50% chance of spell failure. Since she can't be deafened again, max spell failure rate remains at 50% through multiple castings.

This is unchanged from the vanilla game.

alastair93

Oh really? I guess that makes sense now that I think about it.

I was under the impression that you could cast two for 100% spell failure. It was from posts like this one from @Pantalion (and others).

Thanks for clarifying.

CamDawg

If your target is in the level 8-11 range, then they get slow + 75% spell failure. Perhaps it stacks at that range.

Grond0

I was under the impression that the 50% spell failure was a separate component to deafness (as the 75% spell failure clearly is in addition to slow). Stacking would therefore not necessarily be unreasonable. It's not a spell I've used much, but I seem to remember @semiticgod referring quite a bit to its use to get 100% spell failure - that doesn't mean the behavior hasn't changed over time of course.

CamDawg

Just a straight deafness effect for levels > 11. Deafness has a hardcoded 50% spell failure, though I suppose it's possible the engine could apply it in a stackable way.