Devil Shades

FredN

.....In the sewers of Saradush you will meet lots of these suckers, and their shadow spawn buddies. I am doing one of my all evil runs; in the sewers, Dorn and Hexxat and some skeletal warriors take point, so level drain is not a problem. I do however have a technical question. These foes are considered undead but "only" level 11. Now I understand that the game AI scales opponent levels up if the party is higher level than expected, so they may be significantly higher level. Also, Devil Shades are immune to a bunch of elemental attacks. But still ...
.....My cleric in this obnoxious crew is Viconia, and she is now level 22. Yet, for some reason, she has NEVER had any success using turn undead against these suckers. Are they immune to that also? The game docs don't say anything about this, but the total lack of success using Turn Undead (and I have tried something like 20 times) really puzzles me. What's going on here?
.....Mind you, my game does seem to have several irreperable bugs ... verify files doesn't help ... so this may be just another one of those, but I am curious if this is, perhaps, an intended game mechanic.

jmerry

They are nasty critters. Permanently hasted, excellent THAC0, level drain on hit.

They are extremely vulnerable to electric damage - negative resistances. If you have a good source of that, even a wand of lightning (though that is an extremely annoying item to use in BG2), then you can deal massive damage to them.

Devil shades have no special protection against Turn Undead. They're as vulnerable as any other undead of their level (15 in the encounter at the swamp temple, 11 otherwise). As long as they're in range, that is.

FredN wrote: »

Now I understand that the game AI scales opponent levels up if the party is higher level than expected...

No, it doesn't.

The level-scaling mechanics in the game? Random spawn groups scale their numbers to the party's level in BG1. That system is basically abandoned in BG2. Rest encounters also scale this way. A few encounters have scripts that change the spawns based on levels, notably in Watcher's Keep - several of the encounters in the first two levels have "easy" and "hard" versions based on when you go there.
And that's it. There's no mechanism for raising the level of monsters based on the party. When you level up and get stronger, that makes things easier for you; to find a higher-level challenge, you have to go to a higher-level area.

FredN

Ah; I knew about the Watcher's Keep scaling and figured it would carry over to other areas also. Odd that it doesn't. But also, I have never seen Turn Undead work against them. Would the fact that a Drow cleric is by nature evil affect her Turn Undead ability?

jmerry

Alignment does affect the results of Turn Undead; the outcome if you win big as an evil cleric is to control the undead foe instead of destroying it. A small win is a pseudo-fear effect either way.

Taking control of an enemy might not cancel their current actions - you might have to specifically order it to do something other than attack one of your people.

FredN

Oh! I didn't realize that clerical alignment played a key role. I never tried ordering them to do anything; I just assumed the attempt failed when they kept attacking us instead of running away. Sheesh, this game is so complicated, I keep learning new stuff all the time! Ok, thanks, I appreciate the input.

FredN

.....OK, I went back into the sewers again, intending to use that as my route to assault Gromnir. Apparently there is an unending supply of Devil Shades, because we encountered another swarm near the stairs to Gromnir's lair. They don't come singly, but rather in swarms of 5 or 6, each of which can summon 2 Shadow Fiends. This makes for quite a lot of enemies to keep track of, but this time I paused frequently to try and observe what exactly was going on.
.....Sure enough, when Viconia used her turn undead ability, a couple of the beggars were indeed controlled by her. The problem in the past was that my guys who were fighting them in melee combat would still keep attacking their old target. And of course, when you attack something that was neutral, it becomes hostile. So they went from hostile to neutral, and then back to hostile. Doh! I never even noticed this double transition before. My bad.
.....Mind you, there is a decent upside to this; the party gets a nice experience bonus from whacking all these goobers, and we can just pop back to the pocket plane to restore any life levels that have been drained. However, you can't do that while the combat itself is still going on, but now that I know what the story is, I'll be able to take advantage of the process in the future. I can order the controlled undead away from the area, and redirect my guy's attacks.