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Death Fog doesn't unsummon Nishruu/Hakeashar with SCS

KorbenDallasKorbenDallas Member Posts: 29
in Baldur's Gate II: Enhanced Edition
I'm playing on a modded install, using the latest version of BG2EE and SCS; I am not using spell revisions mod. The Death Fog spell description says, "...Death Fog will also instantly kill all summoned creatures, regardless of their Hit Dice and immunities." And the wiki says it bypasses MR; and demons, planatars, and devas are gated/plane shifted so they wouldn't get unsummoned.

But why not Nishruu/Hakeashars? Is this SCS behavior, or a bug? Does the Death Spell unsummon them?

I tested Death Fog on the priest spells: Conjure Animals, Arial Servant, and Animate Undead (the large skeleton warriors) and they were all unsummoned with Death Fog. A Nishruu and Hakeashar were not. These creatures are extremely annoying, and I realize there are other ways of dealing with them like dropping charged items to the ground or casting Protection from Normal Weapons, but I'm unsure why they can't be unsummoned with Death Fog. (And maybe the Death Spell also?)

I attached a screenshot showing the test I did with my install, this is The Crooked Crane litch encounter, with SCS on hardcore difficulty. The litch summoned two Hakeashars, a Sword Spider, and I summoned one Nishruu for the test. In this test the Sword Spider got unsummoned even though it doesn't show in the log, yet the Hakeashars and Nishruu were not. I did a separate test after this without any enemies, and summoned a Nishruu and threw a Death Fog over it and it happily sat there through the duration of the spell.

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Comments

  • MaurvirMaurvir Member Posts: 1,090
    Could this be because those creatures are actually healed by/feed off of magic?
  • KorbenDallasKorbenDallas Member Posts: 29
    edited October 2020
    I'm not sure, I dug up some old posts on them and a Dispel Magic or Remove Magic should instantly kill them in a vanilla install if they were directly targeted. I just tested this in my SCS install and it did not work. The old posts also say Death Fog would unsummon them on a vanilla install, though I haven't tested it.

    The description for Summon Nishruu says they are immune to all magic except for the Death Spell. Though I couldn't find any documentation in the SCS readme, after the tests I did today and what I read about vanilla I'm coming to the conclusion that SCS made changes to the creature to match its description, that it can only be unsummoned/instantly killed by a Death Spell. This is aggravating since the description of Death Fog says the opposite and the description of that spell wasn't changed in SCS.
  • jmerryjmerry Member Posts: 3,829
    SCS changes how that instant death effect works. In vanilla, it indeed works regardless of any immunities. With SCS, anything that's immune to acid is immune to all of the spell's effects - including the summon-killing part. This immunity is added so that Death Fog doesn't interrupt acid-immune spellcasters, but it also weakens the spell against certain summons.

    Magical swords are also immune to acid, so they survive. Fiends and celestials don't have the "summoned" gender and are exempt. With SCS, djinns and efreets are also exempt. All in all, very few high-level summons are vulnerable to instant elimination with Death Fog, in the SCS ruleset.

    The vulnerability to Dispel/Remove Magic is still there with SCS - but it's restricted to the wizard and priest spells. Inquisitor dispels don't work.
  • KorbenDallasKorbenDallas Member Posts: 29
    Thanks, I saw in the SCS readme about the Djinns and Efreets being exempt from Death Fog unsummoning but I couldn't find anything about Nishruus/Hakeashars.

    Regarding Dispel Magic and Remove Magic on the Nishruus/Hakeashars, I thought my party might be at a high enough level for it to work but apparently that wasn't the case.
  • jmerryjmerry Member Posts: 3,829
    Dispel killing a nishruu or hakeashar isn't a level-dependent check. It's a trigger in the creature's script; if this spell is cast on this creature, kill it. Exactly what that means for an AoE spell ... I'm not sure. The three spells named are priest Dispel Magic, wizard Dispel Magic, and wizard Remove Magic.
  • kjeronkjeron Member Posts: 2,367
    jmerry wrote: »
    Exactly what that means for an AoE spell ... I'm not sure.
    It requires directly targeting the creature, either through an AI script, or a mixed target sequencer.
  • KorbenDallasKorbenDallas Member Posts: 29
    kjeron wrote: »
    It requires directly targeting the creature, either through an AI script, or a mixed target sequencer.

    So this explains why it didn't work when I tested it. I summoned a Nishruu, clicked the Dispel/Remove magic spell, then clicked the creature, and neither spell auto-killed it, and nothing happened to it. When I looked through the archives about this I assumed they meant directly targeting meant to click on the creature instead of AoE; but apparently it wasn't.
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