The World of Layonara
The Layonara Community => Ask A Gamemaster => Topic started by: davidhoff on July 14, 2009, 06:52:20 PM
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Hi, Tralek was in a cave picking silk and two unusual things happened:
(see logs below)
1. I had Shadow Shield on and a Troll Mage hit me with Horrid Wilting and did 42 points of magical damage to me after I made my save. What? I thought Shadow Shield protected you against all effects of Necromacy Spells like Horrid Wilting?
2. Other unusual thing was the Troll Mage should never have seen me because I had Greater Sanctuary on; right? Which brings me to another question: Does having true seeing give one the ability to see through/pierce greater sanctuary?
Thanks for any help.
Tralek
Excerpt of my logs:(please note you don't see the mage "cast" horrid wilting, cause I had high-tailed-it out of there by then)
[CHAT WINDOW TEXT] [Tue Jul 14 18:12:02] Acquired Item: Spider Silk
[CHAT WINDOW TEXT] [Tue Jul 14 18:12:41] Troll Warrior of the Shadows is surrounded by an aura.
[CHAT WINDOW TEXT] [Tue Jul 14 18:12:45] Acquired Item: Spider Silk
[CHAT WINDOW TEXT] [Tue Jul 14 18:12:46] Troll Warrior of the Shadows casting Spell Mantle
[CHAT WINDOW TEXT] [Tue Jul 14 18:12:48] Troll Warrior of the Shadows casts Spell Mantle
[CHAT WINDOW TEXT] [Tue Jul 14 18:12:52] Troll Warrior of the Shadows casting Horrid Wilting
[CHAT WINDOW TEXT] [Tue Jul 14 18:12:55] Tralek Rivarmar : Fortitude Save : *success* : (20 + 18 = 38 vs. DC: 22)
[CHAT WINDOW TEXT] [Tue Jul 14 18:12:55] Tralek Rivarmar : Initiative Roll : 6 : (3 + 3 = 6)
[CHAT WINDOW TEXT] [Tue Jul 14 18:12:58] Troll Warrior of the Shadows damages Tralek Rivarmar: 42 (42 Magical)
[CHAT WINDOW TEXT] [Tue Jul 14 18:13:00] Dutches47 has joined as a player..
[CHAT WINDOW TEXT] [Tue Jul 14 18:13:02] Tralek Rivarmar uses Target Cure Moderate Wounds
[CHAT WINDOW TEXT] [Tue Jul 14 18:13:02] Tralek Rivarmar : Healed 31 hit points.
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To me, it looks several bugs were in affect, however I am no expert by any means.
Fort Save and Spell Resistance should protect you from Horrid Wilting. You made the Fort Save, are you sure you had shadow shield up? It didn't expire? If you had it up, then it looks like it wasn't recognized. Which brins us to the next point.
G-Sanc bug (http://forums.layonara.com/bioware-issues/110673-somethings-up-invis.html). Somewhat of a discussion here. If it saw through your G-Sanc, then there may have been something with your avatar that masked what you had up.
I will learn about his as you do as others post. :)
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Not expert either, but... what happened with the fort save is that he resisted the slow effect that goes with the damage. Could you check the timestamp of your last casting of shadow shield? That way you can check the number of minutes vs the number of turns you should get out of the spell to confirm as twidget suggested. The simplest explanation is usually that we just don't notice the ward fading. :)
As for G-Sanc, well, you're boned. :o TS doesn't see through it on purpose, but it's not 100% reliable as you can see with the thread twidget linked... Also, IF the SS for sure was still up, there might've been some kind of conflict with the sanctuary I guess... other people have said they've had wards not taken into account when GSanc bugs, but I can't really confirm on that myself.
Just out of curiosity, were you G-Sancing to get away from something that had already engaged/targeted you, or were you just passing through the area under sanctuary?
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According to LORE, the fort save is only for half damage, and I don't know what the caster level is, but if I recall correctly, that's not unusual to take about that much damage on a successful save from those casters. I can't comment on shadow shield's ability to protect from horrid wilting, but the fort save piece at least I am fairly confident that it is working as intended. Maybe you can find a caster who can cast horrid wiliting, and test in the arena whether this is something that happens consistently?
And yeah, as the others said, greater sanctuary isn't foolproof...
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Ok, thanks for the replies. I definitely had shadow shield up; I casted extended shadow shield (like I always do). As you can see below, I cast shadow shield at 17:56 and got hit by the horrid at 18:12, which is 16 minutes later. Even if it wasn't extended, which it was, I still should have been covered at a caster level of 18. I really think it was because of the greater sanctuary. I had heard of the bugs assocciated with it, but now I'm convinced that the gs bug somehow caused the troll shaman to not recognize some of my wards like you all have said.
To answer the question about if I was in battle when I cast gs...answer is no. I just cast it as a precaution on my way out...then I remembered the silk and went to go pick some up...that's when the troll mage saw me....he did something to make his finger tips sparkle (guess that's him casting spell mantle) then I started running.
As far as the amount of damage..I'm not contesting that...42 pts of magical on a successful save for 1/2 damage sounds about right.
I may try to test this out in the arena if I can find another mage. I'll look for one and see.
Thanks for the help,
Tralek
[CHAT WINDOW TEXT] [Tue Jul 14 17:56:25] Tralek Rivarmar casting True Seeing
[CHAT WINDOW TEXT] [Tue Jul 14 17:56:26] Tralek Rivarmar casts True Seeing
[CHAT WINDOW TEXT] [Tue Jul 14 17:56:28] Tralek Rivarmar casting Greater Stoneskin
[CHAT WINDOW TEXT] [Tue Jul 14 17:56:29] Tralek Rivarmar casts Greater Stoneskin
[CHAT WINDOW TEXT] [Tue Jul 14 17:56:31] Tralek Rivarmar casting Shadow Shield
[CHAT WINDOW TEXT] [Tue Jul 14 17:56:32] Tralek Rivarmar casts Shadow Shield
[CHAT WINDOW TEXT] [Tue Jul 14 17:56:32] You have multiple items equipped or spell effects active that give a Natural AC bonus and the effects will not stack.
[CHAT WINDOW TEXT] [Tue Jul 14 17:56:34] Tralek Rivarmar casting Lesser Mind Blank
[CHAT WINDOW TEXT] [Tue Jul 14 17:56:35] Tralek Rivarmar casts Lesser Mind Blank
[CHAT WINDOW TEXT] [Tue Jul 14 17:56:37] Tralek Rivarmar casting Protection from Evil
[CHAT WINDOW TEXT] [Tue Jul 14 17:56:38] Tralek Rivarmar casts Protection from Evil
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The tests that I ran, the Troll saw through the GS. The Troll is only buffed with SI, not TS. The SS repelled the Horrid Wilting. The one test I forgot to run was the GS and SS up together would the HW affect the NPC then. The Troll didn't last long enough or got the spell off in time to see the result of this.
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Thanks for running the test; confirms they saw through my GS. I'm pretty sure I've been in there before with SS up and got hit by a horrid wilting and log read something like "Tralek spell immunity".
I would be interested to see what would happen to your npc with SS and GS up...maybe some other time when they regenerate again if you're on and think to give it a try.
I appreciate you research and testing on behalf of my post. My conclusion so far is to not use GS really unless....well not to use it *smiles*.
Thanks,
Tralek
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Skimming.... but in case it helps, I'm pretty sure GS kills shadow shield due to it having concealment.
GS kills any spell that has concealment attached - in my experience.
And that's why GS is dangerous in death magic territory - never cast it during combat (my personal rule at least). Also - I'd have to test, but I'm fairly sure the NEP from GS doesn't block horrid wilting. It's not until you have a negative energy immunity item attached outside of spells that it blocks negative damage spells. Again - I'm going off memory, and I get that wrong sometimes.
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um... GS is a bunk spell in my opinion, cast shadow shield.
All the invis and sanctuary spells are bugged, as far as some, or all sometimes, creatures can see through them.
If you cast them before ever meeting a creature in battle you're fine, if you cast one near a creature then try and pass them your toast.
*shrugs* I think it's mechanics that Layo can't fix.
Merlin34
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NEP doesn't matter against Horrid Wilting, as Horrid actually does magic damage (I know, wierd, huh?). However, immunity to necromancy spells should protect against it, unless said protection (in this case from shadow shield) is nullified by the every buggy GS spell.
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Skimming.... but in case it helps, I'm pretty sure GS kills shadow shield due to it having concealment.
GS kills any spell that has concealment attached - in my experience.
And that's why GS is dangerous in death magic territory - never cast it during combat (my personal rule at least). Also - I'd have to test, but I'm fairly sure the NEP from GS doesn't block horrid wilting. It's not until you have a negative energy immunity item attached outside of spells that it blocks negative damage spells. Again - I'm going off memory, and I get that wrong sometimes.
This.
There is indeed a bug regarding GS and other spells that have a concealment mechanic built into them (Layo version of SS, Imp. Invis. etc.). The nature of this bug is that the spells that conflict are both rendered useless when active at the same time, so neither GS nor SS works as intended. It's a NWN bug, so heads up y'all.
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Alright..thanks again for pointing out the dangers here. I will be very careful now if I ever do use GS again. That was pretty dangerous when the GS canceled my Shadow Shield; glad he didn't cast Destruction *winks*.
For now on I don't think I'll be exploring much either invisible or under GS; and if I do, you can bet I'll be very cautious; and never have GS and Shadow Shield up at the same time.
Tralek
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For reference, we once hoped to improve GS by adding an invisibility effect on top of it, to hopefully alleviate the problems with GS being seen in some cases. It actually made things quite a bit worse, due to issues described above.
In my experience, exploring under Invis. (never had GS, so can't really comment) has been pretty safe, unless I came across something with True Seeing. As an escape spell, I'd say I've had 40-50% success due to the Bioware bugs related to Invisibility. I would guess GS to be about the same.
Probably the best general recommendation is to not have anything else active when under GS or Invis while trying to evade the sight of baddies, if at all possible.
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NEP doesn't matter against Horrid Wilting, as Horrid actually does magic damage (I know, wierd, huh?).
But.... if you throw on a NEP item - it magically blocks it (magic globe immunity vfx). Crazy eh?
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Tested the GS and SS up together and the SS repelled the spells. The troll, no matter what NPC I put GS on, saw through the GS.
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I don't know if its possible, but to prevent future problems and request for dt return, but maybe if the spall was taken out, this would definitly solved the problem?
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Or better yet, adding a check to the pc that detects when the gs is cast if any spells that can cause it to fail would render a warning message about the bug and a vfx could be shown to birg the attention of the player to read the server message. I know this would require coding but at least it would make the new players aware of the bug. A stikied thread with all bioware known bug would be great too. Sorry for the double post, but when on my BB I can't edit post without skewing it.
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Tested the GS and SS up together and the SS repelled the spells. The troll, no matter what NPC I put GS on, saw through the GS.
You know that troll has probably been the cause of the most complaints regarding GS acting up. There might be something specifically wrong with that troll.
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You know that troll has probably been the cause of the most complaints regarding GS acting up. There might be something specifically wrong with that troll.
Wat wrong wiff troll? Mes just sittin ther wit mes fwends, havin nice danse wit dwarffen stake piknik, and peepols keeeps huntin mees! Uf corse mees gonna kills da wizurd, mee smells hims. majik blud tasetee! nyum nyum!
-da Troll
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I don't know if its possible, but to prevent future problems and request for dt return, but maybe if the spall was taken out, this would definitly solved the problem?
Please do not take this spell out, as has been my experience if I don't cast any other spells with GS up, I am fine. I have never had any problems if I cast it ahead of the baddies and I am passing by them, unless I have been under it awhile and it just wears off itself.
I use this routinely to collect spotted mushrooms near the pygmies of Alindor and it is the only spell that I can do this with safely. I don't even have problems with it when I use it near the Trolls so long as I am casting it out of their line of sight.
Taking this spell out is a very bad idea!
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But.... if you throw on a NEP item - it magically blocks it (magic globe immunity vfx). Crazy eh?
Yeah, I seem to recall that little oddity with items, which like the rest of it doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but hey, just saying, if a cleric cast NEP on you, and you get hit by Horrid Wilting, it still hurts.
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We're not taking out the spell.
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Thank you Dorg for the reassurance!
Its been my experience with the suggestion of some, that if different areas of the game seem to hard, the reaction has been to take things out, instead of asking people to use a little common sense and technique to overcome the difficulties of an area.
As an Aeridinte I try to avoid fighting whenever possible and this is a means to stay in character, and still continue to be productive with my character.
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The VFX is different for the NPCs then it is for a PC.
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Taking this spell out is a very bad idea!
Agreed...
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We're not taking out the spell.
Don't think we have to worry about the spell going away ;)
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There is a known problem with having concealment and greater sanctuary effects on at the same time. Obviously a big concern for mages using shadow shield. Therefore we changed the GS spell so that it removed any concealment spell effects before applying the sanctuary. This means that it should not remove the death ward part of shadow shield for example.
This change actually helped the GS problem alot, but unfortunately it didnt fix it completely. It is just one of those bioware issues we have to live with. It is easier to adapt the lore of the world to make it a known dangerous spell IG.