Issues with vampires

[toxin]

Vanilla BG2:EE + SCS V30

 

I'm in Firkraag's dungeon and I noticed a few things when I encountered the vampires

1. Constitution drain is not prevented by protection from negative plane energy nor enraged state. I would think at least one of them should protect from it (is there any way to protect against it?).
2. I cannot target vampires when they shape-shift to their bat form (posted on beamdog forums as well, since I'm not sure if SCS or BG2:EE is at fault). there is no red selection circle below them, even though I can see the bat and when I press tab it does show its name and status), but somehow my party members can (using the party AI). The weird thing is, they hit them with melee weapons from afar - weirder still, each party member is in a different location, hitting air but still inflicting damage on the bat, with weapon effect animations showing where the bat is. The cheesy thing is, the vampire can and does hit me while in this state.
3. The encounter seems randomly and surprisingly hard compared to the rest of the encounters in the dungeon (at least up to that point). One minute you're killing ogrillions with one blow, the next your levels and constitution are drained by elder and ancient vampires, half of your party is dominated, your enemies disappear and shape-shift, summoned creatures come from behind to attack your spell casters, etc. Sure, if you come prepared specifically for this encounter it is certainly winnable, but such preparation is hard to justify on role playing grounds (except maybe if you happened to use Wizard Eye to spot them).
4. The vampires are susceptible to spells I would not think Undead should be - most notably Chaos and Feeblemind.

I would love to hear your thoughts.

 

Thanks!

[Fiann of the Silver Hand]

re:1

 

While reading through the legacy of this mod, the CON drain was added to specifically get around level drain protection. I don't remember what fluff justification was used, but it's not a bug.

[kreso]

1. (is there any way to protect against it?).

No, aside not getting hit in the first place.

I did make a little mod which prevents CON drain from happening for people at No-Reload thread, you can download it here (install AFTER SCS). The vamps still "drink blood" and heal themselves by doing so, but you don't loose CON when hit.

Do note this probably makes vamps far less overwhelming than DavidW intended. (they're worth a lot of XP, so they should be hard).

Invisibility can get you pretty far vs them anyway - if you see one of your people getting CON drained to oblivion, potions are plenty.

Imo, a *much* better solution to nerf this effect would be to limit the duration (1 turn). It now lasts 5 turns, which makes vamps uber-annying since they force resting constantly.

[toxin]

Tell me about it!

Almost as annoying as getting cursed by a clay golem

[ithildurnew]

#2 is an issue on my BG2EE install as well; it seems to be tied to the animation change property associated with DW#VMBAT.itm, which is a 'weapon' in the third weapon slot of vampires that when equipped, turns them into their bat shape. Apparently there are two types of bat animations, bat_inside and bat_outside. One is target-able/has a 'circle' underneath the creature, the other is/does not. The question is, was the intent to make vamps while in bat shape untargettable (which would be quite strange; there's nothing inherent about bats, in spite of being small, that makes them impossible to target with weapons or spells in the original game... or real life...) or is this a bug which can be corrected by using NI to change to the other animation?

 

I'm assuming it's a bug and changing the animation to bat_outside using Near Infinity. Dealing with the introduction to Lassal with Mook by the docks, which is supposed to be a fairly minor and short encounter, turned into a highly annoying dragged out affair as he changed into untargettable bat shape and flitted around the entire docks area while I desperately ran all over the place relying on Pause on spotting enemy to keep track of him; can't imagine how annoying this would've been in a dungeon/with other hostiles around.