Holy Word and Bolt of Glory

[devSin]

Is there any particular reason Holy Word applies its effects to both evil creatures and undead? The way I understand it, this means that the effects will be doubled against evil undead. (Rather, than kill the undead stuff, I updated Unholy Word to match, so it will be at least marginally useful -- stupid Viconia.)

 

Bolt of Glory says it does 6d6 damage against "Prime Material" creatures. But it actually only does damage against humanoids. Which means that all animals, and a slew of "Primes" (ankhegs, basilisks, carrion crawlers, ettercaps, ogres, spiders, wyverns, slimes, beholders, otyughs, trolls, umber hulks, mimics, giants, and dragons) are left unaffected. (Locally, I add a bunch of race targets, but you have to be careful to avoid having creatures that fall into more than one category -- the only place I couldn't get around this was the few legitimate undead beholders.)

[SimDing0]

I'd imagine Holy Word having an effect against undead is a mistake since the description doesn't mention anything of the sort.

 

And there are undead beholders in BG2? (Also, can you not grant undead immunity to the spell early on in the effect list?)

[devSin]

And there are undead beholders in BG2? (Also, can you not grant undead immunity to the spell early on in the effect list?)

Yeah, the death tyrant (which may or may not actually ever be used in-game).

 

The spell does special damage against undead, demons, and elementals. So, for those beholders, it'll hit the undead EFF target, and the beholder EFF target.

[NiGHTMARE]

Isn't there a death tyrant in the final battle with Melissan?

[Kish]

Isn't there a death tyrant in the final battle with Melissan?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I don't believe so, but at least one shows up in Watcher's Keep, on the fifth level with the colored spheres.

[devSin]

Is there any particular reason Holy Word applies its effects to both evil creatures and undead?

Hmm. It looks like UNDEAD targets get a 1 second immuntiy to the spell (that isn't applied to EVIL targets). What the hell were they trying to do here?

 

At least now I have a way to work around the undead beholder crap, I guess.

[Nythrun]

Bolt of Glory significantly improved for 6.2; Unholy Word still sucks a whole lot (shrug).

[devSin]

As per the description, we should drop the BOLTUNDwhatever change and make the others do magic damage. Unless you really think "glorious magic energy bolt" means "missile damage," I guess. ;-)

[Nythrun]

I kinda thought missile is used for unstoppable damage more often than magical damage is - but yeah, we can roll that back.

[devSin]

There's a fair bit of missile resistance in BG2, especially with undead (likely why BioWare set this one to magic and also why I never made the change). The holy water should have also been set to magic damage (here, let me splash some water on you... oh, shit! that was an arrow in that bottle. sorry!).

 

Magic damage is the best for "always," with poison coming in second (I can't remember if the STUNNING/WEIRD damage type was blocked by one of the resistance attributes or not).

[Nythrun]

If the devs had cared about REALLY_FORCE_DAMAGE they'd have temporarily set the resistance value to zero, and they don't - so it's magic holy water now!

 

I do some cheaty things with stunning damage, but unless it shares a damage type with poison and I forgot to check, it's truly irresistible.