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Post by madzapper on Feb 20, 2017 20:24:17 GMT
This just happened. Ranged touch attack at AB 40 with DC 31 that killed me without dealing damage. Quivering Palm is not a touch attack, and must deal damage to work. This happened as I melee attacked them from invis, so despite being in melee, the kid used a ranged touch. Descriptor is Death, so Death Magic immunity might work, but my Fortitude cannot be high enough to provide meaningful protection from this. Never seen them use this ability before, does anyone know what it could be? I thought QP respected crit immunity? I don't believe death or mind will protect against it.
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Post by condude on Feb 21, 2017 4:38:24 GMT
This just happened. Ranged touch attack at AB 40 with DC 31 that killed me without dealing damage. Quivering Palm is not a touch attack, and must deal damage to work. This happened as I melee attacked them from invis, so despite being in melee, the kid used a ranged touch. Descriptor is Death, so Death Magic immunity might work, but my Fortitude cannot be high enough to provide meaningful protection from this. Never seen them use this ability before, does anyone know what it could be? I thought QP respected crit immunity? I don't believe death or mind will protect against it. Yeah, he ruled out QP as a possibility. It's not a ranged touch attack, and he didn't take damage, which is a prerequisite for QP to proc.
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Post by johannhowitzer on Feb 21, 2017 9:29:12 GMT
I think the Reek of Decay amulet is a random drop, I went to get it several times and it was never there. It was among the items I found before I started using !list rarity to see whether they were random.
Also did a short test standing there tanking the kids and watching the logs, and not only did they use that death ranged touch twice inside of two minutes (second try killed me), they also knocked me down a bunch of times, where they had never knocked me down before. I can still reach 29 Fortitude while wearing knockdown imm boots though, so it's fine. Just switching up the gear for safety and I'll hopefully have time to run up through the farm house again tomorrow with the new setup, and maybe the kids will behave.
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Post by johannhowitzer on Feb 21, 2017 23:31:21 GMT
Alright, so I came up with a theory at work.
I thought hey, I was level 11 this time, but every time previous, I was level 10. So maybe the kids were a weaker version when I was level 10, some version without all these nasty abilities. We know that level affects spawn composition and size, and in some places, enemies may have the same name but different abilities - like in the Farm, the Taro don't have True Seeing, but in the Temple, they do.
Well, I deleveled to 10 and they still hit me with the instadeath touch. No knockdown anymore though. So it seems partly true...? I have no idea why in all my tests, the kids never once tried this death touch on me, then suddenly a few days ago decided to start using it.
They also seem to be hitting harder, or maybe at 11 their physical damage pierces +2 soak, I dunno. Two kids were enough to strain my HP. I have a partial, non-immunity solution for the touch attack, can still reach 29 Fort at level 10, and I guess I need to keep testing at 10 to see if they try knockdown on me again. Very confused by all this.
EDIT: Aaaaaand they knocked me down at 10. What on earth. Two solid months of never using Knockdown on me once and now they're using it every other round. I have no idea what changed. Stoneskin spell also didn't help with the damage, so +2 is as good as +5 it seems.
One last little idea, but I don't have time to try it right this second... what happens to their AI when I put up damage shields? Maybe that was acting as a deterrent.
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Post by condude on Feb 22, 2017 0:13:16 GMT
Two other possibilities:
1. Your AC has changed since the last time you tried. They might want to guarantee hitting 95% of their attacks, so if your AC's close to their AB, they don't lower their AB with the KD attempt. 2. You switched out KD immunity. They were trying to KD you, but you didn't notice.
I'll run some tests of my own.
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Post by johannhowitzer on Feb 22, 2017 0:22:42 GMT
1. As far as I can tell, my AC has been 10 here every time - slot staff, resist robe, torch, int helm, AE gloves, 10/- bludg belt, ghost cloak, con boots, slot/resist amulet, slot rings, only damage shield buffs and clarity. Base 10 dex.
2. My notes have had Boots of Striding +4 starting at the Farm for a long time, no KD immunity.
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Post by condude on Feb 22, 2017 1:20:02 GMT
Two quick tests I did
Firstly with a level 70ish PM with 134 AC and immunity to everything under the sun. I stood flat-footed, and swung at them. On no occasion did they try any activated ability, they just punched uselessly. I took off a bunch of gear, losing KD immunity, and nothing changed.
I brought in a lvl 23 Assassin/SD, AC 60, 45 flatfooted. When I was fighting them, they weren't using any activated abilities, and were just punching uselessly. When I became flatfooted, however, they started spamming CS: Leg and stunning fist. I had to log before they killed me, because the stunning fist was very painful. Another interesting point is that shadow evade, which was granting me +2 soak 10 seemed to stop working, since their damage increased from aroudn 1 to around 12.
Ok, I tried again with the level 23. Ran up to the first spawn and BANG, I'm dead. Same combat log as you showed, except 2 of them hit me with it at the same time. No shadow evade up this time. There was no animation or movement on the kids' part, which is strange considering only two of them activated the touch attack.
Very similar message to QP (tested on my lvl 40 monk), the only difference is that theirs is a ranged touch attack. I'd guess it's a modified version of QP.
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Post by johannhowitzer on Feb 22, 2017 1:29:01 GMT
I noticed they can use Improved Power Attack, this would account for the extra damage.
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Post by condude on Feb 22, 2017 1:50:38 GMT
No it wouldn't. I didn't see the "Improved Power Attack Mode Activated" message above their heads, nor would they be able to hit me so frequently with -10 AB (45 AC is right in the middle of their range.)
I think flatfooted loses the shadow evade bonuses though.
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Post by johannhowitzer on Feb 22, 2017 1:58:06 GMT
It doesn't show above their heads, but I saw it in the logs.
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Post by johannhowitzer on Feb 23, 2017 10:35:55 GMT
Even using damage shields didn't stop them, and the kids downstairs have started acting the same way too. It's beyond improbable that if they'd been doing this all along, I would ever have survived for more than a few seconds with my old gear setup in this area, let alone several months at a stretch.
Another thing that's happening now is the same problem I have in Zhent grind - a lot of the enemies are just ignoring me as I walk by, standing there not doing anything.
I think the only thing to do now is to start from the beginning of my route on a fresh server, with the old gear setup, and see how they act then.
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Post by johannhowitzer on Feb 23, 2017 21:10:20 GMT
Made some progress at understanding what's going on today.
I went back and watched my 1-18 video, and tried to replicate exactly what I did and how my build / gear was set up, step by step.
- First I changed all my gear back to the setup I had then; no luck.
- Next, I changed my alignment from Lawful Neutral (default on character creation) to Neutral Good (back when I was buying U2D scroll from docks priest). I also changed one other thing - instead of entering the house invisible and attacking them to break invisibility, I entered visible, and waited for the map-entry etherealness to wear off.
After this second change, they stopped using knockdown, ranged death touch, improved power attack, and called shot. So this tells me it was either caused by the alignment change, or by the way I entered the room. I did not cast damage shields until I had gathered all of the kids; their actions were the same before and after the shields were up.
We doing science now! We isolating variables!
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Post by condude on Feb 24, 2017 3:12:41 GMT
Interesting. My assassin had to stop attacking them for them to start hitting him with the nasties. He was instaed when approaching the second spawn from behind (it was a respawn, I'd run through ~20 mins earlier), no invis/shadow evade up. I attacked the kid directly. He's Chaotic Evil. The only time they just swung was when I had shadow evade up and engaged immediately. Moving caused them to start activating abilities, I logged after a stunning fist landed and I started getting pummeled.
My lvl 70ish PM was chaotic evil and had AC off the charts for that area. They swung uselessly, not activating anything.
Hypothesis: If non-good characters move in the vicinity of the children, they start dropping hell on the character, unless it will be completely useless.
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Post by johannhowitzer on Feb 25, 2017 0:42:07 GMT
Yup! It really does seem to be alignment, specifically Good vs non-Good. Good alignment they didn't use anything nasty, Neutral they used all of it. Maybe these abilities have some flag that only allows them to be used against creatures that are non-Good.
Anyway, file that problem under "hopefully solved permanently but at least solved for now." Tomorrow maybe I'll have more energy to get a proper video of the inventory shenanigans I worked out, and continue the note-updating. I should be able to very significantly and quickly improve the route all the way to reincarnation, especially with the stuff I figured out about Zerya.
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Post by johannhowitzer on Feb 26, 2017 4:49:33 GMT
I think people will enjoy this short video. www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZI1B1cMKiYRead the description for notes about what's going on. I left my inventory open as much as possible to show what's going on, as well as the "quest item bag" when relevant.
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