Bigby's Crushing Hand and Bigby's Clenched Fist should go back to Holding their target, not knocking them unconscious

[DavidW]

(I'm assuming a general framework for thinking about opcodes 109, 175 and 185 which I laid out here.)

In classic BG2, the Hand spells freeze the target rigid with a no-save Hold effect (opcode 175) and then wrap an animated hand around them and inflict damage. In the EE, the Hold effect has been replaced with a Sleep effect. This changes the spell's tactical usefulness (different creatures are immune to the two effects), doesn't really match the description, and frankly looks a bit stupid (your character drops to the bottom of the hand and lies there, rather than being trapped in it).

I suggest reverting to a Hold opcode. My only hesitancy is that this was quite clearly a deliberate change in the spell by Beamdog, and I'd ideally like to know why they did it before just concluding it's wrong: maybe it's working around some other awkwardness. Maybe Cam or someone knows?

Although classic BG2 uses 175, I'm going to suggest we use 185: according to the general system for 109/175/185, that's the right opcode for an affect that prevents the character moving through physical barriers rather than paralysis. (Crushing Hand is more like Otiluke's Resilient Sphere than Hold Person). That's doubly necessary if we don't follow my suggestion here and revert the mass roll-out of 175 immunity in the EEs (come to think of it, maybe that's what's driving the change, though if so it's confused).

[Luke]

9 hours ago, DavidW said:

Maybe Cam or someone knows?

There's also an incorrect usage of op337 (Remove effects by opcode):

since the spell should affect small creatures that are supposed to be immune to Sleep (for instance ordinary skeletons and/or ghouls), a 0-second op337 effect removing immunity to op39 is applied just before op39 itself...

However, op337 always acts as permanent! As a result, casting this spell on an UNDEAD/GOLEM/etc. will permanently remove their immunity to Sleep (op39)... And that would be incorrect of course...

9 hours ago, DavidW said:

according to the general system for 109/175/185, that's the right opcode for an affect that prevents the character moving through physical barriers rather than paralysis. (Crushing Hand is more like Otiluke's Resilient Sphere than Hold Person).

I too agree with using op185 here...

Edited March 20, 2022 by Luke

[CamDawg]

This is filed internally as IE-5922, with @Galactygon submitting code to do pretty much what's been proposed here: use op 185 and remove the extraneous ops (39, 176, and 337), along with fixing some save issues in the spells. Status for inclusion is unknown.