Inconsistencies in spells or items that grant immunity to death magic

[suy]

• Cloak of the Lich (OHBCLCK1.ITM): "Powerful enchantments woven into it shield the wearer from all forms of death magic"
• Hindo's Doom +4 (SW1H71.ITM): "Immunity to all forms of death magic"
• Death Ward (SPPR409.SPL): "protects the target from all forms of death magic"
• Avoid Death (SPCL917.SPL): "the rogue becomes immune to death magic"
• Others anyone?

The list of effects that one is immune to with those spell items (via #101) is kind of a mess (I've written them in the order found in the game files).

• Cloak of the Lich: 13 (kill target), 55 (slay), 209 (power word kill).
• Hindo's Doom +4: 13 (kill target), 55 (slay), 134 (petrification), 209 (power word kill), 238 (disintegrate)
• Death Ward: 13 (kill target), 55 (slay), 209 (power word kill), 238 (disintegrate)
• Avoid Death: 13 (kill target), 55 (slay), 134 (petrification), 238 (disintegrate), 211 (imprisonment), 216 (level drain)

As you can see, it's pretty inconsistent.

• Cloak of the Lich lacks many effect protections compared to the others. Disintegrate seems a must.
• Hindo's Doom seems OKish (but petrification being there is arguable).
• Death Ward seems OK as well, similar to Hindo's Doom (but petrification is NOT there in this case).
• Avoid Death seems the most powerful one, but it's weird. It's missing Power Word: Kill protection, which is odd given that it protects against Imprisonment. It also protects against Level Drain. The protection against Imprisonment and Level Drain seems a nice touch for an HLA that only lasts 5 rounds, but it's not mentioned on the description.

I'm not sure what to add, remove or change, but I'd like to hear your input on what should "death magic" be.

• Imprisonment it's like a permanent maze. I don't know if it counts as "death" given the special way to bring back the creature to the original state. It's only on Avoid Death.
• Petrification is good to have in some of the higher level utils, given that nasty stuff in high level spells can petrify (Prismatic Spray). But it's a kind of different form of death as well, and can be protected with low level things available even on early BG1. It's on Avoid Death and Hindo's Doom.
• Level Drain can indeed kill, but it doesn't do so instantly like the others, so we can compare it to regular damage. If Death Ward would protect against it, it would be so convenient, but it would make Negative Plain Protection useless, which lasts a lot less and it's at the same power level. It's only on Avoid Death.
• Disintegrate seems an obvious insta-kill, like Finger of Death. It's on all except Cloak of the Lich.
• Power Word: Kill is missing only on Avoid Death, so seems a no brainer that it's a bug.

 

[CamDawg]

My two cents is that Hindo's Doom should be the standard here: kill, slay, PW kill, petrification, and disintegrate constitutes 'death magic' to me, as they're all instant death effects. Imprisonment doesn't kill, and the comparison you make between level drain and ordinary damage is apt.

[subtledoctor]

The only counterargument I might have is with regard to petrification: it is a transmutation, not a strictly necromancy/“death” effect. And can be reversed without resort to resurrection magic. Branwen shows that someone who is petrified is not “dead.” Of course functionally, in the unmodded game, this may amount to a distinction without a difference...

Edited March 21, 2022 by subtledoctor

[DavidW]

I’m not sure why petrification kills while imprisonment doesn’t. In-game, both trap you in an indefinite immobilized limbo without killing you. Mechanically, both kick you out of the party and require a specific spell to restore you.

[jmerry]

Flavor-wise, I'm OK with leaving petrification out of general "death" immunity. I'd take Death Ward as the standard, though effects that already have more can keep them.

[Luke]

6 hours ago, jmerry said:

Flavor-wise, I'm OK with leaving petrification out of general "death" immunity. I'd take Death Ward as the standard

I agree with you and @subtledoctor: petrification should be left out.

Moreover, GENERAL=UNDEAD and RACE=GOLEM should probably be immune to op209 (Power word, kill)...

Edited March 21, 2022 by Luke

[suy]

OK, after the feedback, this is what I would do (but let me know if you don't think the same):

• Death Ward is the "standard", and it's fine. No need to change.
• Hindo's Doom is like Death Ward, but with the extra protection against petrification. I would update the description instead of remove the effect.
• Cloak of the Lich should get protection against disintegration.
• Avoid Death should get protection against PW:Kill, and should get the description updated to mention protection vs imprisonment, energy drain and petrification.

[CamDawg]

1 hour ago, suy said:

Hindo's Doom is like Death Ward, but with the extra protection against petrification. I would update the description instead of remove the effect.

Why?

[Sam.]

1 hour ago, CamDawg said:

3 hours ago, suy said:

Hindo's Doom is like Death Ward, but with the extra protection against petrification. I would update the description instead of remove the effect.

Why?

...

On 3/20/2022 at 11:27 AM, CamDawg said:

My two cents is that Hindo's Doom should be the standard here: kill, slay, PW kill, petrification, and disintegrate constitutes 'death magic' to me, as they're all instant death effects. Imprisonment doesn't kill, and the comparison you make between level drain and ordinary damage is apt.

Didn't you agree about petrification?  Moreover, I'd say that any "magic" in the engine that awards experience for making a CRE "dead" (STATE_FROZEN_DEATH, STATE_STONE_DEATH, STATE_EXPLODING_DEATH, STATE_FLAME_DEATH, STATE_ACID_DEATH, STATE_DEAD, STATE_REALLY_DEAD), plus imprisonment (seems like there should have been a state for that?), should count as... dead.  Vis-à-vis:  death magic.

[CamDawg]

From everyone else's posts, it seems most folks don't consider petrification as 'death magic'. Given that, why would we leave it on Hindo's Doom?

Avoid Death I can see--it's an HLA and you can see they went extra for it (imprisonment and level drain).

[suy]

I suggested to keep the petrification but updating the description because it seems more balanced and less controversial. The effect is only on the upgraded version, and the upgrade item is found in Abazigal's lair, so it's when you have progressed through ToB somewhat. Removing an effect from an arguably not-so-awesome weapon for ToB's standards (is it used more than Celestial Fury?) might deter some people from using the mod/component. Maybe it's not a big deal, though.

[DavidW]

One observation: 'death magic' is a technical term in 2nd edition AD&D: there is a 'save vs. death magic' after all. The 2nd edition Player's handbook (p.101) defines death magic as 'certain spells and magical items that otherwise kill the character outright'. That suggests that anything that uses opcodes 13, 55, 209, 238 counts, but petrification and imprisonment don't.

(I'm not in favor of using PnP as a resource to decide first-order questions, but it's useful sometimes to work out what developers may have had in mind.)

[subtledoctor]

For me there is an issue of, I want things to be consistent so that I can internalize the way things work and not have to read the spell description every time I cast a spell. If I have one party member wielding Hindo's Doom, and one is wearing the Cloak of the Lich, and one is a rogue who can use the Avoid death HLA, then I might reasonably think to myself "I need to memorize Death Ward three times and my whole party can be protected against death magic." At some level I think that amount of knowledge should be enough to competently play the game. Having to remember that this or that purportedly anti-death-magic item implements its anti-death-magic effect slightly differently than others seems like a kind of unreasonable burden.

So I think there is an argument to be made for bringing these things in line with each other, rather than letting them be different and simply fixing their description text.

[DavidW]

My assumption is that in each case someone wrote the verbal description of the item, put it in the tlk file so that translators could get to work on it, and then sent it to a technical designer to implement that verbal description; since BG2 probably wasn't keeping better track of what 'death magic' meant than we are, different technical designers did it differently. (And in the case of Avoid Death, they were also working under the much-accelerated QA deadline that comes with an expansion.)

On that basis my preference is:

(1) standardize on a single use of 'death magic' over all those items: different implementations isn't really evidence of different developer intent.

(2) specifically standardize on Death Ward: immunity to things that kill (not merely incapacitate) the target instantly, i.e. attacks associated with opcodes 13,55,209,238. That's because (a) I think it's reasonable to think that Death Ward, a core spell, is the most careful implementation of what the designers had in mind by 'death magic'; (b) it fits the AD&D definition of 'death magic', which is the most likely thing the developers had in mind; (c) death magic is the only one of the items that explicitly explains what 'death magic' is in its description, and it defines it that way; (d) I think it's the natural interpretation (death magic is magic that directly kills you, not just removes you from battle in a way reversible without resurrection.

[jmerry]

A specific issue I've already touched on in my own mod, but I'm more convinced now that it's something for the fixpack:

Aec'Letec's Death Gaze includes the "Dying" portrait icon as a cosmetic indicator that you're going to die if you don't do something about it. Death magic protections, including Death Ward and Story Mode, block that icon. They do not, however, block the actual kill effect - that's via opcode 151, which absolutely nothing protects against (for good reason).

As an extreme case, Story Mode blocks the hold, the hold icon, and the dying icon. Aside from the initial sound effect and the lack of a saving throw message in the log, there's absolutely no indicator that you're in trouble until the character is gone five rounds later. (Still in the party, just not actually present anymore. And the log does say they died.)

Story mode should absolutely include (206) protection against the Death Gaze, and death magic protection in general probably should too.