Should vampires be immune to petrification?

[jmerry]

Over at the Beamdog forums, someone ran into an odd loophole - they petrified Dragomir and shattered his corpse, permanently destroying the Cloak of Dragomir so Hexxat couldn't have it. How this could have happened to such an essential item? First, the cloak doesn't have the "critical item" flag. That allows Hexxat to keep it when she leaves the party, which feels right. No change recommended for that element. Second, while most undead have petrification immunity through RING94 or RING95, the vampire immunity item VAMPREG (and variants VAMPREG1, VAMPREG2) lacks that immunity. And Dragomir's a vampire, with VAMPREG providing his immunities.

So, that's the question - does it make sense that vampires can be petrified? Or should that protection be added to their immunity items?

(Most vampires turn into gaseous form when they are killed, as a "replace self" effect. As I just tested, petrification triggers this change and removes the statue immediately.)

Edited December 7, 2022 by jmerry

[polytope]

11 hours ago, jmerry said:

Over at the Beamdog forums, someone ran into an odd loophole - they petrified Dragomir and shattered his corpse, permanently destroying the Cloak of Dragomir so Hexxat couldn't have it. How this could have happened to such an essential item? First, the cloak doesn't have the "critical item" flag. That allows Hexxat to keep it when she leaves the party, which feels right. No change recommended for that element.

It sort of doesn't, this aspect of any plot important item (that it magically returns to the PC's inventory) feels weird already, some recruitable NPCs however will EscapeArea() and thus not reappear if annoyed enough so I guess it was necessary, on the original engine anyway.

11 hours ago, jmerry said:

Second, while most undead have petrification immunity through RING94 or RING95, the vampire immunity item VAMPREG (and variants VAMPREG1, VAMPREG2) lacks that immunity. And Dragomir's a vampire, with VAMPREG providing his immunities.

So, that's the question - does it make sense that vampires can be petrified? Or should that protection be added to their immunity items?

Idk? They are made mostly of flesh, if unliving, so seem to fall under the targets that can be affected by Flesh to Stone spell, unlike skeletons/wraiths/shadows but oth exactly like ghouls and zombies, which are nevertheless immune to petrification...

The fact that vampires are immune to fewer effects that instantly destroy or incapacitate them than other undead does seem like a deliberate choice, because the devs made a specific and different ring for vamps to bundle their immunities and regeneration, rather than giving them an immunity item paired with a regeneration item, like pit fiends have for instance.

Also, giving vampires more immunities seems to restrict playing style, a solo mage might be annoyed if they discover they now have to out damage the vampire's regeneration (not a problem if high enough level of course but still).

[argent77]

Another option could be to provide two instances of Dragomir's Cloak. One instance with the "critical item" flag, added to Dragomir's inventory. A second instance without the "critical item" flag, which replaces the first instance when it is in Hexxat's possession.

[subtledoctor]

I don't see why any corporeal creature should be immune to petrification. If it's got a body, it can be turned to stone, no? It's transmutation magic.

(I mean if you go through the 2E Monstrous Compendium and this or that creature has particular immunity to petrification, then fair enough. But I don't see much justification for blanket immunities in the absence of that.)

[argent77]

Adding immunity to petrification is not enough. Dragomir is also susceptible to Disintegrate and frozen death, which may also destroy the cloak.

[jmerry]

The Dragomir part of it is more of a weird loophole than anything. Vampires hardly ever have drops at all anyway. I had a thought on opcode 295 ... but no, IESDP says it doesn't work against petrification and frozen death.

With the scripting for gaseous form on death, petrification and disintegration are functionally identical against vampires; both instantly discorporate the creature destroying any loot, and it leaves as a blob. You can't actually turn (most) vampires to stone, because their natural transformation abilities override it.

So, it looks like the consensus here is no new blanket abilities. But if there's a decent narrow fix for Dragomir and his cloak, that would be appreciated.

Edited December 8, 2022 by jmerry

[polytope]

18 hours ago, argent77 said:

Adding immunity to petrification is not enough. Dragomir is also susceptible to Disintegrate and frozen death, which may also destroy the cloak.

Does this kind of script block still work?

IF
  Die()
THEN
  RESPONSE #100
    DropInventory()
END

Iirc, the items of a disintegrated/frozen creature are actually retained (even though the creature's sprite is gone), as with a stoned one, not dropped as you'd see with most death types.

Edited December 9, 2022 by polytope

[argent77]

1 hour ago, polytope said:

Does this kind of script block still work?

IF
  Die()
THEN
  RESPONSE #100
    DropInventory()
END

Iirc, the items of a disintegrated/frozen creature are actually retained (even though the creature's sprite is gone), as with a stoned one, not dropped as you'd see with most death types.

Yes, that script seems to work. But it has some issues as well. A cosmetic issue, as the item is dropped while the petrified/frozen creature still exists. A more serious issue is that you can theoretically unpetrify the creature, which might cause plot-related issues.

[Jarno Mikkola]

On 12/8/2022 at 3:59 PM, subtledoctor said:

I don't see why any corporeal creature should be immune to petrification. If it's got a body, it can be turned to stone, no? It's transmutation magic.

Well, considering how you kill a vampire in this game, the creature is not actually coproreal, while the grave one is.. but you cannot just target the grave with petrification and have phoof as a result.

[polytope]

16 hours ago, argent77 said:

A more serious issue is that you can theoretically unpetrify the creature, which might cause plot-related issues.

Surely no harm in giving Dragomir immunity to opcode #43; depetrification, along with a death script extension to drop inventory. The only reason a player would try to depetrify an enemy is to get their inventory items (redundant with such a script) or attempting some outright strange exploits.

11 minutes ago, Jarno Mikkola said:

Well, considering how you kill a vampire in this game, the creature is not actually coproreal, while the grave one is.. but you cannot just target the grave with petrification and have phoof as a result.

Yeah, conceptually I think vamps should only get the "turn to mist and escape" clause if reduced to zero hp through damage in combat, not if petrified, disintegrated or destroyed with a mace of disruption or a Sunray; in that case there should be no need for finding and staking them.

It's beyond the scope of a fixpack to change vampire's scripted Gaseous Form ability though.

Edited December 10, 2022 by polytope

[Jarno Mikkola]

5 hours ago, polytope said:

Yeah, conceptually I think vamps should only get the "turn to mist and escape" clause if reduced to zero hp through damage in combat, not if petrified, disintegrated or destroyed with a mace of disruption or a Sunray; in that case there should be no need for finding and staking them.

Well, technically the vampire could escape from being pertified by going into mist form(thus exploding the petrified corpse...) and escaping, as it's not their own body. The corpse in the grave is their true self.

[GaxGuy]

Is the actual problem to solve that: vampires aren't immune to petrification, or is the actual problem to solve that: an essential item can be lost in an unexpected way?  It seems pretty self evident the actual problem to solve is the later.

I think vampires should remain subject to petrification.  Some vampire storytelling outside D&D even has some failure modes ending in petrification.  There doesn't seem to be anything that reasonably says they should not remain subject to petrification.

As such, I think making vampires immune to petrification is not a good choice to solve the actual problem to solve, and a solution more directly addressing the actual problem to solve should be found.  I'm sorry; I'm just returning to this game after 20 years so I don't know what that is, but other people here have commented on that and I bet people can come up with a great solution.

Maybe there's a way that on that vampires "death", the cloak can be created on the floor?  It's been 20 years since I knew all this.

[polytope]

On 1/6/2023 at 10:56 AM, GaxGuy said:

Maybe there's a way that on that vampires "death", the cloak can be created on the floor?  It's been 20 years since I knew all this.

This bug is EE specific, so hasn't been around for 20 years.

As for creating a cloak on the floor, no, there is a DestroyGroundPiles() action and CopyGroundPilesTo("Area",[x.y]) but to put new objects on the floor they generally need to be dropped by a creature. It is possible to ensure a petrified/frozen/disintegrated creature will simply DropInventory() and that seems the simplest solution.

The other solution of course is a "dummy" cloak with the critical item flag, which can't be destroyed, carried by Dragomir and replacement with the actual cloak by area script as soon as the party picks it up via TakePartyItem() ... GiveItemCreate() if anyone dislikes the former option for cosmetic reasons.

Edited January 7, 2023 by polytope