Pierce magic on Clay golem - newly found bug ??

[strangelove]

Well, since others have killed Clay Golems this way, then in BG2, it would appear you can, though this is technically not correct by the book. We are of course playing by Bioware's house rules, and any engine limitations, though. *shrug* PnP AD&D knowledge is only so useful in a CRPG.

Having just read the section in the monster manual, and anything I could find in the old DM guide, this is what I came up with...

Clay golems (and golems in general) do not possess magic resistance, they are immune to it with special exceptions. Scraping the mold of the DM part of my brain (it's been quite a few years), that means the resistance is fixed, and not lowerable. There simply isn't a percentage to be lowered.

from the first edition Monster Manual:

"Clay golems can be struck only by blunt magical weapons such as hammers or maces. Other weapons do not affect them. Spells do not affect it, except as follows: move earth will drive the golem back 12" and inflicts 3-36 hit points of damage, disintegrate will slow the golem 50% and inflicts 1-12 points of damage, and an earthquake cast directly at a clay golem will stop it from moving that turn and inflict 5-50 hit points of damage."

So, if you want to play by those rules, don't use lower resistance even if it works in BG2. If you don't care about being an absolute stickler for the original AD&D ruleset, then have it. AD&D is flexible, if nothing else. It's entirely possible the engine simply can't be that specific with different monsters and spells, so in BG2 it just gets a very high resistance. I usually just have the party break out the good blunt weapons and crush the blighters.

Actually, I just killed a couple of clay golems in my current playthrough last night. I wonder if I have a good save game right before...it might be fun to test the disintigrate spell and see if it has the special effect on the golem specified in the MM, just out of curiosity. I wouldn't be at all surprised if it did actually slow the golem and cause the damage specified. The game constantly surprises me with how much of the incredibly complex ruleset it does manage to follow, while remaining fast playing and fun.

-sb

[Vaskez]

Trust me, it doesn't have that effect- I have looked at both the .cre files for Clay Golem and spell file for Disintegrate. The engine is very well designed you are right. It WOULD be possible to do something similar to proper AD&D rules, but it would take a very long time...you could make him immune to all spells, have 0 MR and have a script that detects when disintegrate is cast and then apply a custom spell that causes that damage and slows him etc. Too much hassle.
I looked at the CRE file, golcla01.cre
They are immune to poison, cold, electricity and have 50% fire resistance and 100% mag. res. and immunity to slashing,missile, piercing and non-enchanted weapons as you probably knew.