Dungeon Master Forum

I just spent the past 2 weeks vacation to play CSB and finishing it for the first time (and i have this game for like 20 years ). since im not much of an explorer (i just like to level up my chars) but i did want to see CSB, i decided to use maps.

today i went to play DM again and i planned to finish DM for the 3th time. i just finished the Caverns and went down to the Rat level. Now here something strange happened. all my chars are Adapt Fighter and Ninja, Expert Priest and Lo Master Wizard and all have over 400 health. but the first Vexirk i encountered (near the pendant feral) cast a fireball on me and 1 of my party members died. i had a mon Fire Shield on the party, 400 health and 67 anti-fire. the other 3 party members had hardly any damage taken.
i had just saved before comming down there, so i decided to load the game and see if it would happen again. i checked my stamina and food and water and again attack the Vexirk and let it cast a fireball on me. again, the same party member died while the others hardly took any damage.

does anyone have any idea how this is possible? i threw a mon fireball against the wall and none of my party members died.

Are you sure it wasn't a lightning bolt, and not a fireball? Lightning bolts do less fire damage than fireballs, but they also do direct impact damage. This is why they work on knights when most other spells can't do anything. So, my guess is that the one character who got hit and died took the impact damage.

That'd be my only guess...

since i was on top of him, i cant be sure. but could a lightning bolt kill a char with 400 health and 67 anti-fire? this is the Rat level, so it couldnt have been the most strong fireball/lightning bolt, right?

What was the fireshield wrap around bug? Was your dead character the highest anti-fire holder? Were they wearing flamebain?

beowuuf wrote:What was the fireshield wrap around bug?

sorry? what bug?

beowuuf wrote:Was your dead character the highest anti-fire holder?

i just checked. yes he was

beowuuf wrote:Were they wearing flamebain?

noone was wearing a flamebain

I noticed that too, while the Fire Shield spell does correctly his job in CSB, a small fireball can kill your characters or at least makes serious damage in DM.. I was quite surprised so I tried to let my team be hit by a weak fireball, but this time, none of them were protected; the result is that they received small damages (as expected)... I deduced then it was a bug and deciced not to use this spell anymore (in DM only)

Sophia wrote:Lightning bolts do less fire damage than fireballs, but they also do direct impact damage. This is why they work on knights when most other spells can't do anything

Can you confirm that? is it really effective against knights? I though Lightning bolt was a useless spell.. I was very wrong then !?

èné wrote:Can you confirm that? is it really effective against knights? I though Lightning bolt was a useless spell.. I was very wrong then !?

I don't think anyone really knew what lightning bolt was good for. I can confirm it because I figured this out after looking through the CSBwin source code-- in actual play, I was as clueless as everyone else.

Well, after having loaded a CSB game as I wanted to check this by myself, I cast about 25 MON Lightning bolts to one of the four knights you meet in the Executioner's place;

result : the guy seems to be very ok and one of my character is dead..

Maybe it works but very little; I'm not really convinced

I think the good old axe does a much better job against knights

Note you can get impact damage on a knight from fireball too. 5 points per hit. Mon fireball. Archmaster wizard. Or something to that effect. Lightning bolt will have more impact damage, but the knights do have high health.

Anyway, wrap around bug - I seem to recall, and searching on the forum might yield it (I'm getting ready to go out he dor) that the highest value of fire resistance is not capped, so if you add to it, it causes the value to wrap around to the lowest number - making that character vulnerable. Hence, instant death to a relatively low level fireball. And obviously you are close to that value, so only your highest anti-fire possessing guy is affected.

Tr waiting out your fireshields a little. If you are able to hit the cap at level 9, your champions are way too babied by protection anyway!

Good morning everyone,

I have never seen that bug. Yesterday I ran into that fireball trap in accident. All characters took little damage by 3 or 4 fireballs but no one died. The fireshiled was not active.

Does it only happen with the fireshild spell activated? Does it happen randomly?

Kind regards,

Andi

It happens when you manage to boost the nternal counter for fire resistance so high (usually by many powerful fire shields) that the value wraps from being a large positive to a large negative (I believe)

So in normal play you won't see it. If you cast alot of fire shields with a powerful party, you may see it. If I am remembering it correctly

èné wrote:the guy seems to be very ok and one of my character is dead..

"Seems to be very ok" doesn't tell anything. How many HP did the knight have before you started the experiment and how many HP did it have after?

èné wrote:Maybe it works but very little; I'm not really convinced

I think the good old axe does a much better job against knights

Read the source code until you're convinced, then. It's very clearly in there, as clear as anything can be in the CSBwin code, anyway.

That said, I'm sure the axe is better, though. I was never trying to assert that melee wasn't still the way to go when fighting knights, just point out that lightning bolts are the one spell that actually does damage them.

So the fire shield spell is causing this? ok thanks for clearing that up.