Does Cloudkill count as Acid damage?

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Trying to figure out if Shadow Dragon Armor is worth it for a thief. If not Cloud Kill what attacks are acid based?



Also, you know how some spells only work on creatures with x amount of Hit Points. How can you tell how many hit points a creature has?

 

Cloudkill does poison damage. There aren't a lot of spells that do acid damage, the most noteworthy one is Melf's Acid Arrow. There are a few monsters that use acid attacks, like certain dragons. Shadow Dragon armor is still a good choice for a thief though thanks to its high AC, and iirc you can equip rings/amulets of protection while using it.

There might be a mod that shows you exactly how much HP a particular creature has, but normally you have estimate based on how much damage you've done to them plus their health status (press the TAB key while the cursor is over them).

 

IIRC protection from poison doesn't protect you from cloudkill. I think it also kills summoned skeletons, which is a bug. It is SUPPOSED to be poison damage and skeletons are supposed to be immune.

 

I'm pretty sure cloudkill doesn't do poison damage or I would've been immune when wearing the ring of Gaxx. Cloudkill kills summons below a certain hit dice, perhaps that's why skeletons are affected?

The shadow dragon armor is a great piece of armor regardless of the resistance, as it's the lowest AC armor you can wear as a thief. In ToB there's another light armor with the same AC rating, but it never gets any better than what you have right there.

There's also the spell acid fog, if I recall correctly. Not that enemy spellcasters use that one a lot. There's also an enemy in ToB that does a crap-ton of acid damage.

 

Note that there is a difference between immunity to actual poisons and immunity to poison-type damage, much like there's a difference between immunity to magic and immunity to magic-type damage. Cavaliers, for example, have immunity to poison-type damage while the Ring of Gaax simply protects you from being poisoned.

Items and abilities which provide protection from poison-type damage are much rarer.

 

It has been a while but in my nonmodded game I do believe that i am unable to wear cloaks/rings of protection with any of the dragon armors.

 

You are exactly right. In the BG/IWD series there are a ton of different immunities. There are % based immunities, ex. Ring of Fire Resistance. There is complete immunity, ex.. Protection from Fire scrolls. Some immunities are Magic-Type based. The Shield spell is a good example as it gives immunity to Magic Missles. Poison and Acid are hard immunities to acquire. Poison Immunity is one of the abilities I really like about the Cavalier when playing a modded-up Tutu game.

 

I guess that if you have a party of 6 cavaliers that particular immunity isn't going to seem nearly as rare. Just saying.

 

Six LG characters. *shudders at the thought*

If only truly awesome LG characters like Keldorn weren't so uncommon.

 

I'm not arguing the point about the two different things, but anything that says "immunity to poison" should cover both being poisoned and taking poison type damage, since the poison-type damage should not affect the person and thus have no effect. Something that says "immune to poison damage" on the other hand would leave the character open to taking ability damage from poison, but the straight damage type of poison used in BG would have no effect.

Please note that I am primarily thinking of the 2nd Edition Advanced Dungeons and Dragons rule set, although excepting the Infinity Engine games, I haven't played in almost 15 years.
Did we misunderstand things all those years ago? It's almost half a lifetime ago so my memory could be faulty. I certainly wouldn't attempt to play again without rereading the core rulebooks and the Forgotten Realms Campaign Guide.

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Also note that undead and things immune to poison should be immune to cloudkill, since it is a poisonous cloud that does the killing.

 

Nah, I don't argue your points from a D&D perspective, I'm just pointing out how the game engine handles these things. D&D-wise I'm not really sure how this would go, but based on what I've observed the GM would probably just simplify minors things like this and drop poison damage resistance completely (making anything immune to poison immune to posion-type damage). Like the way most GMs ignored the stuff about system shock and constitution back when they used AD&D rules, because it made the game unnecessarily more complicated.

 

Yea there is a difference between D&D rules restrictions and game engine restrictions. Sometimes they are the same and sometimes not. For instance the game engine does not allow you to wear a ring of protection and a magic suit of armor at the same time. In pen and paper you can wear both at the same time though you only get the best value for each so if you wore plate+2 and a ring+1 you would get a +2 bonus to AC (armor bonus is better), a +1 to all saves, and a +2 to saves that you are allowed to apply your armor bonus to (there are random situations that allow this). For ease of use and coding they went with what we see in the game to keep the most important part true about not allowing you to stack both for the AC.

 

Yes, but some of the handling with poison didn't make sense from anything but a coding oversight perspective.