Festering drowned dead

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On the fields of slaughter (or what they are called) near the water where you have to use the holy water in chapter5 my party killed a festering (or what (s)he is called) drowned dead.

Afterwards my paladin was dead.

Scrolling upwards and reading the text I read that all my party members had to roll a fortitude save, my paladin (+28 bonus doesn't help at a critical) failed where the others succeeded.

There was no indication why this save had to be made, so I'm confused.

Has the festering drowned dead so powerful special abilities ?

Is this a bug ?

Did my paladin using the club of disruption cause this ?

 

No, my party members had to save before he got killed.

 

I got no XP for killing him if I remember correctly. A low level monster with "mass save or die" powers sounds pretty weird.

 

Yeah, Festering Drowned Dead is a pretty high level undead monster and he does have a cloudkill style gas aura.

 

Festering Drowned Dead have some sort of deadly aura. In the unpatched version of IWD2, Animate Dead could summon FDD's at higher levels and you had to be extra, extra careful to keep them at a good distance from your party, otherwise their death aura might accidently kill a party member.

FDD's are best killed at range so that you stay out of their death aura. If you happen to have any undead summons of your own, let them deal with the FDD's at melee range.

Your pally probably rolled a raw 1 or 20 (whichever is "bad") where the save bonus was irrelevant. Terrible luck.

BTW, in this area, you can get really cute, if you're willing to do without some XP, by sending a stealthy or invisible character ahead and purifying the water without having to engage every single monster after you've gotten by the lich.

 

Spell description Animate Dead warns you!

WARNING:Some more powerful zombie lords have super-natural auras, which may harm your allies if they are within the range....or says something like that.

Yay, if you fail a save you will be dead or diseased. Happened to me SO MUCH! How can my PCs manage to roll 1s so often?

Oh and because of its aura is a constant threat, you can not SAVE or REST if you summoned a FDD. you must kill it (is boring and pointless) or get the patch!

 

Thanks for the replies !
Since my game is fully patched I can only summon greater boneguards or zombie lords. (what were the best possible undead summons before the patch ?)

It was a natural rolled 1, something like this:

cleric: 8+17=25 succeed
paladin: 1+28=29 failed

Since my cleric always has 1-2 raise dead spells memorized this was rather funny than terrible:
25 high enough, 29 too low ...

Since there were no real enemies left any more I finished this map easily.

Since I didn't get noteworthy XP this undead must have been far lower than level 15.

Is there anything available on the net where you can read the exact stats of the monsters ?

 

Tried DaleKeeper II?

 

A 1 is always a failure and a 20 is always a success. Since the pally rolled a 1, he failed and died.

 

Yes, and high level characters generally tend to fail their saves ONLY when they roll 1. But it happens so frequently!

MY, my cool beyond words, 28 int and 30 wisdom Silverstar/Evoker rolled a 1 and failed a WILL save against Madae's Mass Dominate! He had something like more than +30!

The sheer dissapoinment and loathing!

 

Kmonster, I think that the most powerful 2 pre-patch undead were the Festering Drowned Dead and the Apocolypse BoneGuards.

(Not sure that I'd qualify FDD's as "best", given their deadly aura.)

 

If your charecter keeps failing his saves because he rolled a 1, try casting Luck beforehand. That should eliminate the roll of 1.

 

Really? Never tried Luck spell in IWD2, though in BG2 it had a very poor duration which made it obsolete in combat situations. Though good when trying to pickpocket, open a lock etc.

 

The duration is 10 rounds in IWD2...