Chromatic Orb

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My Protagonist Invoker has reached the point where his Chromatic Orb spell turns the target to stone if the save is failed.

My experience thus far has been that you must continue to attack the stone target until it is dead, but once dead it doesn't leave any items to be recovered.

This actually is something of a problem if the target has the potential to be carrying something important - a magic item or something needed for a quest.

Is there some way around this?

 

Don't use Chromatic Orb.

Spells which turn your opponent to stone or disintegrate them also do bad things to the items they carry. Learn to kill them in a more item-friendly way.

 

Doesn't Chromatic orb just kill (without disintegration) the target when the caster is lvl 11 or higher?

 

At either 11th or 12th. Which is why Aerie can be so deadly with her Chromatic Doom sequence.

 

Chromatic orb has Vorpal effect on wizard level 12 or higher.

If you want to use the Stoning effect of the Orb, as well as Disintegrate, FtS, Prismatic Spray or other similar spells/effects, you may turn off the 'Gore' button in the Game options menu. This way, no matter how you kill your enemies, you'll not lose any items.

If you freeze an enemy, there is also a good chance to lose most, if not all valuable items.

 

Or, you could have a stone to flesh scroll or spell somewhere...A specific ring comes into mind...

When the enemies are petrified, they're dead. No need to shatter the nice statue. If you want the items the enemy carries, stone to flesh brings them back to life, but to one hit point. And when you kill them again, you get the XP again.

 

They may be dead under AD&D rules, but I don't think the computer recognizes them as such.

For example, I hit the slaver cleric in the slums with a Chromatic Orb, turning him to stone. The red circle remained beneath the cleric even after the spell took effect. I then cleaned up the rest of the bad guys via more conventional means. Even after the all of the others were dead, the red circle remained. The computer also refused to let me save my game at that point. Anomen then walked over and gave him one whack with the Flail of Ages. The red circle disappeared, and I was able to save.

I didn't notice when (or if) experience points were awarded.

 

Interesting, I don't think that worked in BG1, so I'll have to try that. I lose the cool special effects, but get to keep the loot. Cool. Cone of Cold, you just got put back on my spell picks. Time to break out those Wands of Frost.

 

Just wanted to chime back in and report that I actually discovered a way around this problem. I noticed that one of my NPCs (Aerie) has a magic device that casts Stone to Flesh once per day.

Once the battle is over, the petrified character is surrounded by melee warriors (Minsc, Sir Anomen). Aerie uses the device, and once the petrification is reversed, the first blow kills the enemy character. The useful items that enemy was carrying can thus be recovered.

This came in very handy when that crazy bunch of Harpers attacked my party. That was a tough battle - really depleted my supply of Potions of Extra Healing.

 

You can tweak yourself out of this.

 

Isnt that also why the Neutron Bomb was invented?

 

Pretty evil turning someone into stone and then curing him to kill him just a few seconds later. Why would Anomen, Minsc or Aerie do that?

 

None of them have ever complained.

 

I loved the Avenger I played with because he had so many spell slots and almost all of them were chromatic orb. Basically all I did was use it over and over (this was my first time playing, so I didn't really think through using doom or greater malison).

 

That spell makes Avengers playable. Also entangle with web can really mess up the bad guys.