confusion on body of water

I have one confusion about body of water spell still. is the subject of this spell prevented from attacking in melee completely no matter what, kind of like body of air spell or does it just prevent the subject from starting the combat but being able to attack if combat is already going on? Or for example if you cast the spell on your character, does it just reduce your damage but still allow you to attack in melee?

 

A character which has Body of Water cast upon him can attack in melee and start combat, yet he does pathetically little damage when in this state (no more normal and fatigue damage than 1-5).

 

Someone should eventually make a decent pdf FAQ containing all these questions. I certainly didn't know this, and it's annoying that someone would be hard pressed to find this information even when they've googled it and searched for it on the forum; it should be more readily available. Not that I'm going to be the one the create such a pdf - I'm far too lazy - but it would be great if someone stepped up. Then all you'd need to do was use Ctrl+f and the answers would be on your fingertips. I guess realistically we could all chip in as a community, cover some pages of posts of this subforum each looking at those which have mechanical queries such as this and clear defined answers, and then post them all into one big stickied thread.

It sometimes feels like the Arcanum Hints & Tips subforum is really the "Muro & Drog Alt & very occaisonally someone else answers your technical questions" subforum and that does seem a bit unfair on them; I guess I don't want to speak for anyone - Muro and Drog Alt might very well like answering all these questions - but still a catch-all FAQ thread about some of the more obscure mechanics of the game such as this, or where to find unusual items, or basically any question not solvable by a very quick and easy search might be handy.

 

thanks for clearing that up

once more question popped into my mind about body of earth also. does the extra damage given by the spell to the subject work with anything melee, including weapons, or does it only work with fists?

 

As far as I know, it just works with fists.

EDIT: In regards to my last post - whoa I didn't realise there was 103 pages! Still I'd imagine most threads asking dumb questions could be ignored and others wouldn't take anything more than a quick scan through to find the real answer. If quite a few people did opt in for this I wouldn't think it would take more than a few hours of effort each. It would also stop snippy responses of "Errr do you even know how to use the search function???!!!???" if it was given a glaring title such as THE BIG BOOK OF ANSWERS.

 

From my notes:

OSF_BODY_OF_AIR - The critter can't wield any items and gets special dialog. Can't attack.
OSF_BODY_OF_EARTH - The critter can't wield any items and gets special dialog. Does +5 normal damage.
OSF_BODY_OF_FIRE - The critter can't wield any items and gets special dialog. Does +15 fire damage.
OSF_BODY_OF_WATER - The critter can't wield any items and gets special dialog. Does +15 fatigue damage.

NOTE: the extra damage granted by these spells cannot be seen in the character inventory, as it's added per hit by a specially designated subroutine. The same subroutine also handles the Hardened Hands (+2 normal) and Backstab damage. Setting Floats to Verbose in options does let you see the extra damage, though.

 

Was not the original idea of BODY_OF_WATER that you could walk of water?

 

That is correct. They eventually decided to ditch the idea, because enabling such an option would cause some problems with game balance and mechanics.

By the way, I find Drog's notes quite informative.

 

It is good that they have ditched this idea indeed. Or else he/she will get everywhere free and definably ruin the plot by walking to the places where he/she should not be yet. There is also the danger that you will get stranded somewhere at sea when the spell wears off.

 

thank you for all the answers.

im indeed not the type to shy away from using search but many spell details aren't really told in past forum topics.(atleast based on my searchs)

Drog's notes indeed pretty much tell everything there is to know about "body of x" spells. And they also tell the fact that for melee users, Shield of Protection spell seems to be better option.

 

Well, if we really want to use the world "everything" here, we shouldn't forget what effect.mes tells us about those spells.