On Mon, 18 Oct 1999, John Robertson wrote:
>
> As a side note, and also as a feeble attempt to make this
> more general-bard related.... while killing hill giants to
> get lambent stones, my group was rather shocked to
> discover that killing two giants was actually easier than
> killing one, thanks to Solon's Song of the Sirens.
Yeah, when a cleric friend and I were playing in Lower Guk, I
charmed two shin ghoul knights into fighting each other. She
asked which one was charmed, I told her, then she proceeded to
nuke the uncharmed one. The charmed ghoul knight finished at
almost full health (which we had to kill), and after heals and
all she'd used about 60% of her mana. Next time I told her to
just wait until one killed the other before attacking. The
fight took longer (these are melee mobs after all), but she
used less than a half bubble of mana (one spell- lol) and we
were ready to go for the next.
I've been using the song a lot lately since Pixie Strike is
broken (I tried it about 20 times on Froon, and it *never*
worked despite not being resisted almost every time). If
you're not in a dungeon where lots of greens might attack a
pet (Permafrost, Cazic), Siren's is an excellent way to make 2
and 3 mob fights easier than 1 mob fights. Several times in
the Minotaur patriarch room, we've gotten a successive stream
of 6-8 mobs due to spawns and wanderers joining the fight.
Since it's almost always only 2-3 mobs at a time, I just charm
the extra into attacking the one the others are fighting and
we actually end up doing better than if we'd fought each one
at a time in succession. I've even had a corpse go *poof*
because the charmed mob did more damage than the other 4 tanks
combined (with the new group damage rules).
By the way, I think I've figured out that really annoying bug
where a charmed creature attacks a player. When you re-charm,
your pet attacks whatever is at the top of its hate list (bard
excepted since charm makes it view you amiably). When you're
playing solo and charm a mob into attacking another, the other
mob damages your pet and thus builds hatred. When you
recharm, the mob is tops on your pet's hate list so your pet
re-attacks without you having to order it.
But when you're playing grouped, the extra mob(s) usually
attack party members instead of your pet, and thus your pet is
never damaged and never hates the other mobs. But some party
members probably attacked it, or gained hatred for pulling it,
so upon recharm, your pet automatically attacks the player. I
know charm clears the damage list, but I guess it doesn't
clear the hatred list - it just puts the bard on top - which
is why you can use it to pull stuff off after it's frenzied
on someone.
If this is what's going on, we have to be careful how we asked
that this be fixed. If it were fixed by just clearing the
hate list, then we'd have to give the mob a new attack command
every time we recharmed it, which may be worse than the bug.
It'd have to be fixed by just wiping players (except the bard)
off the hate list.
In the meantime, you can avoid the bug by making sure you or
another mob are tops on your pet's hate list. Either you have
to pull (so everything hates only you by the time you charm),
or if there are 3+ mobs you have to get two of them fighting
each other so that they hate each other more than any player.
If there are only two mobs and both are already attacking
another player, then there's nothing you can do - you'll have
to keep giving the back off and attack command every time you
recharm.
--
John H. Kim
kim@...