ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

I'm not 100% clear on what just happened to me since I was blinded at the time, but as far as I can tell I got hit with Stone Touch and I just lost 6 turns, causing me to die. I don't get any chance to act or cleanse it for 6 turns? How do I deal with this? Even with the boosted resists I still took 700-800 damage and still had a turn of stoned left when I died.

Stun immunity and spell save can help.

Right now, the talent is unfun and stupid for an NPC to use on the PC. This has been fixed in svn, so for next ToME release, the player won't be stoned via Stone Touch (unless one is playing Insane).

... would you believe that I've never had stone touch used on me in the entire time I've played T4? I've never actually seen the talent used by an NPC, not since the talent was first introduced. Not once.

So, like. I can't offer advice for dealing with it. I've never had to deal with it. I've killed hundreds (hell, maybe thousands) of alchemist enemies, but. Never have they used stone touch. Or at least they never landed it, I'unno.

Not saying it shouldn't be fixed or that the svn change isn't a good thing. Just... throwing that out there. It seems almost anomalous to me, I guess, that for whatever reason the AI's just never bothered to hit me with the talent. I think I've been hit with, like, every other talent in the game that the NPC can actively use (and some, like aura spikes, that they can't), but never stone touch. S'weird.

I've been stoned only twice in total during all my time, so I believe you Both times were due to the poison version.
If spell save works, that's probably the reason I never get hit by it. More than half my characters have high magic and thus a reasonable spell save.
General tip: physical/spell/mental saves are good stats, more important than defense.

I got hit with Stone Touch earlier, but I was playing a tough Bulwark with nice armor, so they didn't even get me down to half hp before it wore off.