ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

I get that it says that it recovers a bone shield every four turns but how come many, many enemies are recovering one every turn? I regularly will hit an enemy for significantly more damage than the trigger amount but yet it will suddenly gain one in addition to not losing one. That's a +2 difference. Kind of a problem.

What the hell is going on with this thing? Is it bugged or what?

This skill is out of control and for the record, I am not imagining it. I have been keeping track and it is definitely not operating according to the description. It might be doing what it's supposed to but it is not doing what it says.

Is it that a bone is regenerating four turns after it was lost, rather than one every four turns? Like, if a guy loses one each on turn 1 and turn 2, is the guy getting one back on turn 5 and then one more on turn 6, instead of one on turn 5 and one on turn 9? Is that what you've been seeing?

That's kind of what I'm thinking but that just makes it a very frustrating shield, which has been my experience when dealing with it when I can't disperse it.

The tendency for enemies to retreat combined with the staggeringly rapid recovery of the shield makes it troublesome.

Oh well... thanks.

Delmuir wrote:I get that it says that it recovers a bone shield every four turns but how come many, many enemies are recovering one every turn? I regularly will hit an enemy for significantly more damage than the trigger amount but yet it will suddenly gain one in addition to not losing one. That's a +2 difference. Kind of a problem.

A few thoughts:

1) The code for Bone Shield is here.

2) Looking at that code, bone shield regenerates on a fixed timer from when it was activated, not based on when any were removed. So it would be completely normal for a bone shield to regenerate immediately after having been removed.

3) When you hit an enemy with bone shield for more than the threshold and they do not lose a shield, are you seeing the "to bones" message in the combat log when this happens? ....and just checking, but: you're talking about individual damage packets, not the total damage you did with a hit, correct? (If you use Flurry and do 20+20+20+20+20+20+20+20+20+20+20+20+20+20+20 = 300 damage, you're only going to strip bone shields if their threshold is 20 or lower.)

Yeah, I've using a mage so it's all one big burst of damage. Definitely hitting the threshold.

I have to a very precise experiment to see what's going on but man oh man do I hate running into this damn shield.