Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Build Discussion Why does Call Lightning do half damage against lightning-weak enemies?

Hello everyone,

Can someone help me understand why if I throw a lightning attack like Call Lightning against steel sentries the damage is halved before being doubled.
I checked all the passive and active skills of the enemy, but I can't find the explanation why the damage is halved.

I am attaching an image with the combat report and the sentinel card, it is in Italian and translated into English below:
Tiro per i danni = Damage roll
Fulmine = Lightning
Danni = Damage
Vulnerabile = Vulnerable (weak, should suffer double)

After they are doubled as the enemy is weak, I would like to understand why they are divided first though.
The attack is a 4d10 (4-40 damage)

I'm probably missing something, can you teach me what?

It's even worse with Halsin because his Healing Word and Call Lightning are not part of the normal spellbook, they are passive baseline spells to him, so they can't be upcasted, just always stuck at lv1 and lv3 casts respectively.

Not only that, but the Call Lightning recast when upscaled seems to revert the damage after the initial cast to a lv3 spell damage calculation. Lots of bugs.

That's not a bug - read the spell description. Like almost all AoE spells Call Lightning offer a saving throw for half damage. WIth vulnerability 0.5*2=1, so a vulnerable enemy who makes the save will take the damage a non-vulnerable enemy would take when failing the saving throw. The saving throw is even visible in your log.

This has actually been a staple of D&D since 1st edition

Thanks a lot Marc Abaddon for the explanation, now I understand; but I never said it was a bug, I just didn't understand this detail and asked.

No worries, I know you didn't - the reply above somewhat implicated that it is.

I was curious about this and didn't get it either. But that explanation makes sense, also they have 22 dex and most if not all elemental damage spells are dex saves.

Shocking Grasp comes in useful here because it has advantage on them.

Imagine a giant robot having 22 dex, especially when you look how they move. At least they have low int.

Disintegrate is also dex save and 0 damage on save damn.

Ought to pull out that lighting spear on Lae'zell and haste her for these.

There's an almost absurd amount of items with increase spell DC though. You can easily get to ~25-26 on a Wizard and even higher on a Sorcerer. So landing debuffs is definitely doable.

According to the WIki the Steel Watchers also have Advantage on Dexterity Saving Rolls though, that is pretty harsh.

But it shows how those custom Larian items and illithid powers lead to an arms race with almost every enemy in Act III having insane stats and/or the absurd Unstoppable buff to compensate.

I really hate how the Illithid powers are basically an illusion of choice. There is no consequence for using them, and they are so busted that you just self-handicap for not using them.

And I will still refuse them, no matter how good they are. They are just another utterly stupid homebrew mechanic to make players feel powerful.

And in my second game I will respec to Int for the Zaith'isk, then back to Cha.

They could have made alternative powers for good playthrough players. Mystra and Selune could have granted similar boons/reskinned abilities. Instead the +stats come from helping the hag and praying to Shar's mirror or using tadpoles, come on.

And then you discover all ground based CC spells are bugged with static DC of 12 :'(

I haven't had this issue at all on either MC sorc or on Gale or Fuzzlump.

What I do notice is a lot of players are trying to multiclass their casters, maybe they are checking the incorrect DC under one of the multiclasses using a dumped stat or something.