Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Technical & Gameplay Problems Noxious Fumes are bugged or wrong description

There are gloves "Ichorous Gloves" they apply Noxious Fumes on enemy if you hit them with acid. Description of Fumes says "Hostile creatures in radius..." but it's not true, your allies also take damage not just hostiles so it's pretty much useless if your whole party is melee. It's either skill bug or description bug.

Anything that applies AOE damage will affect your allies if they are in range... that is why a Wizard specked as an Evocation specialist or a Sorcerer using metamagic: careful"are the safest to avoid friendly fire. Friendly fire is part of the game (therefore, it should have been obvious from the beginning).

I've noticed that it damages neutrals which it shouldn't - e.g. it almost killed some townsfolk I was trying to save! Agree - that's a bug.

It doesn't damage your party members or followers so it's still useful most of the time!

Not sure about non-party allies - would have to test.

Not every aoe works on allies. For example some ilithid powers. If the thing from gloves is intended then they have wrogn description.


It does dmg your party memebrs, that's a thing. This is reason why Im not using it nor my multiplayer party.

No idea about Illithid powers as I don't use them, as far as I know they are just a Larian home brew and nothing to do with 5e. Not that I enjoy 5e at all, Larian yes but 5e no. I would be surprised if non-combatants are immune to damage that affects party members, seems unusual.

If one is not fond of 5e and doesn't play it, then one probably oughtn't comment on how its system works with any kind of authority...

In 5e, spells, effects and abilities do what they say they do, and not what they don't; there is no 'implied' element:

This means that is an effect says "allies within 30 feet of a point you choose within range" it means that - you pick a point within the range of the effect, and any ally within 30 feet of That point, gets the effect, even if they are outside the base range of the spell. No hostiles affected; the effect is not concerned with hostiles.

If it says "Creatures of your choice within 30 feet" on a 'self' originating spell, that means that you can pick as you please which targets are and are not affected by it, within that range.

If it says "Creatures in the area", then all creatures regardless of their feelings towards you or yours to them, will be affected.

If it says "Hostile creatures you can see", then you specifically affect enemies, not allies and not neutral parties, and only the ones you can actually see.

There are numerous examples of all of these kinds of stipulations throughout the 5e game system... Larian's design has not shown an understanding of this particularly well, however, as straight forward as it is. In Bg3, as a result, we have numerous tooltips that say one thing and do another, and numerous spells that use the 5e book text, but do not, in fact, work as they describe at all... and it's not acceptable design.

If the tooltip on this item says "hostile creatures within 10 feet", then that is exactly what it should affect: Not allies, not objects, and not neutral parties - Hostiles, ONLY. If the intent was that it should affect all creatures regardless of their relation to you, then the tooltip should Say that... it's even easier to say that, because you just drop out the word 'hostile' and save yourself some space.

This is not the only instance of false or misleading tooltips in BG3, and it, along with the others, are definitely issues that need to be corrected in one direction or the other.

Bugged for sure. They give the enemy you hit Noxious Fumes, and that in turn gives you and others around the enemy Noxious Fumes Damage.
Should be Noxious Fumes Damage from the gloves.