A2: Doomguard division limit?

[Carranzero]

i'm at the 2nd guardpost before the big portal of the empire, and... well a image is worth 1000 words

 

 

massive cloud of blades... after like 30 rounds, they simply stoppped dividing, even though i damage them... and no, division isn't limited by space, as u can see that there is room for more clones.. maybe theres a limit to dividing?

[Lilith]

Yes, there's a limit to how many monsters can exist at one time. It's... probably better to not let them reach that limit.

[Alorael at Large]

Keep in mind that it's a limit on the total monsters in the town at one time, not the total number of monsters that can have existed or a limit on how many times a doomguard can split. If you hit the monster cap and kill one doomguard, the next one you hit will divide again.

 

—Alorael, who could see hitting the cap and beating all the doomguards almost to death so that they can be killed one by one without splitting further. That's a perfectly good strategy except for the fact that you've already made the doomguard divide so many times that the fight will be miserably protracted even if you can survive.

[Ishad Nha]

As for actually killing all the Doomguards, how about giving your warriors Divine Warrior if they have it?

[Carranzero]

yea, i lost that battle... way too hard, what i did was turn down difficulty to easy, and in 10 hits they were over

[Alorael at Large]

The way to kill doomguards is not to hit them a lot. You want to pick one and hit it with a few very high damage attacks until it's dead. Then you pick a clone and do it again. Repeat until all of them are gone.

 

—Alorael, who won't argue that doomguards aren't tough. That's the point. They're much tougher if you go into doomguard fights like other fights, though. They require much more attention to which character is dealing damage and how.

[Ishad Nha]

PCs who don't deal much damage might want to avoid hitting them at all.

[Toby-Linn]

Yeah, don't hit them with your mage or priest, just use your spellcasters to haste and bless the fighters.

 

That way the fighter(s) will do lots of damage and then when it splits it won't take too many hits to kill them.

[Jeran Korak]

Wall Of Blades damages them, unfortunately it damages them very little. The worst nightmare imaginable is to attack a doomguard in an area where there is an ambiant scource of physical damage, like Area of Effect spell triggers or fields, then they just keep multiplying, and not even a character edited party can have enough attacks per round to destroy more then they copy. Erika's Tower in E3/A3 is the best example.

[Randomizer]

Exile doomguards dealt out hardly any damage compared to Avernum doomguards so even spellcasters could hack away. In Avernum you want to find a spot where most of your party can hide while you slowly hack away at one doomguard at a time.

[Dintiradan]

I could be mistaken, but I thought that Doomguard division only happened when there was a nearby space for the newly split Doomguard to appear in. If you fired an arrow at a Doomguard at the centre of a pack, does it split? I remember one time Cloud of Blades being effective against a Doomguard pack, when it was in a smallish room.

 

There is another way of defeating a Doomguard, probably not intended by Jeff. Admittedly, this is a very cheap way of doing it.

Click to reveal..

If you have access to Capture Soul/Simulacrum, try to capture the soul of a Basilisk or Ur-Basilisk. While Doomguards are supposed to be immune to magical damager, they are susceptible to stoning. Summon the Basilisk at a distance, and make sure no one damages the sole Doomguard.

[Carranzero]

yeah, in fact, i killed pyrog's lair and halls of chaos' doomguards with ur-basilisks

 

and im not 100% sure, but it won't divide if the adjacent squares within 2 spaces are occupied

[Randomizer]

I've seen them split and the new one appears several squares away.

[Callie]

I never fought those two doomguards. I shielded myself (and switched party order so my tank was in the back) and ran back and forth between the levers. You run a high risk of dying, but it takes less time.

[Sss-Chah]

Originally Posted By: Y unas uvas

The way to kill doomguards is not to hit them a lot. You want to pick one and hit it with a few very high damage attacks until it's dead. Then you pick a clone and do it again. Repeat until all of them are gone.

—Alorael, who won't argue that doomguards aren't tough. That's the point. They're much tougher if you go into doomguard fights like other fights, though. They require much more attention to which character is dealing damage and how.

i thought that's how everybody did it. guess i was wrong.

[Earth]

too bad that doomguards can take alot damage before they die and do too so if there are many doomguards priest(s) will be busy healing fighters. doomguard would be nice to call to help in battle but that won't happen.

[Sss-Chah]

i don't remember if you can capture a doomguard's soul. if you can, that'd be a good summon. i remember garzahd being capturable.

[Alorael at Large]

You can't. No splitting monsters can be captured.

 

—Alorael, who imagines that's a good thing. An army of doomguards would make the game rather easy in many places. An army of doomguards hostile to you, which is what happens with splitting monsters, would make the game unfairly miserable the one time you tried that trick.

[Earth]

room full of summoned doomguards and some1 charms them, yay. teleportation-spell would be handy on that situation.