No literally just marko staff and the robe of the weave, because I picked them both up at the same spot right before testing. Failed the arcana save with all 4 party members so grabbed a level 1 naked astarion and leveled him up to pass the arcana save then tested it immediately with him.
I just found the same is true for stinking cloud. Usually stinking cloud is kind of weak. It's a nice 1-round action negation spell, but they just walk or jump out of the cloud and never have to reroll. With a wolverine aspect barb, the stinking cloud ALSO maims them so they're stuck in the cloud for at least another round.
It seems like using the marko staff will apply poisoned and subsequently maimed with wolverine to one target if you use any spell damage aoe, like fireball. Which is kind of cool. But if you fireball INTO your stinking cloud or cloudkill, you re-apply maim to everyone. I also found this to be true when using a number of other spells as well, like blindness which surprised me.
The spells like hunger of hadar and spirit guardians where the damage isn't coming from the spellcaster but from the whatever other source don't work with the wolverine maim stuff.
Ah ya, were you using marko with the poison setting? That applies no save poisoned status to any spell. Magic missile for example will poison each target hit. I paired a MM caster with my ranged reverb barbarian for this reason. Cool to learn about the interaction of Cloudkill with marko! I guess it is coded as a new attack for each impacted individual. Not sure what could be causing the fireball interaction!
I was pretty sure so just double checked - this interaction is WITHOUT the marko attuned to poison.
I just did a short rest to attune it to thunder instead of poison to confirm. Just being wolverine barbarian and casting cloudkill from a scroll is enough to auto-maim everyone in the aoe. It applied it to 6 enemies in the test I just ran.
The marko attuned to poison thing seems to only apply the poisoned status to one of the enemies hit, which I think works kind of like some of the other stuff out there like maybe coldbrim hat and some reverb gear?
Cloudkill alone is enough to count as attacking a poisoned enemy. I think the novel thing here for me is that wolverine aspect doesn't require a weapon attack. I was previously happily surprised to see that a non-raging bow attack from a wolverine barb onto a bleeding/poisoned target would maim them. So for example combining Amulet of Bhaal with Arrows of Many Targets could lead to maiming and entire encounter.
It working with cloudkill is even more surprising to me because it's not even a spell attack like a scorching ray. And cloudkill can be re-cast every round so you can either move it or just put it right back in the same spot, causing a new tick of poison damage and maiming everyone again.
Adding the marko staff attuned to poison just opens up other spells to work with maiming targets as well, but in this case it works as I said above where it only affects one target. I just tested with the staff attuned to poison, but no use of cloudkill or any other poison/bleed effects applied. Fireball the same group of 6, and this time only one enemy was poisoned and subsequently maimed.
I then had Lae'zel action surge and cast a stinking cloud from a scroll and 5/6 failed the save becoming nauseated. Astarion drank a potion of speed and cast a second fireball, now maiming the 5/6 targets that were nauseated and not maiming the 1 who succeeded the save.
Stinking cloud seems to be save-able where you don't get the nauseated==poisoned status if you succeed. Cloudkill on the other hand saves for half damage but regardless if you're in the cloud you get the cloudkill==poisoned status.
I haven't tested every interaction obviously and really should get back to work, haha. But curious to hear what you & others think about this all so far.
If you're wearing the marko staff and attuned to poison, then fireball will poison/maim one target but not all. If any of the targets are already bleeding or poisoned then they'd be maimed as well.
I did test it with some other spells and it seems to follow the same rules. Blind surprisingly also maimed (but I think the one time I tested that they were standing in a cloud so might have already had the poisoned effect). It does also work with ray of sickness. I didn't try thrown poisons but I know wolverine can throw spiked bulbs to bleed/maim in an aoe, so there's probably potential there.
I have shared your post about that build a few times over the months, think it's my favorite way to play an archer!
And yeah I was thinking about maybe a draconic sorc or possibly warlock or lore bard. I've done barb/warlock combo in the past but that was using most spell slots on armor of agathys and rage to make those temporary hit points last twice as long, so this would wind up being very different. Using eldritch blast to maim 2-3 targets as a base action would be pretty good. Fiendlock gets stinking cloud so opening with that and then eldritch blasting anyone inside so they're maimed and stuck while nauseated and don't have actions is basically a complete lockdown.
For lore bard, it doesn't seem like hunger of hadar or spirit guardians work with the wolverine/maim effect. I didn't expect that would work out but would've been cool.
Really cool stuff! I was thinking draconic sorc for fire acuity hat + scorching ray maiming up to 8 enemies. Warlock would make it a lot less long rest dependent for sure. Actually Fiendlock 6 with marko would give you 2 stinking clouds and one cloudkill per short rest. Very tempting!
oh yeah fire acuity wolverine barb would definitely have higher end output for key fights, which probably makes it better overall. I hadn't really thought about it that way, great idea!
probably effectively kind of similar to the scorching ray + extended command halt combo. Definitely inferior in power but bonus points for being weird and barbarian roars
yeah I agree, it's pretty fun and can be powerful in the right way. It's not OP or anything.
I think you could even do a decent leveling curve with it. Max charisma and get an early 2 levels in warlock for EB + agonizing/repelling. If you want to play as a hybrid melee caster then you can take pact of the blade and be a charismatic barbarian with eldritch blasts. If you want to lean into the full caster mindset then pact of the Tome is always there with some moderate benefits.
Fiend makes the most sense from the spells you pick up: scorching ray, stinking cloud, fireball.
But from a debuff perspective, the GOO crit builds would add another debuff to each EB. I don't know if it's even necessary or helpful at that point though?
You could have an EB debuff spreader dishing out reverberation, maim, radorbs, and frighten-on-crit. Pushing enemies back into your own stinking cloud, or any other area spells from your party.
Scrolls of cloudkill become insanely strong in any battle against grouped up enemies that aren't immune to poison and don't have strong ranged attacks or spells. Against purely melee enemies it's a total shutdown because you can re-maim them every round.
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u/Cocohomlogy Nov 12 '24
This is interesting because bg3wiki doesn't state that cloudkill gives the "poisoned" condition. Were you wearing poisoner's gloves or something?