Hell Hounds appear to be spawning with "--" in the place of all of their skills. At GM Wrestling, I miss every time I swing at them. My nightmare, on the other hand (also GM Wrestling) has no problem hitting them. I have no idea what is going on. After a few minutes of letting them try to hit me, they appear to be able to gain Wrestling just fine, but did not gain any tactics from the 2 or 3 times they did manage to hit me. I assume having them spawn with skill values filled in would rectify this strange behavior. I'd suggest looking at the skill ranges given to predator hellcats is probably as good an estimate as any for where they should be in terms of wrestling, tactics, and resist.
I confirmed this as well. Apparently in the default RunUO distro Hell Hounds have no skills. I checked the most current build and found the same thing. Now to find the correct skill set for these guys. Thanks for the Report.
Grand Vizier of Chaos is spawning with "--" for Wrestling. Not sure if this matters, given that they hold an axe, though.
The grand visors have no skill in wrestling since they come equipped with the executioner's axe as their main weapon upon creation. Their combat skills lie in swordsmanship because of this, although currently weapon skills outside of wrestling are not displayed on the animal-lore gump so as a player there's no way to visually check that. Unless they were disarmed via the disarm-punch ability, they have no need of wrestling nor would they ever gain in that skill. I considered giving them skill in wrestling due to the possibilities of this but ultimately decided against it as that would further add to their barding difficulty & that was something we wanted to avoid where possible when we made the latest modifications to bosses.
Ah, well then it is a nice quirk then - disarming them becomes a very strategic move, even more than with other monsters. As far as barding difficulty goes, they're well beyond the range of being able to be barded with anything above the minimum chance, even with a slayer.
I don't have the barding difficulty formula memorized & know exactly where the "line" is drawn between what is eligible for successful barding using exceptional/slayer quality instruments & what is not without looking it up, but I don't think the current ratings for the GV Executioner are high enough to net a 0% chance for success when utilizing a repond slayer, though I could be wrong. A quick comparison vs a freshly spawned dragon which came standard at 111.4 barding difficulty. I'll have to mess with it later though to see exactly how much "difficulty" each additional point(s) in the rating actually has on barding efficiency.
IIRC, it's around 12 points from "50/50 chance" (which is what is supposedly reflected in that figure). So 12 points higher and you have 100% chance, 12 points lower and you have the minimum chance. According to the compendium, they're 122 difficulty with a slayer, which means you'd need around 110.1 skill to begin having more than the minimum chance to bard them.
