Reporting in that the 2.1.17 patch indeed fixed this issue, at least for me.

This is happening to me, too. It crashes every time I damage Lindworm too much. I'm using 2.1.16. Removing the beta update stops me from using any saves made with it patched so that's not an option. One of the many times it crashed because of this a message popped up asking me to email a file to the...