Friends spell weirdness

[aVENGER_(RR)]

The Friends spell (SPWI107.SPL) seems to behave oddly in v3 of the fixpack. Sometimes it grants the proper 6 point charisma bonus, other times it fails entirely (having no effect), and in some instances it even sets the charisma of the caster to 25.

 

Note: this is not an issue of stacking with the Ring of Human Influence. The bug is fully reproducible even if the caster is not wearing the ring.

[CamDawg]

Do you have anything else which might be modifying the spell? What level were you casting it at?

[aVENGER_(RR)]

No other CHA boosting items were present, if that's what you mean. I usually cast it with Haer'Dalis or Aerie and they had about 700,000 XP or slightly less at that time (I was testing the Shadow Thief Improvements component of RR).

 

BTW, this happened on a clean BG2+ToB+Patch26498 install with only BG2 Fixpack v3 (all components except "Paws from Shapeshifting Can Not Be Dispelled") and RR v3.61 mod. Also, viewing the spell with NI reveals several oddities like multiple charisma bonus entries and multiple protections from (the Friends) spell with varying percentual values.

[CamDawg]

' date='Jul 3 2007, 10:46 AM' post='91033']

No other CHA boosting items were present, if that's what you mean. I usually cast it with Haer'Dalis or Aerie and they had about 700,000 XP or slightly less at that time (I was testing the Shadow Thief Improvements component of RR).

 

BTW, this happened on a clean BG2+ToB+Patch26498 install with only BG2 Fixpack v3 (all components except "Paws from Shapeshifting Can Not Be Dispelled") and RR v3.61 mod. Also, viewing the spell with NI reveals several oddities like multiple charisma bonus entries and multiple protections from (the Friends) spell with varying percentual values.

It's supposed to last 1d4 rounds + 1 round/level, so every ability should have four sets of the (non-zero duration) effects, set to 0-25, 26-50, 51-75, and 76-100 percentile ranges.

 

At those levels (Aerie ~10-11, H'D 13) I'm not seeing anything in the effects that could even cause something like this.

 

(edit: A readme with acronym tags, w00t!)

[aVENGER_(RR)]

It still doesn't work right in my game, as described in the first post. Have you actually tried testing the spell in-game? Note: it may take several castings to get the bug to show.

 

BTW, here's an easy way to reproduce this bug: start a new game with a Sorcerer who has 15 CHA and pick the Friends spell. Rest, and you'll have 6 castings of the spell. Now cast Friends once, and if your charisma score is not 21 you'll know that the bug manifested. In case the spell worked properly just hit CTRL+R to dispel the effects from your character and try again. During my tests, the bug showed up at least once in every 10 castings.

 

A readme with acronym tags, w00t!)

 

Heh, guess where I nicked that from?

[aVENGER_(RR)]

Update: the bug is present even if only the "Core Fixes" component of the fixpack is installed (and no other mods besides that). I've managed to repeatedly reproduce the bug via in-game tests with a level 7 Sorcerer at the start of a new game, as mentioned in the post above.

 

Roughly once in every 10 castings, the spell either doesn't raise the CHA value at all or sets it to 25, yet the lighting effects, the "Friends" icon and the "Charisma Modification" text always display properly. Could anyone else runs a few in-game tests and confirm this?

[CamDawg]

Just ran the same test. About 30 castings with a newly minted sorceress with no issues. More testing ASAP would be nice as I'd like to get v4 out today and this is the last outstanding issue.

[aVENGER_(RR)]

That's odd.

 

BTW, have you been testing it with v3 or v4? IIRC, Nythrun mentioned something about a few low-leves spells not always compiling properly in v3.

[CamDawg]

There's only one friends patch in the Fixpack, and it's unchanged from v3 to v4--barring any bugs we encounter here, of course. What Nythrun was talking about is in the beta fixes, which I didn't have installed while testing (it doesn't modify friends anyway).

[Salk]

I have also run some tests and for me the spell Friends works as supposed to.

[aVENGER_(RR)]

Hmm, then I guess it must be a local issue with my computer, but I don't see how that's possible since I don't have SPWI107.SPL in my override folder prior to installing the fixpack. Well, I've uploaded the .SPL file here if that's of any use to you.

 

In any case, this is hardly an outstanding issue Cam, so please, don't let my ramblings delay v4.

[Guest John]

' date='Jul 2 2007, 10:35 PM' post='90991']

The Friends spell (SPWI107.SPL) seems to behave oddly in v3 of the fixpack. Sometimes it grants the proper 6 point charisma bonus, other times it fails entirely (having no effect), and in some instances it even sets the charisma of the caster to 25.

 

Note: this is not an issue of stacking with the Ring of Human Influence. The bug is fully reproducible even if the caster is not wearing the ring.

 

I have had the same problem playing a sorcerer, although my game had many more mods installed than you list earlier in the thread. The problem would occur whether I was or was not wearing the Ring of Human Influence. Also, sometimes, it would result in a CHR of 25. The only workround I had for it was to save the game before I cast the spell and reload if CHR was not modified. The icon would appear everytime regardless if the CHR did or did not change.

 

I did not count the times, but it felt like the spell failed more frequently than you experienced. Also, it seemed that casting from the scroll Friends always succeeded, but take that with a grain of salt because I was not keeping count.

[Guest Guest]

I also had this problem with fixpack v3 and several other mods, but none of them are likely to change Friends.

[Nythrun]

I've been thinking about this one a bit.

 

The file aVENGER uploaded is identical to the one the fixpack produces, so it's not a divergent source issue.

 

Charisma modification, however, is a creature stat, so it's going to funneled through a timing mode 4096 temporary effect which will resolve into an effect with a proper timing mode. I don't think bgmain ever checks spell protections when evaluating such effects, but I might be wrong. That's one possibility.

 

The more likely explanation, though, is that effect probabilities are preserved in this kind of temporary effect. And since they're processed on a different AI update, the probabilities are going to be consulted twice. That's congruent with sometimes receiving no bonus and sometimes receiving too much - sometimes no effect will be added, and sometimes more than one will apply.

 

If that's true, you know what has to be done

[aVENGER_(RR)]

Apparently, this may not be a localized issue after all since other people seem to be experiencing it as well, see here for example.

 

BTW, this still happens in Fixpack v4.