Gort Posted November 2, 2007 Share Posted November 2, 2007 Remove Magic x2 / Greater Malison is a pretty effective way of dropping enemy defences. btw, a couple of times I noticed Greater Malison being dispelled by Remove Magic from the same sequencer. Link to comment
Kobold Posted November 3, 2007 Share Posted November 3, 2007 Bit of feedback : Did the Gromnir fight in ToB and LOVED it ! I don't know what all you changed but here are a few things I noticed : (SPOILER alert I guess ) - Gromnir having and using Vhailor's Helm : 2 Gromnirs charging around -> ouch I actually feel like I earned the Helm this time! - Gromnir using pretty smart targeting : He still sometimes got caught up with summons (Deva, aerial servant, mislead image) but his insane damage output coupled with the mages actually using death spell this time made him hard to get under control. I never managed to get him stuck on a mordenkaine's either. He tried to go after casters in his vicinity but as soon as they cast PfMW he would switch to the next target, really cool! - The melees all using HLAs (saw whirlwind, smite, assassination, hardiness, probably more) - I don't know if you added any there, it's been a while since I played the original ascension but they sure used them quite a bit. - 2 high level mages in such a confined room running with your script -> evil - Both mages had access to 9th level spells. Only one of them used HLA (improved alacrity) which made the fight somewhat manageable in the end. Still, all the powerful non-casters I had to deal with coupled with the mages being rather well protected made it hard to focus on them early, which allowed them to cause quite a bit of havoc. - that minotaur using heal on Gromnir when I had him close to death : don't know if that comes from your mod but it sure made me change my targeting in the following tries! Some things to improve : - Remove Magic script still very predictable : They always seem to fire this right at the beginning at the nearest character in their range -> makes it easy for one character who doesn't rely heavily on buffs (or has SI:Abj up I guess) to just charge in at the beginning to prevent the party from being dispelled. Is it maybe possible to improve this by trying to cast it on targets where it would affect more than one person ? Would be nice to see the casters in the back having to deal with this one as well. They still cast remove magic several times in the fight though, and the chaos going on made it hard for me to stay in good positioning all the time so it wasn't all that bad. - They did seem to use a lot of sequencers between the two mages, but : Still not enough variations IMO. Mostly combinations of remove magic/malison/chaos which, as Gort mentioned above, are kinda unreliable. Saw flame arrow x3 once (which thankfully Imoen's Spell Trap ate up) and skull trap x3 (which ate up Imoen, but I guess I should be able to deal with this by now) I think there is still some room for improvement here. - If you want to, you could improve the targeting of that wizard slayer (Berena Elkan) and the assassin (Eler Had) to something like Gromnir is using. It was quite easy to get their attention with just about anything that stood in their way. Especially the wizard slayer with her spell failure ability might want to prefer going after casters. The assassin also didn't mind beating on fire shield / PfMW Imoen for quite a while. - Speaking about targeting, it's still easy to preserve wounded characters by stepping out of melee range while at the same time another character steps in to get whoever was doing the damage's attention. Maybe some more willingness to go after wounded characters (even if it means moving) for the melees ? Mages spotting it and using a quick PW:Kill or Spell Sequencers might work also. The assassin could watch out for it as well and go in for a quick backstab. All in all, a really fun and challenging fight (I enjoy group vs group in general the most), especially since I myself still didn't have lvl9 spells at that point (Imoen turned lvl18 in that fight) and tried to stick to sensible spell selections with some underused spells for my characters (I actually managed to get an enfeeble off on gromnir but I'm not sure it did anything - he still hit like a truck ) It took me quite a few tries (around 15 I would say) to beat it without half of my group dying and me having to resort to cheesy "heal potion and run around with boots of speed" tactics. Link to comment
DavidW Posted November 4, 2007 Share Posted November 4, 2007 Cool - glad you liked it, and thanks for the feedback. Some thoughts: - the targetting on all the meleers is basically the same, so if Gromnir looked smarter, it's something about the combat situations he was in. It's generally extremely difficult to tell creatures to move to distant melee targets safely -they tend to risk getting stuck behind closer opponents. So SCS tends to play it safe and go for a near opponent. It tries to make an intelligent suggestion within the close opponents but doesn't go beyond that. Unfortunately, the Infinity Engine isn't really bright enough to do much better than that. I do try to get non-meleers (wizards with Magic Missile Sequencers or Power Words, etc) to finish off wounder targets, but it's a bit hit-and-miss. It's also not really bright enough to let me improve on the Remove Magic. Or at least, to let me detect when the spell will affect multiple targets. (Though if someone scripting-literate knows a way, I'd love to hear it...) What I generally do is give mages at least some chance to fire off a RM right at the start of the battle on the off chance of causing trouble - and, in the interests of playing fair, I only vaguely check if there's anything worth dispelling. I'll see if it can be tightened up, though. I clearly need to do something about the unreliable RM-plus-effect sequencers. I think the extra HLAs are mine; I'm fairly sure the Heal is (or at least: I swapped the script, and my script does Heal. Possibly the other one does too.) Link to comment
Kobold Posted November 5, 2007 Share Posted November 5, 2007 I have been playing with the new Breach in v2 a bit. Here are some things I noticed : 1. Breach seems to work as intended now, which is great! Which leads me to a bad thing though : 2. Warding Whip does not seem to work for me. I think this spell was actually bugged in the vanilla game as well (I am not sure on this though), but back then there really wasn't a need for it and I easily discarded it. With your changes to the Breach spell and the amount of spell protections your mages are using though, it would be a great, almost necessary spell to have. To safely dispel SI:Divination in order to True Sight and then Breach I currently need : - 1 Ruby Ray for the Spell Trap - 2-4(!!!) Pierce Magics : they often cast Spell Turning when their Spell Trap gets Breached, always have Globe of Invul up, then come the 1-2 Spell Immunities. All this adds up to a lot of spell slots just to take down 1 mage's protections (meanwhile he's free to do whatever he wants to) I guess Spellstrike would work, but it comes a bit late in the game and wouldn't we all rather save our precious lvl9 slots for other spells ? So all in all, would be great if there was a way to get Warding Whip to work. 3. Arrows of Dispelling are supposed to be non-enchanted (that's what my info page says anyways, don't know which mod added that), yet they are stopped by PfMW but not by Protection from Normal Missiles for me. Is this intended ? I'd prefer for it to be stopped by PfNM really, your mages seem to all be buffed with it anyways and it would allow for quick dispelling of PfMW after you have successfully breached him once to get rid of PfNM. 4. SI:Abjuration does not seem to protect from the Dispel Magic on hit ability by Arrows of Dispelling or Carsomyr. Shouldn't they be stopped by it just as the real spell is ? I don't know if this is intended either but it sure does make those weapons a bit too powerful against casters. 5. Spell Shield sometimes does not seem to get canceled out when hit by Anti-Magic spells like Ruby Ray. This one is a bit inconsistent and I haven't been able to test much on this, your mages don't use it much so I have had to resort to my own dire-charmed party members which is a pita to test. It doesn't seem to get canceled out by Beholder Anti-Magic rays either, shouldn't it only protect against one ? Makes Beholder hunting a bit easier than it should be imo. Would be great to get your feedback on these "bugs", as I feel fixing them would make for a much more enjoyable game. Your mod focuses a lot on spell casters anyway, I feel a more consistent rule system would do much to improve it. EDIT : One more thing I forgot to mention, which isn't a big deal but still: The 4th level spell Ice Storm indicates in it's spell description that it should apply it's damage 5 times (once initially and then once each for 4 rounds), totaling 10d8 damage without a save. The way it works now is it only applies the damage 3 times totally though, which makes it a pretty useless spell for it's spell level. Would be great if you could fix this... if you feel like it and have time to spare . Link to comment
Guest erik Posted November 5, 2007 Share Posted November 5, 2007 About kobold's Warding Whip problem: I'm a bit suspicious of Oversight's Tougher Sendai... which I notice does some interesting-looking patching of Warding Whip. And in my old game, DLTCEP crashes or tells me Warding Whip "loaded with errors". Which has Oversight v7 tougher sendai installed. Try moving spwi705.spl out of your override for a moment. Link to comment
Kobold Posted November 6, 2007 Share Posted November 6, 2007 About kobold's Warding Whip problem: I'm a bit suspicious of Oversight's Tougher Sendai... which I notice does some interesting-looking patching of Warding Whip. And in my old game, DLTCEP crashes or tells me Warding Whip "loaded with errors". Which has Oversight v7 tougher sendai installed. Try moving spwi705.spl out of your override for a moment. You're right, it works when I remove that file, thanks! Might also explain why I thought it might have been a vanilla bug, been using that mod forever. Though when I remove the file I'm also stuck with the non-area-effect version that scs introduces, not even reinstalling scs after removing that file helped (then I get the area effect but bugged version again). You say tougher sendai is causing the problem ? I'd hate to have to play without that mod, so if you or anyone else knows a way to solve this, I'd be glad to hear it. Makes me wonder what kinds of other bugs are introduced by mods that shouldn't have anything to do with it... For instance, I just found out the pierce magic ability from the wand of spell striking doesn't seem to work vs spell turning, somehow. It seems to work fine vs Globes of Invul though...Don't know whether this is a bug introduced by scs, some other mod, or is even buggy in the original game. Guess I might try a cleaner installation soon, see if it helps. Link to comment
Guest erik Posted November 6, 2007 Share Posted November 6, 2007 Um. Not surprising, since removing the file removes all modifications to it. And reinstalling scs would cause scs to put back the oversight version, then modify it to the same bugged version. If you want an ugly fix for your current game: remove spwi705.spl from both override and wherever-you-might-find-it in scsii/backup/*/ (if you don't find it in scsii/backup/ somewhere, my diagnosis is likely wrong) ... then reinstall scsII (and only scsII, leave oversight alone). That should give you a only-modified-by-SCS version of the spell. You'll probably have a somewhat more bewildered than usual Tougher Sendai, but that's all right. Link to comment
Kobold Posted November 11, 2007 Share Posted November 11, 2007 Kobold: any luck? Sorry, yes your solution worked, though I didn't do Sendai's Lair with it. I then ran into some other weird bugs in Abazigal's Lair... messed up the only savegame I had made in quite a while (my water elemental .CRE caused game crashes) Due to studies I didn't have much time to play in the last few days either, I'm still debating whether I should continue the game or not. Anyways, thanks for your help, good tip Link to comment
Kobold Posted November 21, 2007 Share Posted November 21, 2007 Well, I finally got time for the game again, so I reinstalled it with less mods this time...and ran into the same bug with Warding Whip again. It couldn't have been Oversight since I didn't even install it this time. I tried to track it down, apparently SCS2 "Detectable Spells and Effects" does some funny changes to the spell. Near Infinity shows : Original Warding Whip Effect Type: Remove magical protections (230),Targettype: TargetPresetTarget (2),Power: 7, Effect Type: Play 3D Effect (215),Targettype: TargetPresetTarget (2),Power: 7,Unknown: 00 00 00 00 h, Effect Type: Display string (139),Targettype: TargetPresetTarget (2),Power: 7,String: Spell Protections Removed, Effect Type: Remove icon 2 (240),Targettype: TargetPresetTarget (2),Power: 7,Unknown: 00 00 00 00 h, Effect Type: Remove magical protections (230),Targettype: TargetPresetTarget (2),Power: 7, Effect Type: Use EFF file (177),Targettype: TargetPresetTarget (2),Power: 7,IDS target: Object.IDS - 2 / Nothing - 0, Effect Type: Display string (139),Targettype: TargetPresetTarget (2),Power: 7,String: Spell Protections Removed, Effect Type: Remove icon 2 (240),Targettype: TargetPresetTarget (2),Power: 7,Unknown: 00 00 00 00 h, Effect Type: Remove magical protections (230),Targettype: TargetPresetTarget (2),Power: 7, Effect Type: Use EFF file (177),Targettype: TargetPresetTarget (2),Power: 7,IDS target: Object.IDS - 2 / Nothing - 0, Effect Type: Display string (139),Targettype: TargetPresetTarget (2),Power: 7,String: Spell Protections Removed, Effect Type: Remove icon 2 (240),Targettype: TargetPresetTarget (2),Power: 7,Unknown: 00 00 00 00 h, WW after install of Detectable Spells Effect Type: Modify script state (282),Targettype: TargetPresetTarget (2),Power: 7,Value: 0, Effect Type: Modify script state (282),Targettype: TargetPresetTarget (2),Power: 7,Value: 0, Effect Type: Modify proficiencies (233),Targettype: TargetPresetTarget (2),Power: 7,# stars: 0, Effect Type: Modify proficiencies (233),Targettype: TargetPresetTarget (2),Power: 7,# stars: 0, Effect Type: Modify proficiencies (233),Targettype: TargetPresetTarget (2),Power: 7,# stars: 1, Effect Type: Modify proficiencies (233),Targettype: TargetSelf (1),Power: 7,# stars: 1, Effect Type: Modify proficiencies (233),Targettype: TargetSelf (1),Power: 7,# stars: 1, Effect Type: Modify proficiencies (233),Targettype: TargetSelf (1),Power: 7,# stars: 1, Effect Type: Modify proficiencies (233),Targettype: TargetSelf (1),Power: 7,# stars: 1, Effect Type: Modify proficiencies (233),Targettype: TargetSelf (1),Power: 7,# stars: 1, Effect Type: Modify proficiencies (233),Targettype: TargetSelf (1),Power: 7,# stars: 1, Effect Type: Modify proficiencies (233),Targettype: TargetSelf (1),Power: 7,# stars: 1, Effect Type: Modify proficiencies (233),Targettype: TargetSelf (1),Power: 7,# stars: 1, Effect Type: Modify proficiencies (233),Targettype: TargetSelf (1),Power: 7,# stars: 1, Effect Type: Modify proficiencies (233),Targettype: TargetSelf (1),Power: 7,# stars: 1, Effect Type: Modify proficiencies (233),Targettype: TargetSelf (1),Power: 7,# stars: 1, Effect Type: Modify proficiencies (233),Targettype: TargetSelf (1),Power: 7,# stars: 1, Effect Type: Modify proficiencies (233),Targettype: TargetPresetTarget (2),Power: 7,# stars: 0, I'm pretty sure this has to do only with SCS2 now, since none of the mods I installed before modified the spell in any way. On another note, DavidW if you are reading this... I'd still like to hear your stance on the things I wrote about above, namely : - Arrows of Dispelling being considered non-enchanted but not being stopped by Prot.NormalMissiles but instead by Prot.MagicWeapons... is it intended ? I tried to change it locally but I can't seem to figure out how to get PfNM to protect from Arrows of Dispelling - SI:Abjuration not protecting from Carsomyr-like Dispel effects ? Again, I tried to change it locally but I can't find a way to apply a spell school to the dispel effect. If you don't want to change those things in your mod that's fine, but if you know of an easy way to change them locally I'd be grateful for any info. Thx Link to comment
Guest erik Posted November 21, 2007 Share Posted November 21, 2007 Hmm, yes. Same here, actually, now that I have it installed and don't debug blindly. DavidW? Link to comment
DavidW Posted November 22, 2007 Share Posted November 22, 2007 Hi, Yes, definitely something wrong with Warding Whip (I find the same problem locally)... will fix. (To be honest the code for Detectable Spells was borrowed from elsewhere, I didn't check it as carefully as I should have.) As for the other points: they're vanilla game issues but I can look into modifying them. It certainly seems natural for Carsomyr to be blocked by SI. I'm less persuaded by the arrows of dispelling, though - arrows with magic powers seem to count as "magical" to me! Your reasons to change it seem to be that it would make removing mages' buffs easier, and I'm fairly unmoved by that (Incidentally, if I'm slow to reply to these issues it's just because I'm in the middle of term here, and so a bit short of time.) Link to comment
Guest Guest Posted November 22, 2007 Share Posted November 22, 2007 Hi, Yes, definitely something wrong with Warding Whip (I find the same problem locally)... will fix. (To be honest the code for Detectable Spells was borrowed from elsewhere, I didn't check it as carefully as I should have.) As for the other points: they're vanilla game issues but I can look into modifying them. It certainly seems natural for Carsomyr to be blocked by SI. I'm less persuaded by the arrows of dispelling, though - arrows with magic powers seem to count as "magical" to me! Your reasons to change it seem to be that it would make removing mages' buffs easier, and I'm fairly unmoved by that (Incidentally, if I'm slow to reply to these issues it's just because I'm in the middle of term here, and so a bit short of time.) How can one fix this locally, for those that are impatient to wait for the next release Link to comment
DavidW Posted November 22, 2007 Share Posted November 22, 2007 There's no clean solution. A quick-and-dirty solution: delete spwi705.spl from your override folder. Link to comment
Demivrgvs Posted November 23, 2007 Share Posted November 23, 2007 Arrows of Dispelling are non-enchanted but are considered magical because of the "magical" flag. If you open the .itm with NI just remove the flag...but has DavidW says it makes them much more powerful and as i've experienced if counted as non-magical an archer with them can single-handly defeat Irenicus in two rounds. A possible solution would be making arrows non-enchanted and having high level mages use mantles more often (which they should anyway because pfmw can be bypassed easily if the foe isn't naturally immune to normal weapons). Anyway being able to dispel seems magical to me too and another solution could be making them magical to all intents and purposes. Right now it's just that the arrows'description is misleading. When magical abilities are applied as effects directly instead of via spell they bypass any SI because they are not considered of any school. Link to comment
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