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Concerning Breach


Guest Kobold

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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.

Yea, I knew about the magical flag, the way I wanted to "balance" it was by letting "Protection from Normal Missiles" protect against Arrows of Dispelling instead. Since pretty much every mage in SCS2 buffs up with that spell anyways I feel it wouldn't make it too easy to kill them. You would have to Breach a mage once before you can even hit him with them.

The way mages work in the mod (especially higher level ones) is that they chain cast PfMW several times each. This requires an annoying amount of Breaches, unless you go with the tactic of switching everyone to non-enchanted weapons, which I personally find silly... it ruins the immersion for me. So with the change you could use Arrows of Dispelling to get rid of the 2nd and following PfMW, which I personally feel is how it should be. Sure it's harder the other way, but it's also a lot more annoying.

 

My problem is that I can't figure out how to let PfNM protect from Arrows of Dispelling, I'm not used to NI and I couldn't find a fitting type for the "Immunity to projectile" effect which fits Arrows of Dispelling without also affecting other arrows. So if anyone knows a solution to this I'd be glad to know.

 

When magical abilities are applied as effects directly instead of via spell they bypass any SI because they are not considered of any school.

Yes, I know. Again, just wanted to find out if there is a way to assign a spell school to it anyways. Honestly I just feel bad about using weapons with the on-hit dispel effect simply because they make the game ridiculously easy. It'd be a way to tone them down a bit. Another way might be to set a concrete caster level for the dispel effect (I think that's how it actually works in p&p isn't it ?) as opposed to having it automatically succeed with every hit. Again, I don't know if it's possible, but if it is, I'd really like to know how to change it.

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Just on the narrow issue of mantles: I'd welcome advice from players here. My impression is that - with the exception of Absolute Immunity - players normally have magic weapons powerful enough to go through those spells. So the advantage of Pro/Magic Weapons is that at least your enemy is attacking you with nonmagical weapons that don't have damage bonuses, don't do elemental damage that works through stoneskin, etc.

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Yea, I knew about the magical flag, the way I wanted to "balance" it was by letting "Protection from Normal Missiles" protect against Arrows of Dispelling instead.
Just change arrow.pro to arrowhvy.pro with NI...Prot. vs. normal missile should have some usefulness as a matter of fact.
The way mages work in the mod (especially higher level ones) is that they chain cast PfMW several times each. This requires an annoying amount of Breaches, unless you go with the tactic of switching everyone to non-enchanted weapons, which I personally find silly... it ruins the immersion for me.
I dislike too having always equipped many non-enchanted weapon to use when my figthers (who have no arcane knowledge) can sense that enemy mages are immune only to magical ones. :p A solution can be nerfing pfmw to protect from normal weapons and magicals one up to +2 (even if BG II offers too many +3 weapons...). That way mantles became quite useful and you can avoid a lvl 6 spell being more powerful than a lvl 9 one (not to mention that creatures naturally immune to normal weapons can really abuse pfmw). It would be an easy change to do but it can only be done if the AI is set to correctly detect the "new" effect.
Honestly I just feel bad about using weapons with the on-hit dispel effect simply because they make the game ridiculously easy.It'd be a way to tone them down a bit.
You're right...i've toned down Carsomyr and SotM to 50% chance to dispel but it remains a very powerful ability. Don't know if it's possible to set it to use wielders level...but i suppose not.
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A solution can be nerfing pfmw to protect from normal weapons and magicals one up to +2 (even if BG II offers too many +3 weapons...). That way mantles became quite useful and you can avoid a lvl 6 spell being more powerful than a lvl 9 one (not to mention that creatures naturally immune to normal weapons can really abuse pfmw).

Immunity to non-magical weapons and weapons with enchantment +1/+2 is already covered by Mantle. So if you want to modify PfMW, it would be good to change spells Mantle, Improved Mantle and Absolute Immunity as well, make them to protect from weapons with enchantment one level higher than it's now (Mantle up to +2=>+3, Imp. Mantle up to +3=>+4 and Abs. Imm. up to +4=>+5).

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You're right, it's just that i've played too long with my own modded spells (slightly changed from ADpack) with mantle up to +3, improved mantle up to +4 and absolute immunity up to +5 and i didn't remembered they weren't like that in vanilla BG II. :p

 

A lot of this is quite interesting but I think it goes beyond the SCSII remit - I'm trying not to muck with game resources in very dramatic ways. (So nerfing PMW is definitely out, though souping up Mantle et al might not be). And PMW+innate immunity is something you see in the vanilla game quite a lot.

 

Incidentally, while I get the "it's annoying" objection, I'm not sure I see why it's immersion-breaking for PCs to have to shift to nonmagical weapons if an enemy mage casts PMW. It's got a very visible casting effect which even non-spellcasters could memorise pretty quickly.

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*snip* (So nerfing PMW is definitely out, though souping up Mantle et al might not be). And PMW+innate immunity is something you see in the vanilla game quite a lot.
Doesn't sound like a bad idea. Just look out for Carsomyr/Ravager/Ixil's Spike/Staff of the Ram +6, good chance people'll have at least one person who can GWW with one or two of these....
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Doesn't sound like a bad idea. Just look out for Carsomyr/Ravager/Ixil's Spike/Staff of the Ram +6, good chance people'll have at least one person who can GWW with one or two of these....
You have a point but i've "nerfed" those weapons to be "only" +5 enchanted as i suppose Improved Anvil does too. After all Absolute Immunity is supposed to be an ABSOLUTE IMMUNITY not a Quite Immunity that tons of weapons can ignore!
A lot of this is quite interesting but I think it goes beyond the SCSII remit - I'm trying not to muck with game resources in very dramatic ways.
I know it and you've staded beforehand your intentions. I'm well aware you don't want to change radically the game like IA does but mine are just suggestions that seeks to help you improve your wonderful mod...it's up to you to decide which one, if any, taking into account for future releases.
So nerfing PMW is definitely out, though souping up Mantle et al might not be.
Nerfing PfMW is a great change that may arise questions...but improving mantles can only be appreciated by players i supppose (i think noone ever used them being actually very useless compared to a lower level spell like PfMW). And as i said before...Absolute Immunity truly deserves to be an absolute ammunity, not to mention that it's a level 9 spell!
And PMW+innate immunity is something you see in the vanilla game quite a lot.
It sounded like a cheat even than imo, it makes a lvl 6 spell (which already is comparable if not more powerful than its lvl 9 counterpart) way too overpowered.
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Busy week... my opinion on the whole mantles vs PfMW discussion :

 

There's 2 sides to PfMW :

 

1.) PfMW cast by the player :

It simply is (imo) too powerful for the spell level it's at. I don't know if it's a regular 2nd ed. pnp spell, but it dramatically unbalances the computer game. It makes mages (who already have excellent spells like Stoneskin and Mirror Image) the best "tanks" bar none and computer controlled enemies cannot adapt to it ... I've never seen a single enemy switch weapons when faced with PfMW, most of the time they wouldn't even have access to any. By the time you get to cast any of the mantle spells at all, pretty much every monster worth mentioning uses magical weapons, so PfMW is all you ever need. Now when you progress further up in levels and get mantles, they're useless compared, since they often don't offer the needed protection level for that point in the game, with the added protection from non-magical weapons being pretty much useless for a player character. For the computer game balance it would have made much more sense to start with the mantles at spell lvl6, with PfMW being the final spell at spell lvl9.

 

2.) PfMW cast by enemies :

I realize that with the way the game is designed, where your group often meets lone spellcasters coupled with the limited computer AI, powerful protection for said casters becomes pretty much a necessity. Now, given the fact of the plethora of highly enchanted weapons available to the PC's party, making mantles pretty useless for enemies, you end up with PfMW being pretty much required to prevent them from becoming total pushovers.

 

Now, on to my rant about immersion :

Never before in any fantasy setting have I encountered the need for heroes to carry around an extra set of crappy weapons to replace their hard-earned magic ones in so many situations simply because they somehow magically :p turn inferior to even the most mundane wooden stick. Now, I know it's hard to talk about realism in a fantasy setting, but I simply don't buy it. At the very least, a magical weapon should perform as well as it's nonmagical counterpart in any situation. It might not apply it's magical effects to a spellcaster protected from it, but you're still bashing him with a piece of steel nonetheless.

 

That's the reason why mantle spells make much more sense to me. Having said all that, I know it's a matter of personal opinion. I guess it might all work out if you beefed up the mantle spells to something like Demi suggested, but I realize it'd be a whole lot of work to balance it out right and I can understand if you don't want to get into that. I'd still like to see it though :p

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...computer controlled enemies cannot adapt to it ... I've never seen a single enemy switch weapons when faced with PfMW...

 

Actually, two of the opponents from my Chosen of Cyric encounter do just that. :p I figured it would give the players who rely primarily on PFMW in hard battles a nasty surprise. :p

 

On topic, David, if you do choose to nerf PFMW I'd suggest doing it the same way you've handled Harm - by giving the player a choice to leave the enemies with the existing version of the spell and merely nerf the version which is available to the party. Although that might seem slightly unfair at the first glance, I'd just point out that most existing mods assume that PFMW works as in the unmodded game i.e. they can not automatically adapt for any change to the spell, which would in term make the majority of mod-introduced battles far less challenging.

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I think realistically I'm not going to touch PFMW. SCSII isn't intended to be a big reworking of the physics of the BG2 universe (in the way that IA is); it's intended to be a predominantly-AI mod operating within those physics. It's not designed so players have to learn a whole new set of game rules.

 

I realise there are grey areas here, and I do modify Harm and let antimagic spells penetrate Improved Invisibility. It's a matter of taste to some degree, but I am trying to keep this kind of thing to an absolute minimum. I found it nearly impossible to work around the exploits here without changing the spells; I don't feel that about PFMW. Nor do I really feel it's overpowered: nonmagic weapons still penetrate it, and Breach brings it down.

 

As for immersion, again this is a matter of taste. But it doesn't bother me. There's a spell that blocks enchanted items and keeps them at bay, but items which don't bear an enchantment aren't affected by the spell. What's "unrealistic" (whatever that means) about that? Inconvenient, perhaps, but that's a different kind of objection.

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One could also argue that the presence of the exceptional weapons that replace +1 enchanted items are a partial counter to the power of protection from magical weapons. Flame blade is another good spell example that provides extra power and bypasses the protection.

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