Request for content feedback

[Littiz]

Ok, time for more thoughtful feedback.

 

I've faced the first "serious" mage, still lacking most of the tools that obviously are now a necessity to deal with mages.

I admit, it's been a blast.

Finally they act "almost" as I would with that arsenal at hand. A high level mage becomes something to be feared indeed, as he certainly should.

[i have the full-prebuffing mode installed, but it's fair, the script not being able to really "think" and all].

In the end, all I could do was to wait (!) for his spells to wear off, suffering even casualties, resisting at all costs, and then hunt him using Invisibility Purge and such (fittingly, at that point he was just trying to evade me!)

 

I'm even reconsidering my bias against your Spell Tweaks.

Admittedly, most of them make perfect sense. Just a few notes:

• Antimagic attacks penetrate improved invisibility is good as it is, you wouldn't need it to entirely bypass Improved Invisibility, even if it was possible to code it: after all, it's fair to leave some advantages to him who prepares such formidable defenses, and the chance to miss him is only logical
  
• More consistent Breach spell is fine, Spell Turning should indeed protect against it. Liches IMHO should remain immune to it, though. I mean, immunity against 5th level spells should implicate exactly that, let players deal with it. They can always wait or flee after all. Liches "live" for ages, they ARE powerful and are not supposed to be taken down easily by an adventuring party
  
• I see your point with the blade barrier tweak, but the visuals assigned to the spell make the modification feel like cheating, while as human players, we can still tolerate if the scripts cheat a little bit (for the same reason I installed the full-prebuffing option)
  
• Finally, I agree with the point made by Arkain: One possible solution might be to make it so that SI:Abjuration protects against every abjuration spell up to a certain level. So for example Spell Strike and Pierce Shield can dispel it, while Pierce Magic can't.
  Not entirely adherent to either interpretation, but supposedly balanced.
  

I seem to have some issues with the spell descriptions too, but that can be caused by another mod. I'll give more precise reports when I'm home and able to have a look at it.

I hope it'll all be helpful feedback, anyway

[Demivrgvs]

My thoughts on this matter are obviously biased because of Spell Revisions, anyway I've opted for:

- SI:Abjuration protects from all abjuration spells

- Spell Immunities don't stack

- Spellstrike belongs both to Abjuration and Alteration schools, thus it bypasses SI:Abjuration

- Spellstrike is the only antimagic spell with an area of effect (installing DavidW's tweak adds the same area of effect to other spells too)

- Pierce Shield is a sort of Breach+Lower Resistance, thus it affects liches and rakshasas without "cheating"

[onerous]

I've only played through a few bits of this mod, but here is my two cents.

 

For Improved Shade Lord:

 

Consider revising how often the dark alter generates shades. I probably haven't mastered the art of dividing my forces properly, but it seems that if you concentrate solely on bringing down the Shade Lord you will be overwhelmed by shades. And destroying the alter is no small task either since it has magic resistance. I was able to kill either one or the other before shades completely filled the screen and blocked me into a corner.

 

Also, I have one question. Does enemy AoE spells scripted not to harm neutral NPCs? I got into a fierce battle in the Copper Coronet (from the Xan mod) and the mage casted horrid wilting without affecting the innocent bystanders. My party on the other hand, lost rep points for casting Unholy Blight and hitting some evil aligned NPCs. I just wanted to see whether this mod was responsible or the Xan mod.

 

Besides, it's unrealistic for NPCs to be sitting at the bar, business as usual, when a big battle erupts in the middle of the bar. Serves them right for daring the PC to hit them.

 

Anyway, I just want to say that it is an interesting mod to say the least. It may be too difficult for my tastes because I don't have an intimate knowledge of what all of these mage spell do, what brings what, etc. Maybe it will grow on me once I become accustomed to it. Though I'm quite disappointed to be hard pressed not to find any NPCs as inapt at using their skills as I am.

[Garza]

Does enemy AoE spells scripted not to harm neutral NPCs? I got into a fierce battle in the Copper Coronet (from the Xan mod) and the mage casted horrid wilting without affecting the innocent bystanders.

It's the way Horrid Wilting works in vanilla game: it only affect hostile creatures.

SCS, Xan or any other mod have nothing to do with it.

[DavidW]

I've only played through a few bits of this mod, but here is my two cents.

 

For Improved Shade Lord:

 

Consider revising how often the dark alter generates shades. I probably haven't mastered the art of dividing my forces properly, but it seems that if you concentrate solely on bringing down the Shade Lord you will be overwhelmed by shades. And destroying the alter is no small task either since it has magic resistance. I was able to kill either one or the other before shades completely filled the screen and blocked me into a corner.

 

It should be generating three shades every two rounds. Does that sound compatible with what you experienced?

[onerous]

It's the way Horrid Wilting works in vanilla game: it only affect hostile creatures.

SCS, Xan or any other mod have nothing to do with it.

 

Thanks for the info. It's been awhile since I've played so I've forgotten about the selectivity of certain spells.

 

It should be generating three shades every two rounds. Does that sound compatible with what you experienced?

 

No, it was definitely more than that. It generated one shade after another without any pause. I would destroy the alter in about 6 rounds hastened and have about 10-12 shades on me plus the Shade Lord. It was probably a conflict somewhere. I'll give it another try if I do another clean install.

[Louisa]

It should be generating three shades every two rounds. Does that sound compatible with what you experienced?

 

No, it was definitely more than that. It generated one shade after another without any pause. I would destroy the alter in about 6 rounds hastened and have about 10-12 shades on me plus the Shade Lord.

Three shades per two rounds = 1.5 shade per round, times your "about 6" rounds = 9 or so shades, so to me it sounds like you have about the "correct" number of shades arriving after all.

[Wisp]

Some more feedback:

 

I don't know if this is intentional or not, but during my visit to the Underdark Beholder lair, I noticed that Elder Orbs acted rather strangely. The way I went about this was to send out my buffed-to-the-ears sorcerer accompanied by a few skeleton warriors. The rest of the party stayed behind near the entrance. What I would notice was that the Elder Orbs would unerringly go straight for my left-behind party, sometimes while being trailed by summons. They wouldn't do this as soon as they entered battle, but maybe a minute or so afterwards, they'd head off. I was staying mostly off screen so I don't know if this behaviour was triggered by not seeing any enemies (due to telekinesis) or if it happened for some other reason.

Needless to say, I didn't much enjoy it, but if it's intentional, it's your call.

 

Additionally, is the beholder Death ray supposed to work like Death Spell or is it save or die without the extra bells and whistles of Death Spell?

 

 

Furthermore; the Teleport-without-error ability possessed by the enhanced demons and devils almost always results in the fiend teleporting off to fight my party (who aren't involved in the fight and are usually standing rather far away), rather than my sorcerer who's usually standing right in front of the gating spot. I usually retreat though, so I guess it is possible that I'm not directly visible when the fiend finally appears.

This can lead to some odd behaviour when the enemy mage summons a fiend, eg. in the Ust Natha mage duel pit.

 

 

About joinable NPCs getting potions; they get another supply as soon as they are removed from the party. Aside from the exploit potential, there's the (admittedly minor) realism issue.

 

 

Moving on to bandits; the random bandit ambush consisting of one mage, one cleric, two thieves and one fighter(?) has been behaving strangely. I know of at least two different levels of difficulty. There's a lower difficulty one in which the mage carries a scroll of Oracle, one of Minor Spell Deflection and one of Summon Monster II(?) and a higher difficulty one in which the mage carries a scroll of Death Spell, one of True Sight and one of Mislead(?).

I'm using the mildly increased difficulty in random encounters component and am and have only been getting the lower difficulty one (despite now being at ~3.75 million XP).

 

 

Lastly, Kangaxx.

Definitely an improvement over vanilla Kangaxx but he may be in need of tweaking. The whole-of-body Kangaxx gave me more problems, I think.

However, the bit about tweaking is rather tentative, since I beat him rather readily the first time I tried, but when I reloaded the battle I was rather readily beaten myself.

However, I did notice that Imoen was imprisoned and had four levels drained when she failed her save against Trap the Soul. In the reloaded battle, she succeeded her save and just had four levels drained. I was under the impression it was either one or the other (though it's possible I misunderstood).

 

Keep up the good work and good luck (in lack of a better expression) with your doctoral thesis.

[DavidW]

Some more feedback:

 

I don't know if this is intentional or not, but during my visit to the Underdark Beholder lair, I noticed that Elder Orbs acted rather strangely. The way I went about this was to send out my buffed-to-the-ears sorcerer accompanied by a few skeleton warriors. The rest of the party stayed behind near the entrance. What I would notice was that the Elder Orbs would unerringly go straight for my left-behind party, sometimes while being trailed by summons. They wouldn't do this as soon as they entered battle, but maybe a minute or so afterwards, they'd head off. I was staying mostly off screen so I don't know if this behaviour was triggered by not seeing any enemies (due to telekinesis) or if it happened for some other reason.

Needless to say, I didn't much enjoy it, but if it's intentional, it's your call.

 

It's probably what you get for being offscreen, yes. It's not intentional in the sense that I didn't deliberately code them to do that, but it also sounds fairly sensible of them.

 

Additionally, is the beholder Death ray supposed to work like Death Spell or is it save or die without the extra bells and whistles of Death Spell?

It's supposed to autokill summons and otherwise be save-or-die.

 

Furthermore; the Teleport-without-error ability possessed by the enhanced demons and devils almost always results in the fiend teleporting off to fight my party (who aren't involved in the fight and are usually standing rather far away), rather than my sorcerer who's usually standing right in front of the gating spot. I usually retreat though, so I guess it is possible that I'm not directly visible when the fiend finally appears.

Generically this is intentional.

 

This can lead to some odd behaviour when the enemy mage summons a fiend, eg. in the Ust Natha mage duel pit.

This isn't intentional; it needs fixing.

 

About joinable NPCs getting potions; they get another supply as soon as they are removed from the party. Aside from the exploit potential, there's the (admittedly minor) realism issue.

Embarassingly, I don't fully understand this, so I haven't yet been able to fix it.

 

Moving on to bandits; the random bandit ambush consisting of one mage, one cleric, two thieves and one fighter(?) has been behaving strangely. I know of at least two different levels of difficulty. There's a lower difficulty one in which the mage carries a scroll of Oracle, one of Minor Spell Deflection and one of Summon Monster II(?) and a higher difficulty one in which the mage carries a scroll of Death Spell, one of True Sight and one of Mislead(?).

I'm using the mildly increased difficulty in random encounters component and am and have only been getting the lower difficulty one (despite now being at ~3.75 million XP).

Hang on, I'm not sure I follow... there is a component that influences "you have been waylaid by..." random encounters, and another that influences level-based spawns. Which have you got installed? The former isn't level-dependent.

 

Lastly, Kangaxx.

Definitely an improvement over vanilla Kangaxx but he may be in need of tweaking. The whole-of-body Kangaxx gave me more problems, I think.

However, the bit about tweaking is rather tentative, since I beat him rather readily the first time I tried, but when I reloaded the battle I was rather readily beaten myself.

However, I did notice that Imoen was imprisoned and had four levels drained when she failed her save against Trap the Soul. In the reloaded battle, she succeeded her save and just had four levels drained. I was under the impression it was either one or the other (though it's possible I misunderstood).

 

It's both. I'd prefer one or the other, but I don't think it's possible.

[Wisp]

Additionally, is the beholder Death ray supposed to work like Death Spell or is it save or die without the extra bells and whistles of Death Spell?

It's supposed to autokill summons and otherwise be save-or-die.

I can't speak for most other summons, but skeleton warriors have a very long life expectancy against beholders in my game. Magical Swords don't do too poorly either, but they get killed (by damage) faster than skeleton warriors.

 

Moving on to bandits; the random bandit ambush consisting of one mage, one cleric, two thieves and one fighter(?) has been behaving strangely. I know of at least two different levels of difficulty. There's a lower difficulty one in which the mage carries a scroll of Oracle, one of Minor Spell Deflection and one of Summon Monster II(?) and a higher difficulty one in which the mage carries a scroll of Death Spell, one of True Sight and one of Mislead(?).

I'm using the mildly increased difficulty in random encounters component and am and have only been getting the lower difficulty one (despite now being at ~3.75 million XP).

Hang on, I'm not sure I follow... there is a component that influences "you have been waylaid by..." random encounters, and another that influences level-based spawns. Which have you got installed? The former isn't level-dependent.

I have both installed. My bad, I mixed them up. If the random encounter component doesn't scale the difficulty with levels, I guess I've been getting the puny "you've been waylaid" encounter every time due to chance?

 

 

 

I forgot; when enemies use Project Image

A) the projected image isn't dispelled by true sight and

B) the caster of PI isn't immobilised.

 

I'm guessing these can be caused by some sort of work-around that was necessary in order to give PI to enemy mages? In either case, I can live with A just fine, but B is rather aggravating. So basically, known issue or not?

[DavidW]

I forgot; when enemies use Project Image

A) the projected image isn't dispelled by true sight and

B) the caster of PI isn't immobilised.

 

I'm guessing these can be caused by some sort of work-around that was necessary in order to give PI to enemy mages? In either case, I can live with A just fine, but B is rather aggravating. So basically, known issue or not?

 

Known issue (kind of) but not really solvable. There's no particular workaround; the mages cast a standard Project Image spell. My testing shows that it's a bit erratic: sometimes it blocks Truesight and sometimes it doesn't; sometimes it paralyses the caster, sometimes not. As the readme says, "put it down to the vagaries of the weave."

[Wisp]

Hmm, did you add that recently or do I fail at reading? Anyways; ok.

[Demivrgvs]

Known issue (kind of) but not really solvable. There's no particular workaround; the mages cast a standard Project Image spell. My testing shows that it's a bit erratic: sometimes it blocks Truesight and sometimes it doesn't; sometimes it paralyses the caster, sometimes not. As the readme says, "put it down to the vagaries of the weave."

What about making them cast only Simulacrum? I personally retain Project Image quite cheesy (and it reaches absolute non-sense with the two mentioned bugs), while Simulacrum cheesyness mostly concerns player's exploits of infinite scrolls/quick item abilities, and so on.

[Wisp]

I ran across a few more issues;

 

Tanova (chapter 6) is hostile (red circle) but does nothing but stand there while being attacked.

 

None of the named vampires appear to react to summons unless there's a party member in sight (be it invisible or not). You apparently only need to be in sight once to start them off. Moving away again before sending in the summons has them acting normally. Additionally, the fledgling that spawns just above Salia, besides the blood pool appears to act the same way. None of the other "regular" vampires I came across acted strangely. They attacked the summons as soon as they saw them.

I only double-checked the first floor, as I found the second one to be a bit too chaotic.

 

I don't know if some of the vampires have a cloud-of-bats area effect spell, but if so, I guess that would explain the following.

Sometimes when you have an invisible character standing around near a fair number of vampires and send in a visible character, the invisible character will end up getting a cloud of bats on them as well.

But as I said, I wouldn't be surprised if this is caused by an area effect.

[Miguel]

I don't know if some of the vampires have a cloud-of-bats area effect spell, but if so, I guess that would explain the following.

Sometimes when you have an invisible character standing around near a fair number of vampires and send in a visible character, the invisible character will end up getting a cloud of bats on them as well.

But as I said, I wouldn't be surprised if this is caused by an area effect.

 

As far as I know, "cloud of bats" is an adaptation of "insect plague" to vampires. Thus, having an affected character next to his invisible fellow would transmit the bats to him too.