Collection of minor things

[10thLich]

Just a minor request:

 

Could you please revert iogremag to the original BG2 level? As it stands it's a bit ridiculous to fight against a level 13 monster right at the beginning.

 

10th

[Caedwyr]

Heh, the ogre mage isn't that hard really. Minsc and jaheira do a good job of meleeing him down and a round or two of magic missles kills him off quickly. I found the ogre mage Aataqah summons to be a great wake up call that the mod is going to be a bit more challenging.

 

(I had to kill this guy dozens of times while testing another mod, he's not that bad really and doesn't use any of the more advanced mage tactics.

[Caedwyr]

Also, I made the script change you listed David, and the Shade Lord stopped his prebuffing. It didn't stop the massive slowdowns though, which I suspect EMaD has something to do with.

[10thLich]

Sure that we're talking about the same Ogre Mage?

With "Mages cast some short-duration spells instantly at start of combat, to simulate pre-battle casting" he does the following:

 

Stoneskin, Mirror Image, Protection from Normal Missiles and Magic Weapons, Shield, Phantom Blade and Improved Haste.

 

After that Shadow Door, shortly followed by Chaos and 1-2 Skull Traps and for the icing on the cake he casts Mislead.

 

I hate reinstalling. I should have looked more closely at the version of SCSII I'm using. Thought it was v2, but it was v1.

 

10th

[Caedwyr]

Ookay, the one Aataqah summoned didn't do any of that stuff. He just used a couple of spells instead of meleeing like he normally does.

[Guest erik]

DavidW: you might want to change your Gender(scstarget, SUMMONED) checks to OR(2) Gender(scstarget, SUMMONED) Gender(scstarget,20) in your killsummons script blocks ... as that's what D0tweaks changes it to to remove the summoning limit.

[DavidW]

DavidW: you might want to change your Gender(scstarget, SUMMONED) checks to OR(2) Gender(scstarget, SUMMONED) Gender(scstarget,20) in your killsummons script blocks ... as that's what D0tweaks changes it to to remove the summoning limit.

Thanks, will do.

[10thLich]

Just to keep everyone updated:

 

The "bug" if you can call it that, was "caused" by BP. BP added a bunch of spells to iogremag and it seems that SCSII corrected the level of iogremag as a level 5 creature can't cast level 6 spells.

 

Which in turn resulted in a level 13 Ogre Mage with a script that befits such a level. With the end result that a creature worth a measly 650 XP is capable of wiping the floor with a low-level party and is even able to cause problems for a more experienced party due to the fact that it got "the best from both worlds":

 

SCSII's script overhaul (DW#FGMAG) added to BP's own script routines (BPWDASGT). Or in numbers: 650 XP creature gets nearly 24000 lines of code.

 

10th

[DavidW]

That's quite funny...

 

Yes, SCSII does an automated adjust of all spellcasters' levels: it raises their level to the minimum required to cast all the spells they have memorised. (With one caveat: it doesn't raise anyone to a level at which they could cast higher-level spells than they have). So if an ogre mage has a bunch of 6th level spells, he's going to go up to 13th level (not 14th, because then he'd have 7th level spells; not 12th, because then he wouldn't have enough 6th level spells).

 

I don't even think it counts as a "bug" in this situation. BP decides to upgrade the ogre mage in the L1 dungeon? - fine with SCSII, and here's an appropriate script.(One general difference between SCSII and other tactical mods is that it probably "stacks" with other tactical mods better than most... it takes the resources it's given and tries to make them fight as intelligently as it can.)

 

I could include an XP upgrade in the level-upgrade code, but I'm not going to - a very fast way to unbalance the game is to up the total XP available, so in general I've left it alone. (SCSII tries to upgrade the AI of basically everything, so the relative XP values should work out right... if BP wants to give an ogre mage 6th level spells and still make it worth 650xp, that's BP's call.)

[Caedwyr]

One other thing I found really irritating and made me turn off the full prebuffing option (I'm going with option 2 right now) is that as soon as the enemy mage is out of sight and is then seen again, they do the full rebuff. Couple this with their habit of running away from the player while not actually casting spells and it means that in a dungeon with narrow hallways and limited line of sight they'll be constantly having the pre-battle buffs applied. 3/4 of the battle seems to be to get the enemy mage to stay in the same spot and not run out of sight so they can get a full suit of pre-buffs all over again.

 

The caster statues on level 1 of watcher's keep also do this. The high level mage statue is very scary because of this. However, given the large size of the room, this isn't nearly as bad as fighting in narrow hallways so I don't mind it so much here.

 

Also, that statue gives an excellent example of how scary a high level mage can be. One thing you might want to consider however, is having the project images and simulcrums pay more attention to their defenses as they tend to be very easy to bring down.

 

 

Something else I ran into, is that the Iron/Adamantium golem you run into in the statue room on the first level of watcher's keep kept on getting stuck on the main door into the area (slightly behind and to the left)and fixtating on one character. Its graphic would disappear and it wouldn't attack anyone but the target it was fixtated on. I was able to kill it in the end by parking Kivan (the character it wanted to kill out of reach and range, and throwing a whole bunch of Lower Resistance spells followed by about 7 skull traps into the area I thought it was standing at.

[DavidW]

One other thing I found really irritating and made me turn off the full prebuffing option (I'm going with option 2 right now) is that as soon as the enemy mage is out of sight and is then seen again, they do the full rebuff. Couple this with their habit of running away from the player while not actually casting spells and it means that in a dungeon with narrow hallways and limited line of sight they'll be constantly having the pre-battle buffs applied. 3/4 of the battle seems to be to get the enemy mage to stay in the same spot and not run out of sight so they can get a full suit of pre-buffs all over again.

 

The caster statues on level 1 of watcher's keep also do this.

 

I'm still keen to pin this down, as I can't replicate it... you're using v2? And do all mages do it, or only selected ones?

[DavidW]

Also, that statue gives an excellent example of how scary a high level mage can be. One thing you might want to consider however, is having the project images and simulcrums pay more attention to their defenses as they tend to be very easy to bring down.

 

I'm open to suggestions as to good ways to do it. Unfortunately I can't give them contingencies and sequencers as clones don't have them (or rather: I could give them, but it would be cheating). I suppose they should just take the first round or two to cast protective spells? (But there's only so much that a projected image can do to guard against truesight - Spell Immunity works but by the time it's cast, probably the truesight has kicked in.)

[Guest Guest]

I'm new to SCS so can't really comment on the issues raised in this thread, but I do have a question regarding the "stacking" thing that SCS does with other tactical mods: how difficult do things become if you're also using the Creature & Area Improvements from Quest Pack? Anyone tried this combination?

[Caedwyr]

Mantle, stoneskin, protection from magical weapons, shadow door/improved invisibility, protection from Normal missiles all would help the Project Image/Simulcrum. Also, does spell turning/minor spell turning block dispels on the images? Might be a cheap way to help block a dispel magic.

 

Personally, I've found the combination of PfNM and PfMW to be a very annoying set of spells to deal with.

 

With regards to the mages recasting, yes I'm using version 2 and the two high level clerics/druid statues also recast their set of buffs every time they went in and out of site.

 

Also, if the main player that casts the project image/simulcrum has a spell trigger, I believe the image also has one. I'm not so sure on contingencies.

[DavidW]

With regards to the mages recasting, yes I'm using version 2 and the two high level clerics/druid statues also recast their set of buffs every time they went in and out

of site.

Could you post your WEIDU.log?

 

Also, if the main player that casts the project image/simulcrum has a spell trigger, I believe the image also has one. I'm not so sure on contingencies.

 

I think that although you get a spell trigger icon, clicking it doesn't actually do anything. At least on my install...