A weird little bug with Enchanted Weapon

[frabjous]

This recently came up at the Bioware forums:

 

If two casters in the party succeed in getting off an Enchanted Weapon spell at precisely the same time, one will be able to create an infinite number of weapons.

 

Not really a huge deal, but someone might be interested in seeing if it could be fixed.

 

It also came up recently at the Bioware forums that the Skeletal Warrior (summoned by Animate Dead at high levels) uses a +1 two handed sword that is flagged as +3 for its enchantment level (so that, e.g., they can take down Adamantite and Iron golems). Not sure if that was intended or not.

[Icendoan]

I suggested there, that we have a PartyHasItem() in Baldur.bcs, but I am sure that someone will be able to clear up this in a slightly cleaner fasion.

 

The sword, which I cannot remember at the moment, (maybe something like SKELWASU.itm) was a copy/paste with the enchantment and movability flags changed. Also, I found that

 

Icen

[devSin]

The select spell interface (and bugs thereof) is hardcoded. Apparently, you can also assign hot keys to some and be able to cast the spell even if it isn't known or memorized.

 

The warriors' sword is intentional (undroppable items have all sorts of THAC0 and damage and enchantment and other bonuses not indicated by the name or description of the base item that BioWare copied from -- in this case, the plain two-handed sword +1).

[Icendoan]

Another bug, is that, even with the fixpack, it says it is useable by all, but plainly isn't. Remove the unusability for mages, clerics ect or work it into the GTU?

 

Icen

[frabjous]

Another bug, is that, even with the fixpack, it says it is useable by all, but plainly isn't. Remove the unusability for mages, clerics ect or work it into the GTU?

 

Do you mean the description for the undroppable sword the Skeletons carry? Why bother changing it? Without cheating, no one could see it.

 

As for the other issue, I don't know enough about BG2 scripting to know exactly how that would work or what you have in mind, but is the idea that the spell would check if the character already has an Enchanted Weapon weapon in his/her inventory before allowing him/her to make another one? But wouldn't that block legitimate uses of the spell to create multiple Enchanted Weapons? Or was your proposal more complicated?

 

---

Later edit:

 

Playing around with this a bit, it seems that almost precisely the same bug exists with the Spell Immunity spell. If two casters get it off simultaneously, one of them will be able to keep casting the different versions of it -- i.e., get SI:Conjuration, SI:Enchantment, SI:Illusion, SI:Divination, etc., all active simultaneously from just one cast. (Well, two, if you count the other caster's.)

 

This seems to me to be an even bigger issue, since this is something people might actually want to exploit.

 

The select spell interface (and bugs thereof) is hardcoded. Apparently, you can also assign hot keys to some and be able to cast the spell even if it isn't known or memorized.

 

I know about the hotkey exploit for Nahal's, but it doesn't seem to be true for these spells.

[Icendoan]

My bug was for Enchanted Weapon, as the actual weapons.

 

Icen

[Nythrun]

I'd thought the "can be used by anyone" clause was intended to indicate that you can give the enchanted weapon away to other party members (which summoned weapons do not normally allow). It is however a bit odd that a mage only spell can't summon any weapons a mage can use without restoring the summon: quarterstaff.

 

Any of the "choose a spell from this menu" effects are going to be problematic: casting a second before the first is completely resolved causes the first to be lost, they can be forcibly targeted on the wrong party member, etc etc. As devSin's noted, this is all hardcoded in bgmain and can't reasonably be changed - they just have to be handled gingerly. Nahal's is another problem altogether, and one that can't be changed without removing its ability to be cast as many times per round as you like, suitably unfettered by civilization.

[frabjous]

Thanks for the input.

 

It's really not a huge deal. I perfectly well understand that not everything can be fixed. (And some things, though technically fixable, are more trouble to fix than it's worth...)

 

I just thought I'd mention it since I think it's worthwhile for the community to have a repository or list of all those bugs that have been identified, and for each, explanation of to what extent Fixpack addresses it, and to what extent it doesn't (and why not).

 

At present this forum is the best we have.

 

I've noticed several "unfixable" bugs discussed on this forum that haven't made it to the "Unfixable Issues" page of the Fixpack's homepage. I think it would be great to keep that up to date. Things like Cleric/Rangers getting HLAs at the wrong levels often comes up at the BioWare forums, and it's nice to be able to point them to that page.

[Icendoan]

Ohh, this thread has reminded me of another bug I stumbled accross, there is a "Humanoid" skeleton warrior somewhere.

 

Icen

[Nythrun]

I've noticed several "unfixable" bugs discussed on this forum that haven't made it to the "Unfixable Issues" page of the Fixpack's homepage. I think it would be great to keep that up to date. Things like Cleric/Rangers getting HLAs at the wrong levels often comes up at the BioWare forums, and it's nice to be able to point them to that page.

 

Absolutely Ofttimes the difficulty is explaining why the bug is unfixable, even in cases where we even know. If my posts weren't so notoriously unintelligible I'd write a few more up

 

We should have gotten to all the skellies except riftcr02.cre, I think?

[Icendoan]

I was on the hunt of the skeleton warrior summon, and I did a search for Skeleton Warrior and checked through all to see what they were.

 

riftcr02.cre certainly rings a bell, and that might be the one. May I ask why it wasn't fixed?

 

Icen