SR V2 release

[Western Paladin]

One of the things I liked in Icewind Dale II was the variety of interesting creatures you got from the Animate Dead spell at higher levels - things like barrow wights, wraiths, and greater drowned dead. Would there be any way to implement that in BG2? I know there aren't creature animations for some of those things in the game as is.

 

Thanks for your time.

[Demivrgvs]

One of the things I liked in Icewind Dale II was the variety of interesting creatures you got from the Animate Dead spell at higher levels - things like barrow wights, wraiths, and greater drowned dead. Would there be any way to implement that in BG2?

I like it, and I've started to do somethink like that introducing Summon Shadow in SR. I'll work on it in the future, though I don't know if I'd like summoned creatures to be random, I'll most probably make the spell summons increasingly powerful creatures as the caster gains levels. At least this will be true for the "final summon": for example Animate Dead will always summon a Skeleton Warrior at higher levels, and Summon Shadow may summon a Vamiric Mist.

I'll think about it.

[Salk]

I like your idea of having the spell summon increasingly powerful allies more than the random generated ones.

[Demivrgvs]

Progress report 4/08/08:

 

Lately I've mostly worked to improve summons AI, and all SR's summons perform much better in v2, especially fiends and spellcasting creatures.

 

Genies, Fiends and Celestials now cast spells instantaneously as per SCS. This is something I'm not sure I like at all, but it does help to make these creatures very effective. Furthmore all fiends now teleports to the party if they don't have any enemy on sight, unless all party members are protected against evil. I've done it to make these very powerful summons more threatening, as they generally are much more powerful than any other summon spell of the same spell level.

 

Summon Djinni/Efreeti: I've quite improved them once again, and I've slightly changed their spellbook. Djinni switched Teleport Field with Improved Invisibility (casting it instantaneously it works exactly like the higher level spell Shadow Door), and Shadow Door with Conjure Lesser Air Elemental. Efreeti got Conjure Lesser Fire Elemental instead of Sunfire (also note that being Efreet 9th level casters Sunfire had no advantage over Fireballs).

 

Cacofiend: priests now get to cast Cacofiend (thus Death Knights) instead of Gate (Pit Fiends).

SR's Gate is way too powerful to be a 7th level spell, and for the same reason priests already cast Devas instead of Planetars.

 

Summon Fiends: Glabrezus now correctly use all their powers (permanent True Seeing; Mirror Image, Confusion, Unholy Blight at will; Unholy Word and Power Word:Stun once per day).

 

Gate: Pit Fiends now correctly use all their powers (permanent Fear Aura; Fireball, Power Word:Stun at will; Unholy Word and Meteor Swarm once per day). I can assure you these creatures are truly devastating now.

 

Other minor improvements/changes should be listed in the first post. Now all I have to do left are Planetars and their AI.

 

As always, opinions/suggestions are welcome.

[Demivrgvs]

Progress report 6/08/08:

 

It's only a tiny little update, but I like it very much.

 

Summon Djinni/Efreeti: summoned genies now have the Gaseous Form ability making them extremely more effective.

 

The way the original Gaseous Form work is not compatible with player's summoned genies (for quite a few reasons) thus I've changed it entirely. Iit will correctly affect AI summoned genies too, but I've left unchanged all other genies. There are some things to say on the matter:

- vanilla's ability was scripted to replace the creature itself with a gaseous creature, and then replace it again after 20 seconds (with actually a new creature with full hit points and re-memorized spells)

- SR's Gaseous Form instead doesn't change the .cre files, (it does what needs to be done creating a temporarily .itm file in the weapon slot, and with an appropriate script) thus making the whole thing much more smooth imo

- vanilla's Gaseous Form was vulnerable to magic damage, I think it shouldn't, don't you?

- SR's Gaseous Form doesn't automatically heal the genie to full hit points (though it can still do it somehow, see below), neither it restores the genies spellbooks (which is wrong imo)

- SR's Gaseous Form last up to 20 seconds, or until dispelled, while in gaseous form the genies regenerate 3hp/second (these changes makes the ability a little more interesting imo, as you are allowed to dispel it and prevent the genies from fully healing)

 

What do you think about it?

[Shaitan]

Sound very interesting to me

 

Edit:......and when will version 2 hit the boards? (and IR for that matter )

[Demivrgvs]

Edit:......and when will version 2 hit the boards? (and IR for that matter )

I'm quite sure I'll send SR v2 to cmorgan today as it seems I've finally solved the only issue which was stopping me (an "incompatibility" between SR's Death Knight and SCS).

 

Item Revisions is on hold because Mike has gone to vacancy before being able to finish everything, I may try to finish it myself before going out of country myself, but I'm not sure I can handle all his coding stuff. I previously had a finished and complete V1 available, but it was a fully overwriting version for which I would be forever banished to the Nine Hells by Miloch!

[Shaitan]

...for which I would be forever banished to the Nine Hells by Miloch!

 

And many others

[Proteus_za]

The Bigby's Spells:

I think the saving throw penalty for the 9th level version should be better than the 8th level variant. The reason for that is that the target being held with no save for one round is the most useful part, as well as continuing the hold. If the save penalty doesnt change, there wont be much point in using the 9th level variant because the 8th level holds just as well, if 2 rounds shorter, which in combat is more than enough time to finish someone off.

 

False Dawn: Does it still cause confusion? That was the best part of it, being able to confuse liches and disrupt their initial timestop casting.

[Demivrgvs]

Bigby's spells

You do have a point, and making them slightly more different was something I would have worked on for future versions (one spell may cause stun or unconsciousness instead of hold). At the moment the only thing I could think of as a temporarily "solution" is having the 9th level Crushing Hand not allowing a save on the first round.

 

False Dawn

Does it still cause confusion? That was the best part of it, being able to confuse liches and disrupt their initial timestop casting.

No, it causes blindness as undead creatures should be immune to confusion effects. Anyway the repeating damage should be really useful against liches as it may interrupt many spells, and if they happen to become blinded their spellcasting abilities will be just as useless as if they were confused.

[Demivrgvs]

Being back at home and having one or two days to work on SR I've decided I may step in and add a few changes to V2 before cmorgan was going to release it next week.

 

Let's see few additional things we can work on...

 

Lightning Bolt: as aVENGER pointed out damage has to be changed to make it more "compatible" with BG1. At the moment the suggested options are 1d8/level (up to 10d8) or 1d10/2 levels (up to 10d10). What do you think?

 

Greater Malison: I do think I'm going to make it as per PnP/IWD, -2 penalty on saves.

 

Doom: I'm pondering the possibility of having it allow a save (though with an increasing penalty up to -6 at 18th level).

 

Faerie Fire & Sunscorch: what about adding these two spells to druids/rangers arsenal? They would be more or less as DR's ones, though the former in PnP also reveals invisible creatures and has a small area of effect (a sort of weaker Glitterdust, and in fact even just adding Glitterdust to them instead wouldn't be so wrong maybe). What bothers me is that I should use IWD bams which doesn't perfectly suit BG.

 

I'm Miloch is already thinking about warning me about compatibility with DR. Anyway DR users may just skip to install the new spells (if we decide to have them), and everything should be ok.

 

 

I don't have too much time, but any suggestion/input is welcome, and I may have forgot a simple fix/tweak that can be added to the to-do list.

[Salk]

Demivrgvs,

 

about Lightning Bolt, I'd go for aVenger's proposal: 1D8 / level (up to 10D8).

 

For Doom, I wouldn't have any save and rather keep it like it is.

 

Faerie Fire and Sunscorch would be nice additions. I am for preserving the original spell slots number but SR should take in consideration that some casting classes might need more spells available. Especially now that Cleric and Druids see their number of spells diminished. So I would say it might be okay to add those two. But yes, the IWD BAM do not seem to suit the BG's style.

[Demivrgvs]

Here's some more very small tweaks I've just implemented.

 

Entangle: creatures within the area of effect move at half speed even when not entangled (as per PnP). Beholders, dragons, giants, imps, mephits and wyverns won't be affected by this spell anymore.

 

Horrid Wilting: undead creatures are not affected by it.

 

about Lightning Bolt, I'd go for aVenger's proposal: 1D8 / level (up to 10D8).

Probably the best temporarily solution. I'll absolutely work on it to make this spell more unique, if only its default projectile wasn't hardcoded!

 

Faerie Fire and Sunscorch would be nice additions. I am for preserving the original spell slots number but SR should take in consideration that some casting classes might need more spells available. Especially now that Cleric and Druids see their number of spells diminished. So I would say it might be okay to add those two. But yes, the IWD BAM do not seem to suit the BG's style

I generally don't want to add new spells, mages and clerics surely don't need them (except giving to the latter pre-existing Control Undead and Energy Drain), but the first two druid's spell levels are really poor and most of their decent spells shouldn't be available to them (Armor of Faith, Bless, and Doom). Thus I would make druid's 1st and 2nd level spell an exception to the general rule. In this respect an easy solution for their second level slots would be Fire Trap.

 

Fire Trap: druid's 2nd level version of the cleric's 3rd level spell Glyph of Warding. In PnP it inflicts 1d4 +1/level fire damage (up to 1d4+20) but I would personally go for 1d4/level just like Glyph of Warding.

[Salk]

All very good there above, Demivrgvs!

 

Keep it up!

[DavidW]

I still need a filename to identify the mod by.