Random stuff

[Bearwere]

that's just the point! Exactly what you are saying... just reverted. I want potions and scrolls and items to be expensive and not so accessible! I just don't like that both the player and (now with SCS) the enemies have wide access to items' use so that "This one allows me to use them more freely, almost in any fight." I find it an abuse. I realize that this is just my point of view which is diametrically opposed to yours. We can work for subtraction or addition. I tend to like the first method best. Guess DavidW's vision makes some people happy and some not in this case...

there are 2 points, to be exact: you don't like your party having too much potions, and you don't like enemies having too much potions. They are different. About your party - you can simply install component that breaks dropped potions. About enemies - they never have amount of potions near party's.

[Salk]

that's just the point! Exactly what you are saying... just reverted. I want potions and scrolls and items to be expensive and not so accessible! I just don't like that both the player and (now with SCS) the enemies have wide access to items' use so that "This one allows me to use them more freely, almost in any fight." I find it an abuse. I realize that this is just my point of view which is diametrically opposed to yours. We can work for subtraction or addition. I tend to like the first method best. Guess DavidW's vision makes some people happy and some not in this case...

there are 2 points, to be exact: you don't like your party having too much potions, and you don't like enemies having too much potions. They are different. About your party - you can simply install component that breaks dropped potions. About enemies - they never have amount of potions near party's.

 

The first component would be not needed if the enemies didn't carry too many potions (thanks to SCS). The easy and sensible solutions here would simply be to raise the price of such items so that players and enemies are no longer walking stores.

 

Saying that SCS doesn't want to interfere with prices could not be used as rebuttal since there are components that meddle with money directly ("Increase the price asked by Gaylan Baele") and indirectly (giving extra potions to enemies). I would rather see potions change their base price so that it'd be perfectly sensible to not make each encounter a challenge at who-has-more between party and enemies.

[Bearwere]

The first component would be not needed if the enemies didn't carry too many potions (thanks to SCS). The easy and sensible solutions here would simply be to raise the price of such items so that players and enemies are no longer walking stores.

You mean, instead of giving potions to enemies - decrease number of potions back and raise the prices? That's entirely different from the original component. But, I still don't understand what exactly concerns you - amount of potions for party, for enemies, of both?

[coaster]

On the spellcasters being overpowered vs everyone else debate...

 

Yes, IMHO this is true. But I'm also happy with David's defence that SCS2 is really about making sure mages play intelligently rather than trying to address wider issues of balance. Arcane magic is relatively overpowered in BG2; but then who hasn't had the pleasure of cutting someone up into little bits during a timestop, or spamming spells during a time stop/improved alacrity combo? It's part of the joy of the game.

 

I have to say I've found soloing any class other than one with arcane magic capabilities much more difficult with SCS2 (partly because I have the hardest difficulty components installed, so arguably it's my own fault anyway). But fighters etc do have some defences. Firstly, HP - it can take quite a lot of work by mages to pull down HP levels of a fighter, particularly if they are chugging health potions, even more so if they have elemental or other defences granted by potions. Secondly, even vanilla fighters can use the Book of Infinite Spells to get True Seeing, which helps against mirror images etc. Finally, spell disruption is an effective strategy once the Flail of Ages has been obtained (not that difficult IMHO), or with any weapon that deals elemental damage. There are also things like race/class considerations - paladins get -2 to saving throws, dwarves get -5 to save vs spells which means they can often shrug off many spell effects, and for Barbarians or Berserkers the immunities granted by Barbarian/Berserker rage means a range of negative spell effects, including Maze, can be ignored.

 

All that said, I found soloing a fighter (or fighter/x) becomes much easier against mages once HLAs kick in (yeah, I know, duh) - but in particular I found the stun effect of Power Attack was surprisingly effective against many mages - even without Improved Haste they need to make 3-4 saves at -4 in each round. Even with PfMW kicking in, it was quite simple to switch to an unenchanted weapon, activate Power Attack then stun the mage whilst chopping through their stoneskins. And once the skins are gone, low HP = dead wizard very quickly. Obviously things are more difficult against multiple mages, but if you're soloing you have rapid improvements in levels/saving throws which help to shrug off their effects.

 

Not quite sure where I'm going with this post, but my general point I guess is that yes, mages are overpowered vs other classes, but there are a range of anti-mage tactics which still work, even when soloing. With a party, things are even easier since mages & clerics can do some serious debuffing of opponents (and if you have a druid - Insect Plague!!!) which means that spellcasters can be dead in seconds after the fighters rush in.

 

Cheers

 

coaster

[Demivrgvs]

I'll add just my two cents.

 

Overpowered Spellcasters

Mages are overpowered only because of some spells which weren't implemented very well imo. Things like Time Stop (in PnP you can't attack other creatures during it), Chain Contingency (in PNP it can only stores much weaker spells), and Horrid Wilting (it should damage friendly creatures too) surely makes them way more powerful than a mere warrior.

Not to mention PC's spellcasters who can exploit things like Alacrity+Robe of Vecna to turn even the hardest fight into a simple matter of unleashing an entire spellbook over the unfortunate targets.

The only weakness of spellcasters generally is that unless heavily protected by their spells (than again, BG offers them much better protections than PnP) they can go down with very few blows, and that is exactly why I think playing with "no pre-buffing" makes the game much more enjoyable. They deserve to waste same time to defend themselves imo.

 

That being said, DavidW's SCS does a great job with them imo, and I think he does the right think making them use all their potential. Toning them down is probably more suited to a mod like Spell Revisions.

 

P.S Obviously I don't consider Clerics and Druids overpowered.

 

 

Potion for NPCs

This is exactly one of the few things that can be done to reduce the differences in sheer power between enemy mages and melee oriented characters, and I think SCS handles it pretty well. I cannot remember when I played it which was the exact distribution of rare potions, thus I cannot openly support Guest! and Salk, but surely things like Potion of Magic Blocking/Protection/Shielding should be very rare. Anyway I probably wouldn't mind if most the more experienced mid-SoA enemy parties has one of them (maybe the toughest warrior amongst them), as it's far less than the amount of magical equipment the PC has.

[Icendoan]

P.S Obviously I don't consider Clerics and Druids overpowered.

 

I wonder why not? An Assassin/Cleric has probably the most power of all duals. Take a look at this; http://people.umass.edu/klement/1024.jpg

 

Hm.

 

Icen

[Demivrgvs]

P.S Obviously I don't consider Clerics and Druids overpowered.

I wonder why not? An Assassin/Cleric has probably the most power of all duals. Take a look at this; http://people.umass.edu/klement/1024.jpg

We were mainly considering AI characters, but that is clearly an extremely interesting/silly exploit (not to mention a multiclassed assassin/cleric is clearly not possible without cheating). I was one of those guys playing overpowered characters like a kensai/thief fully armored, able to cast Simulacrum (via Vhailor's Helm) and endless Time Stops (via cloned scrolls). Fortunately I discovered that playing a sane game, and trying to roleplay as much as possible is much more entertaining!

 

Anyway, if players want to abuse ranger/cleric's cheesy spellbook, kensai-thief + Use Any Item, or things like closing the doors behind only because the AI is not scripted to open them, it has nothing to do with SCS imo. SCS's priests are a very good challange and obviously they have nothing to share with that ridiculous multi assassin/cleric+Use Any Item combo.

[Icendoan]

That guy is a Dual, if you don't mind, it isn't hacked in any way and perfectly possible in the normal game.

 

Icen

[Demivrgvs]

That guy is a Dual, if you don't mind, it isn't hacked in any way and perfectly possible in the normal game.

I don't mind at all, but it doesn't change much, most of what I said above is still valid. My uber powerful kensai dualled to thief was perfectly doable in the normal game, as his silly Use Any Item HLA, but it doesn't mean it wasn't cheesy. Anyway, I don't want to go too much off-topic on a pretty interesting thread.

[Icendoan]

Why even bother with a Kensai? Try a WS-Thief for WS bonuses and no restrictions.

 

Icen

[DavidW]

The first component would be not needed if the enemies didn't carry too many potions (thanks to SCS). The easy and sensible solutions here would simply be to raise the price of such items so that players and enemies are no longer walking stores.

 

Saying that SCS doesn't want to interfere with prices could not be used as rebuttal since there are components that meddle with money directly ("Increase the price asked by Gaylan Baele") and indirectly (giving extra potions to enemies). I would rather see potions change their base price so that it'd be perfectly sensible to not make each encounter a challenge at who-has-more between party and enemies.

 

You're misunderstanding SCS's design philosophy. The intention of the mod is

 

(i) to make opponents as intelligent as possible within the existing game-rules framework. (Actually, it's to make them appropriately intelligent, but since the scripting language is so restrictive, that translates as "as intelligent as possible" for anything brighter than a dog).

(ii) if it's still not challenging enough, to make fairly low-key upgrades of creature power to further increase the challenge.

(iii) as a last resort, where something in the existing game is really really hard to work around or where a low-key change would be very useful from an AI point of view without having wider ramifications, I change it. I don't do it casually or to restore any sort of "balance" (whatever that is). (Examples: I can't protect SCS 1 wizards effectively without PNM affecting magic weapons; I can't see easy ways of getting around SI:Div + II, so I add one.)

 

It's not a fixpack, so I'm not under any particular obligation to justify anything strictly under these rules; nonetheless, they're the rules.

 

So, in the case of potions: magic potions are readily available, from shops up and down the Sword Coast, in small quantities at prices which are within the reach of mid- to high-level characters. As a matter of realism, why wouldn't enemies buy them? Salk suggests that I answer this question by changing the price of potions, and that's probably viable, but it's a fairly wide-ranging change of the game which isn't needed, so I don't make it.

 

There is a structural issue with potions, though, which in my experience doesn't show up much in BG1 but is a problem in BG2: the party gets too many potions in loot. As Bearwere says, for players who mind this, the "potions break" options are there.

 

Obviously, those who either disagree with this reasoning or find potion battles dull have the standard don't-install-the-component response. What I don't want to do is have an option (as Salk suggests) to give only some much smaller fraction of creatures potions, because I don't understand what the in-game logic would be to decide who gets them.

 

On the topic of mages, Coaster's dead right in his reading of SCS's motivations: if mages in BG are overpowered, that's not really my problem (assuming there's not some flatly broken move that makes the game impossible or trivial). SCS doesn't (systematically) do anything with mages that isn't legal in the vanilla game. (Spell Immunity in sequencers is a grey area; in the vanilla game it's legal for (some) NPCs but not for the party.)

[Demivrgvs]

Examples: I can't protect SCS 1 wizards effectively without PNM affecting magic weapons; I can't see easy ways of getting around SI:Div + II, so I add one.

Both things are changed in SR now that you mention it!

 

EDIT:

 

I've moved this "discussion" to the relevant thread "SCS AI and SR".

[Salk]

Fair enough, DavidW!

 

I can just add that the in-game logic of my proposal (potions for some NPCs - chosen among those that can be seen as key-enemies in the game) was inherently tied to raising the potion price (which SCS won't do) so that only more important/richer NPCs would realistically dispose of extremely powerful potions nonchalantly (it's the "old" way: make the "bosses" be better equipped: SCS does it of course but starting from a - for me - too generous - for the enemy - base).

 

As it is now, the massive use of potions override the tactical challenge in such a way that the player will have to consider SCS II encounters as an event where massive use of potions (in a rather streamlined fashion) is going to happen, mining one important factor for enjoying different encounters: the fact that they can be different and the enemies more unique.

 

Thanks for listening to my feedback anyway.

 

To be really honest, I should not even dare giving any in this case since I didn't really test SCS II and this issue is in my mind merely hypotetical and based on assumptions.

[DavidW]

As it is now, the massive use of potions override the tactical challenge in such a way that the player will have to consider SCS II encounters as an event where massive use of potions (in a rather streamlined fashion) is going to happen, mining one important factor for enjoying different encounters: the fact that they can be different and the enemies more unique.

 

Well, if it makes encounters less interesting for you, all I can say is: don't install it.

[Salk]

The Potion for NPCs component makes the encounters definitely more interesting for me.

 

But the regular use of potions in each encounter dulls partly the component's potential.

 

Still the trade-off is positive and Potion for NPCs will be part of my game.

 

I apologize if I have insisted too much on this subject.