Wands

[Demivrgvs]

Because of the various issues and suggestions about them I've taken a more accurate look at wands and I've decided I can do something about it. It's actually quite a good amount of work with few benefits, but I'll let you decide if it's worth the trouble.

 

At the moment wands use "normal" effects to reproduce the original spells, though many of these spells are slightly customized when fired from wands. I'm instead working to completely change them to use actual spells (.spl files), though obviously custom ones.

This means wands' spells will be correctly flagged as arcane/divine spells with appropriate school, secondary-type, and so on, granting the following advantages/features:

- they will be correctly handled by spell protections (Spell Immunity/Deflection/Turning/Trap)

- if we ever decide to make wands' spells improve with caster level it will be possible

- we can make WoMM fire more than one missile

- we can make Cowled Wizards correctly responds to arcane spells fired from wands

- ...

 

Ironically the one change that really needs to be done is the only one that would have a temporarily drawback:

- Breach and Pierce Magic casted from the Wand of Spellstrike weren't flagged as Magic Attack causing them to not correctly work against spell protections

Fixing that may probably cause incompatibility problems with SCS's "antimagic attacks" component, though avoiding it is just a matter of not installing either this IR's item or that SCS's component.

 

If you have any other suggestion about wands (should they improve with caster levels? Are some of them are too powerful/weak? Should it be possible to re-charge them in stores?) let me know!

[Jarno Mikkola]

As I have proposed, make the wands single use/charge items, but so one can stack them on top of the same kind. This reduces the cost-efficiency factor, inventory allocation etc. And if you want to make "make wands' spells improve with caster level", wouldn't it be better to make them to have 'wand levels', for example make the basic Wand of Magic Missile throw two Magic Missiles, while the mark II would throw 4 or 5 of MM's, and equally the Wand of Fire could throw 5d6 Fire Ball, while the WoF mark II would throw 10d6 one... or even 8d6 Delayed Blast one(+the Agannazar's scorchers).

 

It would of course take more coding to give every creature in BGT the right amount and kind of mark I's or mark II's etc. ... but thanks for the effort.

The day per items can actually be called Rod of ...

 

The mark I&II system gives also gives enough leverage to use different intelligence variables for the wands. And it makes easier to invent new wands, such as Wand of Dispel as the level can be set individually without the "make wands' spells improve with caster level" feature, that may or may not work, depending on the users class.

[Demivrgvs]

Conceptually I do like both ideas, and they are both very creative. I'm less conviced about their implementation though.

 

Make wands stackable single use/charge items (sort of offensive potions )

This reduces the cost-efficiency factor, inventory allocation etc.

The actual prices problems aren't related to this, even with their current status wands have a price based on how many charges are left. I'll work on that in any case.

Inventory allocation for wands is only a problem in case you find a huge amount of them, and it shouldn't happen, but I do like this feature.

Implementing it may be quite time consuming, as after changing the items I would have to patch every single instance of a wand in a place/store/creature and replace it with multiple wands. Mike may know better than me how this would be feasible.

 

Make different versions of the same wand with increasing power level

Not a bad idea at all imo. But implementing it is incredibly time consuming, and it also starts to be a little outside IR's scope (as it would mean adding several new items). It would implies creating two or three version for each wand and then I should study all BG's places/stores/creatures to decide which power level assign there. Knowing that Mike doesn't even use wands I guess he won't like having such a huge amount of work for them. Especially when very similar results can be achieved with a much easier "make wands' spells improve with caster level" component (setting the spell as "innate" should also allow that to work with every class).

 

Speaking of adding items (like Wands of Dispel), I'll made an exception to add a few magical flails, but generally I will not add new items within IR and I think BG already offers a huge amount of them.

[Demivrgvs]

Jarno,

 

you may like to know that it seems Mike has approved your suggestion about making different versions of each wand with increasing power level. Let's say we are really think about working on that for future releases despite my fear to work on such a time consuming thing.

 

I'd like to know what players think about it though!

[Salk]

Personally, I think the idea is not bad but I would not really invest so much modding time on it.

 

It'd be rather down on my priorities list.

[Raj]

I don't use a lot wands but I neither use thieves and bards who'd enjoy them the most I guess. It looks like a nice idea.

[Icendoan]

The thing about that idea is that you do a FOR loop creating each one, modifying the power as they go.

 

Something along the lines of

OUTER_FOR (i=1;i<16;i+=1) BEGIN //Starts at 1, and loops 15 times.
COPY_EXISTING %wandname%.itm %wandname%%i%.itm //lots of vars, so no item name clashes
PATCH_IF SOURCE_SIZE > 0x71 BEGIN //Protects against invalid patches
 PATCH_IF %wandname% STRING_COMPARE "wand05" BEGIN //Because the Wand of Fire is weird
  WRITE_LONG 0x132 (0x132 + %i%) //Each wand gets +1d6 unsavable damage
  WRITE_LONG 0x102 (0x132) //Each wand gets +1d6 savable damage
 END
END
END

 

Such a thing is coded in 2 mins and completely untested, it only handles the wand of fire, now, and needs more conditions to be usable for other wands.

 

Icen

[Demivrgvs]

Should arcane spells cast from wands summon the Coweld Wizards?

 

The thing about that idea is that you do a FOR loop creating each one, modifying the power as they go.

I was asking an opinion on the matter, not how to code it. Anyway, it's not that simple, as most wands cannot be improved by just adding damage to the stored spell.

[Icendoan]

Really? Wand of cloudkill, wand of fire, wand of frost, WoMM, Wand of Lightning, Wand of the Heavens and Wand of the Apprenti are all damage based, which can be affected by a simple loop like that.

 

All the others can have duration/save tweaks as you go up. Very simple.

 

In fact, the only tricky one is WoMS. But that can have duration tweaks, or summon different monsters, whatever.

 

And knowing that is can be coded fairly easily can swing minds, you know.

 

Icen

[Demivrgvs]

If you insist...here's some examples of why it isn't a simple "raise damage" loop what I would do (far from being definitive versions though):

 

- Wand of Fear: Mark I - Spook; Mark II - Horror

 

- Wand of Magic Missile: Mark I - one missile; Mark II - three missiles

 

- Wand of Sleep: Mark I - Sleep affecting low level creatures; Mark II - Sleep affecting mid level creatures

 

- Wand of Cloudkill: Mark I - Stinking Cloud; Mark II - Cloudkill

 

That being said, creating the wands isn't the most time consuming task, it's re-assigning wands to each creature/area/store imo.

 

Anyway this feature surely isn't on top of my priorities.

[Icendoan]

No, but my point is that most of those can be looped easily in a macro.

 

Icen

[Demivrgvs]

Ok, here's few things we can decide together. I've almost finished everything, and I may just add all wands to the hotfixes, though they would be more of an add-on than a fix (only Wand of Cloudkill had a wrong #charges in V1).

 

Wand of Magic Missiles

What about raising the missiles fired from 1 to 3 (5th caster level)?

 

Wand of Sleep

Vanilla's Sleep was affecting only characters with less than 5 Hit Dice, what about raising it as per SR? The wands should have a caster level between 5th and 10th imo.

 

Wand of Lightning

What about changing the projectile as per SR, removing the "bouncing" effect? I would keep the quite unique ability to target six different targets. How much damage shoud it deal each bolt?

 

#charges

I've assigned 10 charges to each wand, to keep prices reasonably "low", what do you think about it? Furthermore, I do think the Wand of Fire should split its charges between the two abilities, or I shoud double its price.

 

As soon as I get some players' feedback I can finish my job very quickly.

[Jarno Mikkola]

1)Wand of Magic Missiles

2)Wand of Sleep

3)#charges

1) I would make it to be 2 MM's, but that's because it would be mark I item, so 3 is definite if there is only the one in the game... for now.

2) If you can go with the players innate level, then it needs to be from 1Hit Dice to 15HD(if the dice is d4). Hhm, you could even adjust the saves too.

3) 10 is fine...but why not make the Wand of Fire like it is, but change the Agannazar's Scorchers to Fire Arrow, as then both of the spells are on the same spell level, and the flexibility lets player "to think on one's feet".

[Demivrgvs]

1) I would make it to be 2 MM's, but that's because it would be mark I item, so 3 is definite if there is only the one in the game... for now.

Mark I would probably be just one missile. We may even have three version of this one, for 3 and 5 missiles, we'll see. Anyway, we're planning V2 for the first half of November, while these revised wands are planned for...tomorrow.

 

2) If you can go with the players innate level, then it needs to be from 1Hit Dice to 15HD(if the dice is d4). Hhm, you could even adjust the saves too.

I'm keeping the fixed caster level instead, and I do like your suggestion on "mark system" because it avoids to break this PnP rule.

 

3) 10 is fine...but why not make the Wand of Fire like it is, but change the Agannazar's Scorchers to Fire Arrow, as then both of the spells are on the same spell level, and the flexibility lets player "to think on one's feet".

I had raised Scorcher's damage to make it more powerful than its 2nd level version. But I may just as well change it with Flame Arrow, and I may even make Flame Arrow as per PnP, with multiple targetting possibilities (a la Wand of Lightning).

Speaking of charges...this wand has either to split its 10 charges between the two abilities ar cost significantly more than the others...

 

What about the Wand of Lightning?

[BloodBeast]

I like the Magic Missile idea, Mark I, II, and III, upgradable via a mage?

 

I think 20 charges would be nice for most wands, as in 20 per ability, just because it's not convenient to recharge it every day. And that would reduce the cost per charge to $500 or so, still a lot of coin, especially for a 3rd level spell like Fireball and lightning bolt.

 

I usually use wands to mop up weak enemies like kobolds and orcs, simply because it's fun to watch them all drop, even though it would be easy to just walk up and club each one on the head.