SCS inherent difficulty

[kthxbye]

Thanks for the infos.

I checked their readme and since it wasn't documented I thought DSotSC would only add, not change things. Anyway it seems it's a quite known thing, next time I'll be more careful and do a more consistent search on the forums.

[erebusant]

@kthxbye

DSotSC changes many normal encounters, especially the assassins. Both groups get very good equiqment and in the case of Lamalha's amazon assassin party two additional NPCs.

 

Just for comparison:

One of Molkar's hit squad originally has the following equiqment: war axe, chain mail, medium shield, helmet

With DSotSC he gets: a +2 two-handed axe, an AC 2 plate mail with elemental resistance, a +2 or +3 shield, a magical helmet with elemental resistance.

 

Not all of them get such a huge boost, but most of them get at least +1 equiqment with extra abilities like extra attack or chance to inflict damage.

 

Lich

DSotSC indeed greatly increases many tactical challenges, however that is also one of the reasons for having such greatly enhanced equipment that can be collected from the bodies after you figure out how to survive.

[BloodBeast]

You can get a TWO HANDED axe in DSotSC ?? I am all ears !!!

 

kthxbye: you should uninstall SCSII while you are still playing BG1 part of the trilogy.

And I would strongly recommend Item Revisions and Spell Revisions, great mods, fixes lots of wpn and spl bugs.

You can install lvl1npc early on, but only modify the NPCs in the very end, after every other mod.

[erebusant]

You can get a TWO HANDED axe in DSotSC ?? I am all ears !!!

 

Dwarven War Axe +2 'Screaming Death'

 

This axe dates back to the clan wars, it was made by Thordar of The Vale for his son Kelvin to use in battle. Kelvin was never much of a warrior, and the axe was made to assist him in his weaknesses. The name comes from the battle of Wyvern Falls, the first time Kelvin used it in battle. Each time he struck down an opponent, Kelvin would scream in disbelief, hence the name 'Screaming Death.'

 

STATISTICS:

 

Damage: 1D8 + 2

THAC0: +2 bonus

Special:

1D6 Backswing Damage (Save v. death for half damage)

Dexterity +1 bonus

Increased attacks (+2)

Armor +1 bonus

Damage type: slashing

Weight: 20

Speed Factor: 10

Proficiency Type: Axe

Type: 2-handed

Requires: 15 Strength

 

Usable Only By:

Dwarfs (Fighter or Fighter-Thief)

[DavidW]

kthxbye: you should uninstall SCSII while you are still playing BG1 part of the trilogy.

 

 

Why is this?

[Jarno Mikkola]

kthxbye: you should uninstall SCSII while you are still playing BG1 part of the trilogy.

And thanks to that he would have to remove all the other mods he has used to make the BG2 part better! Bad idea! After all the BWP handles the BG1 and BG2 mods at the same time and you don't have to start a new game in the BG2 part! Enough punctuation mark?

[BloodBeast]

kthxbye: you should uninstall SCSII while you are still playing BG1 part of the trilogy.

 

 

Why is this?

 

Sounded like he wanted to re-install everything.

Just a helpful note to save him time, coz SCS II can be installed when you start BG2. And the Unholy Blight spell (is that part of SCS I) ?

[kthxbye]

Unholy Blight is part of a SCSI component, the one about smarter clerics if I'm not mistaken. You can choose to have clerics (and mages) cast BG1-only spells or BG1+BG2-spells (the latter gives them Unholy Blight).

 

I'm now playing on an extended huge BiGWorld install, with both SCSI and SCSII. I left all the default BGW choices for the mods, so SCSI didn't give BG2 spells to BG1 npc casters, but the halved xp rewards, plus the great SCSI AI, make it real challenging anyway. It works great.

[BloodBeast]

Item Revisions and Spell Revisions are two great mods.

I can't imagine playing without those two mods anymore.

[Icendoan]

Same, I've just got used to them as well.

 

Icen

[Ithildur]

I'll also chip in regarding the unholy blight/BG2 spells issue; it is a VERY lethal spell at lower lvls unless one chooses to metagame and buff up in anticipation. Imo after having played with the bg2 spells option and with the bg1 spells only option, I'm of the thought that the bg1 game experience especially at low lvls, both vanilla bg1 and tutu version (haven't done BGT) is not well suited for many of the bg2 spells (not taking into account the high lvl [lvl 6+] spells obviously), both in terms of flavor/feel and power level. I chose not to have stoneskin and holy smite, etc etc in my current run of Tutu; I want some things to be as close to the original as possible. If nothing else, it will allow me to appreciate and enjoy these added goodies all the more when I get to SoA and more closely approximate the experience I would've had going from vanilla bg1 to bg2. That's just my personal preference atm.

 

A low lvl wizard type coming out of the mines is almost guaranteed to get killed or close to it in the first round vs unholy blights, without something like minor globe which isn't available until lvl 7, or chugging antimagic/magic resistance potions, or possibly mirror imaging (not sure if MI defends vs smite/blight, it works against a lot of aoe spells in vanilla bg2, which is somewhat broken)... There are ways to defend yourself, but as pointed out, some would consider this metagaming and distasteful... I suppose if you have a stealthy type in the party you can pretend that they went ahead and scouted out the exit of the cave and reported back that there was an ambush, so the party can buff up/ready defenses.

 

I love the challenge of SCS and the more sensible/intelligent enemies making things into a more fair fight, much more fairly than say the Tactics type mods. On the other hand I do not enjoy seeing NPCs fall left and right every other critical battle, mainly because my ONE biggest gripe against IE games is the lack of negative HPs/bleeding unconscious rules from PnP (which allows the party to heal up fallen mates without having to full rez them). I find it extremely annoying from a RP standpoint when due to the lack of this feature Raise Dead/Rez spells have to be thrown around left and right. If anyone found a way to mod the games so that negative HPs would work, I would pay money for that mod!

 

*nudge nudge* I don't supposed a talented modder like DavidW or anyone else at G3 would be interested in a project like that?

[DavidW]

I should say that I don't have strong opinions about Holy Smite/Unholy Blight. It's a design principle of SCS that it takes the resources it's given and then tries to be as clever as it can with them, so enemies "foolishly" deciding not to use those spells isn't something I'd want to do. Of course, there's always the BG1-only option.

 

(Incidentally, IWD has a weaker version of the spell, as I recall - 1d6 per 2 levels, not 1d6 per level.)

 

The negative-hit-points thing is basically hardcoded. I can think of workarounds but they'd be horribly clunky.

[Demivrgvs]

I'll also chip in regarding the unholy blight/BG2 spells issue; it is a VERY lethal spell at lower lvls unless one chooses to metagame and buff up in anticipation. Imo after having played with the bg2 spells option and with the bg1 spells only option, I'm of the thought that the bg1 game experience especially at low lvls, both vanilla bg1 and tutu version (haven't done BGT) is not well suited for many of the bg2 spells (not taking into account the high lvl [lvl 6+] spells obviously), both in terms of flavor/feel and power level. I chose not to have stoneskin and holy smite, etc etc in my current run of Tutu; I want some things to be as close to the original as possible.

One small thing I noticed is that Holy Smite and Unholy Blight seem to use d2 dices instead of d4, making them even slightly more powerful than it seems (e.g. at 10th level they deal 20-40 instead of 10-40). I should probably fix it for SR. I'd like to hear DavidW opinion on this spell. I've capped it at 10d4 because 20d4 was really too much imo, is it still unbalanced for you? Should I do something?

 

Ithildur, I suppose you aren't using Spell Revisions, but I may still benefit from knowing which BG2 vanilla spells were considered unbalanced for BG1. I think my work may allow SCS to use BG2 spells in BG1 without fearing to ruin the flavor/feel and power level you're talking about.

 

I love the challenge of SCS and the more sensible/intelligent enemies making things into a more fair fight, much more fairly than say the Tactics type mods. On the other hand I do not enjoy seeing NPCs fall left and right every other critical battle, mainly because my ONE biggest gripe against IE games is the lack of negative HPs/bleeding unconscious rules from PnP (which allows the party to heal up fallen mates without having to full rez them). I find it extremely annoying from a RP standpoint when due to the lack of this feature Raise Dead/Rez spells have to be thrown around left and right. If anyone found a way to mod the games so that negative HPs would work, I would pay money for that mod!

 

*nudge nudge* I don't supposed a talented modder like DavidW or anyone else at G3 would be interested in a project like that?

I think not many modderes would work on that, and it wouldn't make much difference. Even allowing a character to survive at -10 hit points, it's unlikely that you'll notice the difference too much in BG imo, as most of the times the character would suffer enough damage to die anyway, especially at mid-high levels.

[Ithildur]

If a creature takes enough dmg to take them down to -10hp/-11hps, they get chunked in the vanilla game. This doesn't happen all that often to PCs/party NPCs, especially at lower lvls, and even at higher lvls. So in fact, most deaths do not do enough dmg to outright kill a character if the bleeding/unconscious rule was implemented.

 

In fact there are negative hp's in the vanilla game to be more precise. It's just that everything from zero to -10 and beyond is considered dead dead in IE games, unlike pnp, making death (and hence rezzes) FAR more common in the IE games than pnp. It's something I really miss in the IE games and really like about games like TOEE or custom mods made for NWN games with bleeding scripts; gives you a better chance to have the party emerge from a very tough fight battered and bruised and knocked out, but alive and not needing yet another rez which are so dime a dozen that they cost a measly amount of gold at lower lvls and there's even a couple of rods of resurrections floating around in SoA including one you can buy pretty easily from a store *rolls eyes*

[Guest Dirty Uncle Bertie]

Demivrgvs, if Unholy Blight is killing low-level characters too easily, then can it (and Holy Smite) be changed so it only does moderate damage at lower levels? Is there a point in BG1 where it's not going to be too damaging in its current form, or should it be "nerfed" for the whole of that game?