Unholy Blight and SCS

[Mike1072]

7) At the risk of sounding like a broken record, from an enemy-AI perspective I do think it's much more problematic to nerf spells than to improve them. SCS clerics prioritise HS quite a lot (though it's not the only spell they use) for reasons which will cease to be true if this change goes through.

I'm not sure if this is as big of an issue as the others you mentioned.

 

I know that you take some of SR's changes into account, but I believe most of SCS's spell selection choices are based on the properties of the vanilla spells. With SR providing more acceptable spell choices, already SCS is 1) not always using the most optimal choices* and/or 2) not using as varied a selection as it could be.

 

*Let it be known that in no way do I endorse allowing SCS's mages to pick spells more effectively than I do.

 

To combat this, what is really needed is someone to provide a list or lists of spell selection choices as mentioned here. Pretty much any criteria can be used to prioritise spells, but the current system is just based on random weightings and the level of the creature (some spells are/aren't better at certain levels).

 

Here's an example of one way you could define the different level 2 offensive spells available to arcane specialists. The spells are defined with a weight listed before the SPWI spell number to indicate what priority should be given to selecting them. The example is taken from SCS's current algorithm.

 

=Level 2 Spells=
-Invoker-
 (level > 6)
2 205 // horror
1 215 // web
1 213 // stinking cloud
 (level <= 6)
1 205 // horror
-Enchanter-
3 220 // power word: sleep
2 221 // ray of enfeeblement
1 211 // melf's acid arrow
2 224 // glitterdust

 

The way this would be interpreted is:

• If you are able to memorise a new level 2 spell...
  
  • If you are an Invoker...
    
    • If you are above level 6...
      
      • Roll a random number between 1 and (2+1+1)=4
        
      • If this number is 1, or 2, pick Horror
        
      • If this number is 3, pick Web
        
      • If this number is 4, pick Stinking Cloud
        

      [*]If you are level 6 or lower...

      • Pick Horror
        

    [*]If you are an Enchanter...

    • Roll a random number between 1 and (3+2+1+2)=8
      
    • If this number is 1, 2, or 3, pick Power Word: Sleep
      
    • If this number is 4 or 5, pick Ray of Enfeeblement
      
    • If this number is 6, pick Melf's Acid Arrow
      
    • If this number is 7 or 8, pick Glitterdust
      

 

This would effectively give Invokers above level 6 a 50% chance of choosing Horror, a 25% chance of choosing Web, and a 25% chance of choosing Stinking Cloud whenever they gained a new level 2 spell memorisation slot (ignoring the separate defensive and utility spell assignment).

 

If anyone feels like contributing to this, I'm sure DavidW would be able to provide more details such as which classes/kits should be defined (special multi-class spell selections?).

[Salk]

Mike's idea sounds really nifty...

[Demivrgvs]

Upon further inspection, as I'm currently fixing Unholy Blight and Holy Smite damage output I may have really discovered why they seem so overpowered at low levels.

 

I didn't notice this before but there seems to be a fixed 4 points of damage in vanilla's .eff files!

 

That would mean vanilla spells actually deal a lot more damage than they are supposed to.

For example at 5th level they deal 10d2+8 instead of 5d4!

 

Can anyone confirm this?