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[Demivrgvs]

Conjure Elementals

Why has the elemental summon duration been reduced to 1 turn + 1 round/level. These now only last for 2-3 mins, which is pretty bad. Are they really so beefed up now that they require this to counterbalance them?

 

It would be nice to have some summons that acutally last a while, animate dead is good but if you're roleplaying you're not going to get Aerie to cast this, imo, nor any good protagonist. The only option is then to have a druid with shambling mount which is late in the game. Are there some long lasting (1 turn/level, or preferably 8 hours) spells I seem to have missed, that could be used by a good party? Invisible stalker is the only other that comes to mind.

 

Point is, I would like 1 turn/level elementals for the neutral/good roleplaying option, and am eager to hear why this was changed?

Yes, these creatures are so buffed up within SR that many players asked to slightly nerf them for V4 (tough it mostly is just a matter of reducing their huge amount of hit points). SR also removes vanilla's "mental combat" between caster-summon and its 15% spell failure (actually, it was worse than a simple spell failure) to these spells, which counts as another boost to the spells' appeal. Anyway, I simply made 6th lvl Conjure Elementals spells use the same duration of 5th lvl ones, and more similar to the duration of most summons (a fixed 3 turns duration).

 

That being said, I do want to streamline a little more summons duration within V4, and as a general rule I'm not much against long duration for summons (except uber effective ones such as Mordy, which actually isn't a true summon, and will surely remain 1 round/lvl duration). I'm open to discuss this matter.

Edited May 30, 2011 by Demivrgvs

[Guest guest]

Cojure Elementals

Why has the elemental summon duration been reduced to 1 turn + 1 round/level. These now only last for 2-3 mins, which is pretty bad. Are they really so beefed up now that they require this to counterbalance them?

 

It would be nice to have some summons that acutally last a while, animate dead is good but if you're roleplaying you're not going to get Aerie to cast this, imo, nor any good protagonist. The only option is then to have a druid with shambling mount which is late in the game. Are there some long lasting (1 turn/level, or preferably 8 hours) spells I seem to have missed, that could be used by a good party? Invisible stalker is the only other that comes to mind.

 

Point is, I would like 1 turn/level elementals for the neutral/good roleplaying option, and am eager to hear why this was changed?

Yes, these creatures are so buffed up within SR that many players asked to slightly nerf them for V4 (tough it mostly is just a matter of reducing their huge amount of hit points). SR also removes vanilla's "mental combat" between caster-summon and its 15% spell failure (actually, it was worse than a simple spell failure) to these spells, which counts as another boost to the spells' appeal. Anyway, I simply made 6th lvl Conjure Elementals spells use the same duration of 5th lvl ones, and more similar to the duration of most summons (a fixed 3 turns duration).

 

That being said, I do want to streamline a little more summons duration within V4, and as a general rule I'm not much against long duration for summons (except uber effective ones such as Mordy, which actually isn't a true summon, and will surely remain 1 round/lvl duration). I'm open to discuss this matter.

 

I absolutely understand and agree that most summons ought to be shortish duration, and 1 round/level for mord is fine etc.

 

I hope you see where I'm coming from, in that it is nice to have one or two good summons travelling around with you, essentially. Don't forget they are restricted to the area they are created in, and this is a big restriction if you don't click rest every half-minute...

 

All I ask is if you can point out one summon in the line of 1 turn/level duration, or 8 hours, that I may have missed which a good-aligned party would use. You didn't, so I guess there isn't one.

 

Elementals are the prime candidate for this, I don't imagine monster summonings, spider spawns, etc to last that long. But something, anything would be nice in this line of long duration. Like I said, I do like the shambling mound, it's very nice, conceptually as well as in terms of balance, a real good tank to have around that looks cool to boot. I miss my elementals I guess

 

If you do go down the route of reducing hp, then surely a longer duration is in order, as I do NOT find them too powerful as they are, since truly they last only long enough for 1, maybe 2 battles.

[Demivrgvs]

Summons duration

I absolutely understand and agree that most summons ought to be shortish duration, and 1 round/level for mord is fine etc.

Actually I said almost the opposite (thus voting in your favor regarding elementals). Only exceptionally effective summons absolutely have to last so little (aka 1 round/lvl), to avoid having an army of genies, mordy swords and celestials walking with the party for an entire quest. I actually think PnP 1 round/lvl duration for most summons makes no sense (why making relatively weak summons last only a bunch of rounds if they are going to die anyway as soon as you have a decent encounter?), and even less for low lvl spells (the most hilarious thing ever imo is 3E Summon Monster I which lasts 1 round at 1st lvl).

 

I instead think that most summons could last even 1 hour (aka 5 turns, 50 rounds - 5 minutes of real time) without affecting the overall balance at all (the summoning cap is much more critical on this matter imo).

 

I hope you see where I'm coming from, in that it is nice to have one or two good summons travelling around with you, essentially. Don't forget they are restricted to the area they are created in, and this is a big restriction if you don't click rest every half-minute...

I do intend to remove this limitation within V4, summons should be able to follow you even if you change area.

 

All I ask is if you can point out one summon in the line of 1 turn/level duration, or 8 hours, that I may have missed which a good-aligned party would use. You didn't, so I guess there isn't one.

 

Elementals are the prime candidate for this, I don't imagine monster summonings, spider spawns, etc to last that long. But something, anything would be nice in this line of long duration. Like I said, I do like the shambling mound, it's very nice, conceptually as well as in terms of balance, a real good tank to have around that looks cool to boot. I miss my elementals I guess

You already mentioned them, mages have invisible stalkers, druids have shamblers.

 

Regarding elementals, for a moment I actually thought that giving lesser elementals longer duration made sense, to keep them somewhat interesting even when (greater) elementals are available.

 

If you do go down the route of reducing hp, then surely a longer duration is in order, as I do NOT find them too powerful as they are, since truly they last only long enough for 1, maybe 2 battles.

Don't worry, it won't be a drastical reduction.

 

By the way, elementals major feat within a IR/SR install isn't their hit points imo, but their incredible amount of resistances and immunities which also allows you to create extremely powerful combos (e.g. entangle/grease/web + any elemental, earthquake + earth elementals, firestorm + fire elementals, and so on).

[Guest guest]

Regarding elementals, for a moment I actually thought that giving lesser elementals longer duration made sense, to keep them somewhat interesting even when (greater) elementals are available.

 

But, aren't they rolled into one spell, with no choice once you get to a high enough level of summoning the lower level version, or am I mistaken?

[Ardanis]

Why has the elemental summon duration been reduced to 1 turn + 1 round/level. These now only last for 2-3 mins, which is pretty bad. Are they really so beefed up now that they require this to counterbalance them?

Right now - yes. Earth ones had no problem holding off Yaga-Shura's army while I was picking on major threats.

 

I do tend to agree for making them long-lasted. They're the best candidature for it imo.

[Guest Guest_339]

Hello! I have two small questions about your mod.

 

- Don't you think that the level 3 arcane spell "Protection from Missiles" is a bit overpowered? After all it is in every way better than the 6th (!) level divine spell "Physical Mirror". It grants total protection from all missiles to any creature for a long period of time. This spell basically makes all archers a joke. After all we don't have a level 3 spell (we could call it "Protection from Slashing") that grants complete invulnerability to all slashing damage plus spells like "Phantom Blade", "Black Blade of Disaster" etc. I know that you introduced this spell to ensure compatibility with SCS, however as far as I understand it DavidW mainly changed this spell for people who wanted to play without BG2 spells (like "Stoneskin"). I think there are two ways to fix this spell: 1) drastically reduce its duration to no more than 5 rounds; 2) instead of giving complete invulnerability give a really big bonus to ac vs missiles.

 

- Your SCS compatibility guide doesn't mention it, so let me ask whether you make "fire shields" protect from "insect" spells. If you do, then I think spell descriptions should mention this. If not you should update the compatibility guide.

 

Don't let my criticism lead you to believe that I am dissatisfied with your mod. It's quite the opposite.

[Guest n-ghost]

Hey there. Any luck with implementing healing that do damage to undead/vice versa? If no, maybe just make undead immune to both?

[Demivrgvs]

Protection from Missiles

- Don't you think that the level 3 arcane spell "Protection from Missiles" is a bit overpowered? After all it is in every way better than the 6th (!) level divine spell "Physical Mirror". It grants total protection from all missiles to any creature for a long period of time. This spell basically makes all archers a joke. After all we don't have a level 3 spell (we could call it "Protection from Slashing") that grants complete invulnerability to all slashing damage plus spells like "Phantom Blade", "Black Blade of Disaster" etc. I know that you introduced this spell to ensure compatibility with SCS, however as far as I understand it DavidW mainly changed this spell for people who wanted to play without BG2 spells (like "Stoneskin"). I think there are two ways to fix this spell: 1) drastically reduce its duration to no more than 5 rounds; 2) instead of giving complete invulnerability give a really big bonus to ac vs missiles.

This is a rather recurrent debate, but I'll try to summarize everything.

 

I implemented it to make it work as per SCS, but I would have probably done it anyway because vanilla spell was utterly useless. I think SCS does it not only to give a BG1 alternative to Stoneskin but because without it disrupting spellcasting with an archer was incredibly easy within BG. Even with Stoneskin archers would have a really easy time disrupting every spell with fire/ice/acid arrows.

 

When it comes to PnP, Magic of Faerun's Reverse Arrow (3rd lvl spell) actually is more powerful than SR ProMissile as it also has a chance to reflect missiles back. The good thing about that spell, which has been suggested to rebalance ProMissile too, is its scaling system, as it initially grants protection from +1 missiles and gradually improve with caster lvl up to +5 missiles at 20th lvl. Implementing it is rather tricky as we have to alter A LOT of items and projectile files, but we may go for it if the end result really is worth it. We'll see.

 

Giving it a hige AC bonus vs missiles could be a much more easy-to-do solution, and I actually considered it for ProWeapon too (by the time you can cast 5th lvl spells you almost never face opponents with non-magical weapons, making this spell useless in its current state).

 

Fire Shields

- Your SCS compatibility guide doesn't mention it, so let me ask whether you make "fire shields" protect from "insect" spells. If you do, then I think spell descriptions should mention this. If not you should update the compatibility guide.

They currently don't, but they will.

 

Cure/Cause Wound spells

Hey there. Any luck with implementing healing that do damage to undead/vice versa? If no, maybe just make undead immune to both?

We do thought about it, and I actually didn't implemented it simply because I'm not sure how the AI would handle it.

[Guest n-ghost]

We do thought about it, and I actually didn't implemented it simply because I'm not sure how the AI would handle it.

Uh... and what could possibly happen? I don't recall undead creatures using any healing/harm abilities, a fortiori on themselves. Or there is some non-standard usage of healing spells codes?

[Demivrgvs]

Cure/Cause Wound spells

We do thought about it, and I actually didn't implemented it simply because I'm not sure how the AI would handle it.

Uh... and what could possibly happen? I don't recall undead creatures using any healing/harm abilities, a fortiori on themselves. Or there is some non-standard usage of healing spells codes?

I'm simply not 100% sure each and every undead creature (mod added ones in particular) never use healing spells on themselves. Anyway, I'll look into it for V4 as I would indeed like to implement this PnP feature.

[Dakk]

From SR spell descriptions:

Energy Blades

Level: 10

School: Evocation

Range: Personal

Duration: 5 turns

Casting Time: 5

Area of Effect: Special

Saving Throw: None

 

An energy blade is a discus made of pure energy. The discs are thrown with a +10 bonus to THAC0, inflict 1d4+5 missile damage as well as 1d10 additional electrical damage, and are considered to be of +5 enchantment to determine what they can hit. This spell creates 20 energy discs and sets the caster's number of attacks per round to 9 as long as the discs are held.

Are the +10 bonus to the base unarmed THAC0, and no proficiencies apply?

 

Black Blade of Disaster

Level: 9

School: Evocation

Range: Personal

Duration: 1 round/level

Casting Time: 5

Area of Effect: Special

Saving Throw: None

 

This spell enables the caster to create a black, blade-shaped planar rift, about 5 feet long. It jumps into the caster's hand and is used as a normal sword, remaining there for the duration of the spell. The caster wields the blade as if it was a long sword but he suffers no penalty for non-proficiency, and brandishes it with a base THAC0 of 0. The sword deals 2d12 damage per strike, and acts as a +5 magical weapon in all regards, including hit and damage bonuses. With each hit, there is a 15% chance the victim must make a save vs. spell at -5 or be disintegrated (20d6 points of magic damage, 5d6 on a successful save).

So the caster/wielder have THAC0 set to 0, with an additional +5 to hit (as quoted in bold) bonus on top (for a THAC0 of -5)? Do other boni apply, like STR and from items that grant bonus (gauntlets, bracers etc)?

[Demivrgvs]

Energy Blades

Are the +10 bonus to the base unarmed THAC0, and no proficiencies apply?

Yes and yes.

 

Black Blade of Disaster

So the caster/wielder have THAC0 set to 0, with an additional +5 to hit (as quoted in bold) bonus on top (for a THAC0 of -5)?

Exactly.

 

Do other boni apply, like STR and from items that grant bonus (gauntlets, bracers etc)?

All bonuses apply, and as mentioned by the description the wielder can benefit from having long sword spec or mastery. As of now the only bonus that doesn't apply is STR because BBoD is considered a blade made of pure energy.

[Dakk]

Cool! I just love it that the SR spell descriptions do exactly what they say

 

EDIT: oh cool I actually didn't notice at first read that sword-prof will provide benefits, nice!

Edited September 3, 2011 by Dakk

[DrAzTiK]

Friend level 1 : I suggest to forbidd stacking (too cheap way for discount and it doesn't make cense to reach 25 value with a level one spell).

 

Maybe allow to cast this spell on any creatures, not only spellcaster.

 

 

I also really do think that spell deflection/turning should absorb spell like chaos, Grander malediction, greater command, despair, silence, horror....

 

Theses sort of spell cannot be considered like area spell but more like "multiple centered directly upon wizard spells" and should obvisouly be absorbed.

 

What do you think about it ?

[Incantatar]

Friend level 1 : I suggest to forbidd stacking (too cheap way for discount and it doesn't make cense to reach 25 value with a level one spell).

 

It's not supposed to be stackable. I already told Demi about it and he will fix it.

 

I also really do think that spell deflection/turning should absorb spell like chaos, Grander malediction, greater command, despair, silence, horror....

 

Theses sort of spell cannot be considered like area spell but more like "multiple centered directly upon wizard spells" and should obvisouly be absorbed.

 

But these are deliberately AoE spells in P&P and in vanilla BG. I don't see any good reason to change that, as it would have a big impact on the already tuned spell balance. I can't agree that they are too powerful. Globes also should have a reason to be cast.