Kit Revisions (Fighters)

[kreso]

Further on Berserker

 

- his Diehard feature is slightly weird. What happens is it somehow grants him much higher regeneration than 3HP/round at high levels, as if the spell triggers constantly. I removed it in exchange for a different implementation -

When hit, Berserker has a 20% chance to regenerate some of his wounds.

I kept it as a short-lasting spell (13 seconds) with minimum regeneration of 1HP/round. I've also assigned this to level 2, not 11, for testing purposes. I'm not sure how I'd scale this (it scales itself as he gets hit more often) or if the idea has any merit at all - what I wanted to do is make Berserker a bit more "battle-hungry", and this is only useful is he's fighting. AI benefits from this, which is really nice to see.

(To implement this, I had to use shells as per "on-hit" Frenzy, otherwise it doesn't work with a % based chance. I'm really getting good with this .).

 

For the sake of AI Berserkers, I've restored the immunities to Rage, and the original save vs Death bonus (spells save is redundant with immunities).

To balance it out, a net -4 penalty to AC/Breath is imposed. THAC0 bonus removed, and +3/6/9 damage added (maybe +4/8/12 is better)

EFF with 15% Frenzy chance I've removed from here.

Anyhow - the part which I hate the most, I've added immunity to Frenzy here....I know these 2 go together even in PnP, but the drawback is enormous...up to the point where you keep your Berserker away from the heat of the battle, which is even worse.

 

Frenzy - I've made it only 9 seconds, and increased the chance to 10%. Probably could extend duration to 12, however. I've nerfed it's drawbacks (-1 to AC, Breath)

and added a +1/+2/+3 damage increase at levels 1/10/19 to make it scale a bit.

EFF with 15% chance I implemented here - Frenzy effects now stack with itself. The more a Frenzied Berserker hits, the harder he hits, and less he cares about his protection.

Low duration has 2 benefits:

1)it ensures stacks don't go too high (I'm playing BG1 now, it never stacked, but it does in ToB, most I've witnessed is 3 stacks)

2) helps when Berserker goes crazy and decides it's time to kill Viconia

 

How he preforms? Fine, at least in BG1... Frenzy triggers often enough so you don't forget it's there (chance could probably be lowered to 5% in SoA), for hard battles/mages you'll want Rage anyway. Essentialy, I created a heavy-hitter/steroid fighter which is hard to disable (apart that damn Web) and is very vulnerable once on cooldown (if Frenzy triggers while he's exhausted, it's almost a sure PW:Reload)

 

Toughts?

[kreso]

This above doesn't work.

The "on-hit" trigger itself doesn't work either - it triggers even if the character isn't hit - apperantly, this activates even if standing in Stinking Cloud, Web and similar, and taking no damage et all.

Regeneration, which I made using the same opcode, shares this flaw - it activates even if 0 damage was taken, which is annoying and silly.

[DrAzTiK]

Neither Stoneskin nor MI blocks Disruptive Strike. Ranged weapons are a great chocie for KR's WS but higher apr is not crucial because Disruptive Strike's spell failure is not cumulative

 

Why MI doen't block disruptive strike? You are supposed to miss the target completely so ?? Doesn't disruptive strike work like weapons elemental damage ??

 

THe problem with this ability is also that I don't really understand how it can be realistic. How exactly is it possible to make a enemy mage to fail his casting just by hitting him with a weapon ? Why this effect would bypass stoneskin and MI ?

[Demivrgvs]

Wizard Slayer

Neither Stoneskin nor MI blocks Disruptive Strike. Ranged weapons are a great chocie for KR's WS but higher apr is not crucial because Disruptive Strike's spell failure is not cumulative

Why MI doen't block disruptive strike? You are supposed to miss the target completely so ?? Doesn't disruptive strike work like weapons elemental damage ??

Afaik almost all "on hit" effects have the bad habit of bypassing MI, but Kreso or other beta testers might confirm it or not. Generally I'd be glad if it didn't because I agree about it making no sense, though in this case it's probably a good thing in terms of gameplay. If DS doesn't bypass things like Stoneskin than the ability would be rather poor, because normal strike would perform pretty much the same way.

 

The problem with this ability is also that I don't really understand how it can be realistic. How exactly is it possible to make a enemy mage to fail his casting just by hitting him with a weapon?

I'm not sure myself if there's a "realistic" concept behind it, I was fine considering it some supernatural ability. You might consider it like a readied action (e.g. once the ability is activated the WS keep an attack of opportunity ready to disrupt spellcasting) or similarly to a called shot the WS could have dropped mage's spellbook, harmed his hands (hampering the somatic component of spellcastinc), etc.

[kreso]

Wizard Slayer

Afaik almost all "on hit" effects have the bad habit of bypassing MI, but Kreso or other beta testers might confirm it or not. Generally I'd be glad if it didn't because I agree about it making no sense, though in this case it's probably a good thing in terms of gameplay. If DS doesn't bypass things like Stoneskin than the ability would be rather poor, because normal strike would perform pretty much the same way.

Yes. I have no problem with it, since Mirror Image is OP as it is anyway. Even if you could make it protect the mage from Disruptive Strike, I'd vote against it - having a mage protected from a WS strike by casting a 2nd level spell is bit unfair imo.

 

The problem with this ability is also that I don't really understand how it can be realistic..

BG is a world of magic. If Jaheira can summon insects from thin air and conjure bolts of lightning, why shouldn't a WS "infect" a wizard with a failure chance? It's not supposed to be realistic.

[kreso]

Jsut an idea about Called Shots:

Would the game properly recognize "set apr to 1" effect for using it?

If not, Refinements introduced a stance for Archers which had a "slow" effect, I think this could be used here so they don't get overly powerful.

[polytope]

This above doesn't work.

The "on-hit" trigger itself doesn't work either - it triggers even if the character isn't hit - apperantly, this activates even if standing in Stinking Cloud, Web and similar, and taking no damage et all.

Regeneration, which I made using the same opcode, shares this flaw - it activates even if 0 damage was taken, which is annoying and silly.

 

Did you try setting the trigger condition to 11 (took damage) rather than zero (hit by) which returns true for non-damaging hostile spells?

 

Neither Stoneskin nor MI blocks Disruptive Strike. Ranged weapons are a great chocie for KR's WS but higher apr is not crucial because Disruptive Strike's spell failure is not cumulative

 

Why MI doen't block disruptive strike? You are supposed to miss the target completely so ?? Doesn't disruptive strike work like weapons elemental damage ??

 

Mirror image only protects from damage, not secondary effects in the item's feature block so yeah, a WS disrupts the mage and a vampire level drains you by hitting your mirror images. Vorpal weapons at least could be made to respect stoneskin and mirror image by changing the vorpal opcode to slashing damage set to a value, same as the harm spell.

 

MI is also seriously buggy when it comes to poison and disease. I mentioned this issue ages ago to Ascension64. I don't think it was ever fixed but he has a wish list as long as your arm.

[kreso]

Did you try setting the trigger condition to 11 (took damage) rather than zero (hit by) which returns true for non-damaging hostile spells?

No, my NI shows triggers from 0 to 9. Guess I should switch to DL Editor? I still think it wouldn't make much difference - a chance even as low as 5% skyrockets in BG2 - posions, diseases, insect bites, fireshield effect would all still trigger afaik. What's worse, 5% almost never happens in BG1 (full plate grants supreme protection even on a 10 dex fighter for those levels).I ended up changing it to a spell which has a chance to trigger every round when attacked (7). Did not yet test it in practice. Even this solution will probably have a fair share of problems, but balancing Berserk opcode alone is such a pain anyway - especially when it comes to BG2 mages which eat up the Berserker HP pool very fast.

 

Ascension64...... has a wish list as long as your arm.

Well, it's Christmas soon..

[Demivrgvs]

Called Shots

Would the game properly recognize "set apr to 1" effect for using it?

If not, Refinements introduced a stance for Archers which had a "slow" effect, I think this could be used here so they don't get overly powerful.

Unfortunately it doesn't work. Setting apr to 0 does, but setting it to 1 doesn't seem to prevent additional effects from increasing it (not sure if BGEE developers fixed it when they created their unique halberd using this opcode, but I bet they didn't). Too bad because it would have been a very nice way to handle a bunch of things.

 

Anyway, as I told you, there are at least other two ways to make CS affect the target only on the first successful strike.

 

Berserker

@kreso, you cannot stay without talking about this kit eh? I guess I can tell you what I'm working on at least.

It all comes down to two things:

1) Frenzy is triggered on hit (as per earlier versions) and not when struck (as per PnP)

2) Frenzy and PnP Supreme Power Attack are "merged" into a customized Offensive Stance

 

1) As you noticed the PnP solution really doesn't work well within BG, while triggering Frenzy by successfully hitting someone should also give much more control over who you want to target (at least at the beginning of a fight)

 

2) the idea here is to make Frenzy trigger only when the Berserker is using Offensive Stance. This gives players the maximum allowable control over it, as they may even decide to not risk entering a Frenzy at all, but willingly give up to the huge dmg output potential. I'm undecided about making Rage automatically activate OS or not, but conceptually it probably should.

 

What do you think?

 

I all this fails, I can only think of two remaining options:

a) merging Rage and Frenzy into a single active ability

b) give up to the berserking opcode, and simply give the kit a customized Offensive Stance (gives twice as much damage as a True Fighter but lowers both thac0 and AC)

[kreso]

Called Shots

 

Unfortunately it doesn't work. Setting apr to 0 does, but setting it to 1 doesn't seem to prevent additional effects from increasing it (not sure if BGEE developers fixed it when they created their unique halberd using this opcode, but I bet they didn't).

They didn't. They didn't even fix the effects auras use, so don't bother checking.

 

 

Berserker

 

@kreso, you cannot stay without talking about this kit eh?

Demi, for the last 2 months I'm working on balancing the berserker, I ain't even considering playing nothing else. Let's just say I don't give up until it's properly done, and the more obstacles there are the more it annoys me so I feel obliged to work on it. It's almost a condition. At least I'm aware of it....

.

It all comes down to two things:

1) Frenzy is triggered on hit (as per earlier versions) and not when struck (as per PnP)

Yeah. The "on hit" triggers way to randomly/often. Any big SoA battle will have you berserking, so it's largely irrelevant wether it 5, 10, or 50% - you gonna get it anyway. And those insects/2x magic missile triggers.....bah.

2) Frenzy and PnP Supreme Power Attack are "merged" into a customized Offensive Stance

Like it.

 

 

2) the idea here is to make Frenzy trigger only when the Berserker is using Offensive Stance. This gives players the maximum allowable control over it, as they may even decide to not risk entering a Frenzy at all, but willingly give up to the huge dmg output potential. I'm undecided about making Rage automatically activate OS or not, but conceptually it probably should.

I like this. Keep in mind - SCS makes (and I make even more ) some enemies into kitted Berserkers. So, let them benefit from as much features as they can - merge whatever you can squeeze into Rage ability which they use or grant as passives. OS would require additional scripting from DavidW. Hopefully, one day he'll implement full KR support, but even now it's pretty grand what he did with saving throws and passives.

 

I all this fails, I can only think of two remaining options:

a) merging Rage and Frenzy into a single active ability

b) give up to the berserking opcode, and simply give the kit a customized Offensive Stance (gives twice as much damage as a True Fighter but lowers both thac0 and AC)

You know my opinion of "Berserker with no actual berserk" so I'd vote for - Frenzy on hit when uses OS, Rage=OS + bonuses (HP bonus etc).

All in all, I agree. Just make sure that the damage he gets equals the cost of no control.

 

P.S.

Interesting, in all my experiments, I found that at least one thing doesn't work "as it should". Stacking Frenzy bonuses doesn't work lineary as I imagined, but grows with some crazy exponential function(+1, +2, +8, +16) instead. "on hit" triggers without damage, or being hit at all.

[yarpen]

Some food for thought in terms of Wizard Slayer's usability: what about making him unable to use items with activated abilities? If we'd consider his touch have negative effect on spellcasters, he really shouldn't be that good at casting spells even from items. On the other hand, he just should be able to grab that Ring of Protection, right?

 

Also, swapping that devastating 40% chance to Miscast Magic for cumulative 5% chance. It actually encourages him to attack things more than once.

[Kalindor]

I'm not sure about a 5% cumulative spell failure rate since a mage's HP is usually too low to take a ton of hits. This would result in the scenario where the wizard would be pretty much dead by the time he accumulated substantial spell failure chance. IIRC (I may be wrong), often times SCS wizards have a contingency with PFMW or the like that triggers immediately upon being struck by an attack. In this case, you may only have a window to land one shot.

[kreso]

Some food for thought in terms of Wizard Slayer's usability: what about making him unable to use items with activated abilities?

I think that's too much work flagging than it's worth.

 

Also, swapping that devastating 40% chance to Miscast Magic for cumulative 5% chance. It actually encourages him to attack things more than once.

This would make him a rather poor choice in BG1. I didn't find that 40% is that devestating, they can still succesfully cast for 60% time.

 

I'm not sure about a 5% cumulative spell failure rate since a mage's HP is usually too low to take a ton of hits.

This failure chance goes through protections like stoneskins and mirror images, provided that the hit is succesful (it won't have effect on a PFMWed mage if you're attacking him with magical weapons).

Imo, it's fine as it is. Miscast effect only lasts for 3 rounds, and affects only spells cast via spellbook - a mage can still erect defences via triggers and similar.

[DavidW]

Some food for thought in terms of Wizard Slayer's usability: what about making him unable to use items with activated abilities?

I think that's too much work flagging than it's worth.

 

Do you mean technically? If so, actually it's quite simple to write code to do it automatically.

[kreso]

Do you mean technically?

Yes.

 

..... write code....

I don't know anything about writing Weidu code, I'm afraid, even that such things can be done (now when you mention it, you'd probably flag every item which has a "magical" ability as they show in NInfinity to be unusable by WS).