SR V3

[Ardanis]

Except I can then pepper them full of fire/ice/acid arrows. It can be somewhat countered by granting an uninterruptible casting for the spell's duration, but that's just another replacement of the root of problem. As magic wouldn't interrupt them either.

[Demivrgvs]

Do you have an estimated releasedate

You know how these things go, modding generally requires twice the time expected. Anyway, my computer problems wasted my free time on sunday which generally is the only day where I have some considerable time to mod, thus I cannot promise anything, but I do want this to be the last week I work on SR V3 with all my heart.

 

PfMW

just an idea for balancing/nerfing PfMW that might also more significantly distinguish it.

 

have it grant (set, not increment) 100% physical damage resistance. the mage would still be vulnerable to those rightly-valued weapons that have effects like elemental damage or poison or stun, they just wouldn't be injured by them (much). it would basically act as an infinite number of stoneskins for the duration of the spell.

Long story short, I can't do such a thing, nor a similar one, as it would cause serious issue to the AI.

 

I recently managed to reach DavidW and he said that reducing PfMW to 3 rounds would work fine with his AI (though obviously mages with more than one PfMW spell memorized would recast it anyway), and I'm quite convinced this is the only solution to nerf PfMW without causing issues to the AI. It seems most of you agreed on this, and consider this a better solution than increasing (Improved) Mantle duration, am I wrong?

[Jarno Mikkola]

PfMW It seems most of you agreed on this, and consider this a better solution than increasing (Improved) Mantle duration, am I wrong?

That and increasing the casting time with 2 would be best...but that's my opinion.

[DarkWon]

That and increasing the casting time with 2 would be best...but that's my opinion.

 

What he said

[Guest Guest]

BG1 NPCs innate abilities

Are these custom spells? Shouldn't Dynaheir's Slow Poison and Yeslick's Dispel Magic work the same as the SR versions of those spells?

 

Monster Summoning III

You were the one who first mentioned Vampiric Touch as a possibility, and I liked the sound of it. I hope it is implementable. Regarding what else to use, if we're looking to have "spells appropriate for him or his two followers" then I'd have thought that Haste would be better than Slow, since he can Haste himself and the two Berserkers. This is true regardless of whether or not Slow has already been cast by the party at the enemy i.e. Haste will always be useful, but Slow may not if it's already been cast.

 

And if I remember correctly, Haste lasts almost half as long as Slow, so even if the party casts Haste, having another one to casts (i.e. the ogre mage's) would be useful for a long fight.

 

Spiritual Hammer

I think you meant "former" not "latter". If having it deal magic damage is going to cause issues, just stick with physical damage.

[Jarno Mikkola]

Spiritual Hammer If having it deal magic damage is going to cause issues, just stick with physical damage.

It won't, as long as the damage is not casted on by arcane magic... like it was with the none fixed Hallowed Redeemer.

[Shaitan]

I'm not in for making the casting time for pfmw longer, but 3 rounds seems fine.

[Demivrgvs]

Draw Upon Holy Might

We all agree this spell need to be nerfed, and the discussed solutions were:

1) change it completly (+1 bonus to thac0 and damage every 3 levels)

2) reduce the duration to 6 rounds

3) adding a fatigue effect at the end of the spell (e.g. like Haste)

 

1) it would make the spell more balanced, its effects wouldn't be dependent from starting characteristic values, and it would remove the "issue" which makes this spell only partially effective on pure clerics (as they can't benefit from constitution values higher than 16). This would be a huge change though, and it would probably make the spell much less unique.

2) this solution speaks for itself, reducing the duration is the simplest way to nerf a spell which gives huge advantages (e.g. PfMW)

3) this is the last solution I come up with, and probably the one I'd go for considering most of you don't like 1).

 

 

Fatigue Effects

Speaking of fatigue I currently use two different types of fatigue:

a) physical fatigue (e.g. Haste) which is the same applied after enraging and causes -2 penalty to thac0, damage and AC

b) mental fatigue (e.g. Restoration) which currently causes 20% spell failure rate and -2 to constitution

 

Personally I don't like too much the latter, I'd probably go with a) for every instance where a fatigue effect takes place, perhaps adding a -2 penalty to casting time if we want spellcasters to be affected in a more sensible way. Note that in PnP fatigue works just like a).

[Shaitan]

Draw Upon Holy Might

We all agree this spell need to be nerfed, and the discussed solutions were:

1) change it completly (+1 bonus to thac0 and damage every 3 levels)

2) reduce the duration to 6 rounds

3) adding a fatigue effect at the end of the spell (e.g. like Haste)

 

1) it would make the spell more balanced, its effects wouldn't be dependent from starting characteristic values, and it would remove the "issue" which makes this spell only partially effective on pure clerics (as they can't benefit from constitution values higher than 16). This would be a huge change though, and it would probably make the spell much less unique.

2) this solution speaks for itself, reducing the duration is the simplest way to nerf a spell which gives huge advantages (e.g. PfMW)

3) this is the last solution I come up with, and probably the one I'd go for considering most of you don't like 1).

 

If it DUHM shall be nerfed (and I tend to think so) I'd like option three due to:

 

Fatigue Effects

a) physical fatigue (e.g. Haste) which is the same applied after enraging and causes -2 penalty to thac0, damage and AC

Which I like - and it's even á lá PnP.

 

Regards

[Salk]

I agree with Shaitan.

 

Speaking of Fatigue, just remove b) altogether and just keep the PnP version. The +2 to casting time would be a nice touch though (and disabling the bard song while fatigued would also be an extra nice touch).

[Shaitan]

The +2 to casting time would be a nice touch though.

 

I forgot that, and I agree with Salk.

[Ardanis]

Draw Upon Holy Might

Personally, I'm for reducing it to 6 rounds. Afair there's no divine spell similar to PfMW in duration, so why not to add something unique.

 

If it shall be the fatigue anyway, then I'm for physical one. Mainly because '% of failure' during a combat.

[Demivrgvs]

Draw Upon Holy Might

I've opted for the Fatigue solution as most players voted for that (Mike, Shaitan, Salk, ...), and I've standardized the fatigue effect applied by spells as we discussed (PnP fatigue with the additional penalty to casting time).

 

Unless many of you don't like it I think I'll rename the spell Draw Upon Divine Might, as Divine Favor may be too drastical, but I'm quite convinced the "holy" part has to go considering even the most evil and unholy creatures in the realms can cast it.

 

 

Haste & Slow

The more I look into spells the more I find things that can be done. In this case I had to do again a lot of work to "fix" a few things. The problems here are more than it might seem: these two spells shouldn't stack with themselves (multiple Slow stack instead, and erroneously SR's changes to Haste made it "stackable" too), but should counter each other (this is why SR's Haste has +1 to thac0, AC and save vs. breath, to counter Slow's penalties) which means I cannot use the easy "Protection from Spell" opcode (I have to split the spells into multiple spells, so that multiple bonuses/penalties can't stack, but consecutive slow/haste opcodes can counter each other). This solution is not perfect, but it's the closest thing to perfection we can reach imo.

 

Leaving aside these technical issues, I'd like to discuss a few things, which actually may lead to a considerable "revolution".

 

1) Is SR Slow too weak?

 

2) Is Improved Haste overpowered?

 

1) I'm starting to think SR's -1 penalties (as per 3rd edition, whereas AD&D penalty was -4) may actually be not enough considering the victim's movement rate is halved (thus making his attack and defensive movements extremely predictable for an opponent). The problem is that increasing these penalties would imply a hasted creature should get equivalent bonuses to thac0 and AC to make Haste an effective counter of Slow, but that may cause Haste to become overpowered (even if we take the fatigue effect into account). I can imagine various ways to proceed:

a) make Haste affect a single target (with +4 bonus to thac0, and AC, +2 save vs. breath), so that we can use equivalent penalties for Slow.

b) use a +2/-2 value making both spells slightly more powerful than they currently are.

c) we may even decide we don't care if Haste and slow perfectly counter each other leaving us a little more free to do what we wish with each spell.

 

2) I'd like to point out that Improved Haste currently don't counter Slow despite the description (vanilla's -4 penalties to thac0 and AC weren't countered, and the same is still true for SR -1 penalties). Depending on what we decide for its lower level version we may leave it unchanged, add appropriate thac0/AC bonuses, or make it the "mass" version of Haste (a la IWD).

[Ardanis]

Slow

Doesn't being slowed already provide penalties to AC/thaco? I honestly don't remember, but iirc I did have easier time hitting slowed guys than them being at normal speed.

Even so, being slowed means less ApR and that already reduces damage output about by half.

 

Improved Haste

Maybe lesser ApR increase for fighters? (base-1)*2.

[Shaitan]

we may even decide we don't care if Haste and slow perfectly counter each other leaving us a little more free to do what we wish with each spell.

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