PfMW, Mantles & Absolute Immunity

[Aranthys]

I think Demi could be convinced to make an extra component taking care of PfMW. Or provide something else for you

 

Cheers

Well I was thinking about having a special component, like "Controversed changed" that modifies the spells like these.

But it's up to Demi anyway.

[DavidW]

Problem is, this is exploitable by a PC player by using normal melee weapons.

Something that the IA can't do.

Perhaps the answer should be 'don't exploit it'? After all, it's not like you can unintentionally make an advantage of using mundane weapons.

 

I don't actually think this is an exploit. If the designers (of the PnP Complete Wizards' Handbook in the first instance; of BG2 in the second) hadn't intended you to be able to do this, they'd have made a different spell.

 

 

Various comments:

What I don't like is this eternal crusade for perfecting the odds and tweaking spells in order to give the AI the best possible chances of victory.

I don't think either Demi or I are talking about that. We're just trying to avoid actively spoiling the AI by tweaking spells.

 

 

We are building SR with the (wrong) assumption that we are all "power players". This assumption is also present in the philosophy of SCS so that a player that doesn't want a stupid AI ends up fighting an almost infallible killing machine (best possible spells for the level cast at best possible time, detection of the players' protection so that the attacks are always "intelligent" -> no "waste" of resources, etc. etc.).

For about the twentieth time, no AI mod, including SCS, is remotely as intelligent as a halfway decent player, let alone infallible. (I take the point about protection detection but it doesn't make a major difference.)

 

 

"Players can equip a non magical weapon so that they can hurt enemies that have PfMW while the AI can not. We must "fix" this.."

As a point of interest, there's no in-principle block to AI doing this. (RR does it, I think). It's just too much work (for me, at any rate).

 

I also don't like this SCS script traits. There's no diviner in-game, because diviner cannot realise proper player-killing programme.

 

If it makes you feel happier, interpret half of all the evokers you meet as diviners. They're functionally identical. In fact, if I was just going for powerplay, I'd use diviners in favour of evokers: they have access to enchantment, which evokers don't. I don't use them because I can't think of a way to do anything distinctive with them (there's no "divination-based" set of attack strategies, in the sense that there's an "evocation-based" or "necromancy-based" set.)

 

I don't use transmuters or abjurers, because they can't "realise proper player-killing programme" (or, as I'd prefer to put it, "fight remotely effectively") due to their lack of access to certain core spells (PMW and Stoneskin). But you can blame the vanilla game for that: I think every vanilla BG2 mage uses Stoneskin, and pretty much every vanilla BG2 mage uses some abjuration spell, so none of them can be transmuters or abjurers. I'm just not actively choosing to add them.

[Demivrgvs]

Various comments:

Yes, Demivrgvs. You are right about pointing out that there are two different kind of exploits: the ones that the player seeks to take advantage of on purpouse and the ones that just "happen" (these could be perceived actually almost as "bugs"). I agree that the latter should be somehow fixed by SR.

We agree on this then.

 

What I don't like is this eternal crusade for perfecting the odds and tweaking spells in order to give the AI the best possible chances of victory.

It's not like that, I just want want both players and AI to have the very same odds. Having a spell with two completely different power levels depending on who's using it doesn't seem so great within a mod which aims to rebalance the whole spell system.

 

This should be the job of AI mods (and, for my taste, without exasperating this aspect either: it is known that I oppose openly the detectable items, for example).

Yeah, I don't like too much detectable items, but scripting mages without it would make them behave like idiots. The ideal solution would be for them to use it, but to be able to detect immunities only after having experienced them (e.g. cast charm, target immune, assume target is immune), but I'm not going to ask DavidW such a thing, as it would make scripts way longer imo.

 

We are building SR with the (wrong) assumption that we are all "power players".

I don't, it doesn't take a power player to realize that PfMW used by him is just like Absolute Immunity.

 

But SR is a mod also for players that don't use SCS or other AI enhancing mods so I don't think you should reason like:

 

"Players can equip a non magical weapon so that they can hurt enemies that have PfMW while the AI can not. We must "fix" this.."

 

This is not a problem that should concern SR (and by the way, I don't think it is exploitation, in that case above).

I'll try to translate "Players can equip a non magical weapon so that they can hurt enemies that have PfMW while the AI can not" into an example of how I see this spell right now: would you like a fireball spell that cast by you deals 10d6 points of damage, if cast by the AI deals 1d6, but if cast by liches deals again 10d6?

 

 

I also don't like this SCS script traits. There's no diviner in-game, because diviner cannot realise proper player-killing programme. I don't want SR to go this way. I was always thinking about this mod as opposition, now wizards and clerics have got a lot of options - they can change you into squirrel or just spam you with fireballs, summon horde of ogres - and that's cool. We should keep on this.

Well, SCS without SR can't do all these things, but yeah, making all schools a viable choice is indeed one of my main goals.

 

 

I hope that even if Demi decides to do as DavidW or Aranthyrs are talking about - there would be an allowance for creating mini-mod which changes Protection from Weapons spells, which could be fully compatible with SR. Okay?

I think Demi could be convinced to make an extra component taking care of PfMW. Or provide something else for you

Well, within SR I don't want multiple versions of the same spell, but if it's so important for you it doesn't take me much to create a mini-mod where PfMW becomes a Lesser Mantle. Just don't use it with SCS though.

 

I'll be incredibly busy for a few days (till tuesday), thus forgive me if I'm concise.

[Shaitan]

I think Demi could be convinced to make an extra component taking care of PfMW. Or provide something else for you

 

Cheers

Well I was thinking about having a special component, like "Controversed changed" that modifies the spells like these.

But it's up to Demi anyway.

 

Indeed

[Salk]

For about the twentieth time, no AI mod, including SCS, is remotely as intelligent as a halfway decent player, let alone infallible. (I take the point about protection detection but it doesn't make a major difference.)

 

Well, I guess I can't express myself clearly enough.

 

I don't make a point of pure AI intelligence here and I never meant to.

 

I make a point of AI effectiveness.

 

The SCS AI is as effective as it can be. It's highly optimized to avoid wasting resources and hitting always the right the target at the best of their ability. The spells are carefully chosen so that the offensive potential is always maxed out.

 

You say party protections' detection is not a big advantage but I happen to disagree on more than one level (gameplay-wise, realism-wise but most importantly fairness-wise).

 

A killing machine is not intelligent but it is still deadly.

 

I appreciate immensly the big work behind SCS(II) and I can but thank you for providing great modularity within the mod.

 

I am sorry if I come off as an ungrateful swine. It's never been my intention.

[DavidW]

@Everyone:

 

I'm just in the process of revising SCS's defensive spells, so I thought I'd share my impressions from the enemy-AI side.

 

1) For reasons I've already given, I'm happy with PMW itself: I wouldn't want to nerf it, as I think that'll have big negative effects on enemy mages. (I can tolerate a duration reduction, though I'm not actually in favour).

2) I'm generally finding the 7th-9th level spells just slightly too weak. +3 weapons are far too common, in particular; +4 weapons aren't appallingly hard to come by in late-ish SoA. However, I'd use them extensively if the level of protection went up one step: Mantle protects from +3 or weaker; Improved Mantle from +4 or weaker; Absolute Immunity from everything except +6 (or, perhaps, anything at all). If I had this in place, my non-vampire, non-lich mages would make extensive use of them. (Apart from anything else, I'm finding 6th level spell slots really hard to come by.)

3) I'm unfussed by vampires and liches getting Absolute Immunity on the cheap by using PMW. I think this is on a par with liches standing in Cloudkills or beholders floating above Webs.

4) In ToB I'd probably keep using PMW more, because of the profusion of high-plus weapons. I might still use Absolute Immunity, though - especially if it protects against +6 weapons.

 

So: if SR wants to make this proposed tweak, I'll support it. I may even build it in to SCS itself.

 

I guess from an SR, as opposed to SCS, perspective, players might still prefer to use PMW, for reasons already discussed. If this bothers people, an easy tweak would be a slight modification of the duration. 7th-9th level spells could last 5 rounds, or PMW could last 3 rounds. I prefer the former since I think it leads to slightly more interesting mage battles.

 

Thoughts welcomed, especially from Demi.

 

@Salk:

You say party protections' detection is not a big advantage but I happen to disagree on more than one level (gameplay-wise, realism-wise but most importantly fairness-wise).

OK; that's not my playtest experience but play styles differ.

 

A killing machine is not intelligent but it is still deadly.

I'm reasonably sure I could mop up SCS mages very easily in an evenly-matched battle. They're deadlier than vanilla mages but nowhere near as deadly as intelligently played human-controlled mages.

 

 

I appreciate immensly the big work behind SCS(II) and I can but thank you for providing great modularity within the mod.

 

I am sorry if I come off as an ungrateful swine. It's never been my intention.

 

Please stop apologising for critical comments. I really don't mind. (I'm an academic, for goodness sake)

[Demivrgvs]

Various comments:

What I don't like is this eternal crusade for perfecting the odds and tweaking spells in order to give the AI the best possible chances of victory.

I don't think either Demi or I are talking about that. We're just trying to avoid actively spoiling the AI by tweaking spells.

Exactly.

 

 

"Players can equip a non magical weapon so that they can hurt enemies that have PfMW while the AI can not. We must "fix" this.."

As a point of interest, there's no in-principle block to AI doing this. (RR does it, I think). It's just too much work (for me, at any rate).

Actually it wouldn't completely solve the issue, as most creatures simply can't have a non magical attack.

 

Anyway, if most of you prefer vanilla's PfMW, fine with me, but I do feel it has a very inconsistent behaviour, to say the least.

 

 

Diviners

I also don't like this SCS script traits. There's no diviner in-game, because diviner cannot realise proper player-killing programme.

If it makes you feel happier, interpret half of all the evokers you meet as diviners. They're functionally identical. In fact, if I was just going for powerplay, I'd use diviners in favour of evokers: they have access to enchantment, which evokers don't. I don't use them because I can't think of a way to do anything distinctive with them (there's no "divination-based" set of attack strategies, in the sense that there's an "evocation-based" or "necromancy-based" set.)

Diviners being better evokers than Evokers is great!

 

Anyway, perhaps it's just a stupid suggestion, but I was thinking to add a special feature to mid-high level Diviners within Kit Revisions, 'Detect Invisibility by Script'. Allowing a high level diviner to see invisible creatures should make them very unique imo, as they would be able to target spells at improved invisible creatures!

 

P.S Does liches already do this?

 

 

Abjurers & Transmuters

I don't use transmuters or abjurers, because they can't "realise proper player-killing programme" (or, as I'd prefer to put it, "fight remotely effectively") due to their lack of access to certain core spells (PMW and Stoneskin). But you can blame the vanilla game for that: I think every vanilla BG2 mage uses Stoneskin, and pretty much every vanilla BG2 mage uses some abjuration spell, so none of them can be transmuters or abjurers. I'm just not actively choosing to add them.

Yeah...after ages I recently realized why for example Illusionists in PnP have an almost identical illusion variant of Wail of the Banshee, Weird. Because they can't cast Wail of the Banshee!

 

That's why for example making Ghost Armor an Illusion spell is great imo, because Necromancers have Spirit Armor instead, and thus both specialist mages can have a similar spell but with a unique flavor.

 

Anyway, trust me, I'll work on this and I'll strive to make each school and every specialist mage as cool and viable as possible, both within SR and KR.

[Demivrgvs]

I'm just in the process of revising SCS's defensive spells, so I thought I'd share my impressions from the enemy-AI side.

 

1) For reasons I've already given, I'm happy with PMW itself: I wouldn't want to nerf it, as I think that'll have big negative effects on enemy mages. (I can tolerate a duration reduction, though I'm not actually in favour).

2) I'm generally finding the 7th-9th level spells just slightly too weak. +3 weapons are far too common, in particular; +4 weapons aren't appallingly hard to come by in late-ish SoA. However, I'd use them extensively if the level of protection went up one step: Mantle protects from +3 or weaker; Improved Mantle from +4 or weaker; Absolute Immunity from everything except +6 (or, perhaps, anything at all). If I had this in place, my non-vampire, non-lich mages would make extensive use of them. (Apart from anything else, I'm finding 6th level spell slots really hard to come by.)

3) I'm unfussed by vampires and liches getting Absolute Immunity on the cheap by using PMW. I think this is on a par with liches standing in Cloudkills or beholders floating above Webs.

4) In ToB I'd probably keep using PMW more, because of the profusion of high-plus weapons. I might still use Absolute Immunity, though - especially if it protects against +6 weapons.

 

So: if SR wants to make this proposed tweak, I'll support it. I may even build it in to SCS itself.

 

I guess from an SR, as opposed to SCS, perspective, players might still prefer to use PMW, for reasons already discussed. If this bothers people, an easy tweak would be a slight modification of the duration. 7th-9th level spells could last 5 rounds, or PMW could last 3 rounds. I prefer the former since I think it leads to slightly more interesting mage battles.

 

Thoughts welcomed, especially from Demi.

And here I am.

 

Well, actually almost anything you are suggesting is exactly how it already works within SR. Mantle do protects from +3 weapons, Improved Mantle from +4 ones, and Absolute Immunity protected "only" from +5 ones in V2, but it currently is improved within V3 to effectively grant "absolute immunity".

 

If most players prefer to raise Mantle duration instead of lowering PfMW one, and if you (DavidW) do think it would be much better, fine with me.

[Salk]

If most players prefer to raise Mantle duration instead of lowering PfMW one, and if you (DavidW) do think it would be much better, fine with me.

 

Personally I would rather go with the original plan of nerfing PfMW duration.

[Constantine]

The problem is as follows : in ToB, you have access to +5 / +6 weapons. That means, you can only have Greater mantle & Absolute immunity as a mage to protect you.

 

The problem is that, in ToB, most mages are much MUCH easier to kill since you have access to :

- Timestop

- Spellstrike.

My dear god, so WHAT? TOB is the EPIC LEVEL adventure, whence the high level spells and uber powerful items. C'mon, embrace it, there is nothing you can do about it. You think Timestop&Spellstrike are way too powerful? Well, they are supposed to be this way, they are 9th level spells after all. More over, enemy mages depending on lower level Mantles and loosing is of no consequences. It is obvious that their problem lies in their AI, in the their selection of spells. You think vanilla (or even PnP) low level spells are too weak? So lets just erase them, and all will be happy? A don't think so

 

Both combined means that the enemy mages become quite easy to handle.

What you're suggesting would :

- Change pretty much nothing in first part of SoA

- Make the end of SoA much easier

- Make ToB mages much, much easier.

 

I'm sorry but i'll have to disagree with your proposal.

[Jarno Mikkola]

If most players prefer to raise Mantle duration instead of lowering PfMW one, and if you (DavidW) do think it would be much better, fine with me.

Personally I would rather go with the original plan of nerfing PfMW duration.

So do I, or if DavidW wishes, he can make the PfMW higher level spell, like say we take the Mantle make it 6th level spell, take the IMantle make it 7th level spell and PfMW making it 8th level spell and Absolute Immunity(so it protects from everything).

 

By the way, this would be far better than the other suggestion I presented earlier.

[DavidW]

Well, actually almost anything you are suggesting is exactly how it already works within SR. Mantle do protects from +3 weapons, Improved Mantle from +4 ones, and Absolute Immunity protected "only" from +5 ones in V2, but it currently is improved within V3 to effectively grant "absolute immunity".

Fantastic (and apologies if I'm behind the curve). Then I'll build in allowance for that behaviour in SCS, and add an SCS component to duplicate the change.

 

If most players prefer to raise Mantle duration instead of lowering PfMW one, and if you (DavidW) do think it would be much better, fine with me.

 

I don't feel that strongly either way; I'd want to see playtesting. My default view is just that PfMW functions about right.

 

Personally I would rather go with the original plan of nerfing PfMW duration.

So do I, or if DavidW wishes, he can make the PfMW higher level spell, like say we take the Mantle make it 6th level spell, take the IMantle make it 7th level spell and PfMW making it 8th level spell and Absolute Immunity(so it protects from everything).

 

Not going to happen, as already noted.

[Salk]

Please stop apologising for critical comments. I really don't mind. (I'm an academic, for goodness sake)

 

Yes, sorry about that...

 

No, seriously. It's just that I really hate to offend people.

Still it has happened in the past, both on forums and in real life, despite my intentions.

 

I take it that critical comments are always well accepted by academics then.

 

Good to know...

[Shaitan]

If most players prefer to raise Mantle duration instead of lowering PfMW one, and if you (DavidW) do think it would be much better, fine with me.

 

Personally I would rather go with the original plan of nerfing PfMW duration.

I would prefer to make it function with SCS as much as possible thus striving to make it look like what DavidW prefer. This I do due to gameplaying preferences. In a PnP game things are different.

[DavidW]

I take it that critical comments are always well accepted by academics then.

 

Good to know...

 

God no. But they ought to be. (And people are usually quite good.)