Arrows of Dispelling

[Guest Guest]

I just recently finished a game of scs and i must say i enjoyed it very much. However i found that any fight where i used arrows of dispelling became alot easier. In my opinion they are just a bit too good. Perhaps a component like the one in scs2 that simply removes them from shops could be implemented?

[Icendoan]

This has been suggested before, at which point the answer is you don't have to buy them.

 

Icen

[OneEyedPhoenix]

I have also noticed this in my game.

I have never bought a single dispelling arrow, but I have found plenty of them. Enough to easily win most mage fights.

 

The problem is that vanilla behavior of these arrows is to dispel with 100% success rate, unlike the level three mage and cleric spells. I changed the arrows to allow a save throw vs spells in my own game, which decreased their efficiency significantly.

 

A tweak like this sounds like a better solution than to remove them completely.

[kthxbye]

I don't think in a vanilla game you can find Dispelling Arrows as loot, I guess you found them with some enhancing/quest mods installed?

Without finding them, those arrows are really powerful but REALLY expensive, which make them - in my eyes - quite balanced.

Still, an optional tweak could be nice and I think this would fit SCS well.

[Jarno Mikkola]

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Question, why the CHEESE would anyone shoot those arrows, if they had only x/20 ability to Dispel a magic the target has? Yeah, and let's make the effect also avoidable by magic resistance, give +20 to save bonus etc etc.

 

Information; the mods that add those arrows, also might come with opposition that those items are needed against, or that use them against you.

[OneEyedPhoenix]

Question, why the CHEESE would anyone shoot those arrows, if they had only x/20 ability to Dispel a magic the target has? Yeah, and let's make the effect also avoidable by magic resistance, give +20 to save bonus etc etc.

 

Um... To dispel defensive magic obviously.

 

Even if they had only 5/20 ability to dispel magic they would still be very good. In BG1 these arrows are your only effective way to kill pre-buffed ScS mages and they have the distinct advantage of dispelling every defensive spell on impact (kind of like breach only better because you can't save or spell-protect against these arrows).

[kthxbye]

Well, I would use those for sure if they had a bit lower cost and a save vs the dispel effect.

Anyway, it's for these situations ("I like it that way!" "No that way around instead!" ) that the said component should be optional, isn't it.

[Salk]

The dispel effect is automatic but doesn't it require a successful hit?

[OneEyedPhoenix]

The dispel effect is automatic but doesn't it require a successful hit?

 

I think so. It really isn't a problem for an Archer to roll a hit on a mage though.

[kthxbye]

Yes it requires a successful hit, but my Imoen, changed to a multi thief/mage with Level 1 NPC, has a thac0 of 12 (or lower, if she leveled up since I last checked) with a simple short bow +1 and normal arrows, wearing nothing but the bracers you get from the fastest dart thrower of the sword coast. With a better bow and without the high thac0 for being a multiclass, she'd have no problems at all hitting with almost all her shots. A warrior can achieve insanely low thac0 with a bow.

Actually, Imoen already hits very often in my game..

[Icendoan]

Also, you can (and lots of people do) steal them from the shop you buy them from, thus eliminating the problem of money.

 

Icen

[DavidW]

This has been suggested before, at which point the answer is you don't have to buy them.

 

I don't think that was my answer. I think it breaks suspension of disbelief to deliberately choose not to buy something.

 

The "remove dispelling arrows" component of SCSII will actually work here (I think) but I'll clone it to SCS for the next update.

[kthxbye]

David, could you also insert a component that will add a save against the dispel effect, or that anyway lowers the chance of the dispel effect to kick in? I think that a solution like this, maybe adjusting the arrows price accordingly too, would be optimal.

I'd do this myself for ktweaks, but I think it fits SCS better, and you have way more experience in balancing issues than me.

[Jarno Mikkola]

Yes it requires a successful hit, but my Imoen, changed to a multi thief/mage with Level 1 NPC, has a thac0 of 12 (or lower, if she leveled up since I last checked) with a simple short bow +1 and normal arrows, wearing nothing but the bracers you get from the fastest dart thrower of the sword coast. With a better bow and without the high thac0 for being a multiclass, she'd have no problems at all hitting with almost all her shots. A warrior can achieve insanely low thac0 with a bow.

Yeah, but that requires Imoen. Who by the way has 18 in her DEX, which is kinda rare.

 

Let's see, we take a warrior, ah Inquisitor who, ouh, can't use arrows.

Next example, we have a Fighter, a dwarf Fighter, proficient with axe and hammers, without any bow proficiency, and being dwarf, having extremely low dexterity(DEX 3 ) and we'll have a Fighter that has 25 in his Thac0 at level 1. He'll never hit his opponents with many arrows or bows, cause the enemies also level up when he does, at least the 20 first levels he gets Thac0 the reduction...

 

Now, for arguments reason, let's take a better character, a one that was 'designed' to be 'ranged attacker'(ranger); Kivan. Being at level 5(average for BG1) and having the ability put 2 points to Long Bow 'he did', carrying +1 Long Bow, DEX at 17, he gets a total Thac0 bonus of: +5 +1 +1 +2, and starting Thac0 of 20, he gets end Thac0 of 11. The enemies he'll face most probably will have at least a platemail armor class(AC=3), or a fighter like Zhalimar Cloudwulfe, who has Plate mail and DEX of 18, we'll be able to hit them about 15 to 10 times out of 20, so far so good.

 

Now, let's take a mage of similar ability(from the same fight): Naaman who has a priest friend near by, AC 7 braces, Mirror Image, Stoneskin, Shield spell and other nice spells to back himself up with that theoretically will make his AC about 5 or so. Now we'll be able to him with Kivan 16 of times 20, all the 1 out of was the 5 images(unless we score a critical hit), that being ~4 out of 20 times... this sometimes really begins to get to you. Now, if we add the save throw to that, Naaman's save vs magic is 9/20, meaning you'll have about 1/10 of times you'll be able to dispel the magic with the first arrow, the second will give us 1/10 too, the next will give us about 3/20, the 4th will give us 4 out's of 20, and the 5th will give us 7/20.

[kthxbye]

I think that if you hit a mirror imaged wizard, it doesn't really matter if you hit the wiz or an image, the dispel kicks in.

Obviously using the dispelling arrows requires a character that can use bows (well, duh ).

About your arguments, they all make sense but they all start from the presupposition that having an arrow that dispels on hit each and every magic protection with 100% accuracy is ok. I think, and it seems OneEyedPhoenix agrees on this (please correct me if that's not the case), that a single arrow can't be that effective. I would gladly use dispelling arrows with 25% possibility to dispel the effects, if their cost is lowered to a reasonable level, even taking into consideration that not every shot of my archer will hit - making the possibility to dispel the protection lower than that 25%. That's because I think it's immersion-breaking having some badass mages with tons of protections that want to fry CHARNAME's party, posing a great challenge, being defeated with one arrow each since without protections at all they would last, what, 2 rounds? And if they are that badass, this makes me think two things - first, well, the arrows must've been created by some god to be THAT powerful and, well, maybe the mages (epic level ones too!) weren't that badass in the end.

Using the 25% arrows instead would mean it actually requires some time before you can dispel the protections of ONE mage, making the challenge easier than not using the arrows, but still without making it a walkthrough.

 

Now, obviously it's impossible that we all agree on how those arrows should work - someone will keep them as they are, someone will simply remove them from the game, and someone maybe would like to use them as OneEyedPhoenix and I would like to have them. That's the reason why optional components exists, in my opinion - nobody's forcing you to install that. But hey, if someone else is going to use it (and so far we are two out of six people that replied, a pretty good percentage) why not make it?

I think a tweak like that would fit SCS, so I'm waiting to know if David is interested in making it himself for his next SCS release, but if he don't want to I'll do it myself, obviously without forcing anyone to install it if they don't want to.