A question

[Demivrgvs]

Speaking of which, what I'd really like to do for v4 is to convince David (or find a way to make it myself, as he suggested how to do it some time ago) to replace all instances of SI:Abj with Spell Shield (making it protect from Dispel too if necessary), and all instances of SI:Div with Non-Detection (which will work in a completely new way as per PnP). Then we may move Spell Immunity to a higher lvl and keep its overpowering effectiveness, or we could even get rid of this sick spell that never existed in PnP (where it makes the caster immune to a single spell)

Sounds like a good plan for me. I'm afraid that SCS scripts are still far from being powerfull enemies (with exception of BANDITS) and David will not allow to decrease power of his wizards. Still, you know what I'm thinking about wizzies, especially those who are immune to Breach/Pierce Magic.

Well, we wouldn't make them less powerful.

 

Non-Detection will pratically be a SI:Div but divinations themselves may pierce it (if the protected creature fails a save). The degree of protection is the same, but not "infallible". I'd like to point out though that Non-Detection is a 3rd lvl spell, which means such protection will be much cheaper than a 5th lvl SI.

 

Spell Shield won't be weaker than SI:Abj (especially if we decide to make it work against Dispel Magic too) but it will be consistent! Against SI:Abj you currently have to use an abjuration spell to remove it (e.g. Spell Thrust), and you'll have to do the same against Spell Shield. It wouldn't grant immunity to Imprisonment anymore though, but I see it as a good thing.

 

P.S losing a bunch of ugly SI animations would be another advantage!

 

Now, I could see a a spell like the 9th level Freedom be able to protect from Time Stop, just like the 'Potion of Total Freedom^TM@IMP'. Is that balanced? -Is not my business to be the judge of that, but properly not, so I wouldn't go and change this.

Freedom affects all allies, and even a short lasting mass immunity to TS would be insanely overpowered.

[Jarno Mikkola]

Now, I could see a spell alike the 9th level Freedom be able to protect from Time Stop, just like the 'Potion of Total Freedom^TM@IMP'. Is that balanced? -Is not my business to be the judge of that, but properly not, so I wouldn't go and change this.

Freedom affects all allies, and even a short lasting mass immunity to TS would be insanely overpowered.

Sorry for the typo, but I did try to tell you, kinda spell(alike), so if you wish to modify the spell, you can give it two simultaneous effects, one targeted and one area effect, the area effect is the normal one Freedom, while the targeted is single target effect against the Time Stop and possibly other effects too, like Freedom of Movement, it would last few minutes at most(30 seconds in real time is the most reasonable), and be single target one. This would also limit the spell to need a target when casted and him/her/it be within the casters visual range, or even better on touch range, while the Freedom from Imprisonment area effect takes effect just after the casting and is to everyone in the area like always. While the potion would protect from both effects about the 30 seconds(5 rounds/0.5 turns) ~if my calculations are correct.

[Salk]

My suggestion is first to eradicate completely the Spell Immunities spells from the game altogether and then think of a way to nerf down TS.

 

P.S. I'm half serious of course but if Demi hates with all his heart that spell, I cannot say I love it any more than he does...

[Ardanis]

If you guys gonna kill SI, please make sure you did this prior:

 

- talked David into agreement - and btw good luck on it , when I asked to add fourth pre-buff option, he said it was too much work, imagine his reaction to killing SI

- provided us with Greater Spell Shield, which consumes 3 antimagic attacks

[Demivrgvs]

If you guys gonna kill SI, please make sure you did this prior:

 

1) talked David into agreement - and btw good luck on it , when I asked to add fourth pre-buff option, he said it was too much work, imagine his reaction to killing SI

2) provided us with Greater Spell Shield, which consumes 3 antimagic attacks

2) how's this connected with removing SI? SI:Abj doesn't protect from antimagic attacks at all... Other than that, I don't think a 3x Spell Shield can be made because of how "remove secondary type" work.

 

1) well, I obviously won't do that if it's going to ruin SCS's AI. David was against changing too much his "defensive scripts" because it involved too much work, but I didn't have to offer him the same "tools" we're supposed to implement in v4. The plan is to convince David that v4's Non-Detection can replace all instances of SI:Div and Spell Shield can replace SI:Abj without breaking anything (that's why I proposed to have Spell Shield work against Dispel Magic). What do you think of my plan? Have it any chance?

[Ardanis]

Sorry, that was a really stupid post of mine.

[Guest guest]

If you guys gonna kill SI, please make sure you did this prior:

 

1) talked David into agreement - and btw good luck on it , when I asked to add fourth pre-buff option, he said it was too much work, imagine his reaction to killing SI

2) provided us with Greater Spell Shield, which consumes 3 antimagic attacks

2) how's this connected with removing SI? SI:Abj doesn't protect from antimagic attacks at all... Other than that, I don't think a 3x Spell Shield can be made because of how "remove secondary type" work.

 

1) well, I obviously won't do that if it's going to ruin SCS's AI. David was against changing too much his "defensive scripts" because it involved too much work, but I didn't have to offer him the same "tools" we're supposed to implement in v4. The plan is to convince David that v4's Non-Detection can replace all instances of SI:Div and Spell Shield can replace SI:Abj without breaking anything (that's why I proposed to have Spell Shield work against Dispel Magic). What do you think of my plan? Have it any chance?

 

No chance. SCS is designed to make the enemy AI use the same cheese vs the player without significantly changing the ruleset. The whole approach is flawed in my opinion, because it's just no fun to have a big cheese fight when the spells are horribly unbalanced.

 

But on its own, it's a good idea. Can't you do it yourself with some kind of search and replace? Then you just need to install SCS first, then SR, which will do the search and replace, and David doesn't have to do anything.

[DavidW]

Came across this quite late, sorry.

 

@the general topic: Letting SI:Alt give immunity to timestop is horribly overpowered, enormously exploitable, and breaks basically every archmage script in every tactical mod I know as well as in the vanilla game. Don't go there, people.

 

@yarpen:

I'm afraid that SCS scripts are still far from being powerfull enemies (with exception of BANDITS) and David will not allow to decrease power of his wizards.

 

No script of any kind is a powerful enemy. Scripts can't fight. If enemies with SCS scripts aren't fighting effectively, all I can do is apologise that I'm not offering an adequate challenge (there's a smallish group of people who find SCS too easy and should probably try IA; possibly you're in it).

 

@the evergreen topic of Spell Immunity and SCS:

 

The perennial problem is that I don't want to support multiple setups of protective spells, because it's prohibitively timeconsuming to do and to test. So any change would have to be one that SCS endorses - indeed, that it offers itself. And I still have yet to hear a case for why SI is sufficiently powerful that it should be removed from the game.

 

(Guest, for instance, calls SI "horribly unbalanced". But why? Any medium-power antimagic spell gets rid of it. It's fine to object to the whole scissors-paper-stone style of magical defences in BG2, of course - but that's a different matter.)

 

Having said all of that, as far as I can see Demi's proposal is mostly cosmetic: that is, his proposed replacements function sufficiently similarly to SI:Div and SI:Abj that they wouldn't significantly confuse SCSII AI (the main exception I can think of - immunity to imprisonment - is minor and won't cause immersion-breaking stupidity). So SR could probably force SCS-compliance in a fairly harmless way by just overwriting spwi590 and spwi592. (This would make players' use of SI a bit odd, but you could fix that too). I'd make it a separate component if I were you (and I'm nervous that it makes True Sight too powerful).

[yarpen]

No script of any kind is a powerful enemy. Scripts can't fight. If enemies with SCS scripts aren't fighting effectively, all I can do is apologise that I'm not offering an adequate challenge (there's a smallish group of people who find SCS too easy and should probably try IA; possibly you're in it).

I'm not any sort of SCS's enemy or critican because for me these mods are near to fixpacks and obvious must-have, but still I was quite sure that you wouldn't be happy with idea of removing Spell Immunity just because your goal is to provide to players challenges. SI spell is I think just too overpowered for it's level. Hey, you've got here 5th level spell which can provide immunity to 9th level spells! And when it's Protection from Abjuration it isn't so easy to tear it down, as far as I remember.

[Duckfeet]

SI isn't imbalanced AGAINST the player in the spell-protection mage duels system of SCS, because the AI only uses two of these stacked together (SI:D, SI:A). Each of these are useful; SI:D makes Imp Invis work as a spell-protection (not really its intended application in PnP, but hey), and SI:A makes a mage duel not just a straight level check (my level is higher than yours, so I can strip all your protections in one round with a 3rd level Dispel Magic). Both of these should remain available.

 

SI is imbalanced FOR the players because its long duration lets the player become totally immune to magic in about 4-5 castings (with no absorbtion limit, making this even better than Spell Trap) and only Spell Thrust or SpellStrike can strip multiple layers of SI at once. Against non-caster enemies, a mage using SI can make whole classes of spells self-friendly with a single cast of SI.

 

The obvious response is, "If you don't like cheese, don't eat it." E.g., as a player, I can just choose not to use SI:Ench or SI:Evo, or houserule that SI doesn't stack. But the whole point of Spell Revisions is the systematic extermination of cheese, which is why this discussion is happening here while it's a non-issue at SCS.

[yarpen]

But Non-detection, True Seeing (I think it should protect from any hostile-illusion spells as Spook or candidate-to-introduce Weird) and Spell Shield will have same effects as used by SCS Spell Immunities so I think it's far better solution. It's better solution because wizards have their very-various methods of buffing instead of everything packed into one cheesy and non-PnP spell (in AD&D Spell Immunity granted protection from ONE chosen spell and only after being struck with it).

[Duckfeet]

I think all the Spell Revisions fans are in agreement here, the only question is how to make the mod effectively find-and-replace SI:D/SI:A with another spell instead of just changing the spell effect as David suggested, which would still leave the SI spell available for players to abuse.

[yarpen]

You can just replace spellfiles used by SCS (I think that wizards there are using other .spl files than protagonist - component of non-selectable version of SI is optional) with copies of Non-Detection and Spell Shield.

[Demivrgvs]

@the general topic: Letting SI:Alt give immunity to timestop is horribly overpowered, enormously exploitable, and breaks basically every archmage script in every tactical mod I know as well as in the vanilla game. Don't go there, people.

As I said, I'm not going there don't worry, and for the same reason no IR item will ever grant Immunity to Time Stop.

 

@the evergreen topic of Spell Immunity and SCS:

 

The perennial problem is that I don't want to support multiple setups of protective spells, because it's prohibitively timeconsuming to do and to test. So any change would have to be one that SCS endorses - indeed, that it offers itself. And I still have yet to hear a case for why SI is sufficiently powerful that it should be removed from the game.

I think Duckfeet got my point of view quite well. Spell Immunity as it's used by SCS is not overpowered (*), but the spell "per se" is really insanely overpowered for its level.

 

Few examples:

- SI:Enchantment alone is more powerful than Chaotic Commands (a 5th lvl spell) as it also grants immunity to things such as Greater Malison.

- SI:Necromancy alone pratically is Death Ward (a 4th lvl spell) plus immunity to Horrid Wilting (by many considered THE damage-dealing spell), Skull Trap, Energy Drain, Vampiric Touch, ...

- SI:Evocation allow the caster to throw on his head any sort of non-friendly AoE spell (e.g. Meteor Swarm, Cloudkill, Web, Ice Storm, ...)

- ...

- then you can stack multiple SI to make it even more owerful

 

(*) SI:Div isn't overpowered only because SCS and SR changed Spell Protection Removals to let them bypass Improved Invisibility.

 

 

Having said all of that, as far as I can see Demi's proposal is mostly cosmetic: that is, his proposed replacements function sufficiently similarly to SI:Div and SI:Abj that they wouldn't significantly confuse SCSII AI.

Yep. In theory my suggestion should leave SCS's AI almost untouched while achieving a lot of things for those like me who'd like to have a balanced spell system:

- remove a single multi-use overpowered spell (several other spells would instead benefit from this)

- non-detection would become much more interesting (almost a SI:Div)

- Spell Shield would be a much more consistent semi-SI:Abj (I hate the inconsistencey of SI:Abj not protecting from 90% of abjurations)

- Protection from Fire/Cold/Electricity/Acid (all 5th lvl spells) won't look like little sisters of SI:Evocation

- ...

- SCS wouldn't need to "bend the rules" anymore by using SI via contingencies/triggers (Non-detection and Spell Shield can be used without problems)

 

P.S theoretically using Non-detection instead of SI:Div would also make un-necessary the "Spell Protection Removals bypass Improved Invisibility" tweak, but that would probably require SCS to slightly change its scripts, thus I'm not suggesting it don't worry.

 

 

So SR could probably force SCS-compliance in a fairly harmless way by just overwriting spwi590 and spwi592. (This would make players' use of SI a bit odd, but you could fix that too). I'd make it a separate component if I were you (and I'm nervous that it makes True Sight too powerful).

Well, the plan was to completely remove SI while re-introducing a finally fixed Spell Shield...thus yes, I could do that like you suggest.

 

You may be right about making it a separate component, but I'd still need a future version of SCS to skip the relative optional component which adds tons of Spell Immunity scrolls in the game.

[Duckfeet]

P.S theoretically using Non-detection instead of SI:Div would also make un-necessary the "Spell Protection Removals bypass Improved Invisibility" tweak, but that would probably require SCS to slightly change its scripts, thus I'm not suggesting it don't worry.

 

How do you propose to remove Non-detection? Since it's not a spell protection, currently the only thing I can think of to strip this is a successful Dispel Magic.