Compatibility Question

[Guest AndrewB]

I haven't seen this mentioned before, and I love Spell Revisions and wouldn't play the game without it anymore, so I am curious as to whether SR is compatibile with the BG2 Tweaks component "Add Save Penalties for Spells Cast by High-Level Casters". I was thinking about trying it out.

[Demivrgvs]

From a technical point of view they are compatible yes, but I really wouldn't recommend such tweak with SR, unless you do want spellcasters to be extremely overpowered (some players like it).

 

SR's mid-high lvl spells already have very effective save penalties (in vanilla very few spells had them, such as Slow or Chaos), and high lvl spells have save penalties so powerful that I'm going to cap them at -4 for V4 (a lot of players complained about -5 and -6 penalty being uber-effective).

 

As of V3 few low level spells already have a sort of "Add Save Penalties for Spells Cast by High-Level Casters" feature (e.g. Command, Shocking Grasp, Spook), and if necessary I'll expand it to more spells.

[Shaitan]

I tried it (I used to use it), but after a few games, I just found SR better without.

[Guest AndrewB]

Personally, I'm of the philosophy that all spells should have a use at all stages of the game, and not be relegated into uselessness as soon as the party reaches the later stages. It also makes sense to me that a spellcaster with immense time and study into the Art should be hard to save against. Again, just my opinion.

[Strontium Dog]

Personally, I'm of the philosophy that all spells should have a use at all stages of the game, and not be relegated into uselessness as soon as the party reaches the later stages. It also makes sense to me that a spellcaster with immense time and study into the Art should be hard to save against. Again, just my opinion.

I heartily agree. I got very sick and tired of having spells like fireball becoming completely useless when entering the TOB portion of the game, as the low 10d6 upper limit (and no save-penalties) meant it was better to just use spells like haste instead. And the lack of a save-penalty for most spells meant that I relied too much on my fighters which was just boring. Spell_Rev allowed some spells such as color spray to finally become effective at higher levels than 6th(?) level. And the spell50 mod allowed mages to become really dangerous so that AI-enhanced liches are finally a serious threat in my game(since the liches are never more than 30th level, it's not as ueber-powerful as it sounds, plus even in a BWP megamod install with no xp-reduction, few spellcasters are going to reach above 40th level, if that).

 

 

The only thing that's stopping me from using the add save penalties for higher level spellcasters component, is that it is claimed in the readme that it's prone to bugs causing CTDs. Unless that has changed, I'm far too wary of using it in a BWP install.

 

 

Personally, I would prefer having the option of keeping the high save-penalties(-6 max) but of having even better AI from another mod(SCS2?), where enemy mages could have the death ward spell activated if the PC has the wailing of the banshee spell in his spellbook, and so on and so forth.

[Jarno Mikkola]

Personally, I'm of the philosophy that all spells should have a use at all stages of the game, and not be relegated into uselessness as soon as the party reaches the later stages. It also makes sense to me that a spellcaster with immense time and study into the Art should be hard to save against. Again, just my opinion.

I heartily agree. I got very sick and tired of having spells like fireball becoming completely useless when entering the TOB portion of the game, as the low 10d6 upper limit (and no save-penalties) meant it was better to just use spells like haste instead.

Well, the fireball is really dangerous even in ToB game, if you don't have a party of 6 all being the triple multiclassed with the 3xXP cheated characters, but had your 2 mages hit within the party and at least one will fail in their magic resistance check. See, he has ~60 hit points with Con=18, which is then reduced to a near half by the fireball, and as you only have one cleric, you can't heal the mages because the fighter just got a grave stone put on his portrait slot, and then you meet a mage that just loves to throw death spells... dead mage or two.

[Strontium Dog]

I generally add the components which give max hit-points to both player-characters and all others in the game, which makes things harder. But even in unmodded standard BG2 games, I still found(in TOB) that fireballs were pretty useless re causing damage(most monsters managed to save, being at such high levels, so damage was mostly more like 15-30 max) I had to instead keep on casting horrid wilting spells or dragon's breath to get anywhere.

 

The way I play the game, I consider it cheating to rest a dozen times during each particular major quest(de'arnise/windspear or whatever). That last is what many players do, where they launch 3 10d6 fireballs into a room, wiping out minor opponents, going away to rest and regain spells and then returning to deal with the next 1 or 2 rooms and repeating the cycle.

 

What I do instead is make mages far more deadly so that a mage's spells can last until the end of a major quest without need for constant unrealistic resting.Plus, in the past, fighters with the right magical weapons could easily defeat mages, so this produces a balance of power, re gameplay.