SCSII's 'Make the starting dungeon slightly harder' comp. "small cheat"

[the bigg]

Also, being able to rest one fixes elegantly the "Jaheira has a moronic spell selection" bug.

[DavidW]

The reason SCS allows resting once isn't really for balance's sake: it's because there's dialog (voiced dialog, even) between Imoen and the PC that's triggered the first time you rest, and I didn't want to block it.

 

Perhaps a subcomponent that allows a one time rest, triggering imoen's dialog, and appropriately enough they are interrupted by deurger once, then henceforth resting is disallowed, with a floating text hinting that "You realize trying to rest at this time would be a bad idea" or such....

 

That's not straightforward to implement smoothly; but in any case, I agree with Dakk: it's not obviously an improvement on the current version.

 

Also, being able to rest one fixes elegantly the "Jaheira has a moronic spell selection" bug.

Imoen's isn't great either, and as I recall the player doesn't have any spells learned at all. (I'd forgotten, but yes: this was another reason for this way of implementing it.)

[Ardanis]

On a contrary, Imoen and Jaheira in my games have their spellpower always fully used up. You guys simply don't know how to make a proper use of it

[the bigg]

On a contrary, Imoen and Jaheira in my games have their spellpower always fully used up. You guys simply don't know how to make a proper use of it

Imoen's spellbook is acceptable, but I can't imagine an use for Hold Animals or Call Lightning (at least without SR, which I currently don't have installed).

[Ardanis]

Yes, you're right. It merely shows how much long ago it was (well over three years) since I've played BG without global enhancing mods.

[Ithildur]

The reason SCS allows resting once isn't really for balance's sake: it's because there's dialog (voiced dialog, even) between Imoen and the PC that's triggered the first time you rest, and I didn't want to block it.

 

Perhaps a subcomponent that allows a one time rest, triggering imoen's dialog, and appropriately enough they are interrupted by deurger once, then henceforth resting is disallowed, with a floating text hinting that "You realize trying to rest at this time would be a bad idea" or such....

Why would that be needed?

Instead of a floating text with God-powers telling us what we can and can't do, we have in-game reasons not to rest - attacks by Duergars. The only possible "downside" with that is that you can farm XP and gold by resting 5, 10 or 100 times (if you have a PC capable of beating them). But seriously, preventing rest-farming is not within SCS scope. Indeed, you can do this in several places in BG1 alone (you can have Flesh Golems, Sirines, and other high-xp creatures spawn to interrupt in certain places), and if that's how people want to play; let them. For me, the RP- and immersion factor goes way up when I get to realize by myself resting is a bad idea, instead of being told "silly boy, no rest for you".

 

Perhaps I should've clarified, OPTIONAL subcomponent, as many of the subcomponents tend to be in SCS, for people who might like such. Similar in spirit to the component where all your gear is taken away in Spellhold, though likely far less challenging than that option which I found to be quite deadly.

 

And as far as 'god powers telling us what we can and can't do', there's this thing called a DM in DnD. Having sensible/challenging restrictions is part of the fun of the game.

 

BTW the vanilla game has a number of situations where this exact sort of a thing is implemented in different ways, such as guards coming to interrupt your rest inside cities, 'You must gather your party before venturing forth', 'You cannot rest here, find a xyz to rest in', and a number of others I can't recall off the top of my head.

[DavidW]

The reason SCS allows resting once isn't really for balance's sake: it's because there's dialog (voiced dialog, even) between Imoen and the PC that's triggered the first time you rest, and I didn't want to block it.

 

Perhaps a subcomponent that allows a one time rest, triggering imoen's dialog, and appropriately enough they are interrupted by deurger once, then henceforth resting is disallowed, with a floating text hinting that "You realize trying to rest at this time would be a bad idea" or such....

Why would that be needed?

Instead of a floating text with God-powers telling us what we can and can't do, we have in-game reasons not to rest - attacks by Duergars. The only possible "downside" with that is that you can farm XP and gold by resting 5, 10 or 100 times (if you have a PC capable of beating them). But seriously, preventing rest-farming is not within SCS scope. Indeed, you can do this in several places in BG1 alone (you can have Flesh Golems, Sirines, and other high-xp creatures spawn to interrupt in certain places), and if that's how people want to play; let them. For me, the RP- and immersion factor goes way up when I get to realize by myself resting is a bad idea, instead of being told "silly boy, no rest for you".

 

Perhaps I should've clarified, OPTIONAL subcomponent, as many of the subcomponents tend to be in SCS, for people who might like such. Similar in spirit to the component where all your gear is taken away in Spellhold, though likely far less challenging than that option which I found to be quite deadly.

 

And as far as 'god powers telling us what we can and can't do', there's this thing called a DM in DnD. Having sensible/challenging restrictions is part of the fun of the game.

 

BTW the vanilla game has a number of situations where this exact sort of a thing is implemented in different ways, such as guards coming to interrupt your rest inside cities, 'You must gather your party before venturing forth', 'You cannot rest here, find a xyz to rest in', and a number of others I can't recall off the top of my head.

 

I'm not yet clear what the advantage is of this component over the existing implementation.

[Dakk]

BTW the vanilla game has a number of situations where this exact sort of a thing is implemented in different ways, such as guards coming to interrupt your rest inside cities, 'You must gather your party before venturing forth', 'You cannot rest here, find a xyz to rest in', and a number of others I can't recall off the top of my head.

I know, and I loathe those instances

Therefore, having DavidW actually create an in-game effect that has the same effect as the God-voice but without the clunky semi-fourth wall breaking is, IMHO, an improvement in every way...

[Miloch]

The thing is: if you actually want to do this, I don't mind. It doesn't harm me if you decide to XP farm like this. If you're enjoying playing the game in that way, don't let me stop you. (I do block exploits that someone could do accidentally, but clearly this is only going to happen if you do it deliberately.)

I'm rather adverse to this actually on both the side of the modder and the player. Not because it leads to a potentially unbalanced game through no real fault of the player (which it can do, and one can't blame them for trying to rest when wounded or tired, or killing stuff that keeps coming at them when trying to do so) but because it defies reality. Sooner or later, these infinitely-reappearing waves of creatures are going to run out of replenishments from out of whatever holes they're crawling. (And where *are* these holes anyway, and why can't you invade and destroy their nests, or at least block them off so you can get a wink of shuteye?) In the case of intelligent creatures like duergar or even goblins, they're going to learn very quickly that it's a bad idea to rush a party who's just slaughtering them en masse. They should either regroup for a more concerted attack, bugger off entirely, or possibly resort to guerilla tactics (setting traps, sniping, unleashing unintelligent creatures against the party, etc.).

[DavidW]

The thing is: if you actually want to do this, I don't mind. It doesn't harm me if you decide to XP farm like this. If you're enjoying playing the game in that way, don't let me stop you. (I do block exploits that someone could do accidentally, but clearly this is only going to happen if you do it deliberately.)

I'm rather adverse to this actually on both the side of the modder and the player. Not because it leads to a potentially unbalanced game through no real fault of the player (which it can do, and one can't blame them for trying to rest when wounded or tired, or killing stuff that keeps coming at them when trying to do so) but because it defies reality. Sooner or later, these infinitely-reappearing waves of creatures are going to run out of replenishments from out of whatever holes they're crawling. (And where *are* these holes anyway, and why can't you invade and destroy their nests, or at least block them off so you can get a wink of shuteye?) In the case of intelligent creatures like duergar or even goblins, they're going to learn very quickly that it's a bad idea to rush a party who's just slaughtering them en masse. They should either regroup for a more concerted attack, bugger off entirely, or possibly resort to guerilla tactics (setting traps, sniping, unleashing unintelligent creatures against the party, etc.).

 

I don't think there's any real danger of accidental imbalance. Unless some wandering monster has a totally unrealistic experience value, resting once or twice and getting a wandering monster isn't going to make a huge amount of difference. (In this case, the relevant wandering monster group is worth 1680 XP. You need about two hundred lots of that encounter to gain a level for a party of 6 at that stage.

 

I think the "defies reality" point really just points out broader imperfections of the game. Is endlessly-respawning wandering monsters less good than some hypothetical (and probably un-codeable) mod where the defenders intelligently organise, regroup, apply guerilla tactics, call for reinforcements, summon Irenicus back...? Sure. Is endlessly-respawning wandering monsters less good than the actual alternative of a perpetually-empty dungeon once you've killed off the delineated number of monster groups, however long you wait? ... not in my view.

[Dakk]

I'm rather adverse to this actually on both the side of the modder and the player. Not because it leads to a potentially unbalanced game through no real fault of the player (which it can do, and one can't blame them for trying to rest when wounded or tired, or killing stuff that keeps coming at them when trying to do so) but because it defies reality.

The I began resting, 4 dwarves appeared, kill, rest, appear, kill, rest and so on... I slaughtered approx. 100 dwarves , what means 100*420 = 42000 xp and 100*80 = 8000 gold yield

Well, after resting 20 times in a row, in the same spot, one could make the case that the player was kind of gaming the system

[Miloch]

I think the "defies reality" point really just points out broader imperfections of the game. Is endlessly-respawning wandering monsters less good than some hypothetical (and probably un-codeable) mod where the defenders intelligently organise, regroup, apply guerilla tactics, call for reinforcements, summon Irenicus back...? Sure. Is endlessly-respawning wandering monsters less good than the actual alternative of a perpetually-empty dungeon once you've killed off the delineated number of monster groups, however long you wait? ... not in my view.

Oh, I think you could rise to the challenge . Certainly a solution for the latter is not uncodeable - look at the massive Tutu spawn system (with CamDawg's prefix all over innumerable scripts) or the BGSpawn system based on it. I'm sure it could be coded such that once you've killed x number of duergar, the start dropping off and spiders or other carrion start appearing. Shouldn't be tough to have spawned duergar start dropping snares or whatever after same variable is reached. (By "not tough" I mean not compared with the hundreds of thousands of lines of existing code.)

 

I always had the same vague feeling about the goblins - how could they possibly be so stupid to keep coming back in the same small groups after getting their arses continually handed to them - but I'm not sure changing them all to duergar makes it more believable (less so I suppose, since duergar are supposed to be smarter).

[Salk]

The thing is: if you actually want to do this, I don't mind. It doesn't harm me if you decide to XP farm like this. If you're enjoying playing the game in that way, don't let me stop you. (I do block exploits that someone could do accidentally, but clearly this is only going to happen if you do it deliberately.)

I'm rather adverse to this actually on both the side of the modder and the player. Not because it leads to a potentially unbalanced game through no real fault of the player (which it can do, and one can't blame them for trying to rest when wounded or tired, or killing stuff that keeps coming at them when trying to do so) but because it defies reality. Sooner or later, these infinitely-reappearing waves of creatures are going to run out of replenishments from out of whatever holes they're crawling. (And where *are* these holes anyway, and why can't you invade and destroy their nests, or at least block them off so you can get a wink of shuteye?) In the case of intelligent creatures like duergar or even goblins, they're going to learn very quickly that it's a bad idea to rush a party who's just slaughtering them en masse. They should either regroup for a more concerted attack, bugger off entirely, or possibly resort to guerilla tactics (setting traps, sniping, unleashing unintelligent creatures against the party, etc.).

 

Personally I embrace totally Miloch's view for this specific case and in general I find respawning one of the most loathsome gaming design.

[DavidW]

The thing is: if you actually want to do this, I don't mind. It doesn't harm me if you decide to XP farm like this. If you're enjoying playing the game in that way, don't let me stop you. (I do block exploits that someone could do accidentally, but clearly this is only going to happen if you do it deliberately.)

I'm rather adverse to this actually on both the side of the modder and the player. Not because it leads to a potentially unbalanced game through no real fault of the player (which it can do, and one can't blame them for trying to rest when wounded or tired, or killing stuff that keeps coming at them when trying to do so) but because it defies reality. Sooner or later, these infinitely-reappearing waves of creatures are going to run out of replenishments from out of whatever holes they're crawling. (And where *are* these holes anyway, and why can't you invade and destroy their nests, or at least block them off so you can get a wink of shuteye?) In the case of intelligent creatures like duergar or even goblins, they're going to learn very quickly that it's a bad idea to rush a party who's just slaughtering them en masse. They should either regroup for a more concerted attack, bugger off entirely, or possibly resort to guerilla tactics (setting traps, sniping, unleashing unintelligent creatures against the party, etc.).

 

Personally I embrace totally Miloch's view for this specific case and in general I find respawning one of the most loathsome gaming design.

 

This isn't realistically going to happen, sorry. It's not that it's impossible, it's that it's an enormous amount of work for content that most players aren't likely to see.

[Ardanis]

I think it's the random chance that's the enemy here. Either you manage to rest and get all spells back, or you're interrupted and the cycle repeats. Rest partially, that will be better.

Hm, yes indeed. Unless SCS does it first, it'll be a nice addition for the eventual Creature/Quest Revisions.