10th level spells as HLAs - balancing enquiry

[DavidW]

I vaguely recall discussion elsewhere that suggested SR v4 will move 10th level spells into the HLA slot. I've briefly been brainstorming the logistics of incorporating this into SCSII, and I was left wondering if people are really working through the implications.

 

Example: a 27th level specialist mage has 6 9th level spell slots and has received 10 HLAs. One of the strategies I'd consider adopting for such a mage would be

 

- Timestop

- Dragon Breath

- Comet

- Timestop

- Dragon Breath

- Comet

- Timestop

- Dragon Breath

- Comet

- Timestop

- Dragon Breath

- Comet

- Absolute Immunity

 

At the end of that lot (which is uninterruptable if I get the first Timestop off), everyone in range takes on average 220hp of crushing damage and (depending on saving throws) 140-280hp of fire damage. And I've still got Summon Planetar and a spare Dragon Breath left, as well as having a spare 9th level spell slot for Imprisonment, Spell Strike, or Wish.

 

Are you sure you want me to be able to do this?

[Ardanis]

I believe, and hopefully others agree, that epic spells should only be selectable once.

[Demivrgvs]

I vaguely recall discussion elsewhere that suggested SR v4 will move 10th level spells into the HLA slot. I've briefly been brainstorming the logistics of incorporating this into SCSII, and I was left wondering if people are really working through the implications.

 

Example: a 27th level specialist mage has 6 9th level spell slots and has received 10 HLAs. One of the strategies I'd consider adopting for such a mage would be

 

- Timestop

- Dragon Breath

- Comet

- Timestop

- Dragon Breath

- Comet

- Timestop

- Dragon Breath

- Comet

- Timestop

- Dragon Breath

- Comet

- Absolute Immunity

 

At the end of that lot (which is uninterruptable if I get the first Timestop off), everyone in range takes on average 220hp of crushing damage and (depending on saving throws) 140-280hp of fire damage. And I've still got Summon Planetar and a spare Dragon Breath left, as well as having a spare 9th level spell slot for Imprisonment, Spell Strike, or Wish.

 

Are you sure you want me to be able to do this?

Well, that is indeed scary. I haven't been able to spend much time thinking about it, but there's a few things that I'd like to discuss.

 

Making those HLAs work as innates gives us the opportunity to limit their x/day usability (e.g. Summon Planetar should be 1/day only imo, and illusionary clones shouldn't be able to cast it). I wouldn't mind limiting Dragon's Breath if you think it's necessary, but the main issue here is Time Stop's exploit imo. If you ask me I'd make the caster unable to re-cast TS for a short time (at least 3 rounds), making the whole combo you mention A LOT easier to handle.

 

What do you think?

[DavidW]

I guess I don't think the real issue is Timestop: I think the real issue is that 27th level wizards (for instance) move from having six ninth level spell slots to having sixteen. The Timestop combo was just the first thing I came up with to do something devastating with those slots.

 

I have to say that I'm puzzled more generally as to the motivation here. Do people really think high-level wizards in BG2 are underpowered?

[Ardanis]

Motivation is simple - with no 10th slots, those spells occupy the 9th level space, leaving no room for normal spells. How many would memorize Meteor Swarm (made rather nice in SR v3), when they can use party-friendly BD instead? I also recall NWN2, where epic spells were innates.

 

So, back to balance, I have always assumed that there should be no multiple pickings of the same HLA spell. It even goes along the vanilla route, where casters can only select a new ability once, then move next. And since there's about half a dozen to choose from, that creates roughly a new level with 6 slots.

[Demivrgvs]

I guess I don't think the real issue is Timestop: I think the real issue is that 27th level wizards (for instance) move from having six ninth level spell slots to having sixteen. The Timestop combo was just the first thing I came up with to do something devastating with those slots.

Well, consecutive Time Stops still is a problem imo, with or without HLAs into the equation. Back then in my old power-player days I remember for example a quite silly and simple exploit I used to make my kensai-thief rip any spellcaster (and their party) apart using a 2x TS (via Vhailor's Simulacrum + TS scrolls - but a kensage could do this even more easily): PfMW's duration runs out during a 2x TS. TS on its own is already quite overkill in most situations, but consecutive Time Stops with no chance to strike back are an almost certain sentence of death (in fact I think quite a few players complained about 2x TS via Wish - am I wrong?).

 

Anyway, leaving aside TS, as Ardanis says we're not talking about granting mages 10 or more 10th lvl spell slots, but 4-5 if not less. If we assume a L25 mage he can take 7 HLAs, but many of them won't be 10th lvl spells but rather permanent bonuses or abilities (see Refinements for examples), possibly even related to their school of specialization (e.g. Enchanters might get a mind shield effect, Invokers may get elemental resistances like druids, etc.). On top of that as I and Ardanis just said we could limit them to 1/day only, which means that an archmage may have slightly more slots, but he won't be able to cast tons of Dragon's Breath spells and deal insane party-friendly damage with a bunch of slots, nor benefit from more than a single Improved Alacrity, and so on.

 

I have to say that I'm puzzled more generally as to the motivation here. Do people really think high-level wizards in BG2 are underpowered?

Clearly they aren't, but that wasn't the point. The issues imo are:

* 10th lvl spells steal 9th lvl spell slots

* priests receive 8th lvl spells as HLAs while mages receive 10th lvl ones - they should have similar power instead imo

* something else I currently don't remember

[phordicus]

the number of daily HLA uses should always be less than the number of 9th level spell slots regardless of whether the HLA's are implemented as 9th level spells or innates, imo.

 

time stop could do with a "cooldown" in either case.

[Ardanis]

time stop could do with a "cooldown" in either case.

There's a big risk of recasting it too early in the heat of battle, therefore losing the spell.

 

Also, DB is easy to dodge, so even if AI dumps ten of those, you can move party members away.

[Kalindor]

I'm all for making Timestop one of the HLA's instead of a lvl 9 spell. I can't recall ever forgoing Timestop on one of my sorcerers.

[the bigg]

I'm all for making Timestop one of the HLA's instead of a lvl 9 spell. I can't recall ever forgoing Timestop on one of my sorcerers.

TS isn't that hot for Sorcs if you installed Refinements and SCSII - with SCSII spells like Spell Strike or Spell Trap have the priority IMHO; moreover, in Refs, Sorcs get Aura Cleansing (which lasts a single second) instead of Improved Alacrity - as such, all spells cast under AC are safe from interruption without the need of being cast while under TS.

[DavidW]

I have to say that I'm puzzled more generally as to the motivation here. Do people really think high-level wizards in BG2 are underpowered?

Clearly they aren't, but that wasn't the point. The issues imo are:

* 10th lvl spells steal 9th lvl spell slots

* priests receive 8th lvl spells as HLAs while mages receive 10th lvl ones - they should have similar power instead imo

* something else I currently don't remember

 

But look: I don't think you can consider things in isolation here. Whatever the motivation, the net effect of this change is a major increase in mages' power, in a context where mages are generally felt to be more powerful than their rivals in any case.

 

Ultimately, I don't hugely mind either way. I just wanted to make sure you were going into this with your eyes open. If I end up incorporating this into SCSII and players get slaughtered, I'll direct complaints your way.

[Guest Guest_Loz_*]

A couple of points:

 

- As others have said the main benefit of something like this is actually using the 9th level spell slots for 9th level spells as opposed to filling them with HLAs.

 

- As Ardanis suggested each HLA ability being selectable only once would keep things balanced - pehaps even better balanced. The mage may gain some uses of spells slots, but e.g. the sorcerer will no longer be able to drop 6 comets or use multiple improved alacrities. Versatility will likely be increased but raw power may infact be less, especially in the case of a high level wizard with robe of vecna using one improved alacrity and nothing but damage spells. Remember there is nothing comparable to comet or DB in terms of instant damage at level 9 or anywhere else(even wilting does less damage and is also stuck with a long cast time).

 

- Another option would be to implement a true new spell level 10 with the new Tobex mod if that is possible.

 

- The number of allowed level 9 slots in the example you gave is actually 5 not 6. This is also part of the benefit of every mage being a specialist, 4 slots reduces their power even further.

 

- Perhaps its not optimal, but i'd rather not see more than two timestops memorised on any one mage outside of demi-lich fights. Not because of balance but because it lacks variety(same reason mages have different schools and don't all max out on wiltings) and gets tedious to wait through all the time stops. This goes for either HLA system(time stop is probably better than any HLA outside of improved alacrity+Vecna).

 

 

Basically I think as long as you don't allow mages to choose the same HLA over and over the power won't be much greater than before. If you do allow them to, be prepared for one selection of improved alacrity followed by 10 dragons breaths...

[DavidW]

- The number of allowed level 9 slots in the example you gave is actually 5 not 6. This is also part of the benefit of every mage being a specialist, 4 slots reduces their power even further.

You're right; I misremembered. (SCSII reads these numbers in directly from the 2da file, so my lack of memory doesn't show up in-game!)

 

- Perhaps its not optimal, but i'd rather not see more than two timestops memorised on any one mage outside of demi-lich fights. Not because of balance but because it lacks variety(same reason mages have different schools and don't all max out on wiltings) and gets tedious to wait through all the time stops. This goes for either HLA system(time stop is probably better than any HLA outside of improved alacrity+Vecna).

I have some time for this. The problem is that SCSII spell selection is largely Markovian: after filling in a basic backbone of defensive and antimagic spells, each remaining slot gets filled at random from a fixed list. (And the rationale for that, in turn, is a combination of simplicity, variety and ease of customisation.) But that's a reason why I don't do this kind of thing all the time - it might be worth making an exception here.

 

(More accurately, it might be worth making an exception as long as I don't have the option to memorise eight Comets. If I do, it'd be mad not to take advantage.)

 

Basically I think as long as you don't allow mages to choose the same HLA over and over the power won't be much greater than before. If you do allow them to, be prepared for one selection of improved alacrity followed by 10 dragons breaths...

Thanks, that's a good example of why I don't think this is a fundamental issue with Timestop. I have some time for the idea of restricting each HLA to one pick, though. (It's a bit of a pain to fit into my spell management system, but that's my problem.)

[the bigg]

- Another option would be to implement a true new spell level 10 with the new Tobex mod if that is possible.

I don't think that's possible - CRE files have the space to memorize nine Mage levels, seven Priest levels and an Innate level. To add an extra level, you'd have to alter all CRE files to have extra levels in them - something that Asc doesn't want to do because of compatibility concerns.

[DavidW]

Okay, having gamed the parameters a bit, I'm fairly persuaded that being able to take each HLA only once doesn't lead to wild unbalancing issues, and in various ways makes the game more interesting. I'll be adding compatibility for this into the next version. I'll also allow for the possibility that HLAs work this way but that you're not restricted from taking them multiple times. Don't blame me if this is horribly overpowered. (I'll also be allowing for Refinements HLAs in the next version, though obviously not for SRv4 ones since it's not out yet.)

 

Since the code to allow for it is going to be there anyway, I'll probably add "let HLA spells use Innate slots" as an option in SCSII proper (coding that takes way less time than coding AI to allow for it) - unless that's going to annoy anyone? (Full credit for the idea, avoid installing if alternative implementations are present, etc.)