Insect Summons and other suggestions

[onerous]

I don't know whether you have planned to change this but here are my thoughts.

 

1. The actual insects should not be dispelled and should bypass resistances but should be repelled by any fire shield. (possible?)

 

2. Panic should be dispellable (resist fear, etc.).

 

3. Spell failure has a saving throw and should not be dispelled.

 

4. The penalties to attack and stuff shouldn't be dispelled but should not bypass resistances.

 

Also, can certain priest spells like bless, doom, chant act more like favor granted by whatever god and therefore be non-magical in nature (and therefore not dispelled)? This just came to me so I don't have a better list of which spells would qualify.

[Demivrgvs]

Insect spells

I don't know whether you have planned to change this but here are my thoughts.

 

1. The actual insects should not be dispelled and should bypass resistances but should be repelled by any fire shield. (possible?)

 

2. Panic should be dispellable (resist fear, etc.).

 

3. Spell failure has a saving throw and should not be dispelled.

 

4. The penalties to attack and stuff shouldn't be dispelled but should not bypass resistances.

Yes we do have planned to slightly refine insect spells.

 

1. Yes, insects will be considered summoned creatures, and thus will bypass spell resistance. Fire Shields will protect from them, or even dispel them if you manage to cast them within the swarm.

 

2. Fear won't be dispellable because it's a break morale effect, not a magically induced fear (aka it's not an enchantment, you're really scared by the swarm). Remove Fear and similar effect will still remove the fear (aka restore the morale).

 

3. - 4. The various penalties are there because fighting and casting while a swarm of insect bite you pretty much everywhere is difficult. If the swarm is "real" so are these penalties, and thus they shouln't be dispellable imo.

 

Another possible refinement may be to make insects affected by Death Spell (Banishment).

 

Bless, Doom & Chant

Also, can certain priest spells like bless, doom, chant act more like favor granted by whatever god and therefore be non-magical in nature (and therefore not dispelled)? This just came to me so I don't have a better list of which spells would qualify.

Actually, each and every priest spell is a favor granted by the caster's god. In fact within PnP divine casters must follow their god's code if they want to be able to cast spells, unlike arcane casters who cast spells shaping the weave. Sorry, the DM in me loves to give PnP lectures. Long story short, I'm not convinced by this argument to make them not dispellable.

 

That being said, do these spells really need a boost? They all seem pretty much appealing right now.

[Jarno Mikkola]

Bless, Doom & Chant

Also, can certain priest spells like bless, doom, chant act more like favor granted by whatever god and therefore be non-magical in nature (and therefore not dispelled)? This just came to me so I don't have a better list of which spells would qualify.

Actually, each and every priest spell is a favor granted by the caster's god. In fact within PnP divine casters must follow their god's code if they want to be able to cast spells, unlike arcane casters who cast spells shaping the weave. Sorry, the DM in me loves to give PnP lectures. Long story short, I'm not convinced by this argument to make them not dispellable.

Then be convinced by your own, as the caster is not actually the prayer themselves, but by their god, shouldn't all the divine spells be casted at level hmm, 50. As in undispel-able.

I am not saying this might not be bad, but...

[onerous]

I see what you're saying but it sucks that a priest would devote his time to prepare 'prayers' only to come across a mage who basically says, "Suck it, [insert God here]. Eat my [dispel/remove magic]!" and all combat blessings for the party are removed if caught in the AOE. Your potions revisions mod is better that priest blessings because they cannot be dispelled. I'm not saying make all priest spells undispellable but I find it disheartening that they are so easily removed by enemy mages.

 

Maybe my point is that dispel/remove magic is too powerful. Should it be powerful enough to strip a God's blessing?

[amanasleep]

I see what you're saying but it sucks that a priest would devote his time to prepare 'prayers' only to come across a mage who basically says, "Suck it, [insert God here]. Eat my [dispel/remove magic]!" and all combat blessings for the party are removed if caught in the AOE. Your potions revisions mod is better that priest blessings because they cannot be dispelled. I'm not saying make all priest spells undispellable but I find it disheartening that they are so easily removed by enemy mages.

 

Maybe my point is that dispel/remove magic is too powerful. Should it be powerful enough to strip a God's blessing?

 

My view of the intent of PNP is that priests castings are of variable power because although the Diety granting the power to cast spells may be all powerful (although in D&D even this isn't true), their servant priests are not. If I call on Lord Helm to smite my enemies, he should smite them--but only to the degree that my standing in his service merits. That's why a 20th level (vanilla) Holy Smite does more damage than a 10th level one--A 20th level priest transmits more of the Deity's wrath than his more junior colleague.

 

Also, Dispel/Remove Magic is only powerful if the caster is more powerful than the target, so I don't understand the issue here--should the blessing of a 1st level initiate of Helm be undispellable by Kangaxx?

[Dakk]

My view of the intent of PNP is that priests castings are of variable power because although the Diety granting the power to cast spells may be all powerful (although in D&D even this isn't true), their servant priests are not. If I call on Lord Helm to smite my enemies, he should smite them--but only to the degree that my standing in his service merits. That's why a 20th level (vanilla) Holy Smite does more damage than a 10th level one--A 20th level priest transmits more of the Deity's wrath than his more junior colleague.

 

Also, Dispel/Remove Magic is only powerful if the caster is more powerful than the target, so I don't understand the issue here--should the blessing of a 1st level initiate of Helm be undispellable by Kangaxx?

Also, it's a question of how much of the deity's power the priest can actually channel. A level 1 initiate of Helm would probably burn out if Helm gave him too much attention...

[onerous]

I'm still not convinced that certain priest spells should be dispellable. And I don't mean all preist spells, but you could at least have the ones stating in the description that the priest channels the god's divine power to not be dispellable (draw upon holy might and spiritual hammer come to mind). I don't use most blue combat priest spell because I know they'll be stripped within the first 2 rounds of fighting (using SCS).

 

But I'm not sure my theory would add anything to the game. So I'll change SR to see if there is a noticeable difference in combat with SCS. My party may be soiling their pants fighting Lolth priestesses and handmaidens in the Underdark.

 

Perhaps abominations like liches and demons can disrupt prayers as an innate ability but I don't see how to script this for them and not other mages.

[Demivrgvs]

Amanasleep and Dakk pretty much said what I would have said if I had the time to reply.

 

Leaving aside PnP and conceptual reasons, even in terms of balance most buffs must remain dispellable imo. Any cleric can suddenly become as powerful as a true fighter (if not more) casting a bunch of buffs (e.g. Divine Power alone almost completely fill the gap), and fighter-clerics (e.g. Anomen) can drastically boost their combat prowess well above true fighters...all of this is balanced by only two factors:

1) buffs are not permanent (though many have a long duration)

2) buffs can be removed

If you take away 2) balance is pretty much broken.

 

That being said, feel free to mod your game as you wish, I'm just saying that to make a spell "not dispellable" I need both a conceptual and a balance reason to justify it.

 

Speaking of SCS mages almost always stripping away all your buffs... This is a common "problem", but very recent fixes to Dispel opcode (both SR and SCS include them) should lessen this (without the fix a caster with a single lvl more than you character always dispelled your buffs with 100% chance), and part of this problem is that AI mages within BG (and even more so with SCS) tend to be of higher lvl than the party. You can partially offset this by using single class clerics (e.g. Viconia) to cast buffs, because clerics lvl up much faster than mages. Last but not least, AI mages don't have tons of Dispel Magic memorized, and generally use it at the start of the fight, don't use fast casting buffs (e.g. Armor of Faith, Draw Upon Divine Might, etc.) in your pre-buff routine and cast them when you know your opponent won't likely be able to dispel them.

[Jarno Mikkola]

A level 1 initiate of Helm would probably burn out if Helm gave him too much attention...

I think the more likely reason is that if Helm would give all his might to one Priest that's at level 1, there would be only one worshiper, and then Helm would burn out.

For divine casters, the balance comes from the levels, that bring them more spells to cast, not from the force that they back up those spells... for example the Healing spell don't get any better at higher levels, but I am pretty sure I am still going to store half of divine spell casters spellbooks with them.

And another example is that I don't want to get cursed by a high level caster at one quest and then be unable to dispel that curse if I have a spell that should be able to do that...

 

Any cleric can suddenly become as powerful as a true fighter (if not more) casting a bunch of buffs (e.g. Divine Power alone almost completely fill the gap), and fighter-clerics (e.g. Anome) can drastically boost their combat prowess well above true fighters...all of this is balanced by only two factors:

1) buffs are not permanent (though many have a long duration)

2) buffs can be removed

If you take away 2) balance is pretty much broken.

Yeah, but you can pretty much balance them still with the duration... and that would seem to be more appropriate to some situations... after all, I don't think that it's really seamless if we allow them all be dispel-able. After all there are some creatures that cannot be dispelled like the level 3 summons can be, even though they are immune to the dispel spell.

What comes to the priest being more powerful on the critical moment of his fate than the warrior every day, well... that lead up should already tell you my opinion, it's fine as long as it's not limitless. Just like the dragons are...