My feedback

[Anomaly]

The mod has also made me realise how overpowered Protection from Magical Weapons is, particularly on enemies who are naturally immune to non-magical weapons (which seems to be most of them).

Most of them? Really?

 

Well Liches are high level undeads, so they are immune to normal weapons, so this spell is all they need to be immune to physical damage. This is also true for Vampires Mages. But the other foes shouldn't be immune to normal weapons naturally. Are they?

[Karnor]

The mod has also made me realise how overpowered Protection from Magical Weapons is, particularly on enemies who are naturally immune to non-magical weapons (which seems to be most of them).

Most of them? Really?

 

Well Liches are high level undeads, so they are immune to normal weapons, so this spell is all they need to be immune to physical damage. This is also true for Vampires Mages. But the other foes shouldn't be immune to normal weapons naturally. Are they?

 

Well, alright, I may have exaggerated a bit when I said that most of them are. It's just that most of the high level mages I meet seem to be liches. There are a few humans mixed in but these are much less of a problem because I can breach them.

 

Liches are immune to breach so my only options to kill them are to first get rid of their Immunity:Abjuration and then dispel them (via an inquisitor). I don't have spellstrike so my options are pierce magic, ruby ray or khelben's whip. I'm somewhat tempted to install the Spell Revisions mod because i see that it makes things like pierce magic work like breach (and therefore high level enough to affect liches), but I wonder if that might make things too easy.

 

I'm not complaning really - it's much more fun to try and take down liches this way than the vanilla dispel-then-splat approach. Out of interest, where does the lich immunity to 1-5th level spells come from? I don't remember it from PnP AD&D (unless I've forgotten it).

 

PS: Are fallen planetars really supposed to hit so hard? The ones summoned in the Twisted Rune encounter were doing over 50 damage/hit. Aerie and Imoen were often getting chunked on my attempts because of this.

[Anomaly]

You know there is a SCS II component that tweak the Breach spell to be effective against liches.

 

About the fallen planetar, yes, those things are tough. I suppose this can be only possible by allowing SOA mages to get HLAs (which DavidW does not even recommend).

[Shaitan]

I really enjoy SR and SCS/SCS2 together. And it certainly doesn't makes the game easier.

[Demivrgvs]

I'm somewhat tempted to install the Spell Revisions mod because i see that it makes things like pierce magic work like breach (and therefore high level enough to affect liches), but I wonder if that might make things too easy.

Just a quick note: SR's Pierce Magic doesn't work like breach (though it has been suggested to make it dispel specific protections), it's Pierce Shield which works as a sort of Improved Breach. That being said, it may seem to make things much more easy, but keep in mind that we're talking about a far from cheap 8th lvl spell (liches may have more than just 1 PfMW), and that you still need to counter any Improved Invisibility effect liches may have before being able to use PS (I seem to recall most SCS liches use either II, Shadow Door or Mislead), not to mention that the latest version of SCS can finally use Spell Shield to block your anti-magic attacks (I proudly have some credit on this ).

 

Out of interest, where does the lich immunity to 1-5th level spells come from? I don't remember it from PnP AD&D (unless I've forgotten it).

Yep, it's from PnP.

[coldflame]

First thing first, I just want to say thank you for this great mod, and for all the new updates. This is the feedback topic right?

 

After hours of playing I thought to myself, if both Insect Plague and Creeping Doom spells have been nerfed why didn't Summon Insects? I know Summon Insects is a low level spell, but all three spells belong to the same family of spells, so wouldn't it be logical (maybe just logical to me ) to have Summon Insects handicapped by the same effect? They all involve bugs, so shouldn't they be subjected to the same weakness (fire)? I guess I just thought that would be more consistant. Again, this is just my humble opinion.

[coldflame]

First thing first, I just want to say thank you for this great mod, and for all the new updates. This is the feedback topic right?

 

My gratitude was meant for you David, sorry if I didn't make it clear in my previous post.

[tomtomtom]

Just wanted to add my voice to the reservations about inviso-backstab-inviso. In my experience even with a character having cast True Sight there is still enough time between the dispell check for a thief to drink a potion and attack. Unless this can be fixed I think this tactic should be optional in the Improved AI. I don't like playing whack-a-mole with disappearing thieves and I don't see an effective counter.

 

But yes, an amazing job overall and I know you can't please everyone.

 

Invisibility potion > attack > invis potion is an immensely cheesy way to fight. True sight ought to counteract it, but it doesn't because true sight is only checked once/round. If I wanted to fight like this then I'd equip the staff of the magi on a thief and solo the game with no trouble.

Everyone seems to use the word "cheesy" in different ways, so it's hard for me to respond. (I've seen it used to mean any or all of: (i) this does something the game writers didn't intend; (ii) this takes advantage of a bug, (iii) this isn't possible in PnP; (iv) I don't personally like this.)

 

But there's a fairly major difference with the staff of the magi: namely: you can only take invisibility potions once per round. The staff is genuinely impossible for AI to counter (and fairly difficult even for a PC to counter). There are lots of ways of dealing with thief invisibility.

[Guest geg_Ma3gau]

Things to imrove:

 

-clerics should cast harm at least sometimes (neven seen them do so). maybe only clerics with good thac0.

-some summons have no ai and if you dont control them they just stand there and look stupid (examples: staff of air elemental, simulacrum, staff of fire elementals).

-Summon cacofiend, fiend and gate spells imo should summon diffirent creatures based on alignment. so that gate allows summoning a balor for eample.

 

Btw anyone knows what is pit fiend's weapon enhamncement and if he has poison on hit and whats the effect?

[Guest geg_Ma3gau]

Also, would ve been awesome if contingencies and triggers were reworkes so that they are automatically avaliable each rest without the hassle to recast them all the time and rest twice.

[phordicus]

Out of interest, where does the lich immunity to 1-5th level spells come from? I don't remember it from PnP AD&D (unless I've forgotten it).

Yep, it's from PnP.

Source? I've got 1stEd MM and 2ndEd MM and neither have this. Some other 2ndEd handbook?

 

-Summon cacofiend, fiend and gate spells imo should summon diffirent creatures based on alignment. so that gate allows summoning a balor for eample.

You should look at Spell Revisions.

[Demivrgvs]

Out of interest, where does the lich immunity to 1-5th level spells come from? I don't remember it from PnP AD&D (unless I've forgotten it).

Yep, it's from PnP.

Source? I've got 1stEd MM and 2ndEd MM and neither have this. Some other 2ndEd handbook?

Oh my, I was pretty sure it was PnP but now I cannot find mention of this neither in mt AD&D Monster Book nor in 2nd edition reference site I use (here).

 

Anyway, I've always been against this particular "feature" as I think the huge amount of its PnP immunities combined with its spells should be more than enough to make it uber tough and not "annoying", but I know a bunch players actually like the "uniqueness" of this and the challenge it provides. Anyway, I don't expect it to ever change considering how many times I already proposed to remove it with no success.

 

Anyway, if you install SCS component to make Breach ignore this rule I guess it's not much of an issue as it doesn't interfere much with the usual anti-mage routine: spell removals, Breach, beat to death.

 

P.S While I can live with liches having this feature (they are supposed to be the ultimate eternal archmages, I can see them being absurdly resistant to spells) I really cannot bear rakshasas's immunity to spells up to 7th lvl. I find it neither appropriate nor fun

 

-Summon cacofiend, fiend and gate spells imo should summon diffirent creatures based on alignment. so that gate allows summoning a balor for eample.

You should look at Spell Revisions.

Actually I thought SCS already does this since a couple of versions...

[Guest geg_Ma3gau]

Also, there should be an option that really, really nerfs beholders they are totally overpowered in vanilla (but shut down by cloak and shield) and SCS II (cant be shut down by cloak and shield, only for a couple of rounds), they should cast much less rays/round and antimagic ray should have a check or something so that its not 100% entire buff list away. Should be an option. Beholders are really, really balance killers now.

 

Also, i think there should be save vs death to avoid int damage from illithids. Also pretty strong now should be more in line and int death should allow resurrection.

 

Another thing is that enemies can teleport but player cant. Seems unfair at times when illithids teleport to you ruining all your preparations.

[tomtomtom]

Also, there should be an option that really, really nerfs beholders they are totally overpowered in vanilla (but shut down by cloak and shield) and SCS II (cant be shut down by cloak and shield, only for a couple of rounds), they should cast much less rays/round and antimagic ray should have a check or something so that its not 100% entire buff list away. Should be an option. Beholders are really, really balance killers now.

 

Also, i think there should be save vs death to avoid int damage from illithids. Also pretty strong now should be more in line and int death should allow resurrection.

 

Another thing is that enemies can teleport but player cant. Seems unfair at times when illithids teleport to you ruining all your preparations.

 

Therein lies the difficulty. I think it's very hard within the confines of the game to up the difficulty of a type of monster without completely imbalancing things. Because the original designers took the difficulty of the encounter into consideration when building the game.

 

Another example of this is genies. I installed the smarter genies because I wanted more of a challenge. But it turned the King Strohm maze into one of the hardest encounters in Chapter 2. Because if genies had been that hard the designers would not have put six of them in an early game dungeon.

 

It's a tough challenge and I'm not sure there's an answer.

[Drelnza]

Out of interest, where does the lich immunity to 1-5th level spells come from? I don't remember it from PnP AD&D (unless I've forgotten it).

Yep, it's from PnP.

Source? I've got 1stEd MM and 2ndEd MM and neither have this. Some other 2ndEd handbook?

Oh my, I was pretty sure it was PnP but now I cannot find mention of this neither in mt AD&D Monster Book nor in 2nd edition reference site I use (here).

 

From 2E Monster Manual:

 

"Liches can themselves be hit only by weapons of at least +1, by magical spells, or by monsters with 6 or more Hit Dice and/or magical properties."

 

From 1E Monster Manual:

 

"Similarly, hit dice are 8-sided, and the lich can be affected only by magical attack forms or by monsters with magical properties or 6 or more hit dice."

 

I guess you need some reading glasses I find the SCSII Lich spot on in terms of difficulty, very tough indeed and just as they should be. I install the component to let Breach effect the Lich, fairs fair!!!