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SR v4 (detailed list of changes - ongoing update)


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I have a small suggestion for Shillelag, Flame Blade and Spiritual Hammer.

 

Could you add apr bonuses according to specific levels, e.g., 7/13 level like warriors? Without the bonuses, such magical weapon summoning spells are hardly able to be useful at higher level imo because of the lack of apr. Only dual or multi classes including a warrior might use these spells effectively. Of course, the bonuses should not be cumulative with warrior's apr bonuses which be gained by level up.

Edited by leania
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Sol' Searing Orb & Druid's spells in general

I'd change the Sol's searing orb description something like this if it's still a 3 round duration. "When the spell is completed, it creates a glowing gem. This gem must be thrown at an opponent within 3 rounds, or it will become too hot to hold."
Good point, done.

 

It's great from mechanical standpoint - that is what Druids needed. But from the role-playing side, Druids slinging fireballs even concealed as Searing Orbs feels weird. I'd at least reduce the radius to not make it "Druid's Stronger Fireball".
The radius does seem extreme, but it is twice the spell level of Fireball. I don't think that large of a blast radius is unreasonable.
A mage of similar level can easily combine 3x Fireballs into a 30d6 insta-casting one, and if we want to only compare spells of the same level mages have a 100% friendly Chain Lightning. Btw, if we reduce the blast radius this spell starts to slightly overlap again with Fire Seeds imo.

 

But we still need brutal druid spells. Brutal enough to make it worth having him over Priest or even Mage. I'm all for nerfing Wizard's damaging spells while making all of them party-friendly while having Druids more powerfull spells that also hurt our allies. It kind of captivates the primal savagery of druidic ethos and energy control only mages can do.
I think Firestorm, Earthquake and soon enough Whirlwind are great examples of "primal fury". :D

 

I do think that druids should have offensive power that is comparable to a mage's power of the same spell level. I don't think they should be able to out-damage level 9/HLA wizard spells.
Offensive power is the major difference between druid's spellbook and cleric's one imo, but they are not going to out-damage 8th and 9th level arcane spells indeed.

 

In exchange for reduced spell power, they gain some armor, better HP and THAC0, shapeshifting (LOL), and very powerful summons that don't spontaneously turn against you. I want to try them out with the new version of KR before super-buffing their damage output.
When it comes to the True Druid the only noticeable change I'm planning is to drastically improve their shapeshifting abilities, I'm not buffing their spell casting abilities.

 

Magically created weapons

I have a small suggestion for Shillelag, Flame Blade and Spiritual Hammer.

 

Could you add apr bonuses according to specific levels, e.g., 7/13 level like warriors? Without the bonuses, such magical weapon summoning spells are hardly able to be useful at higher level imo because of the lack of apr. Only dual or multi classes including a warrior might use these spells effectively. Of course, the bonuses should not be cumulative with warrior's apr bonuses which be gained by level up.

I think you already suggested this, and I'm still not convinced. They are clearly meant for those priests who like to go in melee the most (like F/D and F/C), and concept-wise I'm not sure I can justify increased apr on this kind of spell. For Magical Stones (similarly to MMM and Fire Seeds) the increased apr is justified because they are kinda like darts in terms of "handling".
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I'm a little behind my schedule but I've finished the first "run" through all the spells, where I've packaged all the stuff I was sure about. If you still don't see a Done flag next to a spell it's because I still have few doubts about it. I'll give myself one more day to work on them, but if I'm still not sure about them within 24hours I'll call it a day and leave further changes for the next version.

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Random thoughts for my second "run" through all the spells to see if I can squeeze in a bunch of further refinements. Let's start with divine spells...

 

Barkskin

Did we reached a consensus about reducing its duration to 5 turns?

 

Fire Trap & Glyph of Warding

Casting time 5 instead of full round? In exchange no save penalty?

 

Invisibility Purge

Within AD&D this spell actually had a very small 10' AoE unless multiple priests were casting it together. What about reducing the AoE from 30' to 15'?

 

Insect Spells

I'd like to do quite a few things here:

- remove the fear effect from them (Creeping Doom causes a poison effect on a failed save vs. death now)

- make them ignore magic resistance (it makes no sense, they are summons)

And I'm tempted to try the following:

- reduce casting time from 1 round to 3, 5 and 7 respectively.

- allow Creeping Doom to be cast on any point instead of requiring a target

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All above is fine by me, apart Invisibility Purge since AI uses it a lot in BG1.

Random ramblings:

 

Armor of Faith is imo slightly to good in conjuction with armors' damage resistance. 20% is what Hardiness gives you with KR. I'd vote for following:

- all resistances + 10% (doesn't scale with levels)

- duration 5 turns

 

Bless - duration could be slightly toned down, and casting speed increased

 

Free Action & NPP - again, duration seems very long. 3 turns?

 

Chaotic Commands - this spell is really to powerful for what it does, but messing with it probably could make AI falter. Duration toned down, so it actually matters, and so one cannot destroy Ilithid Underdark Lair so easilly? 3-5 turns?

 

Defensive Harmony - additional +2 saves vs Breath? AI uses it often, so it will benefit them as well.

 

Stoneskin - I'd nerf number of skins, especially if Breach won't remove it anymore. This spell (both mages and druidic version) could easilly max out at 6 skins maximum w/o breaking AI, and still serve it's purpose.

 

Greater Malison - -2 to saves, -1 to Luck?

Edited by kreso
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Barkskin/Fire Trap & Glyph of Warding

Fine.

 

Invisibility Purge

Within AD&D this spell actually had a very small 10' AoE unless multiple priests were casting it together. What about reducing the AoE from 30' to 15'?

No thanks.

 

Insect Spells

I'd like to do quite a few things here:

- remove the fear effect from them (Creeping Doom causes a poison effect on a failed save vs. death now)

- make them ignore magic resistance (it makes no sense, they are summons)

And I'm tempted to try the following:

- reduce casting time from 1 round to 3, 5 and 7 respectively.

- allow Creeping Doom to be cast on any point instead of requiring a target

These are appealing to me. I would not reduce the casting time that low, though. Maybe something like 5-8-1round.

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All above is fine by me, apart Invisibility Purge since AI uses it a lot in BG1.
Fine with me not touching Invisibility Purge AoE. I've just arrived at home and I've already put quite a few new Done flags right there. I'm really enjoying this. :) Speaking of which, I confirm that Druids now get Goodberry as a 1st lvl spell, and Gust of Wind as a 2nd lvl spell.

 

Clerics still get Gust of Wind as a 3rd lvl spell for now, but I think in a near future I may try to make their version a bit more unique to justify its presence within cleric's spellbook (because Gust of Wind really doesn't sound like a cleric spell imo). For example we could give it back its old name, Zone of Sweet Air (or something similar), change back the school from evocation to abjuration, and turn it into a sort of "warded zone" with some other benefits.

 

Armor of Faith is imo slightly to good in conjuction with armors' damage resistance. 20% is what Hardiness gives you with KR. I'd vote for following:

- all resistances + 10% (doesn't scale with levels)

- duration 5 turns

Mmm...I may think about this, but it doesn't convince me enough to implement it right away.

 

Bless - duration could be slightly toned down, and casting speed increased
Casting speed is already quite fast imo. Duration might be toned down to something like 2 turns but I'm not sure it would make a huge difference.

 

Free Action & NPP - again, duration seems very long. 3 turns?

 

Chaotic Commands - this spell is really to powerful for what it does, but messing with it probably could make AI falter. Duration toned down, so it actually matters, and so one cannot destroy Ilithid Underdark Lair so easilly? 3-5 turns?

Actually I was daring to suggest that pretty much all these "long lasting powerful buffs" that currently have an absurdly long duration (1 Turn/level) would probably be fine even with a 5 turns duration (1 hour in-game).

 

I'm not sure how SCS pre-buffing routine would handle the change though...

 

Defensive Harmony - additional +2 saves vs Breath? AI uses it often, so it will benefit them as well.
You mean vanilla AI or SCS one? I guess the latter when SR is detected because this spell was really crappy in vanilla.

 

I'm not sure improved saves vs. breath fit the spell concept though. Mmm...

 

Stoneskin - I'd nerf number of skins, especially if Breach won't remove it anymore. This spell (both mages and druidic version) could easilly max out at 6 skins maximum w/o breaking AI, and still serve it's purpose.
Unfortunately Breach will still affect Stoneskin (note that I've not flagged Breach as finished) because SCS scripts rely on Breach to tear it down when detected. DavidW seemed to like instead the idea of making Breach not remove things like Fireshield and Bladebarrier, thus I'm all for implementing that right away and see how it goes.

 

Greater Malison - -2 to saves, -1 to Luck?
Why is this "luck" suddenly suggested anywhere? :D GM is already a very powerful spell in the right hands, and with V4 having lower save penalties in general I think it kinda gains in appeal.

 

If I had to buff this spell the only thing I would do is make it work as a not-dispellable "curse".

Edited by Demivrgvs
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Armor of Faith

 

AoF + Full Plate + Hardiness + Roranach's Horn + Fortress Shield equals 80 damage resistant Paladin/Fighter-Cleric. Unless you wanna remove Hardiness from Paladins and F/Cs (thinking of it, it's not a bad idea imo. Leaves Inquisitors slightly vulnerable but why not?), I'd tone down damage resistance this spell gives. As far as the Concentration check goes, given AI clerics usually wear some kind of plate, they'll probably benefit more from 10% elemental and magic damage resistance than purely phyical (fwiw, I usually use Fireballs to disrupt them).

 

Bless

 

When I start a BG1 game with an 18 WIS cleric, he has 1 slot for Cure Light Wounds and 2 for Bless. That early, this spell gives a huge boost in power, and it affects entire party. It's really very effective, and AI doesn't benefit from it's long duration - no battle lasts for 5 turns.

 

Free Action/NPP/CC

 

5 turns set duration is fine by me. All these spells are invaluable throughout the game, so why not make them more "expensive".

 

Def.Harmony

 

Pretty much every cleric in SCS casts it as part of prebuff routine, I don't think it matters if SR is installed. Imo, Breath saves are "taking cover" behind shields, dodging etc. This spell kind of "improves teamwork" so why not? It would make it bit more appealing and with more uses other than fighting purely melee mobs.

 

Breach/Stoneskin

 

Ok...

 

Malison/Luck

 

Well, Malison is a fine spell if followed up by save or x. Given the immunities of certain oponnents make saving throws less important for them, I was thinking to make this spell appealing even against them. Al starts battles with it regulary, so it'd be even score.

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Bless - duration could be slightly toned down, and casting speed increased
Duration is the only thing making it worthwhile imo. Don't care about casting speed though :)

 

Free Action & NPP - again, duration seems very long. 3 turns?
I don't think those are long... I've found myself memorizing each one of the duration-improved single-target buffs as the default setup with SR. I certainly wouldn't waste slots on them if they're 3-5 turns long only.

 

The only exception to the cause is Chaotic Commands, which is vastly more powerful in BG than in PnP. Here I do agree on 5 turns limit.

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Free Action & NPP

I don't think those are long... I've found myself memorizing each one of the duration-improved single-target buffs as the default setup with SR. I certainly wouldn't waste slots on them if they're 3-5 turns long only.

 

The only exception to the cause is Chaotic Commands, which is vastly more powerful in BG than in PnP. Here I do agree on 5 turns limit.

 

NPP is also much more powerful in BG2 than in PnP world. There it protects you from a single succesfull attack, altough it covers a wider array of protections apart level drain.

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Upcoming release

Just so you know we are still on it, all my stuff for the main component is packaged and ready for upload. I and Arda are now handling global changes (e.g. NWN-style Spell Deflection component), and after that we are done. :)

 

Armor of Faith

Maybe just turn Armor of Faith into AC-boosting spell? Clerics are the one supposed to rule with these and there's no AC-boosting spell until Level 4 (Defensive Harmony).
That's pretty much what 3E did, but in our case I would not opt for it. Clerics and Paladins already have extremely good AC, and ProEvil offers a decent AC boost for a 1st lvl spell. AoF is more unique the way it works now imo, even more so if ToBEx concentration tweak works as expected.

 

I kinda like Kreso's suggestion instead (10% resistance against any dmg type, instead of 20% against physical dmg only). That's actually how it worked in vanilla but there it scaled pretty bad, starting as a useless spell (5% resistance for 4 rounds) and then slowly becoming an OP spell (25% resistance to all forms of damage for 23 rounds! Seriously, I'd memorize this even if it was a 3rd or 4th lvl spell!). This solution instead would make AoF work as per vanilla in terms of role, but performing much better for levels 1-4, almost identical for levels 5-9, less powerful but still very appealing imo for levels 10+. I'm really tempted to go for this.

 

NWN-style Spell Deflection

This is what I'm currently working on. The code to make SD work against AoE spells is ready, and after briefly discussing it with Arda, we have decided the separate component will only handle that particular feature, while all other related changes discussed here are handled by the main component.

 

I'll update the first post asap to reflect the specific changes to each spell, but the last few doubts I PM-ed to Arda were:

- should we keep Minor SD limitation to 7th lvl spells?

- the # of spell levels absorbed in vanilla are 4, 10, 12 respectively, wouldn't something like 6, 9,12 be better? Or do we need bigger differences between them to justify the much higher spell slots used (5th lvl for SD, 7th lvl for Gr.SD)?

- for Spell Trap I have bigger plans in the future, but for now I'd simply make it a virtually infinite SD with 8 hours duration

What do you think?

Edited by Demivrgvs
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