[Bug] Memorized spell slots

[CamDawg]

Now this is probably going to sound realy stupid as a workaround, as it will almost certainly have been mentioned before as a potential solution and rejected, but:

 

(snip)

 

This was my first attempt to solve this bug. The problem is that once the engine sees 0 4th level spells for a 7th level cleric, it stops calculating the spell slots. It doesn't care that the CLAB adds a spell or that wisdom bonuses kick in.

 

My next great idea was to try the same trick by modifying the wisdom spell bonus table to grant one less spell across the board and restore it to vanilla clerics via CLAB. A similar problem ensued: the engine sees that an Xth level cleric has one spell, takes one away from the wisdom table, and then does not evaluate the extra CLAB spell.

 

Both of these (and a whole mess of other things) were attempted way back when we first started receiving these bug reports, so my memory of the issues may not be exact.

 

Removing spells via script is not an option I consider reliable enough for consideration. To ensure that the effect is not repeated, you need to set a variable--you could use GLOBALs and baldur.bcs scripting, but then you'll need a unique GLOBAL for every creature. You could use LOCALS, but then you need to rely upon the dplayer scripts for party members. Neither of these solutions would affect non-party clerics to boot. There's also the additional complication of making sure your script is flexible enough to account for dual and multi-classes, checks the correct level, and needs the ability to roll back the penalty when the class is the inactive half of a DC. I have not found a satisfactory, reliable scripting solution that addresses all of these to my satisfaction. (I have not yet looked at NM's scheme yet; perhaps it does.)

[CamDawg]

Another good reason to remove unkitted clerics and the "one less spell per level" for kitted clerics altogether.

 

This is an ongoing workroom discussion, and I've been pressing for this. There are some implementation issues that make this an ugly tradeoff, though.

[SimDing0]

And there are some argumentative pricks who have their own dastardly motives!

[Andyr]

Heheh.

[Nerik]

Have you considered just adding the 'domain' (bonus) spells to the list of spells the cleric can memorise, instead of having them as innate abilities?

 

(What they should have done in Faiths and Avatars IMHO).

 

Charles

[Andyr]

Yes - though I think we dropped that idea, as there'd be no way to ensure that people either use them at all or use nothing but them... The intention was to have them used as per 3E rules.

 

I guess it would be a workaround, though, if the memorisation bug can't be remedied. Cam?

[CamDawg]

I think we had discussed and dismissed the idea prior to realizing what sorts of problems we would encounter with the one fewer spells per level. I'm pretty sure this was another round on IRC since I can't find any relevant discussions in the workroom.

 

The original thoughts on the bonus spells as innates coupled with the one fewer spell per level was that it really forces spell diversity as a major disadvantage for kitted clerics. The sphere restrictions make kits unique, but to a greater degree serves as a disadvantage in terms of a limited spell selection. Moving domain spells to innates and removing a spell slot served two main purposes, one of which was to lessen their pool of available spells even further--it is, to some degree, a substitution of the innate for that missing spell slot. Since the innate is fixed, we've lessened a kitted clerics spell diversity even more by "locking" one of their slots, further offsetting the advantages of being a kitted cleric.

 

That being said, it's certainly time to re-examine the approach. I've tried many tricks to try and fix this, from the smallest tweaks to the largest full-blown hacks and none have addressed this with any degree of consistency or satisfaction. Coding wise, changing the innates over to regular spells should be fairly trivial to implement.