TActical tips

[Sergio]

So, I've got to ask some questions.

1- How do I defend myself from demilich imprisonment? I understand that on a mage I can use spell immunity: abjuration, but how do I defend all the party from that?

2- What is the way to immunize my party from the spells? Just sheer MR?

3- Can someone explain me how the spell system work? I see all kind of different spells, for example, pierce magic, ruby ray, breach, etc. Which one do I get?

Thanks for help.

[kreso]

1- How do I defend myself from demilich imprisonment? I understand that on a mage I can use spell immunity: abjuration, but how do I defend all the party from that?

It allows for a saving throw. I think it's with a penalty, but a Magic Shielding potions helps with that. It also causes level drain w/o save, but again, equipment/NPP spell will keep you safe. Protection from Magic scroll works.

Item Revisions has boots which give Imprisonment immunity. Keep vulnerable people away, and pray he doesn't see them.

Berserker Rage gives 60 sec immunity to both effects, so Korgan is very effective if you give him a +4 weapon.

 

 

2- What is the way to immunize my party from the spells? Just sheer MR?

What spells? MR helps against a lot, but not all spells. I think it should be noted in spell description if they bypass MR or not.

 

 

3- Can someone explain me how the spell system work? I see all kind of different spells, for example, pierce magic, ruby ray, breach, etc. Which one do I get?

In very short terms:

You have 4 main kinds of protections:

1) combat - Stoneskin, Mantle, PFMW etc.

2) specific - Chaotic Commands, Remove Fear etc.

3) spell - Turning, Spell Immunity, Deflection, Globe of Invulnerability etc.

4) illusions - Imp.invisibility, Mislead, etc.

 

For removing 1, you need Breach or Remove Magic (RM doesn't always work however)

For removing 2, you need Breach or Remove Magic

For removing 3, you need spell protection removals (Pierce Magic, Ruby Ray, Spellstrike, Secret Word)

For removing 4, you need illusion removals (True Sight, Oracle, Jan's Glasses, thief with Detect Illusion or similar)

 

The caveat is that in order to remove 1) or 2) you need to remove 3) with SCS. And to remove 3) you need to remove 4).

SI:Divination will make the mage immune to 4) so SCS makes spell removals targetable on mages with Improved Invisibility (this isn't something I really like).

 

Remove magic is "special" in that regard, it bypasses all spell protections apart Spell Immunity:Abjuration.

I usually prefer Secret Word due to fast casting time(I play with Spell Revisions, so things might be different w/o it, I can't remember what vanilla version of this spell actually does.... or how) and Ruby Ray since it can remove any spell protection, unlike Khelben or Pierce Magic, which are limited to removing up to 8th level protections, so they can't remove Spell Trap, which is level 9. Pierce Shield is quite useless unless you have Spell Revisions.

At level 18 and above, Spellstrike is the fastest way to get rid of spell protections.

 

What should you get - 2xTrue Sight/Oracle, or a dedicated thief, 3xBreach (more in ToB), 3xRuby Ray , 2xSpellstrike. If at low levels, use Secret Word instead of Ruby Ray. At high levels, you can also use Dispel/Remove magic succesfully, especially with a bard or a single/dual class cleric. If there's a high-level mage oponnent (Kangaxx for example, since he comes in 2 versions and you can't rest in-between) you might add more Ruby Rays.

 

These are the basics, but there's quite a bit of quirks with the whole system (removal x can remove protections up to level y), and it can depend on various mods (SR, aTweaks, Fixpack Beta Fixes) and install methods/options, so some things may be slightly different in your install.

[Demivrgvs]

I think Kreso covered it well.

 

@Sergio, as far as I remember you are playing with Spell Revisions, aren't you?

 

I think it should be noted in spell description if they bypass MR or not.

Within SR I added a note within each spell description in case the spell bypasses MR. If you find any spell without such note bypassing MR or viceversa just let me know.

 

SCS makes spell removals targetable on mages with Improved Invisibility (this isn't something I really like).

I don't like it too, but fortunately I found a more refined solution for SR (*), and you can almost pretend SCS tweak do not exist while playing with SRV4. Let's hope DavidW will like it enough to take it into consideration if he will release a new version of SCS.

 

(*) See Invisibility and True Seeing allow to directly target improved invisible characters.

 

I usually prefer Secret Word due to fast casting time(I play with Spell Revisions, so things might be different w/o it, I can't remember what vanilla version of this spell actually does.... or how)

SW was an abjuration spell rather than a Power Word, and casting time was 4 instead of the current 1.

[Sergio]

Thanks a lot Kreso. Your post was very insightful.
If I have other doubts I'll share them ;D

And yes,Demivrgvs, I'm using spell revisions. I'll let you know if I find anything weird

[DavidW]

I don't like it too, but fortunately I found a more refined solution for SR (*), and you can almost pretend SCS tweak do not exist while playing with SRV4. Let's hope DavidW will like it enough to take it into consideration if he will release a new version of SCS.

 

(*) See Invisibility and True Seeing allow to directly target improved invisible characters.

 

That's interesting. How does it work technically?

[Demivrgvs]

I don't like it too, but fortunately I found a more refined solution for SR (*), and you can almost pretend SCS tweak do not exist while playing with SRV4. Let's hope DavidW will like it enough to take it into consideration if he will release a new version of SCS.

 

(*) See Invisibility and True Seeing allow to directly target improved invisible characters.

That's interesting. How does it work technically?

Detect Invisibility and True Seeing do not fully dispel Improved Invisibility anymore, they only reveal invisible targets via opcode 136, but they also temporarily grant the caster opcode 193 which allows them to directly cast spells at semi-invisible targets. Cool isn't it?

 

Btw, if I'll ever convince you to adopt the above tweak rather than your current "spell removals bypass II", please do not override SR's version of these spells when SR is detected because I also applied tons of other small refinements (e.g. TS do not dispel illusionary protections nor illusionary creatures, but the latters are "highlighted" and "weakened").

[DavidW]

Detect Invisibility and True Seeing do not fully dispel Improved Invisibility anymore, they only reveal invisible targets via opcode 136, but they also temporarily grant the caster opcode 193 which allows them to directly cast spells at semi-invisible targets. Cool isn't it?

Very cool. I'm not sure I even knew 193 allowed the player to target I-I creatures. (The normal name, "detect invisible by script", rather suggests otherwise, but those names are often misleading I guess.) Very nice idea; I'll think about stealing adopting it.

 

Btw, if I'll ever convince you to adopt the above tweak rather than your current "spell removals bypass II", please do not override SR's version of these spells when SR is detected because I also applied tons of other small refinements (e.g. TS do not dispel illusionary protections nor illusionary creatures, but the latters are "highlighted" and "weakened").

I'm not sure I understand this. When I do something that's basically identical to SR I normally skip the component if SR is detected, but if I did something differently from SR presumably players ought to be able to choose which they prefer?

[Demivrgvs]

Detect Invisibility and True Seeing do not fully dispel Improved Invisibility anymore, they only reveal invisible targets via opcode 136, but they also temporarily grant the caster opcode 193 which allows them to directly cast spells at semi-invisible targets. Cool isn't it?

Very cool. I'm not sure I even knew 193 allowed the player to target I-I creatures. (The normal name, "detect invisible by script", rather suggests otherwise, but those names are often misleading I guess.) Very nice idea; I'll think about stealing adopting it.

 

Btw, if I'll ever convince you to adopt the above tweak rather than your current "spell removals bypass II", please do not override SR's version of these spells when SR is detected because I also applied tons of other small refinements (e.g. TS do not dispel illusionary protections nor illusionary creatures, but the latters are "highlighted" and "weakened").

I'm not sure I understand this. When I do something that's basically identical to SR I normally skip the component if SR is detected, but if I did something differently from SR presumably players ought to be able to choose which they prefer?

It was just a reminder, not an accusation.

 

For example during the current betas of SR we discovered that any eventual change to Spell Shield on my side was then canceled by SCS. Specifically, within beta 2 we tried to make it grant immunity to dispel and replace SI:Abj with a copy of Spell Shield, but SCS was making Spell Shield work vanilla-style again. Anyway, don't worry we had to give up such solution anyway because you often combine SS, SI:Abj and another spell protection, all at once.

 

If you are curious, right now we are testing another daring solution:

- The main SI spell is replaced by an adaptation of PnP Wall of Dispel Magic (similar to Otiluke's Dispelling Screen). Players only get this spells.

- when your AI looks for SI:Abj it will instead find the above spell. The crucial part for you was that SI:Abj protects from dispel right?

- when your AI looks for SI:Div it will find a copy of Non-Detection (now fully working unlike vanilla's one).

I'd prefer to erase Spell Immunity from existance, but I assume you want to keep it.

[DavidW]

For example during the current betas of SR we discovered that any eventual change to Spell Shield on my side was then canceled by SCS. Specifically, within beta 2 we tried to make it grant immunity to dispel and replace SI:Abj with a copy of Spell Shield, but SCS was making Spell Shield work vanilla-style again.

Okay: there's a reason for this. As we agreed at http://forums.gibberlings3.net/index.php?showtopic=21821 back in 2011, version 4 of SR (which I believe is the first official version that fixes Spell Shield) is supposed to create a file "dvsrv4here.mrk" in the override so SCS knows it's there. If that file's detected, SCS completely skips the Spell Shield changes. If not, SCS does its own fix of Spell Shield, and if it detects SR (but not SR v4) it reverts to a vanilla copy of Spell Shield first, because it's not really viable to hot-include the Ardanis-coded spell shield fix. If you want SCS to treat your betas as version 4, you have to tell it to!

 

(If SR *is* creating dvsrv4here.mrk, something is going wrong in my code; let me know.)

 

If you are curious, right now we are testing another daring solution:

- The main SI spell is replaced by an adaptation of PnP Wall of Dispel Magic (similar to Otiluke's Dispelling Screen). Players only get this spells.

- when your AI looks for SI:Abj it will instead find the above spell. The crucial part for you was that SI:Abj protects from dispel right?

Correct.

- when your AI looks for SI:Div it will find a copy of Non-Detection (now fully working unlike vanilla's one).

I'd prefer to erase Spell Immunity from existance, but I assume you want to keep it.

Yep. SCS's standard minimalism: I don't mind adapting for code changes by third party mods (to the very limited extent that I have the time) but I don't myself want to change the ruleset unless it's absolutely unavoidable. And whatever the pros and cons of Spell Immunity, it doesn't actually break anything: spell combat against wizards using SI is perfectly viable.

[Demivrgvs]

@David ohh I see, good then. SCS handle this whole thing even better than I hoped than!

 

Regarding Spell Immunity, don't worry I understand your position and I'm sure you understand mine. Taken singularly SI:Abj isn't even "brokenly OP" imo (mostly because it doesn't do 10% of what it should do) but as the majority of players I hate SI more than any other spell because:

- it never existed in PnP (clerics had a SI spell, but waaaay less powerful because you had to select a single spell to be protected from)

- it covers too well the role of multiple spells of even higher lvl than itself (e.g. Non-detection, Spell Shield, ProEnergy, Mind Blank etc.)

- it's clearly OP for its level because of the above

- it doesn't work as per description (e.g. caster should not be able to cast spells from the protected school)

- it doesn't work as you would expect (e.g. SI:Abj not protecting from spell removals)

 

On a side note, I thought you used many SI variants but my beta testers are experiencing only SI:Abj and SI:Div, can you confirm it?