Excluding Spells from Bards

[subtledoctor]

Thanks for splitting off this thread, whichever mod did it.

 

See, Refinements used the Jester kit for exactly the reason I thought they did. Yay for memory!

 

But, Refinements uses it to restrict items from the Sword Angel. So this would be a serious compatibility issue.

 

BUT, since Refinements shunts various bard kits onto the Skald usability flag, we can just do the same thing. I'm not aware of any item usability differences between Skalds and other bards. I think SoD might have an item that works differently for Skalds, but that presumably uses opcode 177, not the usability field.

 

@Grammar, yes revising all Scrolls in a comprehensive way would be, well, comprehensive. But I'm not sure it's worth it in the absence of a real comprehensive mod. Players might get freaked out if they install a component called "Revised Bardic Magic" and suddenly their wizards behave differently...

 

Glomming onto the Skald kit flag and then patching spells from certain schools to tick that flag is a pretty easy solution in the meantime...

[Grammarsalad]

I have to admit that I haven't heard of the sword angel kit...i take it that this kit was a thing back in refinements heyday, but is it still a thing?

 

And yeah, you're right, of course ( about the other stuff)...

 

Edit: though, of course, I'm now preoccupied about how to implement this. Heh, modders curse

[Jarno Mikkola]

@Grammar, yes revising all Scrolls in a comprehensive way would be, well, comprehensive. But I'm not sure it's worth it in the absence of a real comprehensive mod. Players might get freaked out if they install a component called "Revised Bardic Magic" and suddenly their wizards behave differently...

Well, if you use the wizard kits usability flags on your bards to remove their ability to cast the spells, the wizards remain are unchanged. Of course you can't install it with the Scales of Balance or any other mod that remove the wizards kit spell restriction factors, but that's why it's there. Or how could you have a Necromancer based Bard without a Necromancer ?

My opinion on this is the same as for the sphere system, if it's done well, I won't even notice it's there. Of course with divine casters, the system can't restrict me from using healing/protection spells from my primary healer or I won't use it as that's why I use those characters primarily for, it's their job/assigned role.

Just like you can't take the traps disarm from my thief. Or damage spells from my mage... or Hitpoints from my tank. But the game has 6 party members, and that's only 4 roles... the rest can be anything and nothing in between those.

Bards don't have a specifically assigned role, so it should have a more broader spectrum they can be used to specialize into. Aka if you want to make it to be a damage dealer, that's fine for a one kit, as long as you try to balance it somehow. Another might be a song singer that gives everyone +5 luck, that has only 3 hitpoints.

[subtledoctor]

of course, I'm now preoccupied about how to implement this. Heh, modders curse

Ha ha yeah. Well, I'm going to make a go of it in the next couple days. I'm going to expand the utility of bard songs so they are less a "stand around and sing" ability and more of a "song/sound-based magic" ability. And you will be able to learn new 'songs' (spells) both from feats and from special quest rewards.

 

In exchange for expanded use of bardic magic, I will restrict bards' use of arcane magic to the schools of Enchantment, Illusion, Divination, and either Invocation or Alteration.

 

It will probably take a week or two to code it up, and then I'll have a working version so we can really see how this kit flag exclusion stuff works.

[Grammarsalad]

"Well, if you use the wizard kits usability flags on your bards to remove their ability to cast the spells, the wizards remain are unchanged."

 

...

 

(Subtle, let me know if I'm hijacking this thread)

 

Jarno, that's not a terrible idea, but I was thinking about unique spell lists for bards-- that is, spells that are not available to other casters at all. If you have bards with (e.g.) the diviner flag, well then sure, they won't be able to select ( at creation) or learn conjurer spells. But if you want to give them unique spells, you have to (at the very least) allow diviners to attain those spells if you do things the normal way...

 

Edit: *looks up*

 

Yeah, that's another way to do it. Give them spells by another method...

[subtledoctor]

Of course you can always just give a kit custom spells in their clab table as well. For example, my Meistersinger will have

- bardic song magic

- arcane casting (only from 4 schools)

- druidic animal summoning in their arcane spellbook

 

Even though bards will be unable to cast spells from the school of Necromancy, the Dirgesinger kit might get some Necromancy spells added for free to their spellbook.

 

Etc.

[Grammarsalad]

Another tangent.

 

A while ago, when that magic of Faerûn mod was in development, the authors were originally going to have a "song mage" kit, that didn't have any spells per se. Rather, the spells the class did have ( that would be in their spell book) merely changed the existing bard song. It seemed like a fascinating idea, not just for a kit, but as a new "take" on the entire class. I don't have any clue as to how they were going to implement it, however. That is, how they were going to get the class through character creation in (e.g.) bg2 without selecting any normal spells.

 

Morpheous seemed confident that they could do it. Thinking about it, I remember that they were going to do it with abilities in the clab. They had a unique clab that allowed custom usability (via use any item and item restriction effects) but they also had a thing that allowed custom sphere and arcane spell access in the works ( which was probably a complete reworking of the system.) They never finished it, so i don't know what they planned

[Grammarsalad]

...

 

In exchange for expanded use of bardic magic, I will restrict bards' use of arcane magic to the schools of Enchantment, Illusion, Divination, and either Invocation or Alteration.

 

...

Hmmm..."sound magic" seems more like an invocation thing than an alteration thing, but it's always felt off to me that bards can cast fireball.

 

On the other hand, 'sound' stimulus is really is more a matter of altering/agitating air molecules...heh, of course, so is 'heat', but fire is a fundamental element in d&d I suppose...so maybe alteration is a better fit.

[agb1]

I vote for Abjuration instead of Invocation/Alteration. So Abjuration, Divination, Enchantment, Illusion only. Stuff that's about auras, mind-bending-ness or (not-)knowing-ness. People stuff, in other words. I'm with Grammarsalad on bards not casting fireballs.

[subtledoctor]

My head started to go round in circles when I thought about it like that. Instead, I think about bards as 'lesser' magicians, casting glamours/enchantments, misdirection/illusions, some basic divining/fortune-telling... these are small-time carnival magicians, more focused on showmanship than plumbing the arcane mysteries of the universe.

 

So, is Invocation closer to this ("ooh, big boom!") and is Alteration more traditional wizardry (mastering the Philosopher's Stone)?

 

Or, is Alteration more superficial showman's magic ("look, I turned this napkin into a dove!"), and is Invocation more traditional wizardry (blasting foes with powerful energies)?

 

I'm leaning toward the latter.

[agb1]

Put it this way: Alteration = Time Stop .. a bard has no business casting that. Invocation/Evocation = Fireball. Ditto.

[subtledoctor]

Well, they can only cast low-level magic anyway, so let's instead compare stuff like Haste, Flesh to Stone, and Polymorph against stuff like Fireball, Chain Lightning, and Cone of Cold.

 

Eh, yeah, you're right, bards should be casting none of that. I forgot about Abjuration!

 

Okay, so probably bards will only be able to cast from the schools of Enchantment, Illusion, Abjuration, and Divination. Plus some select spells that get whitelisted, like Knock and Sound Burst and Shout. But, they will still (I think) be able to use scrolls to cast spells from any school.

[Jarno Mikkola]

...a bard has no business casting that. Invocation/Evocation = Fireball. Ditto.

Have you ever been in a rock/metal show ? There's fire, smoke and things...

A "bard" might not be able to cast (any of)those. But maybe a blade could some ? As they could use the direct damage spells in their fighting, at the DPS role. And they don't necessarily get/need the fighters attack rate.

Jester should maybe be able to summon some, as all bards should be able to charm, making it a non issue. Yeah, bards summoning ... seems somewhat offbeat.

And Scalds ... maybe alteration. So no alteration to Bards, Jesters or Blades.

 

Put it this way: Alteration = Time Stop .. a bard has no business casting that.

Well considering that the Bard should mainly get more spells than the mage, the main emphasis on the amount, not the quality, a Bard should maybe not have 9th level spells.

Unless they are at levels 27++... which is beyond the 5 000 000xp amount, by my ruleset. At which time the mages would have three 9th level spells. Aka the rules suppose that the bards will get to cast even the highest mage spells, but at very much slowly. But they get total of twelve 1st level spells compared to mages total of eight.

[subtledoctor]

Oh, sorry to burst bubbles, but in this mod, the Blade is going to become a thief kit, and the Skald will be a fighter kit! They will have bardic magic but no arcane spellcasting.

[subtledoctor]

Okay, just want to leave a note for posterity, I just tested (on BGEE v2.3) and this does work:

 

 

COPY_EXISTING_REGEXP GLOB ~^.+\.spl$~ ~override~
  READ_SHORT 0x1c spell_type
  PATCH_IF spell_type = 1 BEGIN
    READ_BYTE 0x25 spell_school
    PATCH_IF spell_school = 2 OR     //    conjuration
            spell_school = 1 OR     //    abjuration
            spell_school = 6 OR     //    invocation
            spell_school = 7 OR     //    necromancy
            spell_school = 8 OR     //    alteration
            spell_school = 9 BEGIN    //    wild
      READ_BYTE 0x20 bard_excludes
      WRITE_BYTE 0x20 (%bard_excludes% BOR ~0b10000000~)  // unusable by skalds
    END
  END
BUT_ONLY

 

 

 

That restricts Skalds unable to casting spells from the Enchantment, Illusion, and Divination schools. Note, you can still cast spells from other schools directly from scrolls - the .itm files would need to be similarly altered to disable that - but you cannot add the spells to your spellbook.

 

To apply this to all bards, you would need to set all bard kits to share the Skald usability value (0x00800000). Of course the Trueclass cannot have a kit's usability flag so you would need to, as I said above, add a new "Trueclass" kit and replace the real Trueclass with the new clone in the menu.