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IR Revised V1.3.800 (2022 January 11th)


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Tell that to the BioWare devs who didn't even give good or even neutral players the option of choosing the evil path for that particular quest, :p.

Well, it has never been rewarding to play evil chars... try to be a sith in KotOR 1... and you'll find out that your party has worse equipment, with less experience and harder style to play the game, even if you have the options to be "evil".

In BG, if your rep drops to 1, everyone attacks the player char... which is very unrealistic, and needs to be fixed.

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Already has the immunity to blindness (+ immunity to backstab thrown in!) and the saving throw penalty, and I'm pretty sure "effect upon critical hit" is an EE-only opcode. So out of those ideas, you have a blinding effect, a paralyzing effect, or a +1 to AC effect. Out of those, I'd probably prefer a paralyzing effect - another blinding effect is extremely one-note, and AC is generic as heck.

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Hello Bartimaeus,




It is astonishing to see so many fixes and improvements done since my last visit several months ago. I am also glad to know that two of the three bugs I reported earlier had been taken care of. Great job! :thumbsup:




As for the third issue, how about granting the wearer an on-hit ability that cumulatively lower the target's morale by X for Y rounds, save allowed? IMO that fits its name perfectly. X and Y would better be relatively significant otherwise the target would just die before its morale breaks, rendering the helm useless.




Since I will definitely use this mod for my next EET play, I wish you could consider adding the following two topics into your backlog:



1. Recently there is a major update for BG2EE and the engine, i.e. the 2.5 patch, which changed a lot things that I cannot fully understand. Will IRR take them into consideration?



2. I always wanted to play an archer with (composite) longbows for the entire trilogy yet longbows are too underrepresented in SOA, driving most player towards shortbows or xbows. To my understanding, the launcher-ammo weapon system was designed like:

  • slings: least class restriction, least power
  • shortbows: less class restriction, higher APR and damage
  • xbows: same class restriction, trading APR and speed for higher ammo damage and powerful ammo secondary effects
  • longbows: more class restriction, even higher damage and THAC0 than shortbows

The issue is that magical longbows in SOA are completely out-shined by magical shortbows. To possibly fix this, I would propose:

  • Overhaul the Mana Bow so that it could fire, let's say, unlimited rift shards that do pure magical damage with +4 enchantment in determining what it can hit, with a x% chance of dealing additional y magical damage -- much like a ranged lesser version of black blade of disaster, making it on par with Gesen. Considering that it is available in late SOA, this weapon should not be too OP.
  • Nerf Tugan to have APR bonus of 1/2 instead of 2, or apply a -2 THAC0 penalty (per the rapid short feat in 3e) -- otherwise it beats most longbows in SOA in terms of DPS.
What do you think?

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0. Regarding Helm of Despair: Yeah, I think Demi's idea was simply to have two oppositely blessed helms, the concept of which I've seen in other games. However, I find it to be...a bit of a waste of a helmet, to be honest? Especially because it's not even that good of a helmet? Personally, I hate fear effects (more trouble than they're worth as far as disables go, IMO), but it is called the Helm of Despair. Hmm.

 

1. I'm not sure - I don't play on the EEs, so it's not completely relevant to me, but I'm pretty sure I looked at the patchnotes and didn't see much of note as it related to IR. However, it may be the case that I missed something or they did. ...But, as I said, I don't play on the EEs, so somebody would probably need to inform me if there's something I should be aware of.

 

2. Short Bow vs. Long Bow. For BG1, you have the Long Bow of Marksmanship vs. the Eagle Bow - I'd take the Long Bow, personally. For SoA, it's kind of a mixed bag? Mana Bow is certainly not the greatest, but as with some of the other +4 weapons in SoA, I don't think they're necessarily supposed to be, especially because most of them are easily obtainable...which is pretty much exactly the case for Mana Bow. I don't think it should really be on the same level of Iron Bow of Gesen at all - that's supposed to be a legendary bow that you have to craft (that I already nerfed compared to its utterly ludicrous damage in vanilla IR, too, which I was actually just thinking about recently in that it perhaps deserves something to compensate). And though it's not +4, Heartseeker is pretty darned good. Then, in ToB, you have Darkfire Bow vs. Taralash, and I would consider those to be pretty equal (although the +4 version of Darkfire is a bit better than the +4 version of Taralash). As for Tuigan Bow...I'm actually not totally opposed to nerfing it to +1/2, but then I also should probably do that for the other +1 ApR launchers, which means Light Crossbow of Speed, Sling of Everard, and Taralash. This change would almost certainly hurt Taralash, a long bow and the weapon category you're trying to buff, more than short bows, so I'm not sure of the wisdom of that.

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2. Short Bow vs. Long Bow.

I fully agree with your opinion about bows in BG1. Shortbows in BG1 provide some battlefield control and supplementary ranged firepower from non-warrior classes, meanwhile longbows focus on providing massive ranged firepower. This mechanism is broken in SOA as Tugan outshines most longbows in terms of firepower, with Gesen to kick casters and demilich's ass. IR buffed Strong Arm to improve the longbow line, yet IRR seems to have nerfed it again.

 

Demi once described the logic about bow damage bonus as the following:

Shortbow: no bonus

Longbow: +1 damage

Composite bow: bonus damage per the strength table

 

So Strong Arm should have bonus damage from echantment (+2), longbow (+1), and 19 strength requirement (+7). IMHO to properly nerf it, we can just remove its enchantment at all, which should fit its background well. If still feeling too strong, consider adding the oversized property that adds -2 thac0 penalty.

 

Edit: more thoughts about launcher-ammo weapon's enchantment level:

 

Whether launcher's enchantment level should give damage bonus is another topic. I am not sure how IRR handles this right now -- my feeling is that it should be ammo's enchantment level that gives damage bonus; launcher's should provide thac0 bonus only.

Edited by mercurier
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Demi wanted Composite Long Bows to give strength bonus? That's...interesting, but maybe also pretty crazy, which is why it probably never got implemented? In the vanilla setup (which includes playing with just the main IR component), long bows get +1 damage, while composite long bows get +1 THAC0 and damage, and both get +1 ApR and no enchantment damage bonus. With IR's weapon changes subcomponent, long bows still get +1 damage, while composite long bows get +2 damage, and both get +1/2 ApR and enchantment damage bonus. I did not change this - this is all Demi. To change composite long bows to strength bonus instead, you'd be changing the minimum damage bonus to +1, while the maximum strength bonus would depend on whether you're using 3rd Edition style stats, which IR is kind of made for with its changes to stat bonuses (adding +2-5 instead of setting to 18+). If you start with 18 strength, then equip the Gauntlets of Ogre Power, you now have +8 damage...in addition to whatever enchantment bonus the bow has as well as the ammo. That is so much damage output from a ranged weapon, especially bows that already have +1/2 ApR. Like, what would even be the point of crossbows anymore, which are already not really the best?

 

Regarding the launcher vs. ammo dichotomy, I think it's because the other launcher and ammo types having both damage and THAC0 bonuses that Demi wanted arrows to also do, since it was mysteriously inconsistent, but since bows were already the strongest, they got the ApR nerf. If it were me designing this from the ground up, I'd probably do things somewhat differently, especially in regards to slings which are just...terrible (I really never understood why slings have 1 ApR, since it makes no sense from either a gameplay or conceptual point of view - they should probably be the ones to have 2 ApR, and even then, they still wouldn't be hardly strong enough for that to be of much note). But since IRR aims to be like IR in most ways, that's probably not going to happen, :p.

 

Another version of IR will be coming out soon. Hopefully today or tomorrow.

Edited by Bartimaeus
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I apologize if I didn't state it clearly. The design of compositie bows is that they offer strength bonus exactly equals to their strength requirement, i.e. a composite bow that requires 18 strength always offer extra +2 damage even if the character has 25 strength. Actually the character with 25 strength needs to restrain his strength so that he does not break the bow shaft. In this system any magical composite bow can be designed with balanced enchantment, secondary effects, and bonus from strength, while Strong Arm can be balanced as a non-magical and oversized item.

 

Sling of Seeking, however, is exempt from this rule by making unlimited strength bonus as its unique feature.

 

For the launcher and ammo dichotomy, imo ranged attacker should not be superior to melee attacker in terms of damage output, as the former is in a much saver position in the battlefield, otherwise I think it is really unfair for the front liners. If enchantment in launcher and ammo are to be granting thac0 and damage bonus, respectively, then ranged weapons will be on par with melee weapons in terms of benefits from enchantment. And if we let bows granting 3/2 apr instead of 2, archers (generic ones, not referring to the archer kit) will be slightly inferior to dual-wielding warriors in terms of damage output, reaching the design goal stated in the beginning of this paragraph.

 

Again, I believe that not every family of weapon should have the same damage potential. Longbows, being the most training demanding ranged weaponry, usable solely by warrior classes, deserve the highest damage potential; Slings have almost no restriction in classses therefore should have the least damage potential so that spellcasters will not do their side job too well. After all, it's a trade off between power and popularity. Similar concept is already in the melee weapon system.

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Okay, I get you now. Though the numbers don't add up for other composite longbows, as they require 16 strength, which would be +1 damage in AD&D (or +3 in 3.0), but Demi's weapon changes specifically makes it +2 damage. Strong Arm, on the other hand, does have +7 damage with Weapon Changes (ignoring the enchantment bonus) with a 19 strength requirement, which would be correct for an AD&D 19 strength (but if you don't have Weapon Changes, it would only be +6, which is incorrect). That's fine, though - we can just treat Strong Arm as a unique exception. Strong Arm was a bow that I really didn't "get" and was struggling to figure out what to do with, so a little more wisdom on its concept is welcome.

 

So in IR with Weapon Changes, there's a total of +9 damage and +2 THAC0, while in IRR with Weapon Changes right now, it's +8 damage (+2 from composite bow, +4 from Oversized, and +2 from enchantment) while the THAC0 bonus is 0 (+2 from enchantment and -2 from Oversized). I can change it from the generic Oversized property to a unique property, but what exactly do I want the end numbers to be here? It's a difficult bow to balance. I'm thinking maybe leave it at +2 enchantment bonus for simplicity's sake, and make the additional damage +3 instead. If you play with Weapon Changes, that adds up to a total of +7 damage/+2 THAC0 with 19 required strength. A little bit of a nerf from vanilla IR's Strong Arm and it sort of reaches the +7 STR damage (helped by the enchantment bonus), but a little better than the one currently in IRR with the Oversized property. How does that sound? If you really wanted "true" +7 damage from strength (i.e. not factoring in Weapon Changes' bonus damage from enchantment), that would almost necessitate reducing its enchantment level (or removing its enchantment completely)...which would just make it significantly weaker, so why bother? Sometimes game logic has to be eschewed with to make an item work, I think.

Edited by Bartimaeus
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1.15 released:

  1. Arrow of Detonation no longer applies its missile damage to the group of enemies it explodes upon, but rather only the one actually hit by the missile (suggested by Luke).
  2. The Carsomyrs no longer let you use Reverse Magic (the single target Dispel Magic that always succeeds if the target fails a -4 wand saving throw), but rather use Dispel Magic once again. Reverse Magic had originally been intended to simply be a stand-in while I fixed SR's Dispel/Remove Magic conundrum, but somewhere along the way, I forgot to change it back. Unlike its original version, however, this is cast at caster level (albeit instantly) and does not always succeed as a result (as 3x always succeeding 30' AoE Dispel Magics was insanely OP previously).
  3. Enfeebling effects (e.g. Ardulia's Fall) are now distinct from slowing effects as per SR (from "target is slowed and suffers a -1 penalty to THAC0, damage, and AC for 1 round (save vs. spell neg.)" to "Enfeebling: target suffers a -2 penalty to THAC0, damage, and movement speed for 1 round (save vs. spell neg.)".
  4. Likewise, slowing effects (e.g. Flail of the Ages' Cold Head) are very similar to SR's slow effects.
  5. Strong Arm, instead of the Oversized property, receives the Mighty Weapon property for now (and its strength requirement is back to 19 as a result). I'm still unsure of the balance of this item, but it's still very slightly less powerful than vanilla IR's Strong Arm (by 1 damage), so it's something.
  6. Mana Bow +4's Illusion Bane chance was upped to 33% (from 25%).
  7. More Mustard Jelly fixes, specifically regarding protection from stun and petrification as well as a damage fix.
  8. Blackmist +4 receives the Paralyzing effect for now (33% chance for 2 rounds).
  9. Malakar +2 had the wrong weight.
  10. A number of missing colons after "STATISTICS" and a number of missing commas, as usual.
  11. The Kuo-Toa bolts were apparently supposed to be 1D10 base damage (1D12 with Weapon Changes) and 1 pound each according to Demi's original notes...so now they are.
  12. The alternative forms of Rods of Lordly Might should actually have their correct descriptions now - whoops!
  13. Some more consistent protections.
  14. A bunch of sectype fixes for SR, specifically relating to petrification, haste, slow, and dispel. Specifically, haste effects from different sources should properly revert slow effects, slow effects should properly revert haste effects, Improved Haste should now properly protect against slow effects, items/effects with protection against petrification should now properly protect against SR's style of petrification, Methild's Harp's Break Enchantment should break petrification a la SR, and dispelling effects should cancel out Dispelling Screen. These only apply if you have SR installed.
  15. Protection against projectile fixes for the EEs. The EEs have 1pp's custom projectiles added by default - now items like Gloves of Missile Snaring should protect against them (while the fixes I added to the BWPFP for 1pp will make 1pp patch these items for IRR if you use 1pp on non-EE games, as 1pp must be installed after IRR).
  16. IR's spell protections effects (e.g. Amulet of Spell Warding's Spell Deflection) should now make use of new EE 2.5 functionality that destroys the effects of these spells when the number of deflections have been depleted.

 

And now...just Spell Revisions to go.

Edited by Bartimaeus
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You're welcome. As always, let me know if there are any problems.

 

For those who use 1pp, the 1.03c version of my 1pp fixes has been released - it's just a compatibility fix to avoid a problem I've run into with too long filenames, but it's important if you use IRR. I'll update this when it's been updated on the Big World Project Fixpack.

Edited by Bartimaeus
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