Jump to content

SR Revised V1.3.900 (2022 August 8th)


Recommended Posts

1 hour ago, NdranC said:

@Bartimaeus Thank you.

I also noticed that if you cast Creeping Doom (probably other insect spells as well) on an enemy and you Time Stop, the insect will still tick for damage while time in stopped. I guess the insect spells are pretty... buggy :D

Ok I'm sorry about that. Please still patch my breach.

spwi513.spl 346 B · 0 downloads

Try this: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/a5igzuyle2ztx3x/spwi513.spl

Insects: Odd. I think most other forms of ticking damage don't continue to tick on timestopped creatures, right?

Edited by Bartimaeus
Link to comment
3 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

Try this: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/a5igzuyle2ztx3x/spwi513.spl

Insects: Odd. I think most other forms of ticking damage don't continue to tick on timestopped creatures, right?

Thanks, that fixed my breach so far. I definitely think you should consider the implications of Pierce Shield. Thanks to it I was able to defeat the Planar Sphere Lich with a single Pierce Shield, even though he had Dispelling Screen and some type of Spell Deflection. He was also unable to get his Time Stop or Planetar off. The poor guy died in 1.5 rounds.

Granted I'm probably over leveled for this encounter and I have 3 arcane casters so I could have also overwhelmed his protections pretty easily. I'll keep an eye out for it and give some general feedback once I'm done with the game.

Time Stop: Yeah I just tested it in single player in Irenicus Dungeon and I noticed that not only insect plague will tick for damage but the mefhits kept spawning from the machine. I also tested poison dagger and noticed that even though the poison damage ticks stop with time stop, the poison effect will run out while in time stop. Suggesting that even though the character doesn't take damage their debuff timer is still ticking.

EDIT: I forgot to add. I also noticed I can use Druid Regeneration through Curse even though Curse is stopping Cleric healing spells. Not sure if it's intentional or not.

Edited by NdranC
Link to comment

Probably not, but the golem curse is SCS, not SR.

Pierce Shield: I am usually pretty hesitant to majorly nerf something that the base mod hasn't. I'm usually pretty gung-ho for anything between "major buff" and "minor nerf", but major nerfs have a tendency of annoying people that expect things to work a certain way. It's probably more suited to something like @subtledoctor's tweaks.

Link to comment
Guest Mythdragon

I don't think making Pierce Shield breach identical to normal Breach would be a major nerf it would still be very effective. If enemy doesnt have 2 layers of spell defense it will be breached in a single cast. I dont think it is even intended to bypass all spell protections without any way to protect against it. Description doesnt imply so. As long as it works against liches and rakshasas it is fine if it is blocked by 2 layered defense,bringing down one or both in the process.

Link to comment

Changing Breach to be stopped by Spell Deflection is in large part what enabled SCS to create more interesting mage combat and the way Pierce Shield currently works seems to go against this philosophy.

As far as I can tell there are a couple template that mages will use to pre-buff themselves with.

a) 1 Spell Deflection

b) 1 Spell Deflection + Dispelling Screen

c) 1 Spell Deflection + Dispelling Screen + Spell Shield

d) 2 Spell Deflections + Dispelling Screen

e) 2 Spell Deflections + Dispelling Screen + Spell Shield

As long as you can see through invisibility or have a rogue that can Detect Illusions you will be able to "solve" 3/5 of these with a single cast of Pierce Shield and the other 2 only takes to cast a Secret Word right before it. The problem with that is not that it happens but that I can be sure I can solve almost all my problems with a single spell without reading the buffs in chat or without thinking too much about it. Why would I be incentivized to pick Ruby Ray of Reversal or Khelben's Warding Whip or Spellstrike when they are so close and very much inferior?

Spelltrike will essentially silence the mage but breaching their protections will result in their deaths which is much better. It's also a 9th level spell that competes with Time Stop.

Ruby Ray of Reversal's only unique concept is to deal with Spell Trap as cheap as possible but so does Pierce Shield and no need to cast anything else because they are dead.

Khelben's Warding Whip. I don't care about an enemy that has multiple Spell Protections. My breach will bypass all of them thanks to Pierce Shield.

Both 7th level solutions might be 1 level lower but honestly Pierce Shield is worth the wait as a sorcerer.

Anyway, obviously it's your mod and it's wise to hesitate. This is likely a problem with base SR more than something that is your fault but that doesn't change the fact that at least from where I'm standing I almost want to remove Pierce Shield from my spell list because of how it works. Making the breach component happen just the same but be separate and therefore stoppable by Dispelling Screen or other Spell Deflections would be perfect in my opinion. @subtledoctor thoughts on this?

Edited by NdranC
Link to comment
Guest Mythdragon

In a previous post you said dispelling screen isn't affected by anti-magic lile Ruby Ray. This makes sense for dispel magic since it bypasses that sort of protections anyway, but what if you wanted to Breach?(there should be an another defense against Dispel Magic probably on divine list but that is out of topic). Am I mistaken preventing that spells to interact with Dispelling Screen blocks that avenue? At least Spellstrike should get rid of it. This is related to previous points about Pierce Shield too, as its interaction with Dispelling Screen depends on it.

Link to comment
1 hour ago, Guest Mythdragon said:

In a previous post you said dispelling screen isn't affected by anti-magic lile Ruby Ray. This makes sense for dispel magic since it bypasses that sort of protections anyway, but what if you wanted to Breach?(there should be an another defense against Dispel Magic probably on divine list but that is out of topic). Am I mistaken preventing that spells to interact with Dispelling Screen blocks that avenue? At least Spellstrike should get rid of it. This is related to previous points about Pierce Shield too, as its interaction with Dispelling Screen depends on it.

As of this time, only Breach and DIspel/Remove Magic are absorbed by Dispelling Screen. Functionally speaking, Pierce Shield is the one that makes the most sense to also destroy Dispelling Screen (due to its half-breaching ability) which I think it actually does in non-Revised SR, but that only makes it even more powerful compared to Spell Strike (since, IIRC, it destroys without being absorbed). I don't think it really makes sense to have Spell Strike remove it since it and Dispelling Screen have unrelated functions that don't interact with each other, but Dispel/Remove Magic, Breach, and Pierce Shield do - though in the grand scheme of things, I suppose it's a minor point and could just be considered a unique trait of Spell Strike.

@NdranC I understand - but if I were to make something, it'd be something in setting.ini at best, and not the default option. Maybe I'll do that and provide a couple of different options - leave it as default, change it to specific protections being breached, make the breaching part its own separate effect with its own separate power level, or cast a power level 8 breach that is subject to other spell protections (but not lich immunity).

Edited by Bartimaeus
Link to comment
11 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

Pierce Shield: I am usually pretty hesitant to majorly nerf something that the base mod hasn't. I'm usually pretty gung-ho for anything between "major buff" and "minor nerf", but major nerfs have a tendency of annoying people that expect things to work a certain way.

I can get SCS mages to use it more- that’s often a good way to convince people something is overpowered :)

Link to comment
26 minutes ago, DavidW said:

I can get SCS mages to use it more- that’s often a good way to convince people something is overpowered :)

Hah. Well, you'd be hurting users of the base mod a lot more than SRR at that point, since I can make changes to it on a whim if I really need to, :p.

Edited by Bartimaeus
Link to comment

I think the issue is not so much that it's 'powerful,' but rather that it is inconsistent with the general rule of spell protections, i.e. Breach does not bypass spell protections.  Allowing Pierce Shield's secondary "breach" effect to bypass spell protections invites the same problem that the unmodded game has: one spell can sideline the entire system of protections that mages use to protect themselves. 

So I'm less concerned with SCS mages using Pierce Shield against me as I am with me casting Pierce Shield against them. Yes it's an 8th-level spell instead of a 5th-level one, which is not nothing; but once you have that 8th-level spell, trashing SCS mages will become nearly as easy as trashing unmodded mages.

2 hours ago, NdranC said:

@subtledoctor thoughts on this?

I think I'll likely do an after-the-fact tweak to address this, since I am assuming the same thing affects SR, not just SRR.  I just looked at my spiffy new install, and it looks like rakring.itm and lich.itm have the same issue as mentioned in that thread I linked to from a couple years ago: they have no immunity to 5th-level spells overall, and instead have a mish-mash of 206 effects immunizing them against some, but not all, 5th-level spells.  So it looks like I'm going to be reviving my "Breachier Breach" mod.  I think it makes sense to handle Pierce Shield at the same time.

As far as ideas for how to handle Pierce Shield, let's first recall what it does right now: eliminate one spell protection, and eliminate all combat protections (but not specific protections - so it is not the same as "Ruby Ray + Breach").  I could see doing the following:

  • Literally just have it cast Breach, maybe with a 1-second delay to make sure the Breach will take effect if the PS removed the last Spell Deflection/Trap. (The delay may not be necessary though.)  This would improve the spell, in that the secondary Breach would remove specific protections as well as combat protections; but it would weaken the spell in that the Breach would not take effect if the target of the PS has [Trap + Greater Deflection] or [Greater Deflection + Deflection] or [any of those + Dispelling Screen].
  • Change the secondary effect from removing combat protections, to removing specific protections.  This would focus the spell as a real magic attack, and it would still be quite useful; but I don't mind that it goes through spell protections, because while it makes the target mage more vulnerable than they were, it doesn't let your fighter stroll in and casually stomp them, as Breach does in the vanilla game.
  • Limit the number of combat protections removed to 1/2/3, instead of all of them.  Here again, it does something useful, but it probably won't let your fighter stroll over and casually stomp the target mage without breaking a sweat.
  • Change it to be even more focused as a magic attack: make it remove a Spell Shield plus one spell protection (sort of a similar role as Warding Whip, but it would work quicker and would work against Spell Trap).
  • Alternatively but in a similar vein, have Pierce Shield remove a spell protection plus Dispelling Screen.  This would be useful even if you don't plan to cast Remove Magic, because Dispelling Screen blocks Breach.  So this would get you one step closer to Breaching the target.
Edited by subtledoctor
Link to comment

Ideas 1, 2, and 4 all seem good to me. Don't like idea #5 (removing Dispelling Screen is an extremely weak additional effect compared to Spellstrike's "remove all spell protections + interrupt spellcasting for 2 rounds" - additionally, since you remove the breaching part of the spell, you have the same problem as adding Dispelling Screen-removal to Spellstrike: the mechanics no longer overlap, so it's a non-fitting addition), and idea #3...is okay, but it's difficult to find a number that's simply "useful" and not too useful or alternatively useless that it's probably better to avoid this when you have other options.

Edited by Bartimaeus
Link to comment
2 hours ago, subtledoctor said:

 

  • Literally just have it cast Breach, maybe with a 1-second delay to make sure the Breach will take effect if the PS removed the last Spell Deflection/Trap. (The delay may not be necessary though.)  This would improve the spell, in that the secondary Breach would remove specific protections as well as combat protections; but it would weaken the spell in that the Breach would not take effect if the target of the PS has [Trap + Greater Deflection] or [Greater Deflection + Deflection] or [any of those + Dispelling Screen].
  • Alternatively but in a similar vein, have Pierce Shield remove a spell protection plus Dispelling Screen.  This would be useful even if you don't plan to cast Remove Magic, because Dispelling Screen blocks Breach.  So this would get you one step closer to Breaching the target.

Personally I'm in favor of these two. If we are going to stick with the word "Breach" in the description of the spell then I would rather do the exact same thing Breach does. Respecting terminology to keep a consistent behavior will help players make predictions about how a spell works based on previous interactions with similar effects. I don't mind if it's a new effect but maybe we not use the word "Breach" if it will not work like it.

Side question, I have been avoiding casting these on liches, but does Secret Word/Spell Thrust/Breach bypass lich spell immunity? Or Rakshasa ones for that matter?

@Bartimaeus I'm having  a lot of issues with Time Stop. Not sure if this is something related to SR(R) or my install but buffs and debuff keep ticking away while I'm casting spells. I casted Pierce Magic on a lich to have all the Disintegrates that I casted during Time Stop be absorbed by MR because the 2 round effect wore off in the middle of it. Same with Dectect Invisibility. I have been unable to target Improved Invis mages in the middle of my Time Stop because it wore off.

Edited by NdranC
Link to comment
20 minutes ago, NdranC said:

Side question, I have been avoiding casting these on liches, but does Secret Word/Spell Thrust/Breach bypass lich spell immunity? Or Rakshasa ones for that matter?

In my SR+SCS install, yes they affect liches and rakshasa.  Their power level is 0 so they bypass all defenses such as spell level immunities and deflections/globes.  (That may sounds weird but a technical level, consider that the magic attack needs to first bypass the spell protection, in order to reach the target and then interact with (remove) the spell protection it just bypassed.  (All magic attacks & defenses work this way, except Spell Shield, which can interact in a similar fashion with spells that have normal power levels - and I just got a fascinating idea for replacing this entire 'spell protection/magic attack' system with one based entirely on opcode 226... but who has time for that sort of thing.))

EDIT - oh yeah, also, those spells have the MAGICATTACK secondary type and

Quote

any spell with sectype MAGICATTACK (4) is hardcoded to burn through any/all protections/deflections/turnings/traps (including opcode 102)

 

Edited by subtledoctor
Link to comment

Join the conversation

You are posting as a guest. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...