SR Revised V1.3.900 (2022 August 8th)

[Salk]

Small OT: I do wish Ascension64 could have stayed with us a little longer to develop TobEx further. Most of the new EE engine additions could have been added to it, I'm quite sure... 

Incidentally, I like the vanilla Petrification (I set this to 0 in the settings) so in my case it would have been particularly good to have a better solution for it.

[Salk]

I feel like I am flooding the board with message but I hope you can bear with my questions.

Now I am wondering about whether or not you guys would recommend the Anthology Tweak "Cast Spells from Scrolls (and Other Items) at Character Level". In many ways it makes sense to me but I am wondering if there may be any bad interaction with SR or if I am possibly missing some other non desirable consequence or internal consistency with the spell system.

Any advice?

[subtledoctor]

On 4/21/2021 at 3:12 AM, Salk said:

whether or not you guys would recommend the Anthology Tweak "Cast Spells from Scrolls (and Other Items) at Character Level".

I don't love that, I worry about the stability and potential interactions with other mods when it has so many possible caster level values.  For a modded version that is simple and static, but with more interesting/sensible/PnP-friendly values than "everything at 10th level," I have been using Astrobryguy's Scroll Caster Level Mod. I believe it casts spells from scrolls at the higher of 1) 5th level; or 2) the level required to actually cast the scroll's spell. So Magic Missile would be cast at 5th level, while Chain Lightning would be cast at 12th level.

Something close to that, anyway.

Edited March 3, 2022 by subtledoctor

[Salk]

Thanks for the recommendation, subtledoctor.

I will take a look at it.

[Bartimaeus]

I use it, but I'm also pretty selective about what new items/spells I allow into my game, and I specifically designed all of IRR's item's spells to always cast as intended even if you install that.

10 hours ago, Salk said:

Small OT: I do wish Ascension64 could have stayed with us a little longer to develop TobEx further. Most of the new EE engine additions could have been added to it, I'm quite sure... 

Incidentally, I like the vanilla Petrification (I set this to 0 in the settings) so in my case it would have been particularly good to have a better solution for it.

No kidding - Ascension64's ToBEx work was the basis for a lot of EE technical enhancements, and is what makes continuing to play on the original engine instead of the EEs still possible.

[subtledoctor]

1 hour ago, Bartimaeus said:

No kidding - Ascension64's ToBEx work was the basis for a lot of EE technical enhancements, and is what makes continuing to play on the original engine instead of the EEs still possible.

The big thing that enables a lot of my EE-only modding is the stuff Beamdog brought over from the IWD engine - opcode 321, opcode 318/326 and splprot.2da, opcode 328 and splstate.ids, etc. And all that, of course, derived from having access to both the original IWD source and DavidW's IWD-in-BG2 mod. If someone could have plugged those capabilities into BGT via ToBEx, boy would I have been so happy.

[Chosen]

In my EET run I realized priest spell "protection from cold" isn't in the list for 5th lvl spells for Viconia. I looked at the spell with near infinity and saw bunch of exclusion flags are set for it. Is this a sign of faulty install or maybe a bug in the srr? I didn't recognize any other abnormalities, what should I check to make sure there aren't any?

[Bartimaeus]

32 minutes ago, Chosen said:

In my EET run I realized priest spell "protection from cold" isn't in the list for 5th lvl spells for Viconia. I looked at the spell with near infinity and saw bunch of exclusion flags are set for it. Is this a sign of faulty install or maybe a bug in the srr? I didn't recognize any other abnormalities, what should I check to make sure there aren't any?

Can you give me a copy of the spell?

[Chosen]

Sure

sppr519.spl

[Bartimaeus]

@Chosen

Thanks. The priest type is set to the wrong type, causing it to not appear. This is not your installation's fault, but apparently something I did by accident when I was updating the spell sometime back - not really sure how that happened.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/u2m79ptbr605qyv/sppr519.spl

That is a repaired version that should start appearing in Viconia's spellbook the next time she levels up.

Edited April 24, 2021 by Bartimaeus

[FixTesteR]

Can anyone explain to me the difference between Spell Thrust and Dispel Magic? Is ST in any case better than DM? Of couse, you might ask whether I'm talking about Vanilla or SR or SRR ... in that case, please explain all the differences.

And it's not like I haven't tried reading spell descriptions like 30 times. It just seems DM is flat out better. And it potentially removes everything with one swipe, if RNG aligns?

[Bartimaeus]

3 hours ago, FixTesteR said:

Can anyone explain to me the difference between Spell Thrust and Dispel Magic? Is ST in any case better than DM? Of couse, you might ask whether I'm talking about Vanilla or SR or SRR ... in that case, please explain all the differences.

And it's not like I haven't tried reading spell descriptions like 30 times. It just seems DM is flat out better. And it potentially removes everything with one swipe, if RNG aligns?

Anti-spell protection spells like Spell Thrust, Secret Word, Ruby Ray of Reversal, etc., remove spell protections such as Globe of Invulnerability, Spell Deflection, Spell Shield, Spell Trap, etc. Spell protections are not generally affected by Dispel/Remove Magic, so cast Dispel Magic as many times as you like upon such protected creatures, and those spell protections will never go down. Dispel Magic also only has a chance of working depending on the level of the caster and the creature(s) being targeted, and so upon creatures (such as liches) that are significantly higher level than you, it will effectively never work. This means that you must strip such creatures of their spell protections so that you can cast Breach, which will take down all of their combat and specific protections (Absolute Immunity, Mantle, Protection from Magical Weapons, Stoneskin, Protection from Energy et al.) and actually make them damageable.

[subtledoctor]

They do very different things.

Spell Thrust can remove spell protections like Minor Spell Deflection, Minor Globe of Invulnerability, or Spell Shield. It is single-target and will 100% remove one such protection.  

Dispel Magic can remove basic buffs like Bless, Chant, Haste, Strength, etc. It works on multiple targets in an area of effect, either enemies (SR) or enemies and allies (vanilla), with a chance of being successful that depends on the caster level difference between the caster of Dispel and the caster of the buffs. 

[FixTesteR]

Thanks. I guess the big takeaway is to differentiate between 1) Spell Protections, 2) Combat Protections, and 3) Specific Protections.

Some spells can be inferred to belong to a certain group just by their names, while I'm not sure all spells belong to certain groups by such intuition.

Protection from fire protects you in 2) combat against fire enchanted weapons, it's a 3) specific protection against fire, and it 1) protects you against certain spells.

[subtledoctor]

Spell protections simply block spells. Deflection/Turning/Trap/Globe. 

Combat protections protect against physical damage. 

Specific protections protect against elemental damage. 

That’s more or less how you can think about it.