SR Revised V1.3.900 (2022 August 8th)

[subtledoctor]

I don't know how SCS sequencers work - are they 1x/day?  If it's once per day the balance issue is not as bad.  TnB innate sequencers try to really be more convenient, by letting you re-fill the sequencer as soon as you use it (well, once the combat ends).  There is no limit to how often you can use them, except for the natural limit that doing so will suck up your memorized spells.  The way I ended up playing with it was, I always had one or two spells at the end of each day that I didn't cast; so I just put two of them into a sequencer before sleeping.  The spells that went into the sequencer may not have been optimal, but it meant I didn't have to memorize them for the next day, thus freeing up to more spell slots.  It worked pretty well.

TnB's "Option 5,"  in which putting spells into sequencers doesn't cost slots, makes sequencers themselves cost slots like in the normal game.  So you can memorize them more than once, if you want, getting lots of free lower-level spells in exchange for a few upper-level slots.  But using spell slots for the sequencers is the natural limit in this case.  Hmm, I suppose I could make an "Option 6" version of this in which the sequencers are once-per-day innates.  Then it would just amount to 2/5/8 free spells each day.  That wouldn't be the end of the world.

10 minutes ago, NdranC said:

So in theory, since I already have the SCS component that makes sequencers innate, I should just be able to add that code to my UI.menu (anywhere?) and they should not use charges?

No, you would have to adapt the code I posted into a Weidu mod, and run it.  And it needs Kjeron's "Sequencer_Menu" function.  If you 1) grab that function from TnB's /lib folder, and 2) make a little hotfix mod with the code I posted, and 3) install it in your game, then VERY theoretically, SCS' innate sequencers might work the way you want.  If I had to guess the chance of it working, I'd put it at somewhere less than 50%.  SCS's sequencers might not even be affected by this - I don't know what @DavidW did to make them innate, they might not be affected by that UI code the same way SPWI420 et al. would be.

[NdranC]

@subtledoctor Yes SCS innate metamagic makes them work once per day. It's also not great since for one, Sorcerers get them earlier than they should because as far as I can tell base sorcerers share the same clabma.2da file with mages so they have to have the same progression. The other thing is that for whatever reason this component always failed to patch contingency properly. I always had to manually get in game and edit it myself. Not sure if its EET or SR that it's conflicting with it but I never pursued looking into the problem.

On one side, I like your idea of using sequencers to just store left over spells, seems very efficient. On the other side I would likely find it a little fatiguing to remember what I have on each sequencer on each character and whether or not any of it would be useful right now. Maybe it's not that bad if I give it a try.

I think I'm going to follow your advice and just not touch it right now. I would probably spend a lot of time working on it and maybe I just need to look at them with a different perspective. I appreciate the answer regardless. Thanks.

 

[Bartimaeus]

9 hours ago, subtledoctor said:

Going back to your first post, I noticed this, and i have to defend Kreso a bit.  50% chance to absorb every hit is IMHO way too powerful for a 1st-level spell.  The current SR version does this:

• If you are only being attacked once per round, then that attack has a 50% chance to be absorbed.  Note, this is exactly the same as the version you liked with a 50% chance to absorb an attack overall.  Also if you are only facing one hit per round, you probably aren't really in much danger and don't need to spell to do much work.
• If you are being attacked twice per round or more, then the spell will generally block 1 hit per round.  This is a good, interesting defense, and quite effective for a 1st-level spell.  For a caster, it can very well be the difference between getting a spell off vs. being interrupted.
• A 50% chance to absorb every hit is what SR's Physical Mirror does, which is a 6th-level spell.

Also note that if you have a Luck bonus, like from Bard Song, then I think that 50% chance jumps to 100%, improving the function of Reflected Image.  (I don't know if that affects Physical Mirror too... if so, and Demi didn't realize it, that could definitely be a problem.)

It was crazy powerful, especially since Luck apparently affected how much it worked. But I didn't revert it for a reason, after all - just slightly increased its duration. To be honest, I've thought about increasing it more, since a base 5 rounds makes it pretty difficult to use, since it's too short to ever even think about pre-casting and 50% is not that reliable...but it hasn't really been on my mind. As it is, it's okay to absorb a few hits for early levels of fighter-mages, I guess.

Side-note: I'm pretty sure Kreso made the same exact change to Physical Mirror as he did to Reflect Image, so it's a moot point.

Edited August 3, 2020 by Bartimaeus

[subtledoctor]

Yeah, I know it is not a burning issue or anything, I just figured that it was worth posting the discussion for the sake of any potential future readers.

Meantime, I'll take a look at Physical Mirror.  I wonder if, instead of using the MI effect to block 50% of hits, it could block 100% of hits but only renew itself 50% of the time...?  Might need hidden Luck bonus to make that work, but that's doesn't offend me given the spell level and desired effect.  Having PM be a "Super Reflected Image" that actually blocks 1/2 of incoming hits, and is not dispelled by True Sight because it is not an illusionary protection, would make it a pretty awesome spell.

Not sure if implementing that is actually feasible, but I'll try.

[Bartimaeus]

1 hour ago, subtledoctor said:

Yeah, I know it is not a burning issue or anything, I just figured that it was worth posting the discussion for the sake of any potential future readers.

Meantime, I'll take a look at Physical Mirror.  I wonder if, instead of using the MI effect to block 50% of hits, it could block 100% of hits but only renew itself 50% of the time...?  Might need hidden Luck bonus to make that work, but that's doesn't offend me given the spell level and desired effect.  Having PM be a "Super Reflected Image" that actually blocks 1/2 of incoming hits, and is not dispelled by True Sight because it is not an illusionary protection, would make it a pretty awesome spell.

Not sure if implementing that is actually feasible, but I'll try.

I can't really think of a good solution for Physical Mirror. I made it last longer in order to make up for the loss of power, but I still wasn't ever particularly happy with it.

[NdranC]

On 2/19/2020 at 1:14 AM, subtledoctor said:

In a sense, there are four kinds of invisibility (plus two edge cases):

...

I think that more or less covers everything. 

Ok, after playing a lot more BG2 and re-reading this amazing explanation into Invisibility I have a couple more questions.

1. Isn't True Sight a little weak? It gives you the "eyes" to see invisibility + dispels normal invisibility and low level illusions + blind immunity, that's all great, but almost every enemy I've encountered is rocking the 3rd level spell Non-Detection which prevents the dispels from working. Removing Non-Detection is not trivial since it needs to happen with a Remove Spell Protection type which will always go first for higher level spells like Spell Deflection. By the type the Spell Deflections are down the enemy is breach-able and therefore dead. Unless I'm grossly misunderstanding Invisibility again, the 2nd level Arcane Spell Detect Invisibility already does the most important bits that the 6th level True Seeing spell does when you take into account the abundance of non-detection.

2. My rogue friend started putting points into the thief skill "Detect Illusion" and as far as we have noticed it seems to ignore Non-Detection. He has been reliably destroying mirror images from mages for a while now. Again, this is sometimes really hard for me to track in the middle of combat so I wanted to make sure I'm not drawing the wrong conclusions. This is probably a good thing if indeed true since it makes rogues have a really strong place in late magic combat, but what are the limits? Can he "dispel" partial invisibility? Can he "dispel" sanctuary? Is 100 points enough?

3. Assuming Non-Detection is essentially "Spell Immunity: Divination", doesn't that make spells like the 5th level arcane spell Oracle kinda weak as well? Maybe my perceived problem is that I don't know how to really counter the abundance of Non-Detection besides bringing a rogue. It seems like this 3rd level spell can counter really high 5th and 6th level spells that have a 2nd level cheap alternative.

4. True Sight claims to dispel low level illusions, and mentions Reflected Image, Mirror Image and Blur. Are those the only ones besides highlighting the illusionary clones like mislead, project image and simulacrum?

[subtledoctor]

1 hour ago, NdranC said:

Unless I'm grossly misunderstanding Invisibility again, the 2nd level Arcane Spell Detect Invisibility already does the most important bits that the 6th level True Seeing spell does when you take into account the abundance of non-detection

Yes - See Invisible is substantially stronger than before. It’s actually noticeably better than Invisibility Purge, so much so that I’m thinking about giving priests See Invisible at 3rd level instead. True Seeing gives you protection from Blindness, which is important at high levels because PW: Blind can devastate your capabilities. With TnB I think it also destroys illusionary creatures. 

1 hour ago, NdranC said:

My rogue friend started putting points into the thief skill "Detect Illusion" and as far as we have noticed it seems to ignore Non-Detection. He has been reliably destroying mirror images from mages

Yeah, the thief skill is wildly, ridiculously OP. It’s also horribly hard-coded and there’s mot much to be done about it. It occurs to me that we could make a new sectype, ILLUSIONARYPROTECTIONS2, and move the existing illusionary protections like MI to the new sectype. That might limit the thief skill to dispelling invisibility. If it works via sectype. (Maybe @Bubb knows?)

EDIT - could also just prevent all thieves from putting points into that skill... 

1 hour ago, NdranC said:

Assuming Non-Detection is essentially "Spell Immunity: Divination", doesn't that make spells like the 5th level arcane spell Oracle kinda weak as well

Yeah Oracle is weak. It needs more - maybe something like Mass Know Opponent? Or Mass Clairvoyance? Either would fit the theme. Maybe both? That might be too strong...

1 hour ago, NdranC said:

True Sight claims to dispel low level illusions, and mentions Reflected Image, Mirror Image and Blur. Are those the only ones

Maybe Ghost Armor too?

1 hour ago, NdranC said:

Maybe my perceived problem is that I don't know how to really counter the abundance of Non-Detection besides bringing a rogue.

Yeah this is an issue. Thieves are too good against Non-Detection (renamed  to “Protection from Divination” in TnB), while divination spells are not good enough. 

One possibility that would only work in the EEs: you could change it to “Divination Shield,” and have it work like Spell Shield, blocking the first dispel attempt and letting the next one through. So the first enemy casting of Oracle or True Sight would destroy the Divination Shield but you could remain invisible; the mage with True Sight could hit you with Finger of Death (or Pierce Magic etc.), meanwhile his cleric buddy might cast Invisibility Purge or True Sight and then you would become fully visible to everybody. 

To limit the power of lowly See Invisible, we could make it unable to dispel Divination Shield.

Something like that. Since thieves generally need a couple rounds for their Detect Illusions skill to work, this might put divination spellcasters on an even footing... (would have to re-work TnB Illusionists, though...)

Edited August 3, 2020 by subtledoctor

[Bubb]

31 minutes ago, subtledoctor said:

Yeah, the thief skill is wildly, ridiculously OP. It’s also horribly hard-coded and there’s mot much to be done about it. It occurs to me that we could make a new sectype, ILLUSIONARYPROTECTIONS2, and move the existing illusionary protections like MI to the new sectype. That might limit the thief skill to dispelling invisibility. If it works via sectype. (Maybe @Bubb knows?)

The spell-dispelling part is just a mass-applied Opcode #220 with these params:

• Param1 -> 9
• Param2 -> 5
• probabilityLower -> 0
• probabilityUpper -> nDetectIllusion skill value

[subtledoctor]

1 minute ago, Bubb said:

The spell-dispelling part is just a mass-applied Opcode #220 with these params:

Oh!  Sweet.  So we could change what the skill can do - just dispel invisibility?  Just cancel illusionary images?

Gonna have to make some changes to TnB now...

[subtledoctor]

On 9/7/2018 at 2:30 AM, Bartimaeus said:

Waves of Fatigue: Temporarily revised to simulate fatigue instead of ineffectively trying to actually use fatigue. Previously, the first casting of this spell was borderline useless against a fully rested party, or instead absolutely completely crippling vs. a nearly fatigued party, while not having much of any effect upon enemies.

Curious how you decided to handle this?  I'm just addressing this now in my personal tweaks, and need to decide how to modify it.  Something like, -2 Luck penalty per casting? (Probably should still be stackable, since the AI expects it to be so - though I'm actually open-minded about that.)

Seems like it needs more juice - maybe more varied juice instead of just more Luck penalties.  What about, since Greater Malison was cut to a 2-point save penalty, adding a save penalty here?  It could be like Malison+.  "Even Greater Malison."

Maybe also add more effects simulating tiredness.  2-point penalty to Luck, no save, and then on a failed save an additional 2-point penalty to saving throws, -1/2 APR, and 2-point penalty to casting speed.  (In this case, those secondary  effects at least should definitely not be stackable.)

[Bartimaeus]

"Surges of negative energy render all hostile living creatures in the spell's area fatigued, as if they haven't rested for a day. While fatigued, they suffer a -2 penalty to luck, movement rate, casting speed, and speed factor. Multiple castings of this spell are not cumulative."

Also a spell I don't like and never did like. Maybe you're on to something with gating some of the worse effects - like ApR and the casting speed penalties - to a saving throw while making others non-resistable, effectively making it into a "Greater Slow"...

[subtledoctor]

On 8/4/2020 at 11:16 AM, Bartimaeus said:

"Surges of negative energy render all hostile living creatures in the spell's area fatigued, as if they haven't rested for a day. While fatigued, they suffer a -2 penalty to luck, movement rate, casting speed, and speed factor. Multiple castings of this spell are not cumulative."

Also a spell I don't like and never did like. Maybe you're on to something with gating some of the worse effects - like ApR and the casting speed penalties - to a saving throw while making others non-resistable, effectively making it into a "Greater Slow"...

As I was thinking about it before you posted, I thought to myself "isn't Slow superior to this spell in almost every way?"

Slow is super OP, though, not much we can do about that.  I suppose Slow is easy to counter with a Haste spell or potion.  Maybe this should cancel Haste the way Slow does; but whereas Slow cancels Haste and is itself canceled, Waves of Fatigue could cancel Haste and still apply its effects.

Edited February 14, 2022 by subtledoctor

[Bartimaeus]

5 minutes ago, subtledoctor said:

As I was thinking about it before you posted, I thought to myself "isn't Slow superior to this spell in almost every way?"

Slow is super OP, though, not mush we can do about that.  I suppose Slow is easy to counter with a Haste spell or potion.  Maybe this should cancel Haste the way Slow does; but whereas Slow cancels Haste and is itself canceled, Waves of Fatigue could cancel Haste and still apply its effects.

I *think* Slow already works that way - Haste doesn't grant immunity to Slow, Slow dispels Haste by sectype and then applies itself afterwards. The exact reverse happens with Haste, too - sectype dispel of Slow, then apply the Haste effects. I really don't like Waves of Fatigue, and I'm borderline in favor of restoring the original Chaos (even though it's super lame, seeing as it's basically Confusion+ - I'd rather enemy spellcasters be casting that than Waves of Fatigue).

[subtledoctor]

Want to be really boring, just give wizards Greater Command.

Could also put Confusion at 5th level (it's 7th level for clerics!!), and do something else at 4th level.  Maybe Waves of Fatigue is okay, but should just be a lower-level spell.  Or maybe something else altogether.  Maybe another Emotion: _____ spell.

14 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

Slow already works that way - Haste doesn't grant immunity to Slow, Slow dispels Haste by sectype and then applies itself afterwards. The exact reverse happens with Haste, too - sectype dispel of Slow, then apply the Haste effects.

That's very annoying.  If you get hit by  both, they should just cancel each other out and be net neutral, regardless of the order they are applied.  I thought that's what recently happened to me recently in the Den of Seven Vales fight - they cast Slow, I cast Haste, and when the dust settled some of my guys were hasted and others weren't.  I must have misunderstood what happened.  (That fight does get pretty hectic.*)

Hmm, I might need to see if I can make that work.

Edited August 4, 2020 by subtledoctor

[Bartimaeus]

11 minutes ago, subtledoctor said:

Want to be really boring, just give wizards Greater Command.

Could also put Confusion at 5th level (it's 7th level for clerics!!), and do something else at 4th level.  Maybe Waves of Fatigue is okay, but should just be a lower-level spell.  Or maybe something else altogether.  Maybe another Emotion: _____ spell.

That's very annoying.  If you get hit by  both, they should just cancel each other out and be net neutral, regardless of the order they are applied.  I thought that's what recently happened to me recently in the Den of Seven Vales fight - they cast Slow, I cast Haste, and when the dust settled some of my guys were hasted and others weren't.  I must have misunderstood what happened.  (That fight does get pretty hectic.*)

Hmm, I might need to see if I can make that work.

Wouldn't be too difficult to change the behavior of Haste/Slow to simply counter via subspells and immunities, but I'm not a hundred percent convinced it's a good idea. I suppose the problem for you is how strong of a swing it is?

Actually, I've wanted to branch out Emotion: Despair into a more generalized Emotion spell with multiple choices for a while, but with no icons (and I am not an artist that can create them), it's kind of a no-go. An anti-despair (hope?) that applies to friendlies would be neat, a more powerful Horror (fear, terror?) would make sense as well...and then maybe "Love" as a low effectiveness (0 or +2 saving throw) mass charm? Lots of things you could do with that, but no icons means no spells, . Oh well!

I feel like Confusion makes sense where it is, given Horror 2 levels below with a similar effect (albeit it with no saving throw penalty and a little more difficult to manage).  Hmm.