SR Revised V1.3.900 (2022 August 8th)

[subtledoctor]

35 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

There are merits to a democratic, discussion-based approach on these sorts of things...but it's also a hell of a lot more convenient when you can play the role of mod author and be dictatorial on the things you feel strongly

True, but it’s literally the same amount of effort for me to do it in a separate mod like Random Tweaks vs. including it in SR. 

In fact, I can write it up as a function that won’t run repeatedly, and put it in both places. Do a pull request for SR, and install it from my other mod until the pull request is accepted. 

Edited August 16, 2020 by subtledoctor

[NdranC]

18 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

I forgot about the party friendliness aspect of those two. On the other hand, their damage is 33% lower as well...on the other hand, they're divine spells. I think an argument could be made, but really, I don't feel that strongly about it. In some circumstances, I feel like the 20' trap aspect of Skull Trap is actually less convenient rather than Fireball's immediate explosion, but you're probably right in that it's more of a net gain than loss most of the time. Most of the time.

If I'm allowed to add something to this. Maybe it's because the way I play RTwP games but I almost never use AoEs unless my group can take no damage from them. Yes you can try to snipe once in a while an enemy group from the sidelines, something that gets increasingly more difficult to do in BG2 because of the lack of open spaces, the linearity of the scripted story and SCS making all relevant enemies protected to everything. Protection from Fire comes much early than Protection from Magical Energy for arcane casters and shows up at all in the Divine Caster kit. Giving you the ability to protect your party from Fire much earlier and faster. There are also some decently common items that make Fire Resistance fairly common.

To me this is an advantage to Fireball. Most enemies early in the games when these spells are relevant are not going to be fire immune while you can make your party be. Not taking into account the fact you want to be doing this anyway since a lot of mages use fireballs as is, helping you kill a lot of their own companions, summons and/or minions. Also I think SR(R) makes Skull Trap not works against undead which is a negative towards the spell. All of this paints a picture that skull trap might not be as deserving of so many nerfs. The current sorcerer that I'm playing picked Skull Trap over Fireball mostly because of the abundance of Fireball Wands in BG1 (this was before you introduced the wand charge nerf).

My experience with skull trap hasn't been amazing. Using it as a trap seems really unreliable to me. If you see a group of enemies, cast skull traps on the way, then lure them. First of all is hard to tell how close you can get without triggering the trap yourself. Second, you have to use other tools to lure them with enough leeway, like dimension jump, or haste, or boost of speed, or slowing them. Third, even if it goes off, a lot of the times the group of enemies I lured gets fragmented on their way over and only hits the first 2-3 out of the rest. Maybe if skull trap had a triggering radius of 5-10' might help with some of these issues. Having the enemies only trigger the trap when they touch the skull might not be awful. If an enemy mages uses that on me and I happen to dodge it by an inch then it all of the sudden there is some terrain control by the enemy not freely allowing me to use all the battlefield for movement. I might end up kitting something into it by mistake.

I understand the problems with traps is that it encourages to use meta knowledge to abuse them but honestly you can't really stop someone from playing how they want to. I would rather develop for people who want to make the game fun for themselves. The problem with cheese tactics is when you NEED to use them to win, or when you stumble upon them by being creative yet punishing you with boring gameplay that invalidates other options.

[subtledoctor]

17 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

I tagged you earlier to show you what I did, but as the resources of IR and IRR are quite different at this point, I don't know how much of it is directly applicable/translatable to the base mods. As mentioned before, there is also the issue of inconsistent spell-like abilities between IR and SR

Ah - is it only those items in the .tra file?  I presume base IR should have, if anything, fewer items that need SR-ization than IRR, or the same number.  Seems doable.  I'll take a look.

EDIT - incidentally, I think you have a typo in SRR.  In item_revisions.tph, you have

ACTION_IF (FILE_EXISTS_IN_GAME ~misc31.itm~) THEN BEGIN
COPY_EXISTING ~misc31.itm~ ~override~
  SPRINT old_spell_name @1723000 // Silence 15' Radius (3x per day): opponents within 15' are silenced for 1 turn (save vs. spell at -4 neg.)
  SPRINT new_spell_name @172300 // Silence (3x per day): opponents within 20' are silenced for 1 turn (save vs. spell at -4 neg.)
  TEXT_SPRINT text_update ~replace_spell_name~
  LPM ~update_item_descriptions~

That should be "misc3L.itm", not misc31.itm.

Edited August 16, 2020 by subtledoctor

[Bartimaeus]

@subtledoctor In terms of updating the descriptions, yes, I think that's probably the case.

Thanks for the typo spot. I've typed that one wrong so many times now and been confused by it before.

@NdranC Yeah, a lot of what you said is some of why I tend to take Fireball on my sorcerer over Skull Trap.

Edited August 16, 2020 by Bartimaeus

[pochesun]

@Bartimaeus any ETA on 1.3.2 SRR ?

[NdranC]

I sat down at an Inn and started testing some of the anti-magic spells in the game and I the results don't seem to be in accordance to the description. All my tests were done casting spells of protected party members.

1. Secret Word, Pierce Magic, Pierce Shield, Khelben's Warding Whip, Ruby Ray of Reversal and Spellstrike will not remove Dispelling Screen even though in their description they claim to do so.

2. Spell Shield will absorb Pierce Magic, Pierce Shield and Spellstrike while preventing the secondary component of those spells to activate, the Lowered Magic, Breach and Spell Failure effect. This does not seem to be the case with Khelben's Warding Whip. It will remove Spell Shield and continue to remove other spell protections every round.

3. The breach component of Pierce Shield seems to ignore other spell protections. If I have a mage with Greater Spell Deflection and Spell Trap it will dispel both my Spell Trap and Stoneskin while leaving my Greater Spell Deflection up. This might be related to point 5 in a much bigger issue.

4. Secret Word will post in the chat "Spell Protection Dispelled" even though it gets nullified by Spell Trap.

5. And the worst of all. Breach is NOT getting stopped by Greater Spell Deflection or Spell Trap. Never really tested it before because that's the whole point of SCS/SR so I'm not sure what's going on here. I might have a bugged install? Does breach skip spell protections if casted on party members?

Again, all of this was tested by casting spells on myself or party members and reloading.

Bonus: False Dawn has a conflicting description. It says 20' radius in the top breakdown but the description says 30'.

Edited August 18, 2020 by NdranC

[Bartimaeus]

@pochesunI may not have a chunk of time to finish SRR v1.3.200 until late in the week/weekend due to the additional recent complications with SCS.

@NdranC Dispelling Screen and anti-magic spells: No, they don't - but nor do they claim to. It is currently an SCS bug that rewrites anti-magic spells to say they do (although I prevented this from happening on SRR's end a couple of months back - my own SCS-modified antimagic spell descriptions makes no suggestion of it at the very least, but you may have an older install?).

Spell Shield absorption: That's an interesting observation. The spell says it will absorb the next magical attack made against them, with no mentions of ifs or buts - so from my thinking, that would mean preventing the secondary effects of them is probably correct, and it's Khelben's Warding Whip that is out of line by not being completely absorbed. However, given Warding Whip's unique function among anti-magic spells, it's not something I want to change without feedback from other people, though, so it stays as it is for the time being.

Pierce Shield breaching component: As Pierce Shield magic is classified purely as an antimagic (aka "magic attack") spell, it is intended for the anti-combat protections part of it to pierce through other spell protections.

Spell Trap: Spell Trap is incapable of nullifying Secret Word. If a character has both Spell Trap and Globe of Invulnerability up, Secret Word would still kill the Globe of Invulnerability regardless of the Spell Trap. Intended.

Breach: *Not* intended. I think this got accidentally set when I was setting all anti-magic spells to level 0 for consistency a little while back - Breach is not a real anti-magic attack, and shouldn't really be set to it...I think. I may have done this for some other reason, but ultimately, Spell Deflections and such are supposed to protect you against it. Fixed.

False Dawn: Thanks, will fix.

Edited August 18, 2020 by Bartimaeus

[subtledoctor]

If you haven’t already, you might want to peruse this regarding Breach. Short version: allowing it to affect liches & rakshasa while properly bouncing off deflections can be fairly complicated. I haven’t paid too much attention in my current game, which SR+SCS. But on reflection I might need to revive the “breachier breach” idea.

[NdranC]

3 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

Dispelling Screen and anti-magic spells: No, they don't - but nor do they claim to. It is currently an SCS bug that rewrites anti-magic spells to say they do (although I prevented this from happening on SRR's end a couple of months back - my own SCS-modified antimagic spell descriptions makes no suggestion of it at the very least, but you may have an older install?).

My install is older. I think it's been several months since I made this client. All of these spells mention Dispelling Screen as one of the spell protections they deal with.

Quote

Spell Shield absorption: That's an interesting observation. The spell says it will absorb the next magical attack made against them, with no mentions of ifs or buts - so from my thinking, that would mean preventing the secondary effects of them is probably correct, and it's Khelben's Warding Whip that is out of line by not being completely absorbed. However, given Warding Whip's unique function among anti-magic spells, it's not something I want to change without feedback from other people, though, so it stays as it is for the time being.

Maybe worth mentioning in the description as a counter to Spell Shield.

Quote

Breach: *Not* intended. I think this got accidentally set when I was setting all anti-magic spells to level 0 for consistency a little while back - Breach is not a real anti-magic attack, and shouldn't really be set to it...I think. I may have done this for some other reason, but ultimately, Spell Deflections and such are supposed to protect you against it. Fixed.

Can you help me update my current one? Not having breach stopped by spell deflections feels like it goes against everything SCS stands for. As it's stands the only thing it would stop it is Dispelling Screen and maybe Spell Shield? Didn't test the latter one. It would just take at worst 3 casts of Breach or 1 Dispel Magic and 2 Breaches to solve any mage encounter.

Quote

Pierce Shield breaching component: As Pierce Shield magic is classified purely as an antimagic (aka "magic attack") spell, it is intended for the anti-combat protections part of it to pierce through other spell protections.

Isn't this too strong? The way I currently play (and understand spell combat) is that I need to dispel combat protections so the mage can die to my summons/fighters/rogues/Melf's/Clouds. If that's the ultimate goal, and assuming Breach is fixed to no longer bypass Spell Deflection, wouldn't Pierce Shield solve almost every encounter with a single cast? I guess the only thing it can stop it is Spell Shield so at worst a single mage can be killed by casting 2 Pierce Shields.

The way I pictured this in my head was that Breach like effects needed to be stopped by almost every spell protection, then spell protections need to be removed by anti-magic spells and you can use spell shield to stop those but only once. Unless I'm missing something, PIerce Shield would be better than even Spellstrike.

Quote

Spell Trap: Spell Trap is incapable of nullifying Secret Word. If a character has both Spell Trap and Globe of Invulnerability up, Secret Word would still kill the Globe of Invulnerability regardless of the Spell Trap. Intended.

In my head I though that because Secret Word can't dispel Spell Trap, that Spell Trap would be stronger/stop Secret Word from working. If this is how it works then maybe Spell Thrust is not as bad as I though? One of the main things I have an issue as a mage is illusion spells protected by Non-Detection. So maybe if mages have Spell Deflection/Greater Spell Deflection I can cast Spell Thrust (hopefully it will bypass everything and just get the Non-detection down) and then cast Detect Invisibility/True Sight. Or I can just bring a rogue and detect illusions for a round.

[subtledoctor]

26 minutes ago, NdranC said:

So maybe if mages have Spell Deflection/Greater Spell Deflection I can cast Spell Thrust (hopefully it will bypass everything and just get the Non-detection down) and then cast Detect Invisibility/True Sight

Spell Thrust will interact with Spell Deflection; only GSD is too high level. (I didn’t realize Spell Thrust will slide right by high-level protections.)

Remember, Nondetection will not block Detect Invisible/True Sight for the caster of DI/TS. It will protect Mirror Images though, if that’s the concern.

30 minutes ago, NdranC said:

Unless I'm missing something, PIerce Shield would be better than even Spellstrike.

I agree. I didn’t realize this about Pierce Shield. My feeling is either 1) just cast Breach as a subspell, blocked by everything that usually casts Breach; or 2) maybe tone down the bypasses-everything Breach effect by removing some number (~two) of combat protections, instead of all combat protections; or 3) maybe differentiate it even more - maybe have PS remove specific protections instead of combat protections (snd continue to allow that secondary effect to bypass spell protections).

#3 would change up the tactics a bit, but would still be useful. You could do PS->Acid Storm or PS->Incendiary Cloud, or whatnot. 

[NdranC]

52 minutes ago, subtledoctor said:

I agree. I didn’t realize this about Pierce Shield. My feeling is either 1) just cast Breach as a subspell, blocked by everything that usually casts Breach; or 2) maybe tone down the bypasses-everything Breach effect by removing some number (~two) of combat protections, instead of all combat protections; or 3) maybe differentiate it even more - maybe have PS remove specific protections instead of combat protections (snd continue to allow that secondary effect to bypass spell protections).

#3 would change up the tactics a bit, but would still be useful. You could do PS->Acid Storm or PS->Incendiary Cloud, or whatnot. 

Probably the best way to change it without messing with the AI's conception of this spell is to do the subspell. I'm not sure how SCS works but I would imagine the AI would have to be changed to account for a drastic change to this spell. Actually now that I think about it. Is the SCS AI more "fleshed out" to work with Vanilla Spells compared to SR? I would imagine one has more work and testing than the other.

I just left the underdark and I'm about to go kill bodhi and I haven't found a significant number of mages breaching me or using anti-magic spells. The only thing that gets spammed often is remove magic. I remember a really nasty remove magic from the Drow Lich. I don't know if this is a scripted "cheaty" remove magic or if it was a sequencer but he insta casted 3 remove magics as soon as combat started followed by Incendiary Cloud. Luckily I had buffs in my sequencers and his cloud position was off so I killed him first time.

Does SCS or SR or both fix that old bug that made casters interrupt their spells even if they took no damage from having over 100% in the corresponding elemental resistance?

[DavidW]

10 minutes ago, NdranC said:

I'm not sure how SCS works but I would imagine the AI would have to be changed to account for a drastic change to this spell.

It would probably be ok, actually. SCS's AI tries to put its defenses back up in a layered way, prioritizing Pro/MW and Mantle-type spells, then spell turning and improved invisibility (with a bit of randomness sprinkled over the top, and some effort made to mix offensive and defensive spells. NPC mages won't panic if you cast an uber-spell that drops multiple defenses. 

 

12 minutes ago, NdranC said:

Is the SCS AI more "fleshed out" to work with Vanilla Spells compared to SR? I would imagine one has more work and testing than the other.

In theory, SCS handles both equally well. I did a fairly thorough pass through the system as of v32 to catch and allow for SR (as of about v4beta18 - I'm not likely to do it again until the distant time when there's an official v4). In practice, the vanilla support is probably better fleshed out - that's what I did my playtesting with, and that's the system I know better.

14 minutes ago, NdranC said:

Does SCS or SR or both fix that old bug that made casters interrupt their spells even if they took no damage from having over 100% in the corresponding elemental resistance?

SCS fixes it. (So do BGEE and IWDEE, though not BG2EE - I think it will get fixed there by the 2.6 patch.)

[NdranC]

2 minutes ago, DavidW said:

In theory, SCS handles both equally well. I did a fairly thorough pass through the system as of v32 to catch and allow for SR (as of about v4beta18 - I'm not likely to do it again until the distant time when there's an official v4). In practice, the vanilla support is probably better fleshed out - that's what I did my playtesting with, and that's the system I know better.

Personal question. I would imagine it's your preference to play without SR (IR?). Is there a particular reason besides probably being more accustomed to vanilla? Or are the changes made by SR not to your taste?

[DavidW]

1 hour ago, NdranC said:

Personal question. I would imagine it's your preference to play without SR (IR?). Is there a particular reason besides probably being more accustomed to vanilla? Or are the changes made by SR not to your taste?

I like some but not others, and I like the vanilla system enough (especially with SCS's own tweaks) not to feel the pull of modifying it.

(And there's a bit of back-and-forth between playing and modding: it would reduce SCS's audience for it to focus on SR, so it's convenient for me to stay connected with the vanilla system.)

[Bartimaeus]

8 hours ago, NdranC said:

My install is older. I think it's been several months since I made this client. All of these spells mention Dispelling Screen as one of the spell protections they deal with.

Maybe worth mentioning in the description as a counter to Spell Shield.

Can you help me update my current one? Not having breach stopped by spell deflections feels like it goes against everything SCS stands for. As it's stands the only thing it would stop it is Dispelling Screen and maybe Spell Shield? Didn't test the latter one. It would just take at worst 3 casts of Breach or 1 Dispel Magic and 2 Breaches to solve any mage encounter.

Isn't this too strong? The way I currently play (and understand spell combat) is that I need to dispel combat protections so the mage can die to my summons/fighters/rogues/Melf's/Clouds. If that's the ultimate goal, and assuming Breach is fixed to no longer bypass Spell Deflection, wouldn't Pierce Shield solve almost every encounter with a single cast? I guess the only thing it can stop it is Spell Shield so at worst a single mage can be killed by casting 2 Pierce Shields.

The way I pictured this in my head was that Breach like effects needed to be stopped by almost every spell protection, then spell protections need to be removed by anti-magic spells and you can use spell shield to stop those but only once. Unless I'm missing something, PIerce Shield would be better than even Spellstrike.

In my head I though that because Secret Word can't dispel Spell Trap, that Spell Trap would be stronger/stop Secret Word from working. If this is how it works then maybe Spell Thrust is not as bad as I though? One of the main things I have an issue as a mage is illusion spells protected by Non-Detection. So maybe if mages have Spell Deflection/Greater Spell Deflection I can cast Spell Thrust (hopefully it will bypass everything and just get the Non-detection down) and then cast Detect Invisibility/True Sight. Or I can just bring a rogue and detect illusions for a round.

Breach: Sure, give me your copy of SPWI513.spl.

Pierce Shield: Yeah, it's been realized and noted by a number of people before that Pierce Shield is, in most cases involving pure mages, more useful than Spellstrike. It's not something I particularly wanted to try to deal with until the base mod does, which may well not ever happen.

Spell Thrust/Secret Word: I would assume it works like this so that it's possible to dispel lower spell protections like Non-Detection without being forced to dispel e.g. Spell Trap first when you don't have the means to. It is an interesting idea to have it work the other way, though.