SR Revised V1.3.900 (2022 August 8th)

[Mr. Magniloquent]

Greetings,

Long time player. Huge fan of this mod. I haven't played in about 5-6 years though, and I just overlooked some of the changes. I'm not sure if that linked version is the most current. Overall, very positive, but I do have a few comments.

1. Dimensional Jump seems very powerful for a Level 1 spell. It seems like it would be more appropriate to implement it as Misty Step (a Level 2 spell).
2. Reflected Image seems a bit powerful. Seems like a L1 Displacement. Not sure how to balance this spell out. 
3. Dispelling Screen seems a bit excessive. It seems like it would be more sensible to all Spell Shield so that if anything should remove a protection, Spell Shield would be removed instead--including from Dispel.
   1. I'm not sure I like Spell Immunity being eliminated.
4. Spell Deflections would be better if they functioned like a Spell Mantle--protecting the user from area effects too.
5. No more Hakeshar?
6. Spell Trap absorbing 99 levels? Yikes! I'm also not a fan of it no longer recovering spell slots. I understand the motivations, but the abuses with it were mostly from problems with other spells (simulacra & images using items). I'd restore the spell replenishment aspect, but maybe limit the trap to 2 spell levels per caster level.

Thank you for continuing The Great Work! SR is easily one of the best mods ever released and dramatically improves the BG experience.

[Bartimaeus]

This is the SR Revised version of the mod, which is somewhat different from the mainline version.

1. I always thought Dimensional Jump seemed a bit powerful too, but in practice, if you're trying to use it to avoid another spellcaster's spell, it can (e): lmao I forgot to finish my sentence here - it can be difficult to actually use, since you have to have it be timed just right and it wastes an entire round of spellcasting. If you have very advanced meta-knowledge to the point where you're trying to bait an enemy spellcaster into casting one particular powerful spell or another, and you approach the encounter in such a way that they're forced to target your spellcaster with the Dimensional Jump, and you wait until they're in the middle of casting it before you use the Dimensional Jump, sure, I guess it's highly exploitable and you can do that...but, uh, why are you doing that? I can't imagine that's a very fun way to approach the game.

2. Reflected Image has been hugely nerfed compared to the vanilla version of the game (which auto-regenerated the image every time you were hit for the duration of the spell - in SR, it just regenerates it once every round) - now Mirror Image actually makes sense.

3. Spell Shield and Dispelling Screen have kind of distinct functions, though - Spell Shield is for more powerful anti-magics (such as Secret Word, Spellstrike, Ruby Ray of Reversal, etc.), while Dispelling Screen is more just for Dispel Magic spam and Breach.

4. It was a broken spell which could really only be used well for the purpose of being broken...but it is a broken spell that seemingly a lot of people liked to use, probably because it simplified mage battles. I actually intended to have an optional restoration of it, but I never got around to finishing it.

5. They do, if you use the AoE Spell Deflection component.

6. I restored Hakeshar for SRR (along with a few other spells), but yes, it doesn't exist in non-Revised SR anymore.

7. Hmm, not my decision. If I had to guess, this was because no intelligent AI (i.e. SCS) would ever target a Spell Trap anyways, so casting it basically means enemies will ignore you for spellcasting unless they can directly remove it via anti-magic. Which hasn't changed with changing it to 99 levels of spell deflection instead, it's just that it can no longer be self-abused by the player.

Edited February 16, 2021 by Bartimaeus

[subtledoctor]

EDIT - ninja'd!

I assume that post is meant for the main SVRv4 thread, not the SRR thread.  In any event,

39 minutes ago, Mr. Magniloquent said:

Dimensional Jump seems very powerful for a Level 1 spell. It seems like it would be more appropriate to implement it as Misty Step (a Level 2 spell).

Fair enough. I don't like the idea of Dimension Door being in the game at all, I personally never use it.

40 minutes ago, Mr. Magniloquent said:

Reflected Image seems a bit powerful. Seems like a L1 Displacement. Not sure how to balance this spell out.

With a duration of I think 4 or 5 rounds, is basically can stop 4 or 5 hits, max. And depending on the value of your hidden Luck stat, it might not even stop that many.  I've been playing with it a lot and it works well.  I even modded Barkskin to work in a similar fashion, a 1/round version of Iron Skins.

4 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

Reflected Image has been hugely nerfed compared to the vanilla version of the game (which auto-regenerated the image every time you were hit for the duration of the spell

I thought the vanilla spell just gives you one image, period, end of story? So it stops one attack and then goes away. That's my recollection. (That would make a nice cantrip, but it is underpowered compared to other BG2 1st-level spells.)

44 minutes ago, Mr. Magniloquent said:

I'm not sure I like Spell Immunity being eliminated.

Most of the things you use Spell Immunity for are still there, just in other spells. Nondetection is SI:Divination, Mind Blank is SI:Enchantment, ProEnergy or whatever is functionally SI:Evocation, etc. Removing the single cheesy 5th-level spell forces a bit more tactical gameplay, especially with SCS.

46 minutes ago, Mr. Magniloquent said:

Spell Deflections would be better if they functioned like a Spell Mantle--protecting the user from area effects too.

SRv4 has an optional component for precisely that!

55 minutes ago, Mr. Magniloquent said:

No more Hakeshar?

I don't actually know what the functional difference is between a hakeashar and... that other version of the same monster, whose name I forget. Is anything actually lost with this change?

(I myself never used those magic-eating monsters, they always seemed odd in concept and crappy in execution. Enemy scripts seem completely unable to handle them, so it ends up being a kind of cheesy win-button move - "summon hakeashar, move party out of enemy visual range, go make a cup of tea while enemy mages with crappy AI scripts destroy themselves..." that's not my idea of what makes BG2 fun.)

47 minutes ago, Mr. Magniloquent said:

Spell Trap absorbing 99 levels? Yikes!

Have you ever actually cast 30 levels of spells into a Spell Trap to remove it?  This just makes the spell into what it functionally already was: immunity to spells being cast at you. The proper way to deal with it is Ruby Ray/Pierce Shield/Spellstrike... just like in the normal game. Plus, SR is geared to work well with SCS, and SCS mages don't cast spells into Spell Trap to remove it, it only uses RR/PS/SS. So this just puts everyone on a level playing field as far as how to handle opponents with Spell Trap up.

50 minutes ago, Mr. Magniloquent said:

I'm also not a fan of it no longer recovering spell slots.

Same rationale applies: SCS enemies will not cast spells into your Spell Trap, so it will not replenish any of your spells. And you would be crazy to cast spells into an enemy Spell Trap and replenish their spells. So what's the point? It's not just that the spell allows exploits... rather, it's that the only use for that aspect of spell is those exploits. If the main purpose of the spell is to give you something close to functional immunity to enemy spellcasting... then why not just design it to give you something close to functional immunity to enemy spells? That's what SR does.

[Bartimaeus]

I may or may not have completely forgotten what the vanilla version of Reflected Image did, and instead replaced (in my mind) the old version of SR's Reflected Image with it. Not going to lie, I don't really care at all about or for Nishruus or Hakeashars, but it just weird that the latter was missing just to steal a scroll when you can solve that via other means. In any case, Hakeashars are basically just Nishruus+.

Also, I completely forgot to finish my thought for Dimensional Jump up above, so I just went ahead and edited that in, .

Edited February 16, 2021 by Bartimaeus

[Mr. Magniloquent]

I agree with what Ardanis wrote (years ago) in the other thread about Dimension Door being changed to a L5 spell which gives the user many innate DD or infinite DD for a duration. The Daeveron battle is very iconic, and it would be cool to do battle in the same way. Kind of like an inverse Teleportation Field with some tangential mobility uses.

I'm still not sold of Dispelling Screen. Originally, the formulae in BG2 was something like this:

1. Spells which removed protections against damage (Breach, Pierce, etc.)
2. Spells which removed protections against spells themselves (Khelbens, Spell Thrust, etc.)
3. Spell which removed everything. Dispel removed everything good and bad from friend and foe. Remove Magic removed only against foes at a chance for failure.

That was a good dynamic, with the exception of Remove Magic. It should have been a much higher level spell. Dispel Magic was a double edged sword that could still fail in its own right. Spell Shield is desirable because it works against a broad selection of spells with a narrow, if important, purpose. Dispelling Screen does the same thing, but against one spell. Not worthy. Much better to roll it into Spell Shield as it is already very situational and has opportunity costs of its own.

I did see how a few of the protections that Spell Immunity afforded have been rolled much more sensibly into other spells. There are plenty of gaps though. Most notably Necromancy. It would be really nice to have a 2E adaptation of Shadow Shield.

Regarding Hakeshars, they are a slightly better version of the Nishruu. Between the two of them, it was the only one worth casting IMO. If one has to go, it should be Nishruu. Not a major grievance either way though.

Finally, without Spell Trap being...a trap for spells, it's kind of pointless. It's just the ULTRA version of Greater Spell Deflection. That's not very interesting. If SCS AI won't cast against someone with Spell Trap active, that's more a fault with the AI than the spell. Not every spellcaster is a genius arcanist. Innate casters, divine casters, monsters with spell-like abilities, and even most arcane casters without access to Level 8 or 9 spells shouldn't even recognize it--at least not initially. With Project Image and Simulacra (item abuse) being fixed, anyone who can still find a way to abuse Spell Trap is going to break BG2 anyway. If you're going to fundamentally change the spell, just make it like an end-all-be-all Globe of Invulnerability for all spell levels--even HLA. Otherwise I'd leave it alone. It's part of what made the game good.

 

 

Edited February 16, 2021 by Mr. Magniloquent
Grammar + Forgot something!

[Bartimaeus]

SR is made with SCS in mind, since most players at this point use it, even if it's only at the "basic" level to fix horrific AI behavior. At the level that you can use Spell Trap (it's a 9th level spell!), the types of enemies you're facing actually very arguably should know what it is and react accordingly. If it made any sort of functional difference, I would consider an optional restoration of it for SRR, but doing so would effectively just be flavor text, since the end result plays out exactly the same.

I actually like and use Dispelling Screen a bit, but I play with SCS, where the AI uses Remove Magic a lot. If you don't use SCS, then my suggestion would be to simply ignore Dispelling Screen's existence, since the AI probably won't try to dispel you very much. Spell Shield already counters up to a 9th level spell, so I can't say I'm exactly in favor of also making it AoE...and in practice, this will just result in Spell Shield being dispelled by a random Dispel/Remove Magic instead of actually being used for anything more powerful. On a side-note, SRR doesn't change it so that Remove Magic is a higher level (no way to effectively do this anyways, since the AI will use it same as usual regardless of what level it's set to), but it does change it to a smaller 20' radius instead (compared to Dispel Magic's 30')...and there are additional options for changing its behavior in the settings.ini, plus a related Globes of Invulnerability tweak that makes them either ignore it or even protect against it.

I've always liked the idea of an 8th level Greater Globe of Invulnerability that protected from up to 5th level spells, but at this point, it's not in the works. I'm not a good enough artist to make icons and stuff, and scroll-placing is a headache.

Edited February 16, 2021 by Bartimaeus

[subtledoctor]

27 minutes ago, Mr. Magniloquent said:

I'm still not sold of Dispelling Screen. Originally, the formulae in BG2 was something like this:

1. Spells which removed protections against damage (Breach, Pierce, etc.)
2. Spells which removed protections against spells themselves (Khelbens, Spell Thrust, etc.)
3. Spell which removed everything. Dispel removed everything good and bad from friend and foe. Remove Magic removed only against foes at a chance for failure.

That was a good dynamic, with the exception of Remove Magic. It should have been a much higher level spell. Dispel Magic was a double edged sword that could still fail in its own right. Spell Shield is desirable because it works against a broad selection of spells with a narrow, if important, purpose. Dispelling Screen does the same thing, but against one spell. Not worthy. Much better to roll it into Spell Shield as it is already very situational and has opportunity costs of its own.

IIRC one of the main selling points of Dispelling Screen is that it is an AoE effect.  You can use it to protect all of the buffs that your cleric applies to your party - they will survive the first Remove Magic thrown at you. Now you have a serious advantage, being fully buffed when the enemy hoped to weaken you; or if the enemy has another Remove Magic on tap, then you at least are fully buffed for an extra round, and you force the enemy to waste a round casting the second RM rather than something more dangerous. (I don't use it very much, and it doesn't make much difference... but then I'm only level 12 at the moment, in chapter 3. Perhaps it will be more useful as the game goes on.)

Spell Shield is self-only, and quite specifically geared toward "mage chess." Specifically, with SR installed, it can absorb a Spellstrike and let you keep up your Spell Trap or other defenses.

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I did see how most of the protections that Spell Immunity afforded have been rolled much more sensibly into other spells. Protection from Energy is basically SI: Evocation, Mindblank for Enchantment, Non-Detection for (most) Divination. There are some notable gaps though. Conjuration is absent, and even more conspicuously--Necromancy. I'd rather have a 2E adaptation of Shadow Shield than Dispelling Screen.

I think Death Ward is more or less SI:Necromancy.  Yes, that's a priest spell... but I guess I'm fine with priests being the ones to protect people from necromantic effects.

Is there an actual use-case for SI:Conjuration?  What offensive Conjuration spells are there?  Acid Arrow?  (Admittedly, I change the schools of a bunch of spells in my game, so protection from that school might be more valuable in the vanilla system than in my game.)

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Finally, without Spell Trap being...a trap for spells, it's kind of pointless. It's just the ULTRA version of Greater Spell Deflection. That's not very interesting. If SCS AI won't cast against someone with Spell Trap active, that's more a fault with the AI than the spell.

No, it's a good thing. The various "interesting" vanilla defenses - Deflection, Turning, Trap - don't do much except serve to hand major advantages to a human player against the AI. Even the basic concept of how many spell levels a defense can handle before dissipating is something that the player can exploit but the AI cannot. When AI is well-written, like SCS mages, it will refuse to do stupid things like cast Magic Missile into a Spell Turning.  But once the AI is acting sensibly in that regard, then the "interesting" aspect of Turning suddenly becomes very uninteresting, and even low-level defensive spells become "immunity to spells until the enemy dispels my defense." Kreso was obsessed with this over the years, trying to find a way to make fights a bit more organic.

For SR's purposes, turning all of the defenses into variants of Spell Deflection made sense because that's how it was working out anyway, and this way it could be fine-tuned with that assumption in mind.

If you'r interested, I have made further refinements to the "mage chess" system in my "Random Tweaks" mod, called "Revised Magic Battles." That link goes to the final published version; you can see the genesis of the idea over here, with some discussion in following posts.

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If you're going to fundamentally change the spell, just make it like an end-all-be-all Globe of Invulnerability for all spell levels

Heh, I suggested precisely that in some of the back-and-forth with kreso over the years. The difference, more or less, is this: as it is now, you have the choice as to whether it only counters spells targeting you, like the original Spell Trap, or whether it counters AoE effects as well (if you install the optional "AoE Spell Deflection" component). I think it's good to have that choice. Further, in neither case does it counter stationary effect like clouds and firestorms.  If you just made it into Mega Globe of Invulnerability, that it would block all magical effect, both targeted and AoE, as well as all cloud-like effects, and the player would have no choice about the matter at install-time.

@Mike1072 or another moderator, these last few posts should probably be moved to the main SRv4 thread.

Edited February 16, 2021 by subtledoctor

[FixTesteR]

Hi! Is this topic/mod dead? Sounds like a good and much needed mod! But I didn't see this mod in the Baldur's Extended World Installation Tool. So now after my many-mods installation is complete, wouldn't it be unsafe to install this mod on top of it all? I have SR installed. I'm kinda hesitant, though I'd like to try SRR.

[Bartimaeus]

21 minutes ago, FixTesteR said:

Hi! Is this topic/mod dead? Sounds like a good and much needed mod! But I didn't see this mod in the Baldur's Extended World Installation Tool. So now after my many-mods installation is complete, wouldn't it be unsafe to install this mod on top of it all? I have SR installed. I'm kinda hesitant, though I'd like to try SRR.

Not at all, it's just that the way it installs is kind of funky, so it's not handled by download/install-it-for-you tools. Basically, you download and extract SR (but not install), then you download and extract SRR on top of the SR folder (replacing its files), then you just install SR as normal via the install-spell_rev.exe (or equivalent for other OSes). So unfortunately, if your megamod installation is already complete, that means you'd have to do something rather risky in extracting SRR to on top of the SR folder, and then telling it to reinstall SRR...which would then uninstall and reinstall everything you installed after SR. It might be something better left to another time.

It's done this way because SRR is an unofficial branch of SR that only includes the files it directly changes, and requiring people to install it this way means that there should be no confusion about what version you're installing, reducing problems for both maintainers of the original mod as well as myself, the maintainer of this one (...although it still happens once in a while that an SRR user doesn't know they're using SRR and not the base mod).

Edited February 22, 2021 by Bartimaeus

[FixTesteR]

Thanks! So the mod is still under development and we can expect divine spells to be revised as well? If yes, then I'll be on the lookout for it for the next playthrough once I'm done with the current one. So I'll save the link to this thread and be back later.

(I think Goodberries need a buff.)

[Bartimaeus]

I've actually already done a number of divine revisions, it's just that I never got around to putting exactly what they were in the original post, . Here, I just edited in the the level 1 revisions in the original post - progress!

Goodberry is one that was discussed a lot, but no consensus was ever made on how to make it more valuable without either making it too valuable over similar spells. The only thing I really ended up committing to giving it was a longer duration, unfortunately.

[FixTesteR]

So you think Goodberry shouldn't scale more than it does? Maybe 1 hp/lvl capped at lvl 10? Or could they scale to level 20 for a nice healing solution? Or maybe if they healed poison or something.

When you talk about consensus, are there a lot of people you listen to, and then make a final decision? So that the mod is not the idea of one biased man?

I have also been baffled with Non-Detection. Is there any way to remove it? I think dispel magic is the only way, an AoE effect, since you cannot single-target the invisible opponent. I had some nagging problems with several fights in the late game, and playing ToB for the first time at that.

In any case, I am eager to see your work progress, and will now read what you just added in your OP.

[FixTesteR]

On 9/7/2018 at 8:30 AM, Bartimaeus said:

Regenerate Light Wounds: This used to heal 1 hp/round for 1 turn + 2 rounds/level (up to 30 HP over 3 turns at 10th level), now it instead always lasts for just 5 rounds but heals 15 + 1.5/two levels HP (up to 30 HP over 5 rounds at 20th level).  Basically the idea is to make this semi-usable in combat by having it heal at a decent pace rather than only out of it.

So now RLW is half heal and half regenerate? My suggestion would be to keep it a pure regenerate but just shorten those 3 turns to 5 rounds. So those 30 HP in 5 rounds equal to 1 HP per second at level 20. Ofc then you need to look at what that does to the Regenerate Critical Wounds at high levels, as that may be just too strong. And if it's troo strong, just elongate the duration above 5 rounds. Basically, I agree with you that regeneration should be faster but I wouldn't make a hybrid betwen regen and heal.

Healing, except maybe 6L spell Heal, is usually sup-optimal compared to potion quaffing during combat. But if regenerate's rate is improved by shortening the duration, it might become quite viable to buff with that before or even during combat. As long as the highest spell level of regenerate doesn't get too powerful.

Maybe RLW could be 30 HP in 10 rounds at L20, which is 3 HP per round. Just my two cents.

Edited February 22, 2021 by FixTesteR

[Bartimaeus]

2 hours ago, FixTesteR said:

So you think Goodberry shouldn't scale more than it does? Maybe 1 hp/lvl capped at lvl 10? Or could they scale to level 20 for a nice healing solution? Or maybe if they healed poison or something.

When you talk about consensus, are there a lot of people you listen to, and then make a final decision? So that the mod is not the idea of one biased man?

I have also been baffled with Non-Detection. Is there any way to remove it? I think dispel magic is the only way, an AoE effect, since you cannot single-target the invisible opponent. I had some nagging problems with several fights in the late game, and playing ToB for the first time at that.

In any case, I am eager to see your work progress, and will now read what you just added in your OP.

Never found a good formula for Goodberry. 1 hp/level, for example, is 50 HP per cast at at 10th level, plus it can be used by fighters without needing to be cast. What then would be the point of Cure or Regenerate Light Wounds? They'd both be so vastly outclassed. This is a spell I've been very frustrated by in attempting to find where it fits between balance and usability, and generally when that happens, I leave it alone until I find something I like. I was unfortunately never able to find anything I liked for Goodberry, and though there were a few suggestions by others, no consensus was reached by anyone there either...except that it should be better somehow someway, which I do agree with.

Consensus is probably overstating it. Demi was the strong consensus guy - I'm more of a..."hey, that's a good point/idea, let's try it out and revert it later if necessary, or just make it an optional tweak that's defaulted to disabled via settings.ini if it seems kind of radical" sort of guy. In the past, if a number of people really didn't like an idea, or have specifically asked for something, I generally listen, though. After all, worst case scenario, I keep what I prefer to just myself.

You can single-target invisible opponents. Here is the SRR description of Non-Detection that attempts to state exactly how Non-Detection works (as SR's original description was sorely lacking and vague): "By casting this spell, the wizard makes the recipient undetectable by spells such as Detect Invisibility, Invisibility Purge, and True Seeing, though they may still be audible when moving and certain types of creatures may still sense their presence through other means. Furthermore, anti-illusory spells and abilities such as Detect Illusion and Oracle will also have no effect upon the recipient. This spell does not protect the recipient from detection as a result of engaging in overtly hostile actions, though it will continue to protect other types of illusions they have active from being directly dispelled. Note, however, that specific opponents affected with anti-invisibility spells or abilities such as True Seeing will be able to target the recipient with spellcasting through their improved invisibility for as long as such anti-invisibility spells are active. This spell wards the recipient's equipment as well as the creature itself." In other words, an improved invisible creature can be targeted by creatures, including your characters, that have True Seeing or Detect Invisibility active - only those specific characters affected with those anti-invisibility spells, however. Having an Inquisitor cast True Seeing will do nothing for your mage that does not have either Detect Invisibility or True Seeing active against Non-Detection - the mage themself, after all, must be able to see the invisible creature. Non-Detection is a spell protection, which means it can be removed by anti-magic spells such as Secret Word (which spells like Secret Word do mention).

Whoops, I poorly stated how Regenerate Wounds worked in that short description - the healing is still regeneration over those 5 rounds (including the initial 15), so it does work how you suggested!

 

Edited February 22, 2021 by Bartimaeus

[subtledoctor]

8 hours ago, FixTesteR said:

(I think Goodberries need a buff.)

Shameless plug:  my mod addresses Goodberries.  Totally compatible with SR/SRR.