SR Revised V1.3.900 (2022 August 8th)

[Bartimaeus]

5 hours ago, Chosen said:

By the way I feel like current iteration of cause wounds spell are little bit overtuned, especially if you have good attack bonuses you find yourself one-shotting anything with no save touch attacks. Of course melee attackers can deal similar damage in a turn but I found serious/critical wounds especially deadly. Though this may be a little biased because while cause x spell are are dangerous mage spells of equal circles are not that much less powerful so I don't know if this a fair criticism. Only reason they don't feel oppressive is enemy clerics can rarely use them since 1) party AC is generally higher than enemies 2) Player knows to interrupt spells and can kill enemy clerics quickly (at least so much faster than enemy mages). On other hand I fell vampiric touch is a little bit undertuned(I made it deal 4 every 2 levels).

I think the Cause Wound spells have had questionable damage efficiency since pretty much forever (particularly since you also have to make a successful attack with them, which can sometimes be more of an issue than you might expect - missing it in the first couple of attacks you try to make is super annoying!)...which has always made me wonder they're ever worth any spell slots. Relative to SRR's enhanced Poison and the ever reliable Holy Smite/Unholy Blight, I believe I should be pleased and think it's a good thing if someone likes using the Cause Wound spells.

To be honest, I've always wished that Vampiric Touch was a second level spell and not a third - at third, it's competing with too many other spells that are much greater pressing needs (even in the same school, you already have Skull Trap!), and with the maximum HP bonus, it's difficult to balance just right, so I guess I hear you on that one. Thank you for the feedback.

[Lianos]

F/C with Sanctuary + Cause Wounds can one-shot many human enemys in late BG1/early BG2 as an opener. Better than the usual thief, because it bypasses stoneskins and spell protections. Really powerful.

[Guest Owlman]

Is it possible to choose to not change some spells in the installation?

[Bartimaeus]

12 hours ago, Guest Owlman said:

Is it possible to choose to not change some spells in the installation?

Yes...and potentially no. In spell_rev\components, there is a file called main_component.tpa. Open it with a plaintext editor (e.g. Notepad), and search for the name of the spell you want to disable. Perhaps I want the original version of Haste - I would search for Haste, and put the start comment symbol "/*" at the beginning and the end comment symbol "*/" at the end of its block - see here:

This prevents Haste from being overwritten with SR's version of the spell. However, there are some spells where this may cause issues either in-game or cause the installation to error out. Off the top of my head, Spell Immunity is one that people sometimes wish to restore for its cheesiness, but trying to restore Spell Immunity in this fashion would not really work in-game, because the spell is hidden from the spell selection screen via the hidespl mechanism and the spell scroll file is used by a different spell, Dispelling Screen. You could remove Spell Immunity from hidespl and also prevent Dispelling Screen from being installed so as to effectively restore it, but this could very well cause install errors as the mod assumes that Dispelling Screen is installed and may error out because of it not being installed.

In other words, it depends on what spells in particular you're trying to restore. Some spells can be disabled without issue.

[Mordekaie]

Testing many mods to prepare my next EET install. I made some test with SR R along with Sod2BG2 UI, IWDification and LotLM. It seems that things are messy. I also did the same test with SR instead and it was better. I join the debug files.

What are the main differences between SR and your SR Revisited ?

 

Debug-SOD2BG2_SR_IWDification_TotLM.txt Debug-SOD2BG2_SRR_IWDficiation_TotLM.txt

[Bartimaeus]

3 hours ago, Mordekaie said:

Testing many mods to prepare my next EET install. I made some test with SR R along with Sod2BG2 UI, IWDification and LotLM. It seems that things are messy. I also did the same test with SR instead and it was better. I join the debug files.

What are the main differences between SR and your SR Revisited ?

 

Debug-SOD2BG2_SR_IWDification_TotLM.txt 4.6 kB · 1 download Debug-SOD2BG2_SRR_IWDficiation_TotLM.txt 7.66 kB · 1 download

More or less the same explanation I gave about IRR, except about spells instead of items. Most of those errors are once again "no changes made" effectively, which doesn't really concern me - it just means the spells in question were not modified. What exact practical effect that might have on your game remains to be seen, but usually it doesn't mean anything critical like causing game-crashes or missing resources or anything of that nature - it just might mean a spell wasn't updated to quite how the mod wanted it to be. IWD Divine Spell Pack is letting you know that it did not install IWD spells that already existed in the game - namely, cleric Cause Disease, cleric Circle of Bones, cleric Mass Cause Light Wounds, and cleric Cause Serious Wounds. I don't think any of those particular errors have anything to do with SR/R, because the first three aren't SR/R spells to begin with, while the last one, Cause Serious Wounds already existed in the base BG2 game. So I can't say for sure what's up with that.

Edited March 30, 2022 by Bartimaeus

[Guest Shadow]

First of all, thank you for the mod and i agree with many of the changes. I have some questions/ suggestions. Idk much about 2e DnD and modding of this game aside of how to install them, mostly familiar with 3/3.5. and Pathfinder and i understand its not meant to be totally PnP mod, so we may take some liberties. English isnt native for me, so sorry for any mistakes and such in advance.

 If i want to change, say, Vampiric Touch to 1d6 per 2 lvl and capped at 10d6 and with succesefull touch atk needed, what i would need to change and will the AI will use it? ( i dont even remember that AI using it at all with SCS installed). Also i would like to restore Sleep duration and radius, but with the impovements of SR in regards to HD affected? Also, Larloch's Minor Drain is not quite good atm, i would like smth like 1d4 per 2 lvl, capped at 10 lvl ( so magic missile could still be more damaging + work on undead and such, while drain should work on living).

Suggestions.

1) Banishment - to affect Planetars/Devas and the like with some save. I know that you changed it to have an option for gated creatures, but idk if it works on them.

2) Summoning spells - while many ppl, probably, done care about that, i dont like many of these spells just from the visual side of things + not all of them have much use at mid-high lvl even as meatshield as some dont scale after certain lvls or just poor creatures, like gibs for MS1. If i play a summoner, i want to be aided by some cool summons, like mephits/erinyes ( btw, are there any in BGT? i cant remember. I saw in some discussion that there seems to be an erinyes summoned by Thrix the Profane)/succubus and the like. But current summon spells all kinda suck in terms of visuals - im ok with hobs/ogres/wyverns, but spiders/jellies/Otyughs and such are just a big no, no matter how effective they are. So, it would be nice to have some outsiders as part of those spells as we have in other editions, if not mistaken. Also, why not make Deva a lvl 9 summon for mages? Makes sense for me, considering that we can have Planetars as HLA for mages and they are less powerfull than planetars. In fact, i feel they rather weak for HLA.

So, changes i would like to see as am not a modder and suspect its not easy.

MS1 - various kobolts instead of gibs with the addition of archers and commandos at higher lvl. Also, if there are smth like shamans, they should be added at higher lvl in the mix.

1st : 2 kobolts
3rd : 2 kobolts (idk, there were guards or smth like that ingame that were better than basic kobolts, but i always play with SCS darkside kobs upgrade, so dont remember what its like in base game) + 1 archer
5th : 2 kobolts + 2 archers
7th : 2 kobolts + 2 archers + 1 commando (with arrows of detonation, yes) - well, you get the idea. 

MS2 - mb should add 1 more shaman or smth like that after 12+ lvl.

MS3 - f the jellies. Seriously. Mephits could fill there hicely as they have some spells/abilities and not too powerfull, afaik. Smth like summon random type/ or depends of the caster aligment. If neutral non good/evil then random type. Ofc they should have their PnP abilities like its done in aTweaks or smth like that. They more fitting for elemental summons, but we dont have low lvl elemental summon spell, afaik, and they are cool, so...

MS4 - f the spiders. Replace with dire/winter and vampiric wolfes at higher lvl or smth like that.

MS5 - add 1 more ogre magi at 15+ lvl

MS6 - add 1 more baby at 13 lvl. The gap between the upgrade is 4 lvl - too much.

MS7 - replace with some werewolfes/basilisks and such.

MS8 - replace with something other. I was thinking about fire/frost ( i dont remember if there are any frost ones in bg) giants and some golems as they seem to be in dnd 2e for this spell.

MS9 - Deva/fallen deva. Random var for neutrals. Pure melee such as weres are kinda suck for a lvl 9 spell. Btw, how the AI is going to handle this? I suppose it must be apdated for the use of such spell vs player.

Summon Fiend/Gate - why its always the same summons? Wouldnt it be more interesting and, to some extend, logical if they would be a bit random in hd/numbers, but within more or less the same HD total? That way we could have succubus/erinyes and etc. It would be more fun to have more diversity for the encounters and potentionally lead to the need of adapting tactics on the fly for diff enemy summons and not just the same summons over and over for which you were prepeared beforehand. Esp with SCS where demons should be able to gate more of their kind in the mix.

Nature's Call - why dont add smth like Sirines to the mix? They also a nature beings and all that + diversity.

If someone thinks that it buffs summon too much or smth like that - dont forget about a large numer of AoE spells that simply destroy most of them, aside of highest lvl of spells and even then ... And warriors and the likes have high damage and ac by default due to items and etc. I also play with "every caster that can cast 9 lvl spells gets HLA" option from SCS, so its for variety and a bit more usefullnes, in some cases, so they could be a bit more than just dumb meatshield.

3) Whats the point of having separate spells for Conjure Elemental spell lines? It would be more convinient, from my pov, to have them in one spell for their lvl that either picks random type or let the caster choose. I would prefer random type just for the sake of diversity in encounters as AI, even with SCS, most likely incapable of using the most effective for given situation.

Sorry for the wall of text and thanks for the mod once again.

[Guest Shadow]

Forgot to add. My biggest gripe is with Summon Fiend/Gate - they are always the same summons, so we are pretty much never see rarer sorts of outsiders and etc on OUR side. Its just boring... I also think that Animate Skeleton Warrior could be replaced with smth like Create Undead ( and modify that spell to allow to summon vamps and improved versions of them at high lvl and Skeleton warrior summon could be moved to Animate Dead after 15 lvl or smth like that. Bc atm its just boring - skeletons are fine and all, but no zombies/ghouls/etc for necro - see, what i mean? I would like much broader diversity in summons.

[Bartimaeus]

9 hours ago, Guest Shadow said:

Forgot to add. My biggest gripe is with Summon Fiend/Gate - they are always the same summons, so we are pretty much never see rarer sorts of outsiders and etc on OUR side. Its just boring... I also think that Animate Skeleton Warrior could be replaced with smth like Create Undead ( and modify that spell to allow to summon vamps and improved versions of them at high lvl and Skeleton warrior summon could be moved to Animate Dead after 15 lvl or smth like that. Bc atm its just boring - skeletons are fine and all, but no zombies/ghouls/etc for necro - see, what i mean? I would like much broader diversity in summons.

I usually use atweaks' P&P Fiends in combination with disabling SR's fiends via the settings.ini switch SRR introduced...topped off with using the "atweaks/SR fiends fusion" component from this completely inconspicuously named mod: https://github.com/BartyMae/Bart_Tweaks The same applies for atweaks' Call Woodland Beings.

You know, I wouldn't really be against adding a little more flavor of undead, but one issue is that I'm not much of a creature scripter - that's usually the issue with introducing more complex summonables, I think, and is probably why many summonables in SR are essentially pretty boring fighter types. Vampires probably wouldn't ever happen because level drain is super abuseable, but I get your point regarding other types. It's actually pretty difficult to implement good summonables, and I'm already somewhat unhappy with a few currently in SRR (such as MS9's greater wolfweres...or the ridiculously sized yet fairly weak otyugh, ugh - as a general rule of thumb, you really want to avoid large-sized summonables due to the fact that they become completely unusable/annoying/terrible in many areas with too small corridors and such, which also limits the types of creatures you can use for Monster Summoning...).

12 hours ago, Guest Shadow said:

 If i want to change, say, Vampiric Touch to 1d6 per 2 lvl and capped at 10d6 and with succesefull touch atk needed, what i would need to change and will the AI will use it? ( i dont even remember that AI using it at all with SCS installed). Also i would like to restore Sleep duration and radius, but with the impovements of SR in regards to HD affected? Also, Larloch's Minor Drain is not quite good atm, i would like smth like 1d4 per 2 lvl, capped at 10 lvl ( so magic missile could still be more damaging + work on undead and such, while drain should work on living).

It is, to my knowledge, not realistic to implement variable draining unless it's a single die (e.g. IR weapons with their 1D4 Vampiric property). The reason for this is because every range of damage and healing would have to be mapped out to its own percentile range. That is to say, Vampiric Touch at, say...9D6 would have a minimum damage of 9 and a maximum damage of 50, which is 42 unique values - 42 unique values that you have to tie individually to every possible percentage of a range between 1-100%. This is undoubtedly precisely why Vampiric Touch and Larloch's Minor Drain do not use dice to determine their damage, unlike other types of damage - it's not really possible to fairly equalize something like 42 values between a 1-100% range, plus it's extremely tedious to try to implement for a single level, never mind many. I would also like 1D4 for Larloch's Minor Drain as well (representing an average increase of .5 damage per die used, or an additional 2.5 total damage at 9th level), but trying to map that to a percentage range would be difficult and awful, to say the least.

12 hours ago, Guest Shadow said:

1) Banishment - to affect Planetars/Devas and the like with some save. I know that you changed it to have an option for gated creatures, but idk if it works on them.

It should already, although with the caveat that Banishment only applies to summoned celestials and fiends. This doesn't really make a whole lot of sense in-universe, but there's not really any other way to determine whether an outsider should be banishable in the first place (for example, if you made all fiends banishable, it would be problematic, to say the least, for areas like the Throne of Blood or the Planar Sphere abyssal plane).

12 hours ago, Guest Shadow said:

2) Summoning spells - while many ppl, probably, done care about that, i dont like many of these spells just from the visual side of things + not all of them have much use at mid-high lvl even as meatshield as some dont scale after certain lvls or just poor creatures, like gibs for MS1. If i play a summoner, i want to be aided by some cool summons, like mephits/erinyes ( btw, are there any in BGT? i cant remember. I saw in some discussion that there seems to be an erinyes summoned by Thrix the Profane)/succubus and the like. But current summon spells all kinda suck in terms of visuals - im ok with hobs/ogres/wyverns, but spiders/jellies/Otyughs and such are just a big no, no matter how effective they are. So, it would be nice to have some outsiders as part of those spells as we have in other editions, if not mistaken. Also, why not make Deva a lvl 9 summon for mages? Makes sense for me, considering that we can have Planetars as HLA for mages and they are less powerfull than planetars. In fact, i feel they rather weak for HLA.

The difference is that demons are gated in from a different plane, while general "monsters" (i.e. aberrations) are home to the Prime Material, and generally even specifically Faerûn itself. I agree with you that a few need replacing, but I would not be in favor of replacing them with anything but monsters (it is in the name, after all). Aberrations, constructs, undead, fiends, celestials, and elementals are all quite separate classes of creatures in my brain. I'm not really sure why fiends are limited to such high level spells - I would prefer it if there was just a couple of lower and mid-level fiend spells.

Trivializing a divine HLA to a simple level 9 arcane spell would...feel bad, to say the least. I haven't personally done any exact comparisons of creature strength (though I feel it certainly has to outstrip MS9 as a similarly directly controllable summon), but I would be very much against that for that reason alone: an HLA of one class shouldn't be just another spell for another.

I very much like the idea of putting kobolds at MS1 instead, and allowing the spell to grow a little more. After all, who in their right mind is going to ever memorize MS1 at 9th level over a Magic Missile? The exact formula for creatures would need take some work to figure out, and the issue of Monster Summoning in general is something I'll have to consider more thoroughly at some point to see if I can figure out what exactly I want to do.

12 hours ago, Guest Shadow said:

3) Whats the point of having separate spells for Conjure Elemental spell lines? It would be more convinient, from my pov, to have them in one spell for their lvl that either picks random type or let the caster choose. I would prefer random type just for the sake of diversity in encounters as AI, even with SCS, most likely incapable of using the most effective for given situation.

I think there was an idea to do this at some point, but either nobody ever got around to them or decision-makers ultimately decided against it. The most immediate problem I can think of with doing this is that it actually causes the opposite of the typical issue with adding new arcane spells. Adding new arcane spells always causes the issue of "well, it needs a scroll, and the scroll has to be placed into at multiple locations in the game as well as stores", and that is a difficult process; condensing arcane spells like this would result in you using two scrolls for Lesser Conjure Elemental and Conjure Elemental, which leads to having 4 extra/unused scrolls between the Lesser/non-Lesser Fire/Air/Earth scrolls that are all still placed in the game. This is a bit of a major headache to clean-up, or alternatively replace with new spells. Complications abound everywhere...

Thank you for all the feedback. I will have to re-visit Monster Summoning once more at some point in the future - it has always been a headache that I have not particularly wanted to deal with, unfortunately.

Edited April 6, 2022 by Bartimaeus

[subtledoctor]

21 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

or the ridiculously sized yet fairly weak otyugh, ugh

I have to say, I just played through ToB with SR 4b18, and I found the MS7 otyughs to be an excellent summon in practice. I found myself casting that spell all the time.

The problem with summons is the degree to which you want to hew to the concept of "monster" summoning. You want to avoid animals, even fantastical or mutated versions of animals, to avoid stepping on the toes of druid summons. You want to avoid fey creatures, for being the province of Call Woodland Beings etc. And you want to avoid sentient humanoids, because they are not strictly "monsters" but more like NPCs. This last one in particular gets a bit sticky. Honestly I'm already not super comfortable with having hobgoblins and ogres in the spell series. Hobs are seen in BG1 as having intelligence, societal and military social structures, culture, etc. We don't see the same from ogres but, canonically, they are not really animalistic monsters. It's the same reason Demi didn't include gnolls in these spells. And for this reason I don't love the idea of using kobolds. But it does complicate things.

Some thoughts:

• Gibberlings have to stay. They are iconic. And what site are we on? I think two possible ways to make them better might be 1) summon more of them - like up to 10 or so, ignoring the usual summoning limit. The lore about what makes them dangerous is that they are supposed to attack in a horde, right? A mini horde of gibbs might all get struck down in a single blow by a high-level enemy, but if there are enough of them it will still occupy that enemy for a round or three, giving you a chance to employ some other tactic. And 2) maybe replace them with the BG2 "mutated" variety. Maybe make this the level 2 or even level 3 spell, instead of the level 1 spell. Then use some other little trash mob for the level 1 spell.
• I don't really love the jelly summoning. But it is a monster, and so why not? I think SRR's version of this is probably better than SR's, though I haven't directly compared them in real gameplay.
• Spiders... are just the vanilla Spider Spawn spell, slotted into this series of summons. If you have no problem with that spell in the unmodded game then I can't see having a problem with it here.
• SoD introduces an item that lets the player summon ankhegs. Which means there is a .CRE file, and an attached .BCS file, out there right now ready to be cannibalized.
• What about carrion crawlers? This is a vanilla spell  and a perfectly monstrous creature, they seem perfect for this application. Arguably this should be restored to 6th level and wyverns should be moved over to the druid line of summons...
• Some mod - maybe Ascencion? or SCS? - introduces "drakes" or young dragons to the Abazigal fight. I haven't actually played it, but that could be something to finally fill that 9th-level spot. Again, there is already a .CRE file and .BCS script out there, would just need permission to use them.

So I might do something like this if I ever have the time (and I'd be totally willing to collaborate btw):

1. gibberlings or...something else.
2. green jelly thing, or maybe mutated gibberlings if something else is used at 1st level
3. SRR's jelly?
4. spiders
5. ankhegs
6. carrion crawlers
7. otyughs
8. umber hulks
9. "drake?" (I'm still not sure this spell is really necessary)

Edited April 7, 2022 by subtledoctor

[Guest Shadow]

43 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

I usually use atweaks' P&P Fiends in combination with disabling SR's fiends via the settings.ini switch SRR introduced...topped off with using the "atweaks/SR fiends fusion" component from this completely inconspicuously named mod: https://github.com/BartyMae/Bart_Tweaks The same applies for atweaks' Call Woodland Beings.

I read somewhere that SCS AI doesnt improve them in such cases + some potentional troubles with smarter mage component, but im no modder so cant check if its really the case. Thanks for the link.

49 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

Vampires probably wouldn't ever happen because level drain is super abuseable

The thing is - whats not abuseable in such games? I remember that you could summon vamp spawn in NWN and it wasnt all that op. Drain is useless vs undead/golems and some others + there should be a save/ the need to actually hit the target and opponents could have protections, like clerics and etc. Plus, it will be used vs player, so at least some more work for antiundead spec spells that is usually somewhat rarely used, considering the other options. The number of things one could abuse, IF decided to, is just insane... Like, you can get a litteral tons of consumables/ etc. There was a mod Hard Times, but its sadly not updated for EE and the author abandoned it, it seems. And now im once again with lots of money even in non megamod install pretty quickly on BGEE... Btw, it would be cool if smb could make an unoff update for it, sigh (forum for that mod seems to be inactive, so mentioning here, mb smb sees it as there is much more activity). I also cant find mod that would rebalance economic for bg megamod installs, so the player would actually have to save money. And dont get me started on that magic +++ weapons/etc laying around ( i mean - while IR/IRR rebalances them, just the sheer number of them over the course of BGT is kinda insane)... At least you can get an option with randomiser mod where Kangaxx is "further sealed away". Btw, there used to be mod for BGT that removed most of all op items and removed duplicates of supposed unique artefacts ( so you could never get several boots of speed, for instance), but it seems there isnt one for EE (i dont remember if current IR/IRR do smth in this regard). So, in short, if the player decides to abuse the game, esp the one like BG, he/she will find a way. I just think that for necro vamps make for a perfect minions at higher lvl from purely aesthetics pov, if nothing else. Also, if we take into consideration SCS - while vamps could be strong, yes, they would still be no real threat to actually tough opponents and there are quite many in SoA/ToB. Mb they could actually be op vs illithids ( but im not sure if they are immune to their braineating attack), but skeletons and such op in similar way atm.

A pity about Drains. As it stands now, there is very little point in vamp touch (also this is one of baalspawn abilities, so evil or mb even neutral chars sort of suffer bc of it). Thats why im going with the vanilla spell iteration atm.

2 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

but I would not be in favor of replacing them with anything but monsters (it is in the name, after all). Aberrations, constructs, undead, fiends, celestials, and elementals are all quite separate classes of creatures in my brain.

Well, for some reasons, in DnD ( yes its not pure dnd mod, but still...) we have even some undead in SM spells and in MS7 there is flesh golem,  SM8 - stone golem. Saw here - https://adnd2e.fandom.com/wiki/MM_Appendix_II:_Monster_Summoning_Tables

But, dont get me wrong - am not really against it, just would be nice to replace jellies/spiders/otyughs, at least.

2 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

HLA of one class shouldn't be just another spell for another.

Agreed. On the other hand, clerics then could use some buff there as, from my exp ( but i play heavy modded games), they feel like they belong to lvl 9 and not so much to HLA. Planetar is just so much more stronger in comparison (thats ok). And, if we pit lvl 9 uncontrol summon (btw, it seems to be a way to control it if your caster have a high stats or smth like that with SCS) vs Deva - well, implosion and other stuff to the face and etc ( with SCS). But, even with just SR - i pretty sure that pit fiend wins in most cases. MS9 - yes, deva would be much better just bc of utility by default, but who would use current MS9 vs Gate much? Deva have more utility things, so thats a plus, but still not really anywhere near a thing that you would expect from epic lvls stuff. It really feels just slightly better or on par with lvl 9 spell, while it should be significantly more powerfull as supposed ultimate cleric summon.

About elementals - a pity. Also, those spells are kinda stuck in scaling, aside of longer duration ( but, realistically, most battles are won or lost fairy quickly, so you need more scaling in powers of spells vs duration of summons (skeletons/etc 8h are better for long term in most cases anyway) in 95% cases as they usually dont live this long), so mb update them for more numbers at higher lvl - the most, probably, simple and somewhat effective way. For instance, lesser one - + 1 at 15+ lvl or smth like that.

 

 

[Guest Shadow]

7 hours ago, subtledoctor said:

I have to say, I just played through ToB with SR 4b18, and I found the MS7 otyughs to be an excellent summon in practice. I found myself casting that spell all the time.

I wonder, what settings/ other mods you use, bc it seems like basic vanilla + scs, at most. They are ok for trash mobs, but in heavy modded ToB its somewhat another story + trash mobs, at that point, could even be meleed to death by mage chars after a couple of basic buffs w/o any summons needed due to all that crazy items even with nerfs to them and etc. Not to mention that they just arent good visualwise and we have actual good summons at that lvl - Death Knight, Djinni, Efreeti which are cool looking/quite strong AND have utility due to spells/etc. Duration doesnt matter at that point, unless its 8h. And size counts as minus for otyughs: 3 of them in small areas/doors/etc be damned, so if there were summons with lesser size - it would be better. Unless, ofc, you abuse them so that AI would stuck.

 

7 hours ago, subtledoctor said:

The problem with summons

I got a deja vu, seems like similar thing was discussed years back. Idk about concepts, but i seen kobolds in list of summons for adnd 2e SM1. Btw, no gibs there, afaik. So, if you want to go all that canonical and etc... Im curious - afaik, you have your own ver of SR with blackjack and... so, why are you even care if this mod change that? And whats so iconic about gibs ( this wonderfull site aside). I seen a lot of dnd like stuff, but gibs? Kobolds/etc - sure + we have Deekin. But, more on point:

7 hours ago, subtledoctor said:

summon more of them - like up to 10 or so, ignoring the usual summoning limit. Their whole thing that makes them dangerous is that they are supposed to attack in a horde, right? A mini horde of gibbs might all get struck down in a single blow by a high-level enemy, but if there are enough of them it will still occupy that enemy for a round or three, giving you a chance to employ some other tactic.

They are dangerous only to complete and utter noobs. And even then, pretty much anyone with half a brain can deal with them, not to mention modded AI. High lvl enemy? So, 1 fireball at base caster lvl for that spell or pretty much any AoE/ CC, like Grease or, even better, Sleep with its current radius of 30 that can easily cover 10+ of them  + the foolish caster of this summoning spell - and they pretty much roasted, no matter the numbers. Its now called HIGH LVL? Ahaha. They all melees and terrible ones at that. Many can simply even ignore them, if buffed a bit with basic spells of have normal ac from start, like fighters. Non mages can simply ignore them with half decent armor. Enemy thiefs mb could have a bit of problems at low lvl due to not great ac and without potions of invis/etc that they will get later. About "occupy" - SCS, at high settings, would still prefer to chase and roast YOU and not pathetic gibs, if gibs are still alive by some miracle.

7 hours ago, subtledoctor said:

maybe replace them with the BG2 "mutated" variety. Maybe make this the level 2 or even level 3 spell, instead of the level 1 spell. Then use some other little trash mob for the level 1 spell.

Better, but it doesnt solve their problem with no range/utility at later lvls. Also, why would the player would even want to bother with them when, depending on the opponents, there are Sleep and Grease/etc that AoE and, in general, MUCH more usefull spells? In short - current or your version just dont justify a spellslot. Kobold archers, at least, have a little chance to interrupt casters at low lvl and etc. So, if this spell isnt kept like that as somekind of homage, anyone can see that gibs as summons are complete zero or even negative. Kobolds way more funny and usefull.

7 hours ago, subtledoctor said:

Spiders... are just the vanilla Spider Spawn spell, slotted into this series of summons. If you have no problem with that spell in the unmodded game then I can't see having a problem with it here.

Exactly, they were separated and as such rarely used by AI. Never used them, hate spiders. And they also melees only, without version ala phased one that could teleport to target - welcome to die from mages own AoEs/CC and the like. Sword Spider is the only one that is somewhat usefull, but at 12+ lvl we would face things where it will die rather fast or make no noticeble difference vs spending this slot on another imp invis/skin and etc.

Btw, insectlike things ala carrions/ankhegs is more on druids side, same with spiders. But, smth ala young dragons, if they have appropriate stats, would actually be quite nice for 9 lvl. But, their size better not to be too big.

7 hours ago, subtledoctor said:

I haven't actually played it

You havent played Ascension? How that is even... its a must lvl mod. Along with Longer Road and Redemption.

Well, anyway... I just hope that whatever the changes will be in IR/IRR, they would be better than current state of those spells. Atm, aside the ones with hobs/ogres/wyverns, cant see much point in others vs comparable lvl spells - fiends/elementals are just better in most cases.

[Bartimaeus]

5 hours ago, Guest Shadow said:

The thing is - whats not abuseable in such games? I remember that you could summon vamp spawn in NWN and it wasnt all that op.

I was going to say "in other words, the game was designed around it and mitigations were undoubtedly taken", but it turns out, the vampires you can summon in NWN do not level drain in the first place - it was included on their unarmed attack, but it's never used because they have a bastard sword in their hand and it is not possible to disarm them. Heck of a "mitigation" to just straight up not include their most iconic attack ability, I'd say, . Anyways, there's a reason the player's only avenues of level drain are extremely limited and subject to either low percentage rolls or saving throws, unlike vampires' level drain - level drain is incredibly powerful if you can use it repeatedly and cheaply, and unlike the player, enemies do not have any ability to protect themselves against it.

5 hours ago, Guest Shadow said:

About elementals - a pity. Also, those spells are kinda stuck in scaling, aside of longer duration ( but, realistically, most battles are won or lost fairy quickly, so you need more scaling in powers of spells vs duration of summons (skeletons/etc 8h are better for long term in most cases anyway) in 95% cases as they usually dont live this long), so mb update them for more numbers at higher lvl - the most, probably, simple and somewhat effective way. For instance, lesser one - + 1 at 15+ lvl or smth like that.

It's difficult for me to put much work in elementals because I prefer the job atweaks' does as well, which is...not coincidentally another component of the mod I linked earlier, to unite atweaks' elementals with SRR, .

21 minutes ago, Guest Shadow said:

You havent played Ascension?

I don't think I've ever played it either - mind you, I always have it installed and intend to play it, but when ToB starts is when I usually suddenly run out of any will to continue playing.

8 hours ago, subtledoctor said:

The problem with summons is the degree to which you want to hew to the concept of "monster" summoning. You want to avoid animals, even fantastical or mutated versions of animals, to avoid stepping on the toes of druid summons. You want to avoid fey creatures, for being the province of Call Woodland Beings etc. And you want to avoid sentient humanoids, because they are not strictly "monsters" but more like NPCs. This last one in particular gets a bit sticky. Honestly I'm already not super comfortable with having hobgoblins and ogres in the spell series. Hobs are seen in BG1 as having intelligence, societal and military social structures, culture, etc. We don't see the same from ogres but, canonically, they are not really animalistic monsters. It's the same reason Demi didn't include gnolls in these spells. And for this reason I don't love the idea of using kobolds. But it does complicate things.

Now that you mention it, it is pretty weird to have sapient (note: sapience is thought/knowledge/language, sentience is awareness/emotions/instincts...I think) creatures like kobolds...but for the time being, I'm going to ignore that because having to remove the sapient creatures like ogres and hobgoblins is too much of a jump when the selection of creatures is already very difficult, especially seeing as the ogres/hobgoblins are two of the best MS options as it is.

List of monsters:
 

Spoiler

Spiders
Horrors/guards (technically constructs)
Mists
Ettercaps
Slimes/oozes
Umber hulks
Gibberlings (mutated for upgraded option?)
Monstrous animals (?)

Minotaurs (too intelligent?)
Tasloi (too intelligent?)
Xvarts (too intelligent?)
Gnolls/flinds (too intelligent?)
Ogres/ogrillons/half-ogres (too intelligent?)
Hobgoblins (too intelligent?)
Kobolds (too intelligent?)
Orcs/orogs (too intelligent?)
Goblins (too intelligent?)

Doppelgangers (way too intelligent?)
Yuan-tis (way too intelligent?)
Carrions (too large/weak?)
Otyughs (too large/weak? note to self, there is a "neo" version of this creature that is supposedly stronger?)
Wyverns (too large, maybe use the baby animation even for the adults?)
Anhkegs (too large/difficult to control?)
Drakes (too large?)

Golems (technically a construct; steps on toes of golem manual; difficult to balance player vs. enemy due to weapon immunity?)
Giants (too large!)
Beholders (too heavily scripted)
Trolls (abuseable?)
Wolfweres/werewolves (abuseable?)
Mindflayer (abuseable?)
Basilisks (absolutely not!)

...

Fiends:
Bone fiends
Demon wraiths
Succubus
Cambions
Imps

Undead:
Shadows
Ghasts/ghouls
Skeletons
Skeleton warriors
Zombies
Mummies
Vampires (abuseable!)
Banshees (what abilities do these things even have outside of their wails?)

 

[Awachi]

4 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

Banshees (what abilities do these things even have outside of their wails?)

Guilt trip.

[subtledoctor]

1 hour ago, Guest Shadow said:

You havent played Ascension? How that is even

I have played Ascension. I did not see these drakes that I have read about. So they are clearly not from Ascension. What I said was, I have not played the fight that has those drakes.