SR Revised V1.3.900 (2022 August 8th)

[Salk]

Hello, Bartimaeus!

Thanks for the exhaustive answer. What I can say for myself is that I absolutely agree with your stance in this. I think Non-Detection should, as for its description, protect from Divination spells. It seems to me that any other interpretation is a blatant attempt at thwarting the very meaning of the spell. What can be discussed is how to adjust the spell so that it won't be considered awfully overpowered for its level. But that is another matter.

And I always believe that playing fair should be a parameter to be held in the highest regard. The fact that the AI enjoys protection from the player's divination spells while the player is not when using the exact same magical defenses is a very undesirable situation.

I'm not unfortunately capable of offering you a solution or even an advice about this. You know much more than me what kind of options are available. From what I understand, it seems you are saying there are none that are good. If that is the case, I guess you will have to choose the minor evil. My own preference is having fairness be a priority over the AI sometimes not behaving all that "smart" but I understand I am probably part of a minority.

Thanks for all the good work!

Edited June 15, 2023 by Salk

[FixTesteR]

I second that!

If I was able to gather everything that was written, then as is, ND in SR/R isn't doing what it is supposed to do, thus it's pointless to cast it. Sad.

I do however recall that a Cloak of Non-Detection worked against some revelatory spells in beholder lair of the unseeing eye. Maybe against all spells, I forgot what spell was used on my hidden-in-shadows thief.

If that helps any bit.

[Relay]

I've been running EEEx with Bubb's invis component, that modifies opcode 193 to allow the player chr to view invisible actors. It's disabled in the current release for some reason but if we just want parity between the player and AI this is the best I've had it so far. I've messaged him to see why its still disabled since it's been working flawlessly for me. Probably just an oversight. 

I think with that mod the interaction actually works quite logically, my Invisibility+ND cannot be dispelled but enemies with TS can see and target you. and the same is true for my player chr's. My druid with TS can target a thief who is in stealth, but my fighters aren't able to hack him down until he reveals himself. 

 

[subtledoctor]

12 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

In my opinion, Non-Detection should provide protection from detection.

But Non-detection has never actually done that, in any version of the game with any mods installed. The only way to implement that would be, as I say, with opcode 100. But that can really only work on the EE 2.0+ engine. 

12 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

meanwhile, if the AI casts the combination of Invisibility + Non-Detection, they are protected from the player's divination spells. So not only is the AI's behavior/reaction erratic at best, but the AI gets an advantage out of it that the player can't. I find this rather untenable and certainly very undesirable

I don’t understand what difference you are seeing here. If the player casts 2nd-level See Invisible, the player gets op193 just like the AI, and just like any number of AI creatures who have that naturally and permanently, and the player can target any invisible creature even if that creature has “Non-detection.” Far from handicapping the player, SR puts the player on an even playing field with all those enemies who have natural op193. It also fixes the weird vanilla situation where Non-detection from a spell is utterly useless but Non-detection from an item is (for thieves) ultra-powerful. 

12 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

effect, I think using opcode 193 is just kind of a bad idea

But it is already everywhere in the game, even without SR… just not available to the player. 

12 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

requiring people to add another random mini-mod way after SR/R is installed to fix broken behavior is really just not fantastic

What would be required? I don’t understand. Why not just, make a mod, and people can install or not, as they see fit…?

(I’m not touching any of the rest of that comment, because I honestly don’t understand what has you so upset. If I’ve done something wrong, anyone feel free to let me know so I can correct it. I just re-read the last two pages and I’m honestly at a loss as to where any offense was given.)

Edited June 15, 2023 by subtledoctor

[jmerry]

1 hour ago, subtledoctor said:

I don’t understand what difference you are seeing here. If the player casts 2nd-level See Invisible, the player gets op193 just like the AI, and just like any number of AI creatures who have that naturally and permanently, and the player can target any invisible creature even...

The asymmetry comes in with creatures that are fully invisible. For creatures that just have the "improved invisibility" state, that's exactly how it works; you can target them with stuff if you have "see invisible" running, and any of your party can attack them.

For creatures that are fully invisible, you don't see them on your screen. Hence you can't click on them. Your party member with "see invisible" active can target and attack the invisible creature if you let the AI control them, but you can't issue commands to make them be smarter about it.

[FixTesteR]

15 hours ago, Relay said:

but enemies with TS can see and target you

And attack you with spells?

11 hours ago, subtledoctor said:

But Non-detection has never actually done that, in any version of the game with any mods installed.

But it has ... right?

This spell protects an invisible or hidden (via Hide in Shadows) character from some low-level divination spells:

• Clairvoyance
• Detect Invisibility
• Invisibility Purge

It does not protect against:

• True Seeing
• True Sight
• Oracle
• Detect Illusion

Edited June 16, 2023 by FixTesteR

[FixTesteR]

11 hours ago, subtledoctor said:

Non-detection from a spell is utterly useless but Non-detection from an item is (for thieves) ultra-powerful

I have SR and yet I experienced that. But you're saying that ND is useful in SR? Maybe I used it in the wrong situations. Where do you find that spell so useful?

[Relay]

6 hours ago, FixTesteR said:

And attack you with spells?

Yes with eeex when opcode 193 is on you can see/attack/cast spells on any chr whether fully or semi invisible. It's even cooler because if you select one or your chrs who does not see invisibility the enemy will completely dissappear, and reappear when you select a chr that has see invisible. 

[subtledoctor]

15 hours ago, jmerry said:

For creatures that are fully invisible, you don't see them on your screen. Hence you can't click on them. Your party member with "see invisible" active can target and attack the invisible creature if you let the AI control them, but you can't issue commands

Ah. Yes, well, the lack of a selection circle has long bothered me about SR’s implementation. I’m sure you can find posts of mine going back 10 years or more, discussing it with Demi. But I always found it to be a fairly minor issue because 1) it’s still so much better than the horrid mish-mash of the unmodded game; 2) invisible enemies cannot do much against you without dispelling their own invisibility; and 3) enemies who are really dangerous tend to use II, and fairly quickly become partially visible, making player-accessible op193 particularly valuable in BG2-level gameplay. 

I tackled the problem of selection circles once the EE engine hit 2.0, and in Tome & Blood released a mod component that makes selection circles appear when you cast See Invisible or the like, while still preventing other characters who cannot see invisible from targeting those selection circles. For me, this is a solved problem, and one of the major reasons I moved from playing on the classic engine to the EE engine. 

I can’t use EEex because it is platform-limited, but Bubb’s fix for this via engine hacking is even slicker than mine. It sounds cool. 

6 hours ago, FixTesteR said:

But it has ... right?

This spell protects an invisible or hidden (via Hide in Shadows) character from some low-level divination spells

I don’t remember exactly when it protects from. I know it behaves differently with some divination spells versus other similar-sounding ones; and differently with invisibility versus hiding in shadows; and differently from a spell versus from the Cloak. And there is a whole host of enemies in BG2 who can naturally see invisible things; Nondetection sounds like it should help you against such enemies, but in fact it is completely useless there. The reason I don’t remember all the specifics is because the unmodded implementation is so horrible that I haven’t used it literally in decades. 

Again, I’ve solved this for myself in my Revised Invisibility mod in Tome & Blood by simply renaming Nondetection to “Protection from Divination” and explicitly making it have nothing to do with detection, and instead protect your illusionary buffs like RI, Blur, MI, II, etc. (And potentially protect your illusionary summons from Shadow Monsters etc… though TBH I haven’t tested this.)

Renaming and fine-tuning Nondetection in this way is actually something I think could be considered for inclusion in the base SR package.

[FixTesteR]

On 6/16/2023 at 4:52 PM, subtledoctor said:

could be considered for inclusion in the base SR package.

Are you the keeper of SR? Anyone else? There should probably be a committee of very knowledgeable players that could provide some tweaks to SR I am mostly very happy with it. ND and maybe Goodberries is what I'd change, maybe some other minor tweaks but overall I really like it. So, on the other hand, I wouldn't like drastic changes. Maybe optional ones. Well, ND can't really be changed, as you and others have explained here, so renaming is the logical way, then. OR get rid of op code193?

[pochesun]

@Bartimaeus Green orb from Chromatic orb Spell deals only 1 damage per round while in description its said "2 damage per round".

[Bartimaeus]

9 hours ago, pochesun said:

@Bartimaeus Green orb from Chromatic orb Spell deals only 1 damage per round while in description its said "2 damage per round".

Are you sure? The poison opcode uses type 3 with the interval being 3, which should mean 1 damage per 3 seconds, i.e. 2 damage per round.

Edited June 21, 2023 by Bartimaeus

[pochesun]

18 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

Are you sure? The poison opcode uses type 3 with the interval being 3, which should mean 1 damage per 3 seconds, i.e. 2 damage per round.

Yeah you are right. Honestly did not know it dealt damage twice per round in chunks of 1 instead of 1 proc in a chunk of 2. Good to know i guess Also i like this split effect even more since its better against mages trying to cast spells.

[pochesun]

@Bartimaeus i have a question regarding Melf's Acid Arrow spell and Flame Arrow spell. It says that when i cast them on target it deals missile damage first and then elemental damage. When the target has 100% resistance against those elementals it receives missile damage first and then recieves no elemental damage, as intended. But if the target has protection from those elements (immune to them) and techincally has 127% resistance - then the target wont recieve and damage (neither missile, nor elemental). Why with 127% resistnace the target recieves no missile damage from those spells?

[jmerry]

Checking the files ... the basic SRR version of Melf's Acid Arrow just does a bunch of damage effects. Resistances apply to each of those individually, and >100% resistance to the acid effect can result in negative damage (increasing the target's damage). But it's a small effect; 2d4 damage at 127% resistance results in an average of 0.875 health gained per packet of acid. Still, the highest level version of the spell is 1d6+1 missile damage and then six packets of 2d4 acid damage; at 0% missile resistance and 127% acid resistance, that's -1.75 average damage over the course of the spell.

For Flame Arrow, the damage is all instant, and the offsetting effect happens immediately.

There's a quirk of game mechanics there; >100% resistance results in negative damage, but only for non-physical damage types.