SR Revised V1.3.900 (2022 August 8th)

[subtledoctor]

We may have talked about this, but have you tried playing on a tablet?  I find it is very natural-feeling.  I don't have the same degree of issues as you, but I find the BG games to be about the worst out there as far as causing wrist pain when played with a mouse & keyboard - so much of the interface involves mouse-target control, it's just brutal.  With a tablet I find 1) it's easy to get in 10 or 20 minutes' play between other activities, great for long-play games like this; and 2) touching the screen, instead of doing so virtually with a mouse pointer, is way more comfortable.  As I've said elsewhere, I will simply never go back to playing these games on a computer.  The big issue with a tablet is simply propping it up with your off-hand or a stand or something. 

[Bartimaeus]

39 minutes ago, subtledoctor said:

We may have talked about this, but have you tried playing on a tablet?  I find it is very natural-feeling.  I don't have the same degree of issues as you, but I find the BG games to be about the worst out there as far as causing wrist pain when played with a mouse & keyboard - so much of the interface involves mouse-target control, it's just brutal.  With a tablet I find 1) it's easy to get in 10 or 20 minutes' play between other activities, great for long-play games like this; and 2) touching the screen, instead of doing so virtually with a mouse pointer, is way more comfortable.  As I've said elsewhere, I will simply never go back to playing these games on a computer.  The big issue with a tablet is simply propping it up with your off-hand or a stand or something. 

Sadly, I just can't hack touchscreens - no strong tactile feedback is so difficult to get used to (I'll never trade physical buttons for virtual interfaces!), and I just find touchscreens to be kind of clunky and slow in general, especially due to the necessity of having to move fingers/hands physically across the screen to do things (and I very much do not enjoy the lack of a precise and perfectly controlled cursor, and never mind the lack of hotkeys and macros). For doing a few things, that's not a big deal, but playing a game for many hours would drive me totally looney-toons. I have trouble doing anything of note on modern smartphones for much the same reasons.

Anyone who's ever had a grandparent or parent who has started to get older and suffer from physical handicaps that make it so they can't always do the same things or do them in the way they used to probably has seen them struggle mightily at times to adapt to the new realities of their situation, and has probably seen them get extremely frustrated and belligerent as a result - that's basically me. Decades of built-up muscle memory and things working just as precisely and efficiently as I like them suddenly upended, and then being forced to make due with much slower and more imprecise implementations is extremely frustrating and soul-sucking. There are certain genres of games (such as but not limited to first person shooters and real-time strategy) that I used to play a lot but have now crossed out entirely because it is too awful to play with a controller, and that's just kind of where I am now.

Edited August 11, 2020 by Bartimaeus

[Salk]

Just to chime in, I share completely Bartimaeus' feelings and experience when it comes to playing videogames.

I still believe most of the time a mouse and a keyboard cannot be beaten.

The second best way for me was the Wii controllers (theoretically). That is why the Wii is my favorite console ever.

Once I get myself a decent VM system I may add another entry to my very short list above.

Until then my favorite way to play is either mouse and keyboard or a Wii mote  (+ nunchuck).

[NdranC]

We might be getting a little of topic, but who cares. As someone that would love to lay in bed or a couch and play with a controller I just can't stand them. Every game that in "theory" sounds like it's a good controller game doesn't work for me. Any amount of aiming, even twin stick shooters feels awful and imprecise. I relate with @Salk and understand your pain @Bartimaeus. I might be there soon with my eyes but hopefully I still have some time.

Edited August 12, 2020 by NdranC

[NdranC]

Now I get to bother you over here.

Suggestion: At one point you made Fireburst only work on enemies to give this spell something special compared to similar AoE. I bring this up because I just did the house you get access to after you kill the Drow Lich in the underdark, and even though it was certainly not "hard", boy was it annoying to deal with all of those 20 high MR drows. I sure wished there was a way to either lower MR in AoE. Or, maybe an AoE spell that ignores MR. See where I'm going with this? Maybe it's my fault for not being more knowledgeable about MR spells but I believe there isn't a single AoE nuke that ignores MR. I was lucky that as a Dragon Disciple I got a single cast of my breath weapon and that thing apparently ignores MR. Would it be too silly to make Fireburst ingore MR? You can even roll back the enemies only change if you think it's more appropiate.

I can understand a single boss enemy with high MR, I can even understand multiple enemies with low MR. But multiple enemies with high MR seems tedious or annoying to deal with. Maybe if the idea is sound, add another single way to address this? Maybe spell thrust could have a small MR reducing component, like 20% or something like that. If not spell thrust, maybe malison could at least ignore MR or even lower it a bit as well. It feels pretty nerfed to me and for a spell that is supposed to make you more "susceptible to magic" it would not be insane to think it might lower your natural magic resistance a tad without bringing it back to OP territory.

Or maybe I'm just not using the right tactics in these types of combat. I mean I did kill them without anybody dying. Mostly with summons, MMM and banishing their summons.

[Bartimaeus]

6 hours ago, NdranC said:

Now I get to bother you over here.

Suggestion: At one point you made Fireburst only work on enemies to give this spell something special compared to similar AoE. I bring this up because I just did the house you get access to after you kill the Drow Lich in the underdark, and even though it was certainly not "hard", boy was it annoying to deal with all of those 20 high MR drows. I sure wished there was a way to either lower MR in AoE. Or, maybe an AoE spell that ignores MR. See where I'm going with this? Maybe it's my fault for not being more knowledgeable about MR spells but I believe there isn't a single AoE nuke that ignores MR. I was lucky that as a Dragon Disciple I got a single cast of my breath weapon and that thing apparently ignores MR. Would it be too silly to make Fireburst ingore MR? You can even roll back the enemies only change if you think it's more appropiate.

I can understand a single boss enemy with high MR, I can even understand multiple enemies with low MR. But multiple enemies with high MR seems tedious or annoying to deal with. Maybe if the idea is sound, add another single way to address this? Maybe spell thrust could have a small MR reducing component, like 20% or something like that. If not spell thrust, maybe malison could at least ignore MR or even lower it a bit as well. It feels pretty nerfed to me and for a spell that is supposed to make you more "susceptible to magic" it would not be insane to think it might lower your natural magic resistance a tad without bringing it back to OP territory.

Or maybe I'm just not using the right tactics in these types of combat. I mean I did kill them without anybody dying. Mostly with summons, MMM and banishing their summons.

Sol's Searing Orb, False Dawn, Sunray, Creeping Doom, and Earthquake all ignore magic resistance. Interestingly, it isn't until 9th level Meteor Swarm that you get a mage damage AoE spell that ignores magic resistance. Fun fact: Sunfire (original spell name) originally ignored magic resistance in BG2. It was the only thing that made it useful in some circumstances (against drow and mindflayers, mainly). SR not only removed this particular trait, it then also reduced the radius from 30' to 20', effectively nerfing it twice...for a spell that was already underused. Didn't understand that at all. I personally really like the party friendliness of it, and I'm not sure I want to add back it ignoring magic resistance...though it does still have reduced range compared to vanilla...but of course, it should now, since it ignores friendlies and a 30' 15D6 fireball that only targets enemies wouldn't be that much worse than Horrid Wilting. Hmm.

There's unlikely to be an "AoE reduce magic resistance" spell. Lower Resistance is already at 5th level and only reduces magic resistance by 2% for every level, or 20% at 10th. It'd very quickly become a joke even with like a 10% Spell Thrust. (e): Although, you know, there's maybe an argument to be made that Lower Resistance itself should perhaps be AoE (not like an area of 30', but maybe target + 10-20'). That's probably a better idea, but I'm still not a hundred percent convinced. Probably something I'd want more feedback on before committing to.

Edited August 15, 2020 by Bartimaeus

[NdranC]

Sol's Searing Orb, False Dawn, Sunray, Creeping Doom, and Earthquake: You have a point, mind you these are all divine spells. I mean my point was not particularly strong, there are ways to defeat them with summons and fighters as well. That fight was more annoying based on circumstance. Misc recently got perma'd so I'm running with 5 people. Jaheira is stuck in the druid level lull and she only has 1 (7th) and 2 (6ths) slots, most of which were spent. I think I had sunray from dawnstar +4 but I didn't remember that skips MR. I also change my gameplay based on my protagonists class. If I'm playing a mage I try to solve problems with my main character as a mage and I keep everyone else mostly a supporting roles. So maybe that's why as a mage I felt solving that encounter felt disappointing.

This comes back to my previous suggestion. I just need to sit down and re-read all spells now paying attention to the MR part of it since it's increasingly becoming more relevant.

That being said, personally I find MR design just awkward. We already have saves, elemental resistances and combat protections. Lower Resistance seems to be only really fun to use if combined with Spell Trigger. At the high MR levels that the game puts into the game, MR is essentially an ON or OFF effect. Either enemies have it and might as well treat it like it's 100% or they don't. I don't see why Lower Resistances needs to lower MR by such a small amount when it takes a single (but correct) spell to take down combat/spell protections. I've been relaying a lot more on Pierce Magic because of this.

I probably just need more experience with it. Malison also feels like a disappointment to use. I throw it in every time but the high MR from drows, or honestly any enemy worth debuffing instead of out-right killing, makes it not do anything. Even if it lands through the high MR now your subsequent spells need to roll the dice against MR and then a save on top of it.

I keep trying to buff spell thrust because out of all the "dispel" effects, it's really the weakest. Doesn't go through liches, yeah it's aoe but it will not go through high level spell protections so its rare when that's useful. Secret Word is just one level later and so far has remained pretty useful. At this point I'm just throwing ideas to see what sticks but maybe it could work like Pierce Magic? but only 1 round of MR nullification. That way you can combo it with malison or another mage's AoE. You can time spell thrust with one mage then land a horrid wilting with another. I don't think it should cannibalize Pierce Magic that much. Maybe it could be 50% MR reduction for 1 round instead. Not sure.

I'll finish the game first and then bring you more mature feedback.

------------------------------

BTW I've been getting this bug for a while now and I'm not sure if it's SRR fault but I'll bring it up.

I'm noticing sometimes, not all the time but sometimes, spells are failing to cast from metamagic like triggers and contingencies. I got reminded of it because it happened to the Drow Lich. He used his chain contingency and out of the 3 spells only 1 happened. The other 2 said in chat something like "the spell failed to cast" or something along those lines.

This happened to me a couple times and it seems to happen more often with certain spells. For example I stopped putting skull traps into my sequencer because at some point when I went to use them, all on them failed to cast. Then I would proceed to test it and they would cast just fine every time I tested it. Normally it would be a long time before I would use a sequencer so maybe time/resting/reloading a multiplayer game affects this somehow.

I hadn't brought it up before because I couldn't replicate it reliably. Now that it happened to an enemy I feel confident enough to bring it up. If it ever happens again I'll try to remember to take a screenshot.

[subtledoctor]

1 hour ago, NdranC said:

That being said, personally I find MR design just awkward. We already have saves, elemental resistances and combat protections. Lower Resistance seems to be only really fun to use if combined with Spell Trigger.

Mod MR out completely of your game!

Or, failing that, maybe make Lower Resistance AoE and reduce MR by a greater amount.  (50%?)

[NdranC]

2 minutes ago, subtledoctor said:

Mod MR out completely of your game!

Or, failing that, maybe make Lower Resistance AoE and reduce MR by a greater amount.  (50%?)

I've been eyeing out your mod for a while now. I might try it for the next playthrough but I want to finish this one as is. I'm a little concerned by the drastic nature of the change. Do you play with it often? I guess maybe this is a dumb question to ask the author... do you like it?

@Bartimaeus I started re-reading spells and MR is inconsistently displayed . For example, Fire Seeds ignores MR but it doesn't say so in the description. Am I supposed to infer that summon weapon attacks ignore MR by default? Sol's Searing Orb specifically mentions that it ignores MR but Melf's Minute Meteors does not. A lot of these summoned weapon attacks have saves and behave like spells so it didn't seem far fetched that they would mention how they interact with MR if relevant.

In my quick search for MR ignoring spells in the middle of combat I'm quickly scanning text for the words "Magic Resistance" and if I don't see them then the default position is that the spell gets blocked by MR.

[Bartimaeus]

Weapon effects are not subject to magic resistance in general - I would assume the reason Sol's makes mention of it is because it makes a giant magical fireball that you would intuitively assume would be subject to magic resistance, but no, even stuff like Cause Serious Wounds is not subject to magic resistance.

Spell Thrust: I think Spell Thrust is quite bad, too. There are few instances throughout all of BG1/BG2 where it makes sense. I've been tempted to increase its AoE to 30' just to make it slightly better, but it doesn't really deal with the problem that it's just in a tough spot.

Failing triggers/contingencies: That's really weird, haven't seen that. Will be on the lookout, but as SR does not modify triggers or contigencies from base SR as far as I can think, I'm not sure what the cause would be.

[pochesun]

2 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

Spell Thrust: I think Spell Thrust is quite bad, too. There are few instances throughout all of BG1/BG2 where it makes sense. I've been tempted to increase its AoE to 30' just to make it slightly better, but it doesn't really deal with the problem that it's just in a tough spot.

Failing triggers/contingencies: That's really weird, haven't seen that. Will be on the lookout, but as SR does not modify triggers or contigencies from base SR as far as I can think, I'm not sure what the cause would be.

I dunno, from my last playthrough on SRR+IRR+SCS i been using Spell Thrust very often, especially in BG1 and SoD, the spell proved to be very efficient and came in handy in many battles and i am satisfied how it performs now.

Regarding Contingencies. I am not sure how it works from the coding/programming point of view but could it be that when contingency happening all 3 spells are "attempted" to be cast (thought they are cast simulteniously they are still separated from each other in terms of "actually casted spells") and the caster could be subject to Deafness or something and 2 of 3 spells fail to be casted.

[subtledoctor]

3 hours ago, NdranC said:

've been eyeing out your mod for a while now. I might try it for the next playthrough but I want to finish this one as is. I'm a little concerned by the drastic nature of the change. Do you play with it often?

Yes. My current (very slow) game is the first time through BG2 with it, so the difference will be greater. There us still some MR in the game: in a few items like Balduran’s stuff, and the actual Magic Resistance spell becomes a fairly unique priestly magic defense. (Which is countered by Lower Resistance.) 

Shameless plug: if you can tolerate substantive changes, my Magic Battles Revised really improves Spell Thrust. It can chip away at spell defenses up to 8th level (anything but Spell Trap) and Spell Thrust itself is moved to 1st level. So more effective, and less costly. I’m playing with it now and it’s working well. Instead of enemy spell protections being an opaque puzzle you need to solve, you get a situation in which persistence pays off. 

[Guest Guest]

Skull traps in sequencers or contingencies can fail because Skull Trap has a rather small range. When you

target an area that is out of range the spell will fail. I've had Skull Trap  in  a sequencer with other spells

and they would work in range but the Skull Traps would fail as out of range.

[pochesun]

50 minutes ago, Guest Guest said:

Skull traps in sequencers or contingencies can fail because Skull Trap has a rather small range. When you

target an area that is out of range the spell will fail. I've had Skull Trap  in  a sequencer with other spells

and they would work in range but the Skull Traps would fail as out of range.

Good guess.

[Bartimaeus]

1 hour ago, Guest Guest said:

Skull traps in sequencers or contingencies can fail because Skull Trap has a rather small range. When you

target an area that is out of range the spell will fail. I've had Skull Trap  in  a sequencer with other spells

and they would work in range but the Skull Traps would fail as out of range.

Thank you for the insight. This spell has a range of 30 in vanilla, and SR (not SRR) sets it to 20. That seems a little silly to me given it's an AoE spell that can damage the party - I will be increasing its range back up to 30.

The additional following combat-oriented mage spells have a range of 20 in SR/R (parentheses numbers denotes value in vanilla BG2EE - cross out if vanilla's number is than or equal to SR's):

1. Grease (30)
2. Battering Ram (20 - not a combat spell in vanilla though)
3. Agannazar's Scorcher (15)
4. Glitterdust (20)
5. Haste (15 in vanilla)
6. Vitriolic Sphere (30 in IWD)
7. Summon Shadow (25)
8. Elemental Conjurings (15)
9. Invisible Stalker (30)
10. Animate Warrior (30)
11. Khelben's Warding Whip (20)
12. Summon Death Knight (30)
13. Summon Fiend (30)
14. Gate (30)

Range of 10 in SR/R:

1. Icelance (30 in IWD)
2. Contagion (30)
3. Maze (3!)
4. Imprisonment (1!)
5. Larloch's Energy Drain (1!)

The following combat-oriented cleric spells have a range of 20 in SR/R:

1. Animate Dead (30)
2. Call Woodland Beings (25)
3. Aerial Servant (20)
4. Elemental Conjurings (30)
5. Dolorous Decay (20)
6. Animate Warrior (30)
7. Summon Shambling Mound (30)
8. Summon Death Knight (30)

...And finally, range of 10:

1. Fire Trap (doesn't exist anywhere else?)
2. Glyph of Warding (30)
3. Icelance (30 in IWD)
4. Contagion (30)
5. Poison (10)

...Note to self: the BG2 wiki is kind of terrible, I initially looked up the vanilla numbers on there then noticed something flagrantly wrong, then went back and checked and realized that the majority of them were wrong.

I am not too concerned about the summonables since they're usually summoned at self by the AI anyways (...I think?), but I think it would make sense to increase Vitriolic Sphere, Glyph of Warding, Icelance, Contagion, FIre Trap, and maybe Grease. @DavidW, any insight into what SCS enemies tend to put in sequencers/chain contingencies?

Edited August 16, 2020 by Bartimaeus