SR Revised V1.3.900 (2022 August 8th)

[Hubal]

It wasn't me Bartimaeus. I was trying to reply to that Carmosa guest but I fucked up editing.

Please delete.

[Bartimaeus]

7 minutes ago, Hubal said:

It wasn't me Bartimaeus. I was trying to reply to that Carmosa guest but I fucked up editing.

Please delete.

Ah, no problem, I was confused by the layout of your post. By the way, if you want me to check out your Hold Person or Animal, send over SPPR305.spl and SPPR305D.spl from your override, .

 

[Hubal]

Thank you. Files attached.

sppr305.spl sppr305d.spl

[Bartimaeus]

47 minutes ago, Hubal said:

Thank you. Files attached.

sppr305.spl 346 B · 0 downloads sppr305d.spl 490 B · 0 downloads

Apparently, I also need sppr305e.spl as well, though sppr305d.spl certainly suggests that it should be the full turn.

[Guest Carmosa]

Thanks for everyone's replies so far!

I've investigated interrupts more and it seems they're governed by CONCENTR.2da which appears to default to '1' as the parameter value - which according to documentation should mean a concentration check of 1d20+luck rolled against spell level+damage taken. This seems to work in some weird way that basically means you practically never interrupt, possibly due to LoB bonuses on the roll, possibly due to downright faulty implementation (maybe flipped rolls, so low damage = higher chance?).

Parameter value '0' interrupts on ANY damage whatsoever; while parameter value '2' ostensibly uses 1d20+concentration rolled against spell level+15, which I'm not clear on how it works (what's concentration?) but seems to result in a reasonable chance for interrupts.

I'll test things with it set to '2' for now, but there's preciously little actual info on the inner workings of this thing... I'm by no means an expert on the IE so if someone has more documentation to point to I'd definitely appreciate it!

[subtledoctor]

4 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

I would be content with emulating original game behavior where targeting yourself with such spells is O.K., but as it is not possible to do so

Well, I mean it's possible... as @CamDawg said elsewhere, the answer is always MOAR SUBSPELLS!

4 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

I don't see why e.g. casting a cure spell vs. casting Aid should be any different from one another.

I just figure I would carve out a limited set of cases to replicate what clerics could originally do under Sanctuary, which is walk around the battlefield helping friends in limited, context-driven ways (cure some wounds here, neutralize some poison there) but not necessarily cast any old "non-hostile" spell under the sun.  (I mean there are so many gray areas... most pure buffs are implicitly hostile, and some like Chant have explicit hostile effects.)

4 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

though should casting True Seeing/Detect Invisibility be breaking your own invisibility with every pulse?

I think casting any spell should only break invisibility with the initial casting (barring some particular spell that has some particular noisy recurring effect, like bard songs). Want to cast False Dawn or True Sight and then make yourself invisible? Sure.

EDIT - btw I just did a few google searches to see what the PnP rules really are, and this is the best thing I've read today:

Quote

Invisibility

The spell first appeared in Men & Magic, as a magic-user spell. Illusionists are also able to use it. Dragon Magazine #12 maintained this spell on the Illusionist list.

No actual description of the spell's effects are provided, but, presumably, it makes the subject invisible.

Edited September 15, 2021 by subtledoctor

[subtledoctor]

1 hour ago, Guest Carmosa said:

I've investigated interrupts more and it seems they're governed by CONCENTR.2da which appears to default to '1' as the parameter value - which according to documentation should mean a concentration check of 1d20+luck rolled against spell level+damage taken.

No, the default value is zero. You have altered this file in some way (maybe with my mod!).

The documentation indeed says the roll is [1d20 + Luck] vs. [spell level + damage taken], but as I said in the other thread (in the SCS forum?), this is bugged; I've been told that, IIRC, one or more of those terms is inverted in the way the engine handles the equation, such that you are more likely to be interrupted when taking slight damage and less likely to be interrupted when taking lots of damage.  It is super annoying.  But the bug has persisted across the 2.0, 2.1, 2.2, 2.3, 2.5, and 2.6 patches. Beamdog just doesn't seem to care about this.

Setting the value to 2 is an option, I don't have any indication that it doesn't work... but it's a pretty boring game setting. There is no concentration stat in the engine, so the equation is simply 1d20 vs. [spell level + 15]. Which means there is a slight chance of not being interrupted when casting low-level spells, but you will definitely be interrupted when casting high-level spells. This is close enough to vanilla behavior (always interrupted when take any damage when casting spells of any level) that IMO you might as well just set the value to 0 and play with the vanilla interruption rules. If I'm not mistaken the original complaint on the SCS forum was something like "spell interruption isn't working like it normally does!" so you might as well just set it to work like it normally does.

[Guest Carmosa]

37 minutes ago, subtledoctor said:

No, the default value is zero. You have altered this file in some way (maybe with my mod!)

That's very strange then. I literally installed the game fresh from the source 4 days ago, and the only mods I used everyone involved swears it doesn't touch concentration... I didn't even know the file existed so I didn't modify it before (obviously). But whatever the cause, it's good to know what the source of things was!

The rolls being inverted makes sense explaining this behavior.

You're right in that '2' seems to not really be working too well - I played with it for an hour or two and it felt off, very random stuff. Since players basically get interrupted by the least little thing I guess enemies could be, too? I guess there isn't a very good solution given how binary things tend to be, but oddly enough the INTENDED behavior of '1' seems the most reasonable to me (more damage = higher chance). Maybe we'll get a fix for this at some point? Though I guess if they haven't fixed it in that many patches nobody cares

[Hubal]

Here

sppr305e.spl

[Bartimaeus]

1 hour ago, subtledoctor said:

I just figure I would carve out a limited set of cases to replicate what clerics could originally do under Sanctuary, which is walk around the battlefield helping friend in limited, context-driven ways (cure some wounds here, neutralize some poison there) but not necessarily cast any old "non-hostile" spell under the sun.  (I mean there are so many gray areas... most pure buffs are implicitly hostile, and some like Chant have explicit hostile effects.)

"what clerics could originally do under Sanctuary"

They couldn't do what you just suggested is the entire issue, though. Casting Cure Light Wounds on another party member breaks Sanctuary in the original game. The Sanctuary-ied character could cast single-target spells like Cure Light Wounds, Aid, Cure Disease, Draw Upon Holy Might, etc. on themselves without breaking Sanctuary, but nothing that could affect others (including Bless or Chant, or using the aforementioned single-target spells on anybody but themselves). It was a simple but effective system. Now we have a mess of modular behavior that I'm going to have to create an actual standard to adhere to.

So far, I have:
1. If it applies a negative effect to an enemy (damage, debuff, disable, whatever), it should be considered hostile (so yes, Chant would therefore be included here...as would something like Detect Invisibility, Timestop, etc.). Straight buffing, even if offensively-oriented (e.g. Divine Power), would not be, as per the original game.
2. Creature summoning, especially since all creatures besides maybe Wizard Eye have at least a strong possibility of affecting enemies in a hostile manner (and at that point, I might as well just include Wizard Eye as a general creature summoning rule).
3. Perhaps a third rule regarding obvious visibility? Something more concrete to catch stuff like Dimension Jump and Fire Shield...

Alternatively, you could go more extreme than the original game - anything that isn't automatically self-targeted also breaks, which means something like Draw Upon Holy Might would not break, but Cure Light Wounds would. I said I hated this change a page or two ago, and it's because it means I have to actually figure out what makes sense and what doesn't and set a standard, and there's no way to go back to how it used to be, and that's really quite annoying and stupid. At some point, I need to figure out what EE players actually want out of this, but for the time being, making it so at least the absolute basics of what should obviously break invisibility/Sanctuary is what I'm working towards, and that's the first two rules at an absolute minimum and maybe a third (or even fourth that I haven't thought of yet).

Edited September 15, 2021 by Bartimaeus

[Bartimaeus]

6 minutes ago, Hubal said:

Here

sppr305e.spl 394 B · 0 downloads

Okay, so I cannot detect anything wrong with these files: everything seems to be in order. Spawn a bandit or something and use it on them and make sure that it truly is much shorter than it should be - if it really is actually a short duration, then we're going to have to figure out what spell you're casting, because this would not appear to be it.

[kjeron]

1 hour ago, subtledoctor said:

Setting the value to 2 is an option, I don't have any indication that it doesn't work...

Setting the value to 2 has the same inverted success/failure issue, it just replaces "luck" with (Constitution / 2 - 5).

[Hubal]

Chant spell is caster centered, so its best to cast it near heat of battle to affect as many enemies as possible. 

I am playing With SCS and on Lob difficulty and as soon as cleric closes in to cast anything, those pesky kobold commando targets him making it nearly imposible to cast.

So Sanctuary is crucial for cleric to safely navigate the battlefied. Making chant "offensive" just makes cleric useless. 

Considering LoB gives -11AC bonus to mobs it makes Bless and Chant crucial low level cleric spells. You need as low THAC0 as you can possibly get.

So Casting all defensive spells should not break sanctuary in my opinion and Chant is one of them.

 

Xzar just hit level six Necromancer, Larloch drain is six points, Vampiric touch 9 points. Why would I ever take that as third level spell? Do I need to wait until 20 level to actually use it? on top of that ridiculus scaling he needs to stand next to victim and Larloch is long range. What I am missing?

Edited September 15, 2021 by Hubal

[subtledoctor]

1 hour ago, Guest Carmosa said:

Maybe we'll get a fix for this at some point?

Beamdog knows about it... up to them whether they will ever fix it. But it has to be fixed at the engine level, so we are dependent on them.

Edited September 15, 2021 by subtledoctor

[Bartimaeus]

@Hubal

Yeah...uh, Sanctuary is a first level spell. It's not meant to grant you invulnerability while you cast offensive spells from behind it. Chant has always broken Sanctuary, and continues to break Sanctuary even with the official EE spells. If it doesn't right now in your game, it's purely only because of the SR incompatibility with 2.6 and the fact that no spells are currently actively marked for breaking invisibility/sanctuary.

Actually, playing around with Sanctuary on a fresh copy of 2.6 right now, it seems like Beamdog more or less has my exact same standards. All friendly-only spells (even offensively-oriented ones like Spiritual Hammer or Divine Power as well as AoE ones such as Bless and Mass Cure) do not ever break Sanctuary, while ones with even "minor" hostile effects (e.g. Chant, True Seeing) do, along with summons and hostile aura effects (e.g. Blade Barrier). Raise Dead doesn't break, so I guess I'll imitate that as well.

Edited September 15, 2021 by Bartimaeus