SR Revised V1.3.900 (2022 August 8th)

[subtledoctor]

19 minutes ago, Hubal said:

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.  [...]  Considering LoB gives [...]

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

1) LOB is a ridiculous mode that Beamdog just borrowed from IWD when they made IWDEE, because it was easy to do so. But it is very much not how the game is designed to be played, so decisions like this should not be geared toward LOB play.

2) Chant is offensive, it negatively affects enemies' rolls. That's about as clear-cut a definition of "offensive" as you can get.

3) Chant applies penalties to enemies in range, but it also applies bonuses to allies regardless whether any enemies are around. So you don't need to cast it near enemies to get benefits from the spell. I cast it far away from enemies all the time.

Edited September 15, 2021 by subtledoctor

[Hubal]

Please do not destroy my happiness with Chant ! I beg of you!

[Hubal]

3) Chant applies penalties to enemies in range, but it also applies bonuses to allies regardless whether any enemies are around. So you don't need to cast it near enemies to get benefits from the spell. I cast it far away from enemies all the time.

Isn't that Bless on second level?

 

[Bartimaeus]

7 minutes ago, Hubal said:

Please do not destroy my happiness with Chant ! I beg of you!

But real talk, you can always change it back yourself... There's just no rationale I can think of for allowing Chant (or anything like it) to not break invisibility/Sanctuary.

Edited September 15, 2021 by Bartimaeus

[Hubal]

10 minutes ago, subtledoctor said:

1) LOB is a ridiculous mode that Beamdog just borrowed from IWD when they made IWDEE, because it was easy to do so. But it is very much not how the game is designed to be played, so decisions like this should not be geared toward LOB play.

2) Chant is offensive, it negatively affects enemies' rolls. That's about as clear-cut a definition of "offensive" as you can get.

3) Chant applies penalties to enemies in range, but it also applies bonuses to allies regardless whether any enemies are around. So you don't need to cast it near enemies to get benefits from the spell. I cast it far away from enemies all the time.

1. You are 100% correct. I use it as a excuse to make my own  min max party. 

[subtledoctor]

43 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

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.

Huh, you're right. Somehow I internalized "but may use non-attack spells or otherwise act in any way that does not violate the prohibition against offensive action" from the spell description, but I forgot "The priest may not cast spells on other creatures without ending the spell" from the spell description.

45 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

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.

Okay, I'm with you, but I have a recollection that invisibility was more strict than Sanctuary. I thought casting pretty much anything (including Stoneskin, Fire Shield, etc.) will break arcane invisibility. Is my memory wrong?

47 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

Now we have a mess of modular behavior that I'm going to have to create an actual standard to adhere to

Well, the obvious answer is that someone with some notable amount of authority - the game developers at Beamdog, a number of whom used to work at Bioware when BG2 was developed - have already made these decisions. Could just write a little Weidu script to extract the information about the spells in BG(2)EE v2.6, and then apply that list to SR(R). Some spells change but the number of annoying decisions necessary to make would be pretty small.

Also this affects SR as much as SRR, so it's probably worth looping in @grodrigues and setting this up in the base mod. Then you can change what you want (if anything) in your version. Maybe an RFC in the SR forum is in order.

Also I recall the 2.6 engine has two flags, not just one... I need to re-read what the flags are and how they are different from 2.5 and pre-EE, in order to do this right. (Also a way to distinguish a 2.6 game from a 2.5 game would probably be handy.)

[subtledoctor]

13 minutes ago, Hubal said:

Isn't that Bless on second level?

Nah, it's much better than Bless. It applies a Luck bonus, meaning you do more damage in melee and you take less damage from spells. Good when you're about to face a caster with Fireball or ADHW etc.

Bless just gives you... a Morale bonus I think? Real useless. At least in IWD it gives you a little thac0 bonus as well.

[Hubal]

9 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

But real talk, you can always change it back yourself... There's just no rationale I can think of for allowing Chant (or anything like it) to not break invisibility/Sanctuary.

I have just copied my installation to my wife computer, children's laptops and my ex sata HDD drive. NO ONE will take my offensive defensive chant rambo style spell from me!

[Hubal]

5 minutes ago, subtledoctor said:

Nah, it's much better than Bless. It applies a Luck bonus, meaning you do more damage in melee and you take less damage from spells. Good when you're about to face a caster with Fireball or ADHW etc.

Bless just gives you... a Morale bonus I think? Real useless. At least in IWD it gives you a little thac0 bonus as well.

No. Bless gives you 1 thac0  bonus and 1 damage bonus. At least on SRR.

Also there is no mention of Luck in Chant description. So I am confused

 

Edited September 15, 2021 by Hubal

[subtledoctor]

22 minutes ago, Hubal said:

No. Bless gives you 1 thac0  bonus and 1 damage bonus. At least on SRR.

Also there is no mention of Luck in Chant description. So I am confused

I'm talking about the vanilla versions of the spells. If SR(R) upgrades Bless, that's great - the spell needs it. But I don't think they change Chant...?

Vanilla Chant technically applies the "chant" effect (opcode 1310 to allies, and applies the "bad chant" (opcode 137) effect to enemies. Those effects are distinct opcodes, but in application they are identical to opcode 22 (Luck) with a positive or negative modifier, respectively. The spell description says:

Quote

When the Chant spell is completed, all the priest's allies within the area of effect gain a +1 bonus to attack rolls, minimum damage/healing rolls, and Saving Throws. Furthermore, damage dice for all effects outside a weapon’s base damage is reduced by 1. For example, a 6d6 fireball will do 6d5 damage, and an arrow of fire that deals 1d6+2 piercing plus 1d6 fire damage will deal 1d6+2 piercing plus 1d5 fire damage instead. The priest's enemies suffer the opposite effects.

That's a description of how Luck works.* Chant is like casting Luck on your allies and a negative version of Luck on your enemies.

* Luck has other effects as well. The most notable one IMO is that it affects the chance that your Mirror Images will absorb a hit. If you have a bonus from Chant and/or Luck, hits will be very likely (or guaranteed?) to hit your image instead of you. With no such modifiers, I think hits will have a 50% chance to hit you or an image. If you have a negative Luck or Chant effect (if an enemy casts their own Chant), hits will be more likely (or guaranteed) to hit you instead of your mirror image. Maximizing the protection of Mirror Images is probably pretty important for LOB play... so it's probably worth casting Chant on a mage even if you're out of range of enemies.

Edited September 15, 2021 by subtledoctor

[Bartimaeus]

42 minutes ago, subtledoctor said:

Okay, I'm with you, but I have a recollection that invisibility was more strict than Sanctuary. I thought casting pretty much anything (including Stoneskin, Fire Shield, etc.) will break arcane invisibility. Is my memory wrong?

As far as I know, they work exactly the same: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/5qjbuwvr285qizh/cydTjDlHZ3.mp4

9 minutes ago, subtledoctor said:

I'm talking about the vanilla versions of the spells.

https://baldursgate.fandom.com/wiki/Bless

"Upon uttering the Bless spell, the caster raises the morale of friendly creatures by +1. Furthermore, it raises their attack and damage rolls by +1."

 

[Lord_Tansheron]

48 minutes ago, Hubal said:

1. You are 100% correct. I use it as a excuse to make my own  min max party. 

Don't let them hate on LoB. LoBers unite! LoB forever!

In any case... Chant is very good. One of the big reasons to have a cleric, imo, as it skews rolls considerably with the bonus PLUS penalty spread. I 100% agree that's an offensive spell (in the tactical sense) and should break invisibility.

IMO anything that affects others - enemies or allies - should break invisibility. Things that PURELY affect self - buffs, heals, whathaveyou - are probably fine; I can't think of an example right now where I think it wouldn't be. The reasoning is simple: even if you're invisible, people will notice something just happened to someone else (or themselves). Is that too broad a perspective?

[Bartimaeus]

5 minutes ago, Lord_Tansheron said:

IMO anything that affects others - enemies or allies - should break invisibility. Things that PURELY affect self - buffs, heals, whathaveyou - are probably fine; I can't think of an example right now where I think it wouldn't be. The reasoning is simple: even if you're invisible, people will notice something just happened to someone else (or themselves). Is that too broad a perspective?

That's how the original game worked and is my preference (cast Cure Light Wounds on self, O.K.; cast Cure Light Wounds on other party member, break invisibility), but Beamdog has made going back to that...difficult or maybe impossible (SD said there may be a workaround for doing this, but I'm not sure exactly how that would work), and they seem to prefer a "you can cast no-harm spells at anyone and everything" approach.

[subtledoctor]

5 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

but I'm not sure exactly how that would work

Something like, every spell with “living actor” targeting casts a subspell, and the subspell casts a secondary subspell on “original caster,” and the secondary spell breaks invisibility. But each main spell makes the caster immune to the first subspell for a second or two. 

Maybe? Something like that. There is surely some way to do it. Not sure it’s worth the complexity, though. Easier to just say all offensive spells break invisibility (which seems pretty true to PnP).

[Bartimaeus]

2 hours ago, subtledoctor said:

Maybe? Something like that. There is surely some way to do it. Not sure it’s worth the complexity, though. Easier to just say all offensive spells break invisibility (which seems pretty true to PnP).

Even if that worked, it would seem a bit hacky/inconsistent, since you could actually cast those spells without fear of being interrupted, as you'd be invisible during the entire spellcasting period and only be revealed after the fact. So as far as I can see, it is impossible to go fully back to how it used to be, .