SR Revised V1.3.900 (2022 August 8th)

[Bartimaeus]

9 minutes ago, FixTesteR said:

Makes sense what you're saying but ... are there in-game examples where you could use charm to your benefit? It seems it's more of a role-play, right? Maybe BG City Chapter 7? Or do you have viable situations where a NPC is approaching you and you'd like to avert them? Just wondering.

In BG1, there are a great deal of unique dialogue options only available via charm, and you can use it to temporarily enlist neutral characters to aid you pretty easily due to the stronger saving throw penalty against non-enemy characters, or if you just want to move them out of the way to accomplish something without making them hostile - stuff of that nature.

13 minutes ago, FixTesteR said:

So the bottom line is, you don't really like how Vanilla Dispel Magic works? Well, one thing I found annoying near the end of ToB was that the strong mobs always use Dispel Magic as opposed to other dispells, and it seemed that, being of a higher level than my party, have a very high chance of dispelling my whole party with one swoop. I guess Dispelling Screen helped avert the first cast, but after that, one Dispel Magic could remove all types of protections on several members that I cast before battle. Anyway, it just seemed that Dispel Magic trumps all other dispells. Hopefully you can relate at least a bit to what I'm saying here. Also, while other dispells tell me what they dispel, Dispel Magic is just very broad all around the board. I mean, what doesn't it dispel?

I'll reply to your last sentence first: Dispel Magic doesn't dispel spell protections (e.g. Globe of Invulnerability, Spell Deflection, Shield of the Archon, Non-Detection et al.). That's...more or less the full list, with just a few rare exceptions to that. And no, I don't much appreciate the level vs. level mechanic that overwhelmingly favors the AI (who are usually higher level than the player and who thus have a much better chance of dispelling you while ignoring your own dispels) and silly Inquisitors. The saving throw alternative is a -1 penalty initially, and scales another point for every 5 levels up to -4 at 20th level, so while it still has a good chance of working, it's no longer literally automatic if a 20th level character casts it on your 10th level party. The numbers may ultimately still need tweaking, though.

[Guest Alkaid]

Actually... Yeah, I might try implementing those Dispel changes myself directly via SPL editing (pretty sure I turned off the option but I might just be able to copy the .SPL from a different place unless it was implemented weirdly). It's pretty fucking stupid to have every magical protection and buff you have dispelled by a single ability, stuff like Breach is fine because it's single-target and designed for that. 

[Bartimaeus]

47 minutes ago, Guest Alkaid said:

Actually... Yeah, I might try implementing those Dispel changes myself directly via SPL editing (pretty sure I turned off the option but I might just be able to copy the .SPL from a different place unless it was implemented weirdly). It's pretty fucking stupid to have every magical protection and buff you have dispelled by a single ability, stuff like Breach is fine because it's single-target and designed for that. 

They're in the "spell_rev\shared\alternatives" folder (assuming you're using SRR) and they're the files whose names are marked with ".breach" or ".save" (depending on which option you prefer) and simply removing that and dropping it into override. Their descriptions would need fixing, as descriptions can only be set when the mod is installed, but otherwise should be fine.

Funny thing about Breach and Dispel Magic: Breach is subject to spell protections, while Dispel Magic is not. That is, if you had something like Spell Deflection running, Spell Deflection would absorb Breach, but Dispel Magic would go straight through it. That seems kind of silly, doesn't it? Another funny thing about Breach and Dispel Magic: Breach dispels only combat and specific protections, Dispel Magic actually dispels those and stuff that doesn't fall under either of those umbrellas, such as summoned weapons (e.g. Phantom Blade) or non-protections (Bless, Luck, Aid et al.). That seems kind of silly, doesn't it?

...Now that I mention it, perhaps I should introduce a settings.ini option that allows Dispel Magic to be absorbed by spell protections. There already is one for Globe of Invulnerability, why not the rest in order to break its effectiveness even more? With the aid of the AoE Spell Deflection component, you can even have it decrement the amount of "charges" those spells have. This would likely prove very devastating to SCS AI that will assume Remove Magic should work properly against e.g. Spell Deflection and so I wouldn't personally use it, but the option would be there for those who want some easier counters to SCS' brutal usage of Remove Magic.

Edited October 12, 2021 by Bartimaeus

[Guest Alkaid]

Tbh I can kind of see why Remove Magic might have been deleted from the old SR. Like, it's a pretty nice spell, but by the current implementation it's basically the 'anti-everything' button with one specific counter.

Actually, the way I *thought* it worked, and perhaps the way it *should* work, is that it dispels only the most recent/highest level/lowest level effect on a character, not everything. Dunno how hard that would be to add, though, and it might screw with SCS ai as well (spellcasters just spam remove magic because they're told to 'use remove magic until buffs are gone' or something) but it would certainly make it more fair and give it a place for hitting groups of lightly protected things over one heavily protected thing.

[subtledoctor]

2 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

perhaps I should introduce a settings.ini option that allows Dispel Magic to be absorbed by spell protections. There already is one for Globe of Invulnerability, why not the rest in order to break its effectiveness even more? With the aid of the AoE Spell Deflection component, you can even have it decrement the amount of "charges" those spells have. This would likely prove very devastating to SCS AI that will assume Remove Magic should work properly against e.g. Spell Deflection and so I wouldn't personally use it, but the option would be there for those who want some easier counters to SCS' brutal usage of Remove Magic.

How?

I like this idea... would work very well with the version of RM that eliminates one combat protection and one specific protection. In fact I think that version would be broken without this behavior. 

I have to look, but I think it could work with SCS; SCS knows not to cast Breach at an active Deflection, so maybe one spell or the other could similarly tell it not to cast RM. 

[Bartimaeus]

42 minutes ago, subtledoctor said:

How?

I like this idea... would work very well with the version of RM that eliminates one combat protection and one specific protection. In fact I think that version would be broken without this behavior. 

I have to look, but I think it could work with SCS; SCS knows not to cast Breach at an active Deflection, so maybe one spell or the other could similarly tell it not to cast RM. 

Seems simple enough: set the power level for the effects of Dispel/Remove Magic, then include it in the AoE Spell Deflection component. Shouldn't that do the trick?

3 hours ago, Guest Alkaid said:

Actually, the way I *thought* it worked, and perhaps the way it *should* work, is that it dispels only the most recent/highest level/lowest level effect on a character, not everything. Dunno how hard that would be to add, though, and it might screw with SCS ai as well (spellcasters just spam remove magic because they're told to 'use remove magic until buffs are gone' or something) but it would certainly make it more fair and give it a place for hitting groups of lightly protected things over one heavily protected thing.

Yeah, not really possible, I don't think. Maybe with some extremely complicated EE-only shenanigans, but even then, it would probably be difficult to implement.

3 hours ago, Guest Alkaid said:

Tbh I can kind of see why Remove Magic might have been deleted from the old SR. Like, it's a pretty nice spell, but by the current implementation it's basically the 'anti-everything' button with one specific counter.

Remove Magic wasn't "deleted" from SR - quite the opposite, actually. Dispel Magic was "deleted" from the game and instead Remove Magic was renamed to Dispel Magic (well, except for the Inquisitor version of Dispel Magic, which was probably simply overlooked). At least, that's the way it was for many, many years - I'm unsure of the current status of these spells in SR in the very latest version that came out a year or two ago, it may have changed because people realized that wasn't right, but I'm not a hundred percent sure - SD would know for sure, probably.

Edited October 12, 2021 by Bartimaeus

[Guest Alkaid]

19 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

Yeah, not really possible, I don't think. Maybe with some extremely complicated EE-only shenanigans, but even then, it would probably be difficult to implement.

Hm, how does the Breach version work, then? Does it just pick the effect it dispels at random? Tbh I would have thought the engine would naturally do most recent effects but I guess I could be wrong.

[FixTesteR]

Just dropping by to say I appreciate all the talk you're having about Dispel Magic. In ToB, 95% of dispells that the enemies cast were Dispel Magic spells. It is just that overpowered. After one or two landed, I started wondering whether it was worth to pre-buff at all.

Edited October 12, 2021 by FixTesteR

[Bartimaeus]

1 hour ago, Guest Alkaid said:

Hm, how does the Breach version work, then? Does it just pick the effect it dispels at random? Tbh I would have thought the engine would naturally do most recent effects but I guess I could be wrong.

The Breach version dispels 1 specific protection and 1 combat protection, the highest level possible AFAIK. But Breach (and the "Breach" Dispel Magic) dispels by secondary type (e.g. "Spell Protection", "Combat Protection", "Specific Protection", stuff like that are secondary types), while normal Dispel Magic doesn't care about any of that and just dispels everything that has the "dispel" flag marked, which is why it catches stuff that isn't of any particular secondary type (e.g. Luck).

1 hour ago, FixTesteR said:

Just dropping by to say I appreciate all the talk you're having about Dispel Magic. In ToB, 95% of dispells that the enemies cast were Dispel Magic spells. It is just that overpowered. After one or two landed, I started wondering whether it was worth to pre-buff at all.

SRR does have a Globe of Invulnerability settings.ini switch that you can enable to provide immunity to the Dispel Magic...and I suppose I should work on doing the same for Spell Deflection. I'm not a big fan of pre-buffing in general as a philosophical issue (unless your characters have in-universe reasons to expect a fight...which they sometimes do, e.g. Lavok or Firkraag or...and often times they don't), but there some effective strategies against SCS' spamming of it, like fanning out your characters to prevent all of them from being affected - if you really want to get abusive, you can even just have one character advance and then move them away from everyone else once you see the enemy spellcaster attempting to dispel you. I'd prefer to not engage in abusive tactics where I can, though, which is why I'd prefer to just have alternative methods of at least ameliorating it, though.

[Hubal]

Self restricted prebuffing is the only play. Solves all problems.

[subtledoctor]

2 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

Seems simple enough: set the power level for the effects of Dispel/Remove Magic, then include it in the AoE Spell Deflection component. Shouldn't that do the trick?

But then wouldn't it automatically be blocked by MGOI? Thus removing any player preference with regard to the MGOI setting, and making MGOI much more effect at blocking Dispel than any deflections. Almost to the point where I wonder if this is worth the effort.

On the EEs I think this would be easier, could just give deflections op101 immunity to op58, or run dispels through a subspell and give deflections op206 immunity to it. But on the old engine it is more complicated.

Come to think of it, how is Breach prevented from going through deflections? I don't see anything obvious in my game here. Man, I am rusty at this stuff.

[Guest Alkaid]

34 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

I''m not a big fan of pre-buffing in general as a philosophical issue (unless your characters have in-universe reasons to expect a fight...which they sometimes do, e.g. Lavok or Firkraag or...and often times they don't), but there some effective strategies against SCS' spamming of it, like fanning out your characters to prevent all of them from being affected - if you really want to get abusive, you can even just have one character advance and then move them away from everyone else once you see the enemy spellcaster attempting to dispel you. I'd prefer to not engage in abusive tactics where I can, though, which is why I'd prefer to just have alternative methods of at least ameliorating it, though.

For most situations, I like to justify pre-buffing with "my characters know this is a dangerous situation and want to protect themselves" or have maybe caught wind of upcoming combat in a way you can't really do in-game (e.g. tracks, noises, etc.)
If that doesn't work, because say it's a surprise attack, I try it a couple times without prebuffing. If that doesn't work, I chalk it up to my Bhaalspawn having some vague knowledge of what occurred even when you reload, CHIM-style. 

[FixTesteR]

10 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

I'm not a big fan of pre-buffing in general as a philosophical issue

I hear you, but since SCS does it? You're kind of forced to do it. Though in BG1 where I am now, I am capable of handling lots of fights without pre-buffing. I'll see what happens in SoD and BG2. I guess one could argue some encounters are clearly on the horizon, and for those, you should pre-buff.

 

10 hours ago, Hubal said:

Self restricted prebuffing is the only play. Solves all problems.

Say more? We're talking with SCS on, right?

[Bartimaeus]

10 hours ago, subtledoctor said:

But then wouldn't it automatically be blocked by MGOI? Thus removing any player preference with regard to the MGOI setting, and making MGOI much more effect at blocking Dispel than any deflections. Almost to the point where I wonder if this is worth the effort.

On the EEs I think this would be easier, could just give deflections op101 immunity to op58, or run dispels through a subspell and give deflections op206 immunity to it. But on the old engine it is more complicated.

Come to think of it, how is Breach prevented from going through deflections? I don't see anything obvious in my game here. Man, I am rusty at this stuff.

You know, I guess I was kind of assuming that if you want Spell Deflection to block Dispel/Remove Magic, you obviously must also want Globe of Invulnerability to do the same. Also, I actually don't know off-hand for Breach, especially because somehow SCS makes it pierce through lich's immunity to 5th level spells or lower while also still having it get absorbed by spell protections like normal... But yeah, you're right, an alternative scheme would have to be devised if you didn't want both. Although both of the solutions you listed seem like they should work on the original engines just fine? Though I would say the latter solution is probably better because it doesn't prevent being dispelled from other sources e.g. Carsomyr.

10 hours ago, Guest Alkaid said:

For most situations, I like to justify pre-buffing with "my characters know this is a dangerous situation and want to protect themselves" or have maybe caught wind of upcoming combat in a way you can't really do in-game (e.g. tracks, noises, etc.)
If that doesn't work, because say it's a surprise attack, I try it a couple times without prebuffing. If that doesn't work, I chalk it up to my Bhaalspawn having some vague knowledge of what occurred even when you reload, CHIM-style. 

There's also the simple fact that you can reasonably have a character in stealth/invisible and have them scouting ahead. This doesn't work for ALL situations, but most of them, so yeah, I really don't mind what other players do...but SCS is specifically punishing that behavior by just smashing the player with dispels constantly, so it's something to think about. You could also go with a more mixed pre-buffing style, where you use some things but not everything, so you still have stuff you can cast later into the battle.

[Guest Alkaid]

Hey, were Deathknights fixed/changed somewhere post-1.3.500? Looking at the creature file, the description of the spell doesn't seem to quite match what they actually do. 

For instance, they don't seem to have spells.
They have 2 APR, not 3, etc.