SR Revised V1.3.900 (2022 August 8th)

[Bartimaeus]

2 hours ago, Guest Alkaid said:

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.

Nope, and I actually have no idea what Death Knights do, as I don't use them (I prefer atweaks' fiends). I'll take a look.

I installed SRR on an otherwise unmodified BG2EE game and added them to my party. They have 3 APR (2 base + 1 from weapon), cast Symbol of Pain, Symbol of Death, and Power Word: Stun within three rounds of entering combat (I didn't see anything after that because I DIED), weapon damage/THAC0 seems more or less correct (exact calculations here are tricky because of the different options for proficiency bonuses you can use, but regardless of that it's at least within acceptable range...I should really just completely abstract weapon proficiency stuff for summonable creatures so that the numbers are always correct even if they don't follow every user's exact rules - that way, the descriptions would always be correct at least)...I don't know, everything seems to check out O.K. to me.

(e): The one thing that DOESN'T check out is they won't attack you if you have Protection from Evil applied, which isn't intended as far as I know. The same seems to be true of Gate and Summon Fiend. I think someone reported this in here at one point but I forgot about it until just now.

Edited October 13, 2021 by Bartimaeus

[DavidW]

5 hours ago, FixTesteR said:

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.

 

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

You can always turn it off using the difficulty control.

[Bartimaeus]

Okay, so the issue with summoned demons is that I've made Protection from Evil literally provide blanket protection against them as per the original game. I can only assume I did this waaaaay back in the early days of SRR when I intended to restore the original summons in these slots...but then eventually I decided on atweaks' being more than good enough instead. It's fine for that, it's not fine for SRR...so I will be removing it. I'm a little embarrassed it took me this long to notice, since it's been years since I must have done that.

[subtledoctor]

8 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

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...

Right, silly me. I forgot because this stuff is complicated. Deflections respond only to the power level of the first effect in the stack; but opcode 102 (protection from spell level) operates on each effect separately.

So SCS sets Breach to power level 5, and removes liches' op102 immunity to 5th-level spells, and adds op206 immunity to a specific list of 5th-level spells.

My "breachier breach" version on top of SR and SCS restores liches' blanket immunity to 5th-level spells, and sets the power level of the 146 effects in SPWI513 to 0, so they bypass deflections and op102 immunity and cast their subspells; then SPWI513B has a dummy effect with power level 5 so that it is blocked by deflections and treated like any other 5th-level spell; but the subsequent, functional effects are given power level 9 so that they can affect liches and rakshasa (but still get blocked by my version of Spell Trap).

Okay. Now the only thing I don't remember is how Breach bypasses deflections in the unmodded game, since it has level=5 and power=5... but then, I don't care too much about the unmodded game.

EDIT - riiiight, vanilla Breach has the MAGICATTACK sectype, which automatically bypasses deflections.

Edited October 13, 2021 by subtledoctor

[Guest Alkaid]

3 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

(e): The one thing that DOESN'T check out is they won't attack you if you have Protection from Evil applied, which isn't intended as far as I know. The same seems to be true of Gate and Summon Fiend. I think someone reported this in here at one point but I forgot about it until just now.

Hm, they do seem to use spells. I dunno, all the summons just have slightly odd behaviour compared to what I'd expect, perhaps due to the (I mean honestly not *that* bad) concoction of mods I have. You've seen the list.

For instance, if I use the level 7 Summon Fiend spell to make a Glabrezu, I can control it directly which is kinda odd. This spells also mentions mistreated ones turning against their summoners (I guess that means these aggro if you friendly fire with say an AoE spell? Which IIRC regular summons were changed to not do.)
Perhaps I can control them directly due to my caster's high ability scores? Dunno. Just confusing. I can't control the death knight though, it just seems to laze around and only do stuff sporadically. 

[FixTesteR]

48 minutes ago, subtledoctor said:

So SCS sets Breach to power level 5, and removes liches' op102 immunity to 5th-level spells, and adds op206 immunity to a specific list of 5th-level spells

I wonder. Liches are immune to ... spells of level 1-9 or something. Right. Whatever. But their protections shouldn't be. If they cast PfMW, that protection shouldn't be irremovable by, say, Breach. Right? It's the liches personally that are immune, and cannot be hit by spells. That's my understanding of it.

[Bartimaeus]

1 hour ago, Guest Alkaid said:

Hm, they do seem to use spells. I dunno, all the summons just have slightly odd behaviour compared to what I'd expect, perhaps due to the (I mean honestly not *that* bad) concoction of mods I have. You've seen the list.

For instance, if I use the level 7 Summon Fiend spell to make a Glabrezu, I can control it directly which is kinda odd. This spells also mentions mistreated ones turning against their summoners (I guess that means these aggro if you friendly fire with say an AoE spell? Which IIRC regular summons were changed to not do.)
Perhaps I can control them directly due to my caster's high ability scores? Dunno. Just confusing. I can't control the death knight though, it just seems to laze around and only do stuff sporadically. 

What happens in my game for these fiends is that they're summoned, they're controllable for a second or two, then they either decide to be hostile or friendly to you. If they become friendly to you, they say they'll follow you and will become uncontrollable but retain their green circle and follow you around and help...unless you do even the slightest of hostile actions, in which case they turn hostile. If they turn hostile immediately, they'll say something like "die!" and will be aligned with all general hostiles and immediately start attacking the party. I just tested 8th level Summon Fiend and 7th level Death Knight and that is how both of them worked.

1 hour ago, subtledoctor said:

Right, silly me. I forgot because this stuff is complicated. Deflections respond only to the power level of the first effect in the stack; but opcode 102 (protection from spell level) operates on each effect separately.

I feel like I've learned everything that you just said probably around 4-5 times throughout the years, but I never remember the details. I'll try to remember that you wrote it all down here if I need it again.

[Lord_Tansheron]

The Lich vs. Breach thing is a bit of a balance necessity, I fear, because without a way of reliably removing their protections they're absolutely MISERABLE to fight against on SCS.

Same thing with rakshasas, really. Or anything with spell level immunities, which are kind of cheesy to begin with.

I guess it's just a sad reality of the way SCS works that many mage fights are a binary mess where you either win very quickly or lose very quickly.

[FixTesteR]

Well, the reason why I'm asking some of these questions is that I'm running a no-reload saga playthrough, and liches are very positive candidates to end my whole run. That's why it's vital for me to know the logic of the game. If liches are immune to many spell levels, I can't see why their protections would also be immune. When a lich casts Stoneskin, it casts the same level 4 spell as my mage does. It has the same vulnerability to be removed by Breach, and the lich's personal immunity shouldn't block it. It's the protection that's being targeted by Breach, not lich's immune body.

Then again, say you have Magic Resistance on your party member, and he gets targeted with some dispell. It's possible MR blocks it, even though your protections are vulnerable to that dispell.

Sometimes the game just doesn't give you enough information about enemies. Wouldn't it be cool if there was a mod that introduced books of knowledge about creatures in Faerun all around city libraries alongside Sword Coast? Now that would be another layer of immersion. And a whole lotta extra work.

[Bartimaeus]

2 minutes ago, FixTesteR said:

Then again, say you have Magic Resistance on your party member, and he gets targeted with some dispell. It's possible MR blocks it, even though your protections are vulnerable to that dispell.

Anything that dispels is not magic resistable, whether it's Breach, Secret Word, or Dispel Magic. I think your logic make senses, and for that reason, it makes sense that those anti-magic spells work on liches. The only exception I think is Breach, but that's taken care of by SCS - everything else (e.g. Secret Word, Remove Magic, Spell Thrust) do function...though Remove Magic is very unlikely to work, of course.

[Guest Alkaid]

16 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

What happens in my game for these fiends is that they're summoned, they're controllable for a second or two, then they either decide to be hostile or friendly to you. If they become friendly to you, they say they'll follow you and will become uncontrollable but retain their green circle and follow you around and help...unless you do even the slightest of hostile actions, in which case they turn hostile. If they turn hostile immediately, they'll say something like "die!" and will be aligned with all general hostiles and immediately start attacking the party. I just tested 8th level Summon Fiend and 7th level Death Knight and that is how both of them worked.

Yeah, the death knight seems to work that way for me, though if you never deselect them you can retain direct control of their movement and basic attack.

The 7th level summon fiend (priest spell) makes a Glabrezu that has 70 health for some reason, doesn't say anything, and remains under your direct control. Though they have some sort of AI script as well I think because they move around wonkily on their own and sometimes seem to fight their orders.

The 8th level (mage spell) works as you describe though. And they have the correct amount of health, no direct control.

[Bartimaeus]

1 hour ago, Guest Alkaid said:

The 7th level summon fiend (priest spell) makes a Glabrezu that has 70 health for some reason, doesn't say anything, and remains under your direct control. Though they have some sort of AI script as well I think because they move around wonkily on their own and sometimes seem to fight their orders.

There appears to be some sort of issue here, because there is no 7th level Summon Fiend for priests in SR/R - only Summon Death Knight.

May I see your current weidu.log?

Huh, yeah, you're right about being able to control the summoned fiends if you never unselect them, but ultimately a very minor issue.

Edited October 14, 2021 by Bartimaeus

[Cahir]

3 hours ago, FixTesteR said:

Sometimes the game just doesn't give you enough information about enemies. Wouldn't it be cool if there was a mod that introduced books of knowledge about creatures in Faerun all around city libraries alongside Sword Coast? Now that would be another layer of immersion. And a whole lotta extra work.

This would be fantastic. Normally I would throw such kind of idea on G3 forum over the weekend, hoping that next day when I woke up I'll see a new shiny mod released by @CamDawg, but this is something that cannot be done over the weekend

[Guest Alkaid]

@Bartimaeus

Ah, my bad. The spell is added by Faiths and Powers, I thought the issue might have been with the creature itself but I guess something is going wonky all over the place. It has the same description as the Wizard SR spell though, do they both pull from the same string?

Curiously enough, the CREATURE that the spell ultimately ends up pointing to (DEMGLASU.CRE) is indeed first touched by Spell Revisions (then scales then stratagems, never FnP even though FnP is the spell that points to this creature). I wonder if the creature file was duplicated off and changed at some point then, or something like that. It has 70/160 HP too for some reason in my final creature file, though none of the ones generated by changelog.bat have that HP. Maybe it's intentionally nerfed to be weaker in exchange for more control? Who knows.

DWDVGLAB.CRE which I think is the one the properly functioning wizard spell points to is just touched by SCS. maybe that's the wrong creature though.

[Guest Alkaid]

None of my priests actually have Summon Death Knight. I wonder if it's conflicting with FnP's sphere system... Maybe I shouldn't have chose to use that. XD

Or maybe things would be even more broken if I hadn't. Are Wizards even supposed to learn SDK as a 7th level spell?