Protection Against Dispel Magic

[subtledoctor]

SR tried (and failed) to merge Dispel Magic and Remove Magic

Huh?

 

Yes, RM/DM, if successful, will dispel literally any ongoing effect that is marked as type 1 (dispel/no bypass magic resistance) or type 3 (dispel/bypass magic resistance) resistance.

Ah right. That should have been fairly clear.

 

Anyway that's fine. This setup would, I think, make RM and Breach pretty well-balanced against each other:

 

Benefits of RM:

- lower level

- AoE

 

Benefits of Breach:

- no % chance to fail

- bypasses Dispelling Screen

- doesn't remove debuffs from target

Edited October 11, 2018 by subtledoctor

[DrAzTiK]

I’d also recommend reading (at least the first page of) the “revised SCS” thread; it’s clear from there that at least Kreso, and probably also Demi, were just fine, rightly or wrongly, with SR making solo play very difficult.

Yup.

Speaking of Liches in Umar, here's how I've killed one with a 12th level party.

Personally with liches beeing level 29, I think I am going to code a way to remove liches from quests whitch are supposed to be done before underdark : so 2 liches in Umar and one in the pit ( cult of the eyeless quest) and even the liche in spellhold.

 

The problem also is that beholders are hard to fight before underdark.

 

The liche we have to meet in Edwin Quest should be tweaked also to a lower level. What is the challenge and the fun to fight a level 29 liche with a level 10-12 team.

 

The best way to make everybody happy would be to adjust the quantity and quality of enemies according to the game difficulty level which can be set in the Gameplay subsection of the Options menu. Rogue rebalancing works like that and the new version of my mod also .(mod butchery, new release soon)

 

The problem of RM DM also comes from the fact that wee meet too much high level spellcasters sometimes. (especially licches with SCS in quests that we are supposed to be done before underdark)

Edited October 11, 2018 by DrAzTiK

[subtledoctor]

Personally with liches beeing level 29, I think I am going to code a way to remove liches from quests whitch are supposed to be done before underdark : so 2 liches in Umar and one in the pit ( cult of the eyeless quest) and even the liche in spellhold.

 

The problem also is that beholders are hard to fight before underdark.

 

The liche we have to meet in Edwin Quest should be tweaked also to a lower level. What is the challenge and the fun to fight a level 29 liche with a level 10-12 team.

 

The best way to make everybody happy would be to adjust the quantity and quality of enemies according to the game difficulty level which can be set in the Gameplay subsection of the Options menu. Rogue rebalancing works like that and the new version of my mod also .(mod butchery, new release soon)

 

The problem of RM DM also comes from the fact that wee meet too much high level spellcasters sometimes. (especially licches with SCS in quests that we are supposed to be done before underdark)

I have never seen the Umar liches. Is that something to do with the difficulty slider? Frankly I think it's silly at a very basic level - liches are not meant to be lackeys guarding the mid-section of a dungeon. Liches are supposed to have their own dungeons.

 

Anyway, I've found a way to make magic attacks "burn off" deflection levels, instead of outright cancelling them:

- SpellA (say, a modified Spell Thrust) has sectype "MAGICATTACK." I has a 146 effect casting SubSpell1.

- SubSpell1 is level 6 and has a single dummy effect: a 0-point 0-second Lore bonus, at power=6

 

- SpellB (modified Secret Word) is MAGICATTACK and has two 146 effects... the 2nd one has to be timing=4, duration=1. Both 146 effects cast SubSpell1

 

- SpellC (modified Pierce Magic) is MAGICATTACK and has three 146 effects... the 2nd one is timing=4, duration=1, the 3rd one is timing=4, duration=2. All three 146 effects cast SubSpell1

 

- Set Minor Spell Deflection to deflect 6 levels of spells, level 1-9.

- Set Spell Deflection to deflect 12 levels of spells, level 1-9.

- Change Spell Turning to Greater Deflection and set it to deflect 18 levels of spells, level 1-9.

 

Now:

- Spell Thrust cast once cancels Minor Spell Deflection

- Spell Thrust cast twice cancels Spell Deflection

- Spell Thrust cast three times cancels Greater Spell Deflection

- Secret Word cast once cancels Minor Spell Deflection and Spell Deflection

- Secret Word cast twice cancels Greater Spell Deflection

- Pierce Magic cast once cancels Minor Spell Deflection, Spell Deflection, and Greater Spell Deflection

 

And perhaps best of all: Deflections won't stack anymore. (In the vanilla system, per kreso, "Deflection-type spells don't stack when it comes to spell apsorption, but do stack when it comes to removing them with spell removals. Try buffing with Minor Deflection + Deflection. You need two Secret Word spells to remove them both.")

 

I suppose there will be a problem in that these effects won't be able to affect rakshasa. They can only be affected by 9th-level spells, right? In that case I could just rebalance the system so MSD blocks ~8 levels, SD blocks 16 levels, and GSD blocks 24 levels. And Spell Thrust/Secret Word/Pierce Magic burn off 9/18/27 levels, respectively. Only issue there is, these deflections will be more durable against normal spells. (But with SR and Deflections being worn out by AoE spells, maybe that's fine.)

 

Alternatively, make one subspell at level 5 and one subspell at level 9; Thrust casts the former, Secret Word casts both, and Pierce casts 2x the latter. (This would mean Thurst is useless against rakshasa and liches, while Secret Word is only partially effective, and Pierce Magic and above are fully effective. On paper at least, I kind of like that. Can play around with the numbers to balance it right.

 

Now that I know this is possible, I think I'll code up a quick rough draft of a mod. Then people can try it out, and David can see more clearly what I'm talking about as far as how it would interact with AI scripts.

 

EDIT - note that you can play around with this. In this system RM won't bypass Deflections, but we can do stuff like give it power level 9, or something, so that it will wear down Deflections more effectively than a Fireball. So even with Deflection blocking RM, you would still have some latent vulnerability to enemies who spam RM. You would have some breathing room, but you would need to deal with them quickly before they wear down your protection. (Spell Trap would block it more thoroughly; so if you want to run a solo wizard through hordes of fiends, you better be 18th level.)

Edited October 11, 2018 by subtledoctor

[Bartimaeus]

 

SR tried (and failed) to merge Dispel Magic and Remove Magic

Huh

As in, SR renamed both of them to Dispel Magic with the intent of making them affect only enemies, then failed to actually make them affect only enemies and instead had different implementations depending on which exact Dispel Magic you were talking about.

[subtledoctor]

 

 

SR tried (and failed) to merge Dispel Magic and Remove Magic

Huh

 

As in, SR renamed both of them to Dispel Magic with the intent of making them affect only enemies, then failed to actually make them affect only enemies and instead had different implementations depending on which exact Dispel Magic you were talking about.

 

Ah. Well yeah man that was a bug. But bugs are hardly "failures" - they are in fact eminently fixable. Edited October 11, 2018 by subtledoctor

[DrAzTiK]

 

 

I have never seen the Umar liches. Is that something to do with the difficulty slider? Frankly I think it's silly at a very basic level - liches are not meant to be lackeys guarding the mid-section of a dungeon. Liches are supposed to have their own dungeons.

I play with SCS component Increase difficulty of level-dependent monster groupings on "almost-maximum difficulty". Liches are not supposed to appear but they do appear in my game. Maybe a bug. I should report it to DavidW.

 

edit : humm but the SCS readme say that " liches are not supposed to appear unless you have 1 million XP." SO that is maybe the reason why I have encountered liches.. But 1 million XP means a party around level 13-14, still not enought Imo to fight liches...

[subtledoctor]

Welp, I've got an alpha version of the mod coded up. Only trying to figure out how to handle Shield of the Archons. How does SR treat it - as just a Greater Spell Deflection that a priest can cast? Seems kinda boring. Is it worth doing something more interesting with it? Like I toyed with earlier: party-wide Spell Deflection? Maybe Spell Deflection for the caster and Minor Spell Deflection for allies? Is that crazy? It is the highest-level magic... but maybe that sounds more like an HLA?

 

Only other thing I haven't done is touch Breach at all. How does SR determine which spells are combat protections or specific protections? Is there just a static list somewhere?

Edited October 11, 2018 by subtledoctor

[Jarno Mikkola]

How does SR determine which spells are combat protections or specific protections? Is there just a static list somewhere?

I won't quote Azoth quoting Kreso... but it's here. Or rather this:

 

 

[subtledoctor]

No, I mean, which spell count as combat and specific protections, or neither. Armor, Shield, Strength, Mirror Image, Stoneskin, Fire Shield, Mind Blank, Chant, Strength of One, Barkskin, Chaotic Commands, etc.

 

Eh, I suppose I can just make a big inclusive list by hand.

[Bartimaeus]

Well, it's whatever spells have sectype 2 (specific protection) or sectype 7 (combat protection), isn't it? So read byte 0x27 for 2 and 7 to get a more comprehensive list.

Edited October 12, 2018 by Bartimaeus

[subtledoctor]

As I said I'm specifically interested in how SR does it. Is there an array defined somewhere, does it include spells added by orher mods, etc. I've seen Demi talk a lot about what is Breach-able, but I don't know if someone around here is familiar with the code itself. But whatever.

 

Poking around this issue, and glancing at the "AoE Deflection" code, it occurs to me that there's an install order problem. At least with IWDification, which is supposed to be installed after SR. Seems like:

1) IWDification should be installed after the SR main component, and AoE Deflection should be installed after IWDification (easy enough, though I generally try to avoid splitting mods if possible); and 2)

2) SR's AoE Deflection code should account for IWDification spells (I'm not sure it does - it should be using IDS names, but at a glance I didn't see that happening.)

[Bartimaeus]

I'm afraid I don't understand: Breach is almost literally just two opcode 221s (remove sectype) set to 2 and 7. So it's literally whatever spells have byte 0x27 set to 2 or 7. If a mod adds a spell that has sectype 2 or 7 that has a duration, it's sure to be Breachable.

[subtledoctor]

I'm afraid I don't understand: Breach is almost literally just two opcode 221s (remove sectype) set to 2 and 7. So it's literally whatever spells have byte 0x27 set to 2 or 7. If a mod adds a spell that has sectype 2 or 7 that has a duration, it's sure to be Breachable.

Sorry, i distracted myself. My first point was: which spells are coded as sectype 2 or 7? Because the answer to that question with SR installed is different from the answer to the question in the unmodded game. My goal is to simplify things, more or less by eliminating oddball exceptions to the rule that players must remember (like, with SR, remembering that Fire Shield and ProEvil are not breachable, whereas in the unmodded game they are). So I'm compiling a list of all buff spells (at least, all buff spells in BG/BG2/IWD) so I can manually set which buff is which sectype. I thought if SR had already done something like that, it could save me an hour of trawling through NI. But it's done now anyway.

 

Quite apart from that, any mod that adds AoE spells (say, IWDification's Produce Fire or Acid Storm), if it installed after SR then those spell will not be blocked by Spell Deflection. SR's "Spell Deflection Blocks AoE Spells" component must be installed after any other mods that add AoE spells. In addition, that component must recognize and patch those AoE spells... so I think it may not work at the moment even if you get the install order right. I noted it because I hadn't thought about it until now (didn't know how that component worked) and because I am mentally adding it to my list of things to fix for 4b16.

 

Another one: on EE 2.5+ Deflection spells need to be patched to use the new functionality in opcode 201.

 

Those two things are off-topic for this thread, admittedly - just noting them for my own purposes.

[subtledoctor]

Okay here's a rough cut. I think it is EE-only (there's a 328 effect or two in there), and it is meant to be installed only after SRv4 (an SR-agnostic version will take more time.). The goal here is to simplify the system without impairing the AI, and secondarily, to reduce the power of RM spam. Main features of the magic battle system with this installed:

 

- There is no GOI. The only spell protection is Deflection, with minor/normal/greater varieties at 3rd, 5th, and 7th levels. They block 7/14/21 spell levels, respectively, of 1st- through 9th-level spells.

 

- How many spell levels a Deflection can absorb actually matters. That is how low/mid-level magic attacks operate now: by burning off absorbed spell levels faster than normal spells do. Spell Thrust burns off 8 spell levels, Secret Word burns off 16 spell levels, and Pierce Magic burns off 24 spell levels' - so 5x Pierce will actually destroy a Spell Trap. High-level magic attacks (Ruby Ray +) are unchanged: they simply destroy a spell protection.

 

- Each 8 levels burned off takes 1 second to process. So Pierce Magic will destroy a Greater Spell Deflection, but it will take 3 seconds to happen.

 

- Deflection spells do not stack with each other. (And, I guess they don't stack with Spell Trap anymore... when did it get turned into a Deflection spell??). So the whole 'mage chess' gets boiled down to 1) how many levels of protection do you have (7/14/21/99) and 2) do you have a Spell Shield. 2 removal spells can make you vulnerable to Breach; with Dispelling Screen you have an extra layer of protection against Dispel Magic.

 

- Dispel (née Remove) Magic does not bypass spell protections; however, it burns off 8 spell levels rather than 3. This will utterly destroy a Minor Deflection, and do a fair amount of damage to a normal Deflection - especially considering that it is AoE.

 

- I recategorized most buff spells' sectypes. Combat Protections are basically anything that buffs your stats or makes you more dangerous in combat. Specific Protections are anything that gives you resistance to a category like "acid damage" or "magic" or a spell school. Combination Protections are summoned magical weapons and shapeshifts. Noncombat Protections are odd things like Luck or Regeneration. You can edit a simple 2da file to decide what spell falls into which category if you disagree with my changes. You can also edit a few variables in an .ini file to decide which categories can be Breached.

 

- I think SCS v31 AI should actually be pretty okay with these changes. The main mistake it might make is to cast DM against Greater Spell Deflection or Spell Trap. (Casting DM against Minor or normal Deflection is actually not a terrible idea.)

 

- I have only tested this as far as a bit of "pew pew!" action with Phlydia in Candlekeep. So don't do a 2-day mega install and hope you can use this flawlessly. But, on the other hand, if you'd like to mess around with it so see how the different mechanics play out... here you are.

Edited May 14, 2020 by subtledoctor

[Jarno Mikkola]

The only spell protection is Deflection... They block 7/14/21 spell levels ...

... so 5x Pierce will actually destroy a Spell Trap. High-level magic attacks (Ruby Ray +) are unchanged: they simply destroy a spell protection.

And how many spell levels does the Spell Trap "block" ? And what about ... "Spell Turning":

And there should be a minor version of that, as the greater is Spell Trap.

Edited October 12, 2018 by Jarno Mikkola