SCS: spell systems

[DavidW]

IIRC they're used for PC targeting. Look at stratagems/ssl/library.slb.

[Manatee]

I hadn't played this game for ages until recently. I remember breezing through the original game, but your mod is absolutely fabulous. I have a question though trying to create my perfect setup:

-The spell revisions mod has a lot of changes I like, but also a couple of changes I really don't.  What happens if I only install some of the spells combined with IWDification?
Is the AI eg going to try to attack me with knock spells? Or, even worse, does it corrupt the game? Or does the mod recognize the partial install
of the mod? Is there a difference with complex spells like Gate and spell immunity vs simple scaling changes? If I use the trick above (edit always.tp2) in order to ignore the SR install, does that simply imply that the AI is using a different version of the spell than my character? Thanks a lot! You truly lifted this game far beyond its original state.

 

[subtledoctor]

44 minutes ago, Manatee said:

Is the AI eg going to try to attack me with knock spells?

Probably this.  But, I'm not sure you would ever notice.  In the vast majority of cases SR spell changes are designed such that the behavior would be correct even is SCS had no idea SR was installed.  There are a very few exceptions to this: changing Knock to Battering Ram is one, changing Blindness to Obscuring Mist is another.  (As I said elsewhere, SR should have replaced Blindness with Sunscorch, which can blind the target anyway.)

I have SR in my current install and I have never once seen AI mages cast Battering Ram at me (though you might consider that @DavidW ).  Personally, I think you will get best results by doing the least amount of mod surgery possible - especially on SCS.  Maybe be more specific about which SR changes you are omitting, and we can tell you whether it will make a difference to SCS?

44 minutes ago, Manatee said:

If I use the trick above (edit always.tp2) in order to ignore the SR install, does that simply imply that the AI is using a different version of the spell than my character?

No, it would just mean that SCS would treat spells for tactical purposes as if they were their vanilla versions - expecting Blindness to be single-target instead of AoE.  In this case SCS would assume Knock is Knock, and refrain from casting it at you.  But OTOH even when SCS knows Knock is Battering Ram I still haven't seen it used.  So like I say, unless you point to a specific spell that might be problematic, my default would be to leave SCS alone and see how it performs.  It will probably be fine.

Edited July 29, 2020 by subtledoctor

[Guest Manatee]

Thank you very much! That was really helpful.

NB: Although I didn't try them yet, I have already discovered your mod. Really nice changes: including many things that you suddenly start to miss after having played with new rulesets.  Nevertheless I think I stick to SCS insane+ascension+ a couple of tweaks (from spell revision and tweak anthology and an ui overhaul) for my first real run in many many years. Will probably need a lot of reloads, but so much more fun than immortal autoattacking.

[kungfuhobbit]

What do Layene (Twisted Rune), Shade Lich and Elemental Lich use for weapon immunity from Dragon's Breath +4 halberd?

It lasted way longer than Absolute Immunity /PfMW should have. I couldnt see in fightlog or in bcs file.

[DavidW]

PfMW, almost certainly. I don't know why you didn't see it being renewed in the log.

[Luke]

@DavidW

As you know, Snilloc's Snowball Swarm causes extra damage against fire-using or fire-dwelling creatures.

Internally, this is coded using STAT RESISTFIRE > 100: it means that if I quaff two potions of Fire Resistance in a row, then I'll qualify as fire-using or fire-dwelling creature. Is it intended...?

At least on EE games, attaching a spell state to fire-using / fire-dwelling creatures (instead of relying upon STAT RESISTFIRE) would probably be more accurate...

[DavidW]

This is a direct port from IWDEE. Fixing bugs in IWDEE is outside SCS’s scope, unless they’re really critical, not least because for all I know they’ll be fixed in 2.6 anyway.

[Luke]

2 hours ago, DavidW said:

Fixing bugs in IWDEE is outside SCS’s scope...

I know, but I'm not sure this is really a bug... I mean, it does sound like a crude way to identify fire-using / fire-dwelling creatures.

That's why I said "more accurate"...

[subtledoctor]

Following up on something from a few months ago, for the sake of anyone else thinking about it:

On 5/31/2020 at 1:54 PM, subtledoctor said:

IWD spells add a bunch of new things that the AI can use, whereas SR actually adds fairly little.  I'm not sure how the AI re-prioritizes things for SR.  But I feel like an AI that basically ignores SR and focuses on utilizing IWD spells would still capture a lot of the benefits of SR (since a lot of SR involves IWD spells or outright substitutions).  And crucially, it would have things like priests using Impervious Sanctity of Mind and Entropy Shield for spell protections, which I gather won't happen with a purely SR-focused AI.

 

On 5/31/2020 at 2:31 PM, DavidW said:

If you want to try this, a better way (at your own risk!) would be to edit lib/always.tph.

Firstly, find the block starting at line 140, that sets the variables base_folder_spells_mage and base_folder_spells_priest. Edit the logic so that it sets them to 'iwd' even if demivrgvs=1. (That controls which lists mage and priest spells are selected from.

Secondly, find this line, at line 400:

OUTER_SPRINT ~sslvariables~ ~%sslvariables%~^~&~^~Demivrgvs=True~

Comment it out. Then SCS's AI scripts won't know about SR.

So I finally got around to trying this.  I'm not sure it's a great idea, as I saw some errors in the "Smarter Mages" component:

SCS's 'mage_edits_main' function has encountered a file it doesn't know how to patch, DW#LICH1.CRE (probably the file was broken by a previous mod). The error message was 'Not_found'. SCS has skipped it and continued with installation, but this may cause instabilities.

It happened to enough creatures (about 20-30) that I don't feel comfortable proceeding into a 100-hour game.  But, I didn't see any such errors with the "Smarter Priests" component, and the changes SCS makes to IWD priest spells are more substantial and more interesting than the ones it makes to IWD arcane spells.  So I reinstalled, and edited the block near line 140 of lib/always.tph such that "base_folder_priest" is "iwd" even if demivrgvs is 1, but kept "base_folder_mage" as "demivrgvs."

Then I installed the. AI components, and there were no hiccups.  So hopefully, this should mean that SCS mages will use the SR-oriented spell lists and scripts, while SCS priests will use the IWD-oriented spell lists and scripts, including, crucially, stuff like Entropy Shield and Impervious Sanctity of Mind.

Soon to start playing.  I'll report here if I notice that it does, or doesn't, go according to plan.

[Guest Obtuse User]

@subtledoctor How did this experiment happen to go? Any update?

[Luke]

@DavidW

Just a FYI: your tweak Antimagic attacks penetrate improved invisibility will be official behavior on EE games when the 2.6 patch drops...

[Betonmischer]

Sorry if this has been discussed before and I didn't notice. I tried to make my EasyTutu as close to the original BG1 as possible, so I went with the option to remove access to BG2 spells during SCS installation. Turns out while the player is prevented from using those new spells, enemy mages are still perfectly able to use ones like Melf's Minute Meteors and Stoneskin on higher AI difficulties. More importantly, as we didn't have dedicated spell protection removal spells in the original BG1 repertoire and the BG2 version of Dispel Magic coming from EasyTutu don't act as one (contrary to vanilla BG1), mage duels end up being hugely imbalanced against the player. For instance, It took me countless reloads to beat the mages guarding Cloakwood Mines with zero means to take down their Minor Globes of Invulnerability. Am I missing something or is it the intended behaviour of SCS as of the current version?

If it is, I would propose for the SCS AI component to recognise vanilla BG1 spell limitations (if those are present, and revert BG1 spells to their original mechanics should the player choose to remove BG2 spells).

[Guest Mad Wizzzard]

If i whant all of SCS but not the nerfs to the spell like melf's minute meteors and that chant slows. How do I go about that?

I like SCS and Ascension, I feel it is the way to go. But I what unerfed spells.

Can I skip the spell component of SCS and use the IWDification? Or will it fuck the game?

[Graion Dilach]

IWDification is fully supported and has a few bugfixes in the spell import library SCS lacks (because they were added to the library since the last release). It is better to use that mod atm.

The spell nerfs aren't part of the IWD components, but SCS 5900. You can attempt tricking the mod into assuming Spell Revisions is installed which skips the spell changes via placing a dvimhere.mrk file to your override folder, but there are some SR fixes which would be installed on that path and notsure how would that roll out. I wouldn't really advise this - a lot of mods has checks for SR obviously -, nor did I tested this. If this breaks the mod, then avoiding the spell changes is unavoidable.