My new "Made in Heaven" mods

[Angel]

On 1/15/2020 at 11:42 AM, Arthas said:

Happy to hear about it!

Have you thought about tweaks of the zombie farm ?

Indeed I have, but I haven't gotten around to testing it yet.  In short, there will be 40 zombies, and they are all juju-zombies with 8 HD (immune to normal weapons, half damage from most spells).  They should be roughly as tough as ankhegs.  I'm still pondering on some sort of follow-up encounter that goes into where the zombies came from.

[subtledoctor]

On 1/7/2020 at 3:26 PM, Angel said:

 If you have specific concerns about some of my items or spells, please do share them, I am very curious to hear.

I don't think it's bad, balance-wise.  (And I'm only going off the docs, so I might not have an accurate read on what the spells are like in-game.)  There are just a few things that sort of jump out at me

• Lots of better versions of Magic Missile, improving on the part of MM that was already its most OP aspect (lots and lots of projectiles)
• Improved Magic Missile being identical up to 9th level seems weird, a 3rd-level spell being exactly the same as a 1st-level spell for all of BG1?  Maybe just have it make ~3 more missiles at the same level, or something.  (So 6 vs. 3 at 5th level, and 8 vs. 5 at 9th level.)
• Otiluke's Acid Cloud seems superior to Cloudkill, at a lower level
• Spell Matrix seems identical to Minor Spell Sequencer, doing the same thing but better, at the same level?
• The damage for Ball Lightning seems kind of high - 4d12 at 5th level, 8d12 at 10th level, 12d12 at 15th level, when Lightning Bolt does 5d6/10d6/10d6.  At 20th level this 3rd-level spell can do over 200 electrical damage, which could be a fair amount stronger than 8th-level Deathbolt.
• Deathbolt seems juts like Finger of Death, but it is a necromancy spell that does electrical damage, for what reason I don't know except that metagaming, I suppose few enemies are resistant to that damage type?
• Faerie Sword is cool, but actually seems kind of better than Black Blade of Destruction which is 9th-level magic

In general though I like the spells - aside from the... focus... on magic missiles, they seem pretty cool.  I like that you added Evard's Black Tentacles, it seems like a classic spell to me (was it in the PHB?) and is a nice wizard's answer to priests' Spike Growth and Spike Stones.

Edited January 16, 2020 by subtledoctor

[Angel]

• Lots of better versions of Magic Missile, improving on the part of MM that was already its most OP aspect (lots and lots of projectiles)

I'm considering dropping the Lesser/Greater Missile Storm, I have trouble getting them right anyway.  They are from Neverwinter Nights, by the way.

• Improved Magic Missile being identical up to 9th level seems weird, a 3rd-level spell being exactly the same as a 1st-level spell for all of BG1?  Maybe just have it make ~3 more missiles at the same level, or something.  (So 6 vs. 3 at 5th level, and 8 vs. 5 at 9th level.)

This one is actual P&P Forgotten Realms material.  That really is how it works.  The Wizard's Compendium even states this fact.  And you can't get it in BG1, it's a rare spell and is only available in a few somewhat hidden places, the first being late in Siege of Dragonspear when your wizard is likely 10th or 11th.

• Otiluke's Acid Cloud seems superior to Cloudkill, at a lower level

The cloud is much smaller.  But yeah, not happy with this one.  I'd trade it for Scintillating Sphere if I knew how to make a projectile for that one.

• Spell Matrix seems identical to Minor Spell Sequencer, doing the same thing but better, at the same level?

Spell Matrix is 5th level, Minor Sequencer is 4th.  And yes, this one is also P&P.  Ironically in P&P all sequencer spells are unique to The Symbul, they should not be as wide spread as BG2 makes them.   Anyway, I just thought it nicely filled the gap, all spell levels from 4th to 9th have one sequencer/contingency spell except 5th. ^^

• The damage for Ball Lightning seems kind of high - 4d12 at 5th level, 8d12 at 10th level, 12d12 at 15th level, when Lightning Bolt does 5d6/10d6/10d6.  At 20th level this 3rd-level spell can do over 200 electrical damage, which could be a fair amount stronger than 8th-level Deathbolt.

Mm, fair point, although there is a drawback the description doesn't mention, the balls are very slow.  Also, they hit only one target each while Lightning Bolt can hit many in one discharge, especially if it rebounds.   Oh, and the theoretical maximum is "only" 192 (16x12), not over 200. ^^  Still I should perhaps tone it down a notch.  Maybe have the versions with more balls do less damage per ball?  That would be on par with the source material...

• Deathbolt seems just like Finger of Death, but it is a necromancy spell that does electrical damage, for what reason I don't know except that metagaming, I suppose few enemies are resistant to that damage type?

This one is straight from PST down to the projectile and all.  And they in turn got it straight from P&P, it is an existing spell in the Forgotten Realms (from the Shining South).  To be honest, my main reason for including it is sheer coolness factor, I'm well aware of how similar to Finger of Death it is.  It does deal more damage though. ^^

• Faerie Sword is cool, but actually seems kind of better than Black Blade of Destruction which is 9th-level magic

I haven't done much testing with this one yet, so I am not too certain of how good or bad it really is.  Anyway, this is a P&P spell, it's elven high magic from Elves of Evermeet.  Maybe I should give it to our favorite fallen high mage. ^^

• In general though I like the spells - aside from the... focus... on magic missiles, they seem pretty cool.  I like that you added Evard's Black Tentacles, it seems like a classic spell to me (was it in the PHB?) and is a nice wizard's answer to priests' Spike Growth and Spike Stones.

Yes, Black Tentacles was a PHB spell even in 2nd edition (maybe even in 1st?).  The enemies should just be glad I didn't make it Vaarsuvius' Spiked Tentacles of Forced Intrusion.

[kjeron]

2 hours ago, Angel said:

• I'd trade it for Scintillating Sphere if I knew how to make a projectile for that one.

Can you elaborate on the projectile?

[Angel]

11 minutes ago, kjeron said:

Can you elaborate on the projectile?

Scintillating Sphere is basically an electrical version of Fireball, used in the Halruua region of the Forgotten Realms (The Shining South).  This is the description from the Wizard's Compendium: "This spell caused a grape-sized sphere to appear near the caster.  The sphere then travels in a straight line at high speed to a location in the sight of the caster.  Upon reaching this location, the sphere pulses outwards twice and then disappears."  The picture on the same page shows someone getting blasted by multiple arcs of lightning.

[kjeron]

Okay, that's the description I was looking at as well.

Give these a try.

Add the projectiles to PROJECTL.IDS and assign each to it's respective spell (SCINT1.PRO -> SCINT1.SPL, SCINT2.PRO -> SCINT2.SPL).

Cast SCINT1.SPL at a location.

It will explode twice: the first explosion will reach it's apex before imploding back into itself, after which the second (damaging) explosion will occur.

(The animation used is just a recolored ELECTRH.BAM from IWDEE).

SCINT.zip

[Angel]

17 hours ago, kjeron said:

Okay, that's the description I was looking at as well.

Give these a try.

Oh my, that looks nice!  I'll have to fiddle a bit to fit it in, but that shouldn't be any trouble.  Thank you so much!

[subtledoctor]

2 hours ago, Angel said:

[stuff]

Cool. As I say, I like most of the spells and a lot of them would actually be right at home in Spell Revisions (which is high praise). 

Just a very minor note, the documentation shows Spell Matrix as 4th level, not 5th - which is the cause of my remarking on it above. At 5th level it makes perfect sense. 

[Chitown Willie]

On 1/15/2020 at 4:35 AM, Angel said:

For those curious about what I am up to, I am currently working on new versions of MiH Item Pack, MiH Spell Pack and MiH Encounters & Quests.  This will be a massive rewrite that uses @DavidW's SFO (and in a few places SSL) library, like SCS, Wheels and aTweaks do.  Item Pack and Spell Pack are almost finished, and I'm about halfway with Encounters & Quests, the mod that will profit the most from using SFO and SSL.

Thanks for the update.

Is the rewrite for behind-the-scenes purposes - or is it something from which the end-user will benefit?

[Angel]

19 minutes ago, subtledoctor said:

Cool. As I say, I like most of the spells and a lot of them would actually be right at home in Spell Revisions (which is high praise). 

Just a very minor note, the documentation shows Spell Matrix as 4th level, not 5th - which is the cause of my remarking on it above. At 5th level it makes perfect sense. 

Alright, that is indeed a little typo.  I'll correct it in the next release.  I need to revise the documentation sometime anyway.

And thank you for the compliment, it's nice to see that my work is being appreciated.

There are only two spells that I completely made up myself, Ramazith's Slime Summons and Major Globe of Invulnerability.  Everything else is either from other games (PST and Neverwinter Nights) or from official source material.

[Angel]

6 minutes ago, Chitown Willie said:

Is the rewrite for behind-the-scenes purposes - or is it something from which the end-user will benefit?

Well, hopefully it will lead to better code and a more stable and compatible mod!  But most is behind the scenes, I haven't planned any major changes in content.  Although that doesn't mean I won't make any. ^^

[Angel]

11 minutes ago, Arthas said:

Angel, I ask for your help: bg1 quest and encounters makes it possible to fry a spider egg and make it a headgem that makes you immune to hold.

In BGT, it also means immunity from critical hits.
In BGEE, it doesn't.

What immunity would you provide? Or is there any special opcode that would make the gem protect from critical hits?

Internally, ioun stones (which is what the spider egg becomes) are implemented as helmets, and the old engine was hard-coded to block critical hits on creatures wearing any kind of helmet, even an ioun stone.  A "toggle" bit to turn critical hit protection off for helmets (and on for other items) was implemented by the ToBEx hack, and this same fix also made it into the EE engine.  So yes, in EE ioun stones will not provide critical hit protection, including the core ones.

As for what it should be, well, critical hit protection from helmets is non-canon to begin with but it makes sense to me.  After all, critical hits involve getting a lucky blow on an especially vulnerable area of the body and the head is an obvious one.  Think of head shots in first person shooters, for instance.  Anything that is not covering the head should not provide critical hit protection IMHO.  The ioun stones from my item pack will also not protect you from critical hits in EE or BG2/BGT with ToBEx (and without ToBEx, my mods will not function properly).

[Angel]

5 hours ago, Arthas said:

1) The weapon "Bala's axe" is not available into BGT/classical BG2, while it's there on BG:EE
2) Kiel's helmet is missing from BG2 (both versions)
3) It would be cool if you could release a "special" plugin that adds back the "artifacts", like Durlag's goblet.

That's more the terrain of Unfinished Business, but well, I maintain that one too. ^^

Bala's Axe is restored by UB (it's in the Planar Sphere, I remember because I had to add code to not duplicate it on BGEE), would have to check for the others.  There are more of then, like "The Practical Defense" plate mail +3, Kiel's Buckler and "The World's Edge" two-handed sword +3.  In many cases, these are already equaled or superseded by other items,  for example the Doom Plate +3 found in Spellhold has exactly the same stats as The Practical Defense (I like the latter for its cooler look though), and Lilarcor is much better (and funnier) than The World's Edge.

In other cases, other mods already restore them and we could end up with duplicates.  I know there are at least two mods that restore Kiel's Buckler (Rogue Rebalancing is one of them), and I am pretty sure I saw The Practical Defense in a mod once too.

As for Durlag's Goblet, I suppose it would be fair to at least import it into Chateau Irenicus if not all charges had been used in BG1/SoD, but it being a unique artifact I'm a little wary about placing it fresh somewhere.

[subtledoctor]

1 hour ago, Angel said:

That's more the terrain of Unfinished Business, but well, I maintain that one too. ^^

Bala's Axe is restored by UB (it's in the Planar Sphere, I remember because I had to add code to not duplicate it on BGEE), would have to check for the others.  There are more of then, like "The Practical Defense" plate mail +3, Kiel's Buckler and "The World's Edge" two-handed sword +3.  In many cases, these are already equaled or superseded by other items,  for example the Doom Plate +3 found in Spellhold has exactly the same stats as The Practical Defense (I like the latter for its cooler look though), and Lilarcor is much better (and funnier) than The World's Edge.

In other cases, other mods already restore them and we could end up with duplicates.  I know there are at least two mods that restore Kiel's Buckler (Rogue Rebalancing is one of them), and I am pretty sure I saw The Practical Defense in a mod once too.

As for Durlag's Goblet, I suppose it would be fair to at least import it into Chateau Irenicus if not all charges had been used in BG1/SoD, but it being a unique artifact I'm a little wary about placing it fresh somewhere.

It really doesn't seem like the kind of thing that would be left lying around... (I mean that's true of a lot of things, but that one in particular.)

Also, separately, that item is a real game-breaker that was pretty clearly designed to only be used in the last few minutes of the game (a game in which the Cavalier and Blackguard did not exist).  Having it for all of BG2 would just be tantamount to going through the whole game pressing 'ctrl-R' on people.  Fear immunity is not exactly difficult to come by in the sequel...

[Angel]

On 1/24/2020 at 8:51 PM, Arthas said:

1) Angel, what do you think about upgraded Koveras Ring and Semaj's robe inside BGT tweak?

They always seemed kinda random to me, so I usually didn't install them.  The ring is also significantly more powerful than anything else you can get for quite a while.

On 1/24/2020 at 8:51 PM, Arthas said:

2) Do you think that Questpack Ai improvements work well together with your tactical enhancements? What about Questpack creature improvements? I can forsake the creature improvements, but I would like to keep using the ai improvements.

I've not encountered any issues myself., and Quest Pack has been a staple in my mod stack for many years.  I actually don't do that much with AI at all, my modifications are usually about adding or replacing creatures, or altering their stats.  Basically I do what SCS (usually) does not.