Unearthed Arcana presents Faiths & Powers: Gods of the Realms

[Graion Dilach]

@ahungry The following mods also add spells to the game which you're overlooking: TDDz, DSotSC, Region of Terror and god knows what the other Roxannetrashmods add as well (CtB adds spells, so it would make sense her cutups also add those). It is possible that all these mods combined end up reaching the spell count.

[ahungry]

8 minutes ago, Graion Dilach said:

@ahungry The following mods also add spells to the game which you're overlooking: TDDz, DSotSC, Region of Terror and god knows what the other Roxannetrashmods add as well (CtB adds spells, so it would make sense her cutups also add those). It is possible that all these mods combined end up reaching the spell count.

Ah, thanks @Graion Dilach - I didn't consider that quest/npc mods would be changing much in the way of spells - back in the 2000s, I had tried some BWP megamod stuff, and in the last few months I've done the following setups:

- vanilla (beamdog EE)

-  EET + SCS + various tweaks

-  EET + SCS + Unearthed Arcana stuff  + tweaks

Now I'm trying to go ad-hoc megamod with a bunch of the "big" mods/quest mods/npc mods to create a "unique" experience (or more like, see why certain mods are so despised/negatively reviewed, and what the harsh criticisms are about)

I'm guessing spell.ids is locked to 99 spells (per level?)

Seems like mods should be very explicit about how many spells (per level) they add to the game, so a player can check how much room they have pre-install.

Is the limit separate between mage/priest spells, or combined?

[subtledoctor]

The total number of spells of each type, at each level, which are in SPELL.IDS, cannot exceed 50. It's not 100% accurate but the simplest way to find out is to simply look at all the " SPPR___" files. In a bog-standard BGEE 2.6 game, the 1st-level spells go from SPPR01 to SPPR13, and then there is SPPR50 (the "SPPR_50" spells are the special shaman spells, at each spell level.) Of spell levels 1-6, 3rd level has the most spells, going up to SPPR319, which means there is room for 30 more 3rd-level priest spells to be added by mods. The other spell levels range from 13 to 17 spells. The exception is 7th level, which includes HLAs for no good reason. (Really, any mod adding spells should run standardized function moving all the HLA files out of SPELL.IDS and dynamically changing HLA tables to point to the new files.)

BG2EE with IWD Spells and Spell Rev goes to these limits:

• SPPR124
• SPPR223
• SPPR336
• SPPR431
• SPPR532
• SPPR622
• SPPR740

So there's room for 9 more 7th-level spells, and 13 3rd-level spells. (3rd-level priest spells must really popular!)

I'll add the FnP sphere system component to that mix and check the results:

• SPPR133 (+9)
• SPPR230 (+7)
• SPPR342 (+6)
• SPPR432 (+1)
• SPPR534 (+2)
• SPPR625 (+3)
• SPPR742 (+2)

Again 3rd-level spells seem to be the tight spot; there is only room for 7 more to be added before you hit the "couldn't add to spell.ids" install error. You can check for yourself how many spells there are at each  If MIH adds more than 7 3rd-level spells, (or more than 15 5th-level spells, or whatever) then there you go.  It's not MIH's fault; its a problem with all the various mods that add new spells this way, when used all together.

Now, I have a few things to say about this, most of which I've said before.

First: I don't have that much sympathy for mods that just add new spells for the sake of having lots of spells. Enemies won't use them, SCS AI won't consider them, they won't add anything to the tactical nature of the way encounters play out in these games. They are basically shiny new toys to play with. And don't get me wrong, shiny toys are cool, but... not that cool. I prefer the approach of, say, Spell Rev or my own Random Tweaks mod, which replaces various underwhelming spells with better ones. This adds shiny new toys that are already integrated into the game. (Recent versions of SR have been replacing fewer spells and adding more via ADD_SPELL, a change to which I objected, but I was outvoted.)

Edited to add - nevertheless I don't mean to discourage people like Angel, MIH seems to be good stuff. I really have zero sympathy for the junky old "mega" mods that add poorly-written quests, 1-dimensional NPCs, crappy combat encounters, a million uber magical artifacts, and for no good reason, gum up spell.ids with spells that don't need to be there.

Second: at some point I did ask that Weidu not be so tight-assed about this error. if two spells can't be installed, so be it, why not add the other 15 spells and the rest of the mod and move along? It's ridiculous that this error should prevent something like FnP's sphere system from installing. The answer I got was that things will stay as they are, because if the mod installed but a spell is not included, there might be kits, NPCs, scripts etc. that rely on that spell. It's not quite so clear-cut as "just move on and keep installing the mod. (I'm not entirely convinced by this, because when I tried to implement this myself, I ran up against Weidu's "TRY" command which is the most inscrutable thing I have ever seen.)

Third: FnP's sphere system does not need spells to be in SPELL.IDS. It can work perfectly fine with plain-jane RES filenames, of any sort. The spells that I made for the sphere system do not use ADD_SPELL for this very reason - I try to save precious IDS slots for other mods to use. But some of the FnP spells are from Grammarsalad's "b_Spells" mod, and it's not easy to strip out their ADD_SPELL code because it is meant to be a drop-in replication of an independent mod that is not connected to a sphere system.

So, there are not a ton of of good answers. Olvynchuru has created a function to bypass the SPELL.IDS limits, but it relies on UI modding which can be a bit less reliable, and it cripples various other mods that a need to be able to poll all the spells available to the player. The Beamdog devs could, I expect, increase the IDS limit from 50 to 60 or 75 or 99, but let's be honest there have been 6 patches in the last 8 years and requests like this just don't seem to ever get on their radar unless it's a personal pet favorite feature of Camdawg/Wisp/Galactygon/etc.

If you just want to keep your spells and install the FnP sphere system and sacrifice the new FnP spells, then you can try adding a double-slash " // " at the beginning of line 159 of faiths_and_powers.tp2 ("LAM v78_add_fnP_new_spells"). That might let the mod install... but just be aware I balanced the sphere system with those spells in mind and I don't know what it will look like without them.

Edited January 14, 2022 by subtledoctor

[ahungry]

@subtledoctor is there a CLUAConsole command, or an ability I can add via eekeeper to bring up the Select Deity innate ability that's used in installs without the fnp_multiclass?

I was hoping adding fnp_multiclass would ensure the Shadow Adept Mage/Cleric dual received spells, but with F&P "AD&D" sphere system (option 2) that combo still only has around 1 basic cleric spell per level (none of the spheres).

I also notice Cleric/Ranger is in the same boat (no spheres at all), as well as the Monastic Orders Monk+F&P cleric combos (without fnp_multiclass, I could do a specialist monk from monastic, like broken one + cleric, and choose a deity after entering the game).

Being able to force the Select Deity dialogue or innate ability would save a lot of time in manually adding the missing spells.

[subtledoctor]

Spells are added by kit abilities in a kit table. So deity access is tied to kits. FnP_Multi adds a bunch of multiclass kits - a deity-based cleric kit combined with another base class. So there are several ranger/cleric kits that get spells. These kit are in the multiclass class-choice menus. What you won’t see is something like a Stalker/cleric, because notice that there us no deity assigned to the cleric half. No deity, no spheres; no spheres, no spells. 

It’s possible to give a default set of spheres to ‘generalist’ clerics (even though IIRC no such class really exists in Forgotten Realms)... but it gets really tricky, and super frustrating, because of the way trueclass kit tables are hard-coded to interact with multiclass kits. It’s just not feasible to account for every possible weird edge case players want to try. 

In particular, the Shadow Magic kits have a lot of unusual traits and whole newly-created game mechanisms just for them. E.g. they have their own proprietary system for attribute-based bonus spells, which conflicts pretty hard with the Scales of Balance one. Ditto 5E casting. The only thing I can do is leave the shadow magic kits alone, excluding them from many of my mods’ systems and letting them do their own thing according to their author’s vision. 

I’m surprised you can see the old dialogue-based deity-choice ability. That was designed for use with the 1.3 patch way back in like 2014. Once 2.0 let us put multiclass kits in the menus, we stopped using it and excised it from the mod. Nobody has looked at it in over 5 years, I do not predict good things happening to your game if you try to shoehorn it in. A better option would be to install NPC_EE or SCS NPC customization, and giving the customization ability to Charname via console. This is quite easy with NPC_EE (just give Charname D5_CKIT.SPL); I have no idea if it’s possible with SCS.

But that will not necessarily help you because remember: choosing a deity for sphere access means choosing a kit. Those various methods to choose a deity in-game will change your kit. A creature can only have one kit, so if you try this on a Shadow Adept/cleric, you would lose your Shadow Adept kit and probably be left with a rather buggy character. 

What should happen is, if the Shadow Magic adds a proper SA/cleric multiclass kit (not a M/C with the Shadow Adept single-class kit), that mod could include some ready-made code to leave instructions for sphere access in place in case FnP is installed later. FnP itself includes this for several dozen kits from other mods, but I can’t cover every mod out there and I’m not familiar enough with Shadow Magic. My rough understanding was, Shadow Magic clerics have their own mechanisms for obtaining spells. 

EDIT - if you want to force FnP spells on other kits, rather than adding spells manually, you can look at the kit ability .2da table for an FnP kit and see how spheres are added - the entries like “AP_D5SPLIF” (that “P” in the 6th place means sphere access; “M” means minor access and “F” means focus access). Save your game, add entries like this in the column one level higher than your current level. Go into the game, level up, and you’ll get your spells.

EDIT 2 - though, that will only work if you have a single-class kit. If you have a true multiclass kit then you would need to modify (add some 177 effects to) the QD_MC[]## spells, which is more complicated. Like I say, a mod interacting with this many systems, many of them hard-coded, cannot cover every non-standard edge case. It adds over 200 divine kits and supports dozens more. The assumption is that players will find something satisfactory among them. 

Edited January 15, 2022 by subtledoctor

[Guest Gushwender]

I don't know how to feel about this mod. The creativity and imagination behind it is stellar, and has so much potential. I'm pretty conflicted. It seems to have found its way through the cracks of the G3 modding community and garnered seemingly such high praise, which led me to trying it out. I'm actually a bit disappointed that someone who clearly has such a creative mind and interesting ideas has blundered the execution so heavily by making this mod nigh unplayable in its current state. I had high expectations given the scope of the mod, but the mod feels several halflings short of an ogre.

I'm sorry but the creativity and excitement of this mod is overshadowed by the solemn fact that this mod is ridiculously haphazard and unorganized. This is before mentioning the slew of bugs and inconsistencies that make it near impossible to perform a clean install or run through an entire playthrough using it. Which begs the question: has anyone ever actually finished a full playthrough with this mod? Has that been tested before release? Or—as evident by the entirety of the mod's atrocious grammar, spelling, inconsistent ruling language, unfinished descriptions, lack of readability, etc.—was it just thrown together with fingers crossed?

To be specific, I have installed this mod alongside T&B, M&G, and SCS, and each every time, no matter the components I select, there are endless issues on trying to get the mods to work together (let alone by themselves). I follow the mod load order suggested in the readme, on the most recent patch of BGEE, with the most recent version of every mod. My mod list is very standard, and follows the Readme order, with no components installed that should interfere with these 3 signature subtledoctor mods:

AC_Quest
BGQE
SoA
ChattyImoen
Voicepacks
MSFM (no familiars component installed)
Song & Silence
Tome & Blood (which could not install the multi-class sorcerer despite no obvious conflicts with other mods)
Faiths & Powers (don't get me started on the fact that it asked me to move the .tp2 file to my directory and didn't include a readme in the installation(and the fact that despite the existence of a .tp2 file for setup_faiths_and_powers_multiclass, the setup cannot locate its own .tp2 file when run, even when placed in the directory directly))
Might & Guile (singlehandedly broke my install on three separate occasions, only way I found out was through version control of my directory, with the game working perfectly fine with all the other mods (with the exception of the other subtledoctor mods))
Tweaks Anthology (no tweaks to proficiency system, spellcasting rules, or anything that otherwise might interfere with the new spell system (even though the tweak mod shouldn't have issues, I err on the side of caution)
Sword Coast Stratagems (SCS)

I can't bring myself to say much more than what is painfully obvious when running the mod at the moment. I've been monkeying with my install for several days, and am too tired to try again. I sincerely hope to have the time and patience to add a greater rundown of the mods in question, as I believe in their current state they need a serious overhaul to be worthwhile. But having spent these few days poring over modded content, thirsty for some good homebrew, and finding whatever these mods are instead, I doubt I will return. I can see that a lot of time and effort has been spent on these mods, but I cannot say I agree that it was energy well-spent. It seems more like pure happenstance that these mods received any popularity at all with the lack of self-awareness they contain. It must be Tymora's blessing. Whatever the case, I feel like I've permanently lost a section of my brain after installing these mods.

In closing, I bestow upon you the words of Thalantyr, mighty mage of Beregost: I wish you intelligence, because luck runs out.

[subtledoctor]

Thanks for the feedback! Unfortunately, this is an example of what is called "not good" feedback.

34 minutes ago, Guest Gushwender said:

the slew of bugs and inconsistencies that make it near impossible to perform a clean install

Weird, because I just did that about an hour ago, with no problems.

34 minutes ago, Guest Gushwender said:

atrocious grammar, spelling,

Examples? No? Okay.

34 minutes ago, Guest Gushwender said:

Which begs the question: has anyone ever actually finished a full playthrough with this mod?

Several times. (Also it does not "beg the question," it perhaps raises the question.)

34 minutes ago, Guest Gushwender said:

To be specific,

I have seen almost no specificity in this entire post.

34 minutes ago, Guest Gushwender said:

Tome & Blood (which could not install the multi-class sorcerer despite no obvious conflicts with other mods)

Yes as noted in that thread there was a two-character typo in one recent release, which has already been fixed. This is fairly specific so I'll give you this one.

34 minutes ago, Guest Gushwender said:

Might & Guile (singlehandedly broke my install on three separate occasions)

Examples? Specifics? No? Okay.

34 minutes ago, Guest Gushwender said:

despite the existence of a .tp2 file for setup_faiths_and_powers_multiclass, the setup cannot locate its own .tp2 file when run

Now that is specific, good feedback! Thanks for mentioning that! A quick perusal reveals that when the SD branch was merged into the main branch, the multiclass .exe installer file was not renamed to match the new version of the mod folder and .tp2 file. I mod and play on a Mac so i have no use for all those .exe files, which is why it got past me. Super easy fix btw - just rename one file! As bugs in a huge mod go, this is  a joy to hear because the fix is almost effortless. (EDIT - I just did it while writing this post. )

34 minutes ago, Guest Gushwender said:

I can't bring myself to say much more than what is painfully obvious when running the mod at the moment.

FYI, things that you don't actually say are not painfully obvious. I'm in the  late stages of a BG2 run right now and what obvious to me is that it is awesome and I enjoy it. (Though not having any priests with Chaotic Commands is a bit unfortunate...)

If you have complaints or suggestions but for whatever reason you "can't bring yourself to say" them, then they will not be addressed. That, at least, should be "painfully obvious."

34 minutes ago, Guest Gushwender said:

I can see that a lot of time and effort has been spent on these mods, but I cannot say I agree that it was energy well-spent.

They make my game better. Anything else is just gravy. Maybe you just don't like gravy?

I wish you luck, because... well...

------------

p.s. Temnix?? Zat you?

Edited February 8, 2022 by subtledoctor

[Gwaihir]

I was hoping for a reply. I was not disappointed.

[ahungry]

I use mods in this order - I've installed/reinstalled many times to make adjustments to the setup:

• EET
• Ascension
• General purpose (rogue revisions, cdlore, a7-achievements, g3-anniversary etc.)
• item packs / forgers (thalan etc.)
• quest / npc mods (atm I'm using a whole lot)
• item-rev
• spell-rev
• Tome and Blood (UA)
• Monastic Orders (UA-ish?)
• Artisan Kitpack (and other mods from Artemius - shadowadept etc.)
• Divine Remix (no spheres - some install attempts said they were incompatible with eet, while others tried to install them for some reason)
• Faiths and Powers (UA) - no spheres - I really like the idea, but it has complications with working in tandem with other mods (as I noted on previous comments) so I'm mostly using it for the special kits/multi-class kits
• Might and Guile
• FnP Multiclass (the install was tricky for me - I've had the best luck with a git clone of the repo, and installing off of that, as the release I happened to download didn't have a distinct fnp_multiclass directory - but given my first FnP attempt had the deity innate, and that was stated to be quite old - I must have downloaded some old release)
• EET_end
• Stratagems (SCS)
• Various tweak mods including EET_Tweaks
• Scales of Balance (UA)
• npc_ee (UA)
• randomiser (item)

As you can see, I'm leaning heavily into mods @subtledoctor created or assists with - I've hit a few snags/oddities, but they were all easy to work around and are in my comment history, or I figured out on my own how to avoid the issue, and most aren't any fault of the UA mods, but just mods not being able to account for every variation of installed mods (although the cross-mod support is quite good).

The biggest problems I've noticed in my setups, related to UA mods are:

• Sphere system and other mod custom kits do not mesh well, as the 'vanilla' spells will be missing and you'll find clerics with nothing but Cure Wounds or w/e the level 1 heal is, but you'll still have tons of kits/combos to play around with - an easier way to 'choose deity' in these circumstances can fix it also (npc_ee)
• The Might and Guile multiclass-bards component never installed for me in the shipped releases, so I updated/patched the tp2/tpa file myself to account for the bug - now it works
• The T&B component for changed rings of wizardry never seemed to work - neither sorcerers (classical casting) or mage casters received more casts of spells - leaving the component uninstalled, and it works fine on wizards
• 5e casting (in mod or as the dedicated module) had issues similar to sphere system, in that I had mod incompatability issues - spells from spell_rev or other mods wouldn't work as they were not known by the special casting system - this caused spell selection to be limited and cumbersome (I would 'memorize' a spell, and it wouldn't appear in the spell selection)
• Monastic Orders (UA based I believe, but not by subledoctor) hasn't been updated for awhile - "qdmfist.itm" does not work with BGEE 2.6 - I fixed the .itm file in NearInfinity and added to a github PR, but the mod is undergoing some changes - I save this file locally and add to MonasticOrders/ before installing the module - now I have the fix
• Some of the Tome and Blood abilities are confusing/undocumented (or I missed them) - I see some casters have improvised casting or something, but I haven't been able to figure out what this is/does (I toggle it on and keep casting as normal - maybe its 5e casting related)

Now, compared to the scope of what is being added with these mods - these are the tiniest of issues and barely worth noting (and every single one of them was resolvable on my own, with some help/input from this forum).

Edited February 9, 2022 by ahungry

[Cahir]

Weird, I was trying subtledoctor's mods a while ago and didn't find them unplayable. Have I done something wrong? 

My one tiny issue with your mods is that while those are stellar and creative in terms of coding, the writing is sometimes...sloppy. Don't get me wrong, I absolutely don't mean it's bad or something. If I could describe my feelings about it, is that I can imagine you are being excited to find some new ways to code stuff only to be annoyed, that you need to actually write some background text to it I can't give any example now, because I'm currently not working on any installation, and since the writing style is very personal matter (and I repeat it's perfectly fine as it is, it's not the style that bothers me) I didn't want to bring this up earlier. This for example is the reason I chose Deities of Faerun over F&P in my IWDEE install. F&P is much more complex and better coded that DoF, but DoF is more fleshed when it comes to lore background, which is somehow very important to me. 

Just to rephrase, I dont't want this to be perceived as negative feedback, more of a personal prefererence of someone, who cares more about the stuff that he reads, than the WeiDU code behinds it. 

As an example of how silly it is... I couldn't play IRR until Barty updated the mod to handle EE-style descriptions, for which I'm eternally greatful

I can give examples of what I mean, when I finally get to new install, but since this is all just my preference and not actual bug reports, I'm not sure how much valuable this feedback would be for you, subtledoctor. 

[jumbogoblin]

Thought I'd add my input as a bit of criticism, seeing as how useless the troll's "feedback" was. Hoping I don't come off too harshly but as a full-time game designer I feel like it's important to provide workable and unfiltered feedback. I only really had time to go through a couple of these cleric kits from FNP while on my lunch break so sorry for formatting and what not. Not really used to forum websites.

PRIEST OF TYR: Often depicted as blind with a bloody bandage over his eyes and missing his right hand, Tyr, the Maimed God, is the lawful good deity of law and justice. He is primarily concerned with the punishment of wrongdoers as well as the general furthering of law and good in the world, disdaining duplicity, trickery, rule-breaking, and wanton destruction. The belief in justice through (benevolent) force, or at least armed vigilance, is the reason for Tyr's existence. As the leader of the coalition of lawful good deities known as the Triad, Tyr holds great prominence in Faerûnian pantheon. Worshipers of Tyr are typically judges, magistrates, the oppressed, paladins, and police.

[Small format fix suggested below for readability and organization, as well as following the setup in AD&D 2E from Faiths & Avatars sourcebook.]
Focus sphere: Protection

Major spheres: All, Life, War, Knowledge, Vigor

Minor spheres: Death, Destruction, Thought, Dread, Light, Magic

Abilities [small syntax fix: "Advantages"]:
– May cast...once per day every 5 levels (starts at 1st level with one use).
– May cast...every 10 levels of the caster (starts at 1st level with one use). 
(Notes: Both could benefit from following the syntax of other existing class descriptions, though these inconsistencies tend to come from the original game itself. The current iteration suggests the caster receives an additional use of these spells at levels 5/10/15|10/20/30, when in actuality the additional uses come in at levels 6/11/16|11/21/31.)
[Suggested fixes:]
– May cast Exaltation once per day. Gains one use at level 1 and an additional use every 5 levels thereafter.
– May cast Divine Favor once per day. Gains one use at level 1 and an an additional use every 10 levels thereafter.

MAGISTRATI OF AZUTH: Azuth is a lesser deity who assists Mystra, the Mother 
of Magic, in tending to the Weave, the very fabric upon which all magic is drawn on Toril. Azuthan clergy tend to love magic for its own sake. They have a natural familiarity with and access to arcane spells. Specialty priests of Azuth are known as Magistrati.

Major spheres: All, Life, Destruction, Protection, Knowledge, Light, Magic

Minor spheres: Exploration, Deception, Thought, Dread, Vigor, Fire, Shadow

Abilities [small syntax fix: "Advantages"]:
– From 5th level, once per day, a Magistrati can concentrate and briefly increase his ability to understand and identify the workings of magical items. (Notes: could probably use shorter, more concise explanation as to what this ability does, and could benefit from following the syntax of other class descriptions. Flavor text generally does not belong in the technical section.)
[Suggested fix:] May cast Identify (if I'm understanding this ability correctly) once per day starting at 5th level.
– Can use scrolls and wands normally restricted to wizards.

Disadvantages:
– Alignment restricted to any non-evil.
– May not dual class.

DOOMMASTER OF BESHABA: Beshaba, [M]aid of [M]isfortune [referred to often as Lady Doom] [and the evil sister of Lady Tymora], is the jealous (source?) goddess [chaotic evil deity] of ill-fate [accidents, bad luck, misfortune, and random mischief, and a member of Tempus' pantheon]. Not worshiped so much as feared, she demands tribute, or at least lip service, else she is like[l]y to doom those that offend her to a life of failure. [Beshaba's doctrine dictates that bad luck will befall everybody and the only way to avoid it is to worship her. Thus, she is revered more out of fear than out of religious faith. Her priests work to ensure that her ego is adequately sated (?). Doommasters of Beshaba are the best known order of specialty priests in her service, for the way they revel in the infliction of misfortune upon others.]

Major spheres: All, Life, Death, Protection, Thought, Dread

Minor spheres: Destruction, Knowledge, Deception, Vigor, Affliction, Magic

Abilities [small syntax fix: "Advantages"]:
– Doommasters can cast a special version of the doom spell at will. It can be used once, and only once, on a given opponent.
(Notes: Could greatly benefit from explanation. What makes the ability special, and how does it differ from the Doom spell? Does it have a different casting time, duration, range, etc.? Spells like this should be described in the section below. Also, Doom doesn't stack with itself on a target either way, so the second line is unneccessary. Unless you meant that you cannot ever cast the spell on the same creature again? That should be clarified.)
– Doommasters gain a +1 bonus to all saves.
– At 7th level, the doommaster can cast misfire as a special ability once per day. Misfire works as the spell of the same name. The doommaster can use this ability an additional time per day at levels 10, 13, 16, and 19.
[Syntax fix:] Can cast Misfire once per day starting at 7th level, and gains an additional use every 3 levels therafter up to level 19.
(Notes: Spells and other named abilities are case-sensitive, and should be capitalized to prevent confusion. "Misfire works as the spell of the same name"—this spell does not exist in the original game and warrants further explanation. No other class descriptions provide a new spell without describing its uses in the description below, and spells aren't usually described as "special abilities" even if they are technically innate abilities.)
– At 10th level, the doommaster can cast misfortune. he can use this ability one additional time at levels 15, and 20.
(Notes: Again, spells and abilities are case-sensitive. "One additional time" is inconsistent with other descriptions. Try your best to follow the syntax of the existing game language to keep things kosher. This is important when creating homebrew, mods, or any custom content for a game. It not only shows you have a deep understanding of the game and its logic, but that you care to put the effort into the game's (and your) design philosophy. Forgetting to capitalize or spellcheck your document before submitting is also bad form for content creation on any platform, Infinity Engine or otherwise. There are several websites that will check your documents and what not for free, or you can have a friend do it.)
[Syntax fix:] Can cast Misfortune once per day starting at 10th level, and gains an additional use at levels 15 and 20.

MISFORTUNE: This abilty curses the target, causing them a penalty of -10 penalty to THAC0, saves and AC for one round/level if they fail a save vs. spell.
(Notes: The massively overpowered effect aside hahaha, this description should probably be proofread and try to be following existing game syntax (receive  [penalty]). It should also be clarified whether or not this is also an existing spell like Misfire, since its description refers to it as an ability but reads like a spell.)
[Syntax fix:] MISFORTUNE: This (spell/ability) curses the target, [flavor flavor flavor]. For the duration of 1 round/level, the target receives a -10 penalty to their THAC0, AC, and Saving Throws if they fail a save vs. Spells.
[Balance suggestion/don't reinvent the wheel:] Why not just give the doommaster a 1/day Greater Malison, since the spell already exists and is pretty balanced? It fits the theme, and undoubtedly would be very useful in many situations. The current iteration just encourages cheeseloading on single creature encounters.

Restrictions [Minor syntax fix: "Disadvantages":]
– Alignment: Any evil or chaotic neutral
[Minor syntax fix:] Alignment restricted to any evil or chaotic neutral.

These are just three examples, and it gets a bit worse as you go, unfortunately. By worse I don't mean it's a bad mod just that there are more issues as you go lol. I don't agree with the way the "feedback" was presented by Gushwinder (esp. the install issues, which are an easy fix after reading the forums), and I don't mean to play devil's advocate, but when it comes to the game design of the UA mods they do leave a lot to be desired as far as reading or design quality goes. I can't speak for the mechanics much! I think a good readover of the entire UA mods would benefit it greatly, balancing aside (I don't know much about balancing myself).

Cheers!

Edited February 9, 2022 by jumbogoblin

[jumbogoblin]

2 hours ago, Cahir said:

My one tiny issue with your mods is that while those are stellar and creative in terms of coding, the writing is sometimes...sloppy. Don't get me wrong, I absolutely don't mean it's bad or something. If I could describe my feelings about it, is that I can imagine you are being excited to find some new ways to code stuff only to be annoyed, that you need to actually write some background text to it I can't give any example now, because I'm currently not working on any installation, and since the writing style is very personal matter (and I repeat it's perfectly fine as it is, it's not the style that bothers me) I didn't want to bring this up earlier. This for example is the reason I chose Deities of Faerun over F&P in my IWDEE install. F&P is much more complex and better coded that DoF, but DoF is more fleshed when it comes to lore background, which is somehow very important to me. 

Agrred. I love the way you describe it. When you say the coding and finding you have to write  background, that's pretty common in programming. Especially if it has to do with art lol. If it works, it works, but good lore is delicious. I love DoF for the same reasons 

[subtledoctor]

I don't mind criticism at all. Feel free to trash the mod... just please be specific when you do! 

3 hours ago, Cahir said:

If I could describe my feelings about it, is that I can imagine you are being excited to find some new ways to code stuff only to be annoyed, that you need to actually write some background text to it

heh heh... you kind of hit the nail on the head there. I mean don't get me wrong, in normal life I am very much a writer and very much not a coder. When I am writing, I make sure to write well. But when I am tinkering with the mechanics of a computer game engine... I just want to tinker! This is my hobby dammit, something to take my mind off normal life and responsibilities.

Beyond which, there is a problem a mod like this: we want to do technical stuff, we want to allow players to follow more than a measly three deities (!), it involves kits and HLAs and spells and spheres and weapons and... once it's working, then suddenly it's like, okay, now write kit descriptions for 120 kits. Like, my mod before this one has six kits, and I put a lot of care into them and they were distinct and well-crafted. But honestly, I don't give a crap about the gnomish deities! I never played a gnome and I never will. I could care less about gnomish theology. But the stupid mod isn't complete without four or five gnomish kits, right? Okay, fine, go into the Faiths & avatars or Demihuman Deities 2E sourcebook, I see five paragraphs of text on this or that deity. Check BG2: cleric kits have two sentences of text in their descriptions. I can do better than that, but i don't feel much impetus to deviate from the example set in the best RPG of all time, right? So I adapt 3-4 sentences from the original source material, and bam, there's a divine kit description. (Note, all of it comes from the actual 2E source material. I haven't looked at DoF in a long time but I'm pretty sure that mod cribs it from the same source; it's just more... florid. )

Anyway, that's the process. I have a life. Also note that this involves different pieces created by different people, and we are not proofreading each other. (See "I have a life.") Once upon a time I had dreams that this could work another way... I designed a sphere system that anybody could design kits to work with. I thought, maybe if someone gives a crap about the gnomish pantheon, they would make a gnomish cleric kitpack, and it could easily hook into the FnP sphere system(s). And someone else could do a kitpck for the Mulhorandi deities, etc. etc. Notably, that's what DoF was at first: a kit pack adding more options for clerics, which could work in the unmodded game and could also work with the FnP sphere system. For a minute things were going in a nice direction. I left off making kits for a bunch of deities because DoF already had them, and DoF+FnP was the jam. But then Raduziel picked up his ball and took it home, made all his lovely kits incompatible with FnP, and we were suddenly left high and dry with a tons of missing kits. So we filled the gaps, but it had to happen quickly, out of necessity more than passion. (IIRC there was a kitpack with some elven kits as well, which has hooks into the FnP systems, but that's no longer around.)

Ever since then, the idea of crowdsourcing some of this stuff has dried up. And I'm just spread too thin. So it is what it is. The .tra file right over here, anyone can very much feel free to suggest substitutions or even rewrite the whole damn thing. I'm not possessive and I don't think my poop doesn't smell. If someone fairly confidently asserts that their description is better, I won't even question it - I'll happily just paste it right into the mod.

As to a couple specifics:

1 hour ago, jumbogoblin said:

Why not just give the doommaster a 1/day Greater Malison, since the spell already exists and is pretty balanced?

See above about how this was a team effort; and that wasn't my kit. If Grammarsalad - or anyone else - has a particular vision for this or that kit, then it's not my place to second-guess it. (In this case Misfortune is straight from the 2E source material... but there the penalties are only -3! I'm not sure what the rationale for the larger penalty is; maybe it just works better in the context of the video game. I haven't played with that kit yet.)

1 hour ago, jumbogoblin said:

Abilities [small syntax fix: "Advantages"]:

IIRC the "Abilities/Restrictions" in place of "Advantages/Disadvantages" is intentional, for two reasons: 1) it is a more accurate description of the following sections of text (notably, BG2 cleric kits have no actual disadvantages), and 2) it is necessary for the mod's actual code, to perform some text substitution in kit descriptions for the sphere system. The mechanics of the mod are completely modular; it is designed such that a kit's spheres can change by editing a single document, and the descriptions must follow suit. Text substitution in kit descriptions is a bit tricky in this engine... and when I made this mod I was not as adept as I am now. So in DoF the formatting can follow F&A very faithfully... but you're entirely stuck with the rules as written. If you want to house-rule one little thing, you're entirely out of luck. This mod is designed to allow any user to implement all sorts of house rules,* and still spit out a functional, fun BG2 mod.

(* On which more soon.)

Edited February 9, 2022 by subtledoctor

[Cahir]

Yeah, I feel that I perhaps sound to harsh, using the word "sloppy". It implies bad writing and grammar mistake. It's not the case at all! As I mentioned before it's just a tiny issue and it's really just a subjective matter. You see, I know many of players here or SHS or Beamdog know these gemes inside out, so whole trying new stuff they don't care much about kit, spell or item descriptions. What mattera is how those kits/spells/items translate into the game. I don't play these games often, in fact I think I finished the whole saga only twice in my entire life, so each time I play it's like a new game to me. This means that I read everything and since I appreciate the lore consistency I probably notice all those little nods to us lore freaks more, but I'm also more nipicking about it when I see it can be done smoother. 

Now, with the way F&P or other of your other kit mods are coded (as much automated and less hand crafted as possible) I perfectly understand it's not possible to write each kit description with great care, this is without question. And this is probably perfectly OK for like 95% of players (hey, no one ever complained about lack of EE-style descriptions in IR(R) before me. It means most of us don't care about fluff.).

Also, the background descriptions is one thing, the other is the formatting consistency with nom modded EE game and/or other mods. This is something that drives me crazy (it shouldn't, I know, but I does) and I think this actually is something that could be improved a bit, if possible. But also, I understand this would be a boring stuff to do and realize it's not something that will probably done in forseeable future if done at all. 

Just to reiterate once again - this all is just nitpicking, otherwise your mods are really top notch. 

[subtledoctor]

Incidentally, here is an example of why I prefer to tinker and make a modular, flexible mod rather than something where every little bit is hand-curated and utterly inflexible. For people who are not too enthused with the sphere system, I just threw together an alternate version, which I am calling the "Vanilla-Plus" sphere system. It has most of the same spheres as the FnP system, but priests' spells are not restricted by them; clerics will get all the normal cleric spells as in the unmodded game, and druids will get all the normal druid spells. On top of that, every kit gets focus access to two of the FnP spheres. This means several things:

• they will be able to cast a few spells as if they were one level lower than normal (Barkskin as a 1st-level spell, etc.)
• they may have access to a few wizard spells
• a cleric may have access to a few druid spells, and vice-versa

So the example I just rolled up in testing it is a cleric of Baervan Wildwanderer - like Aerie. This kit gets all the normal cleric spells as in the vanilla game (like Aerie), BUT in addition it gets access to a bunch of plant- and animal-based spells, and can cast them one level lower than normal. (So Aerie would cast Barkskin as a 1st-level spell.) Aside from that bonus, clerics and druids should play much like they do in the base game. Oh, and also, since this replicates the base game spell allocations within the context of the sphere system, it works with the ability to learn and cast spells sorcerer-style - something that doesn't work outside the sphere system. So if you want that option, but you prefer no sphere system, this new component might be up your alley.  (You can even remove that focus-access stuff, with a simple mass find/replace operation in one file.) It still suffers from the problems that the base game has: clerics of Lathander can summon undead minions with impunity, clerics of Auril can choose a bunch of HLAs involving fire, etc. (I decided to make all of the FnP HLAs available to every kit... it's on you to make appropriate choices, or not, as you see fit.)

Keep in mind I haven't fully tested it yet (that would take months), but I've tested that it installs, and creating a cleric gives the appropriate spells, and converting to sorcerer-style casting works. It should be fine.

I also cleaned up some of the kit description text formatting, specifically there are no longer any trailing commas after the lists of sphere access.

Finally, hopefully without being too defensive, I should respond to a few things the seem to have been lost in the shuffle:

19 hours ago, ahungry said:

Sphere system and other mod custom kits do not mesh well, as the 'vanilla' spells will be missing and you'll find clerics with nothing but Cure Wounds or w/e the level 1 heal is

This will only be the case in multiclasses which have a kit on their other class. Unkitted clerics and unkitted multiclass clerics should be getting spells. I think I have greatly extended the number of possible kit- and class-combinations... but there are still edge cases that just won't work.

However, after delving into my own code for a bit, I have come up with a workaround for you, if you want it: you should create an unkitted multiclass cleric, which gets a default set of spells. Then you should change the character's kit to whatever other kit you want. The key thing is, you should NOT use Chargen menus or NPC_EE to change the kit; you should do it with EEKeeper, or perhaps with with an AddSuperKit command in the console, if you are quite console-savvy. When you process your 1st-level kit effects from CLABPR01.2da as an unkitted character, you should get spells; then when you change your kit, your spells should remain. (But NPC_EE will  remove them, so don't use that.) Bob's your uncle.

19 hours ago, ahungry said:

The T&B component for changed rings of wizardry never seemed to work - neither sorcerers (classical casting) or mage casters received more casts of spells - leaving the component uninstalled, and it works fine on wizards

Are you sure you didn't just miss it? That component removes the effects of Evermemory, but adds an item ability (in the backpack button) which refreshes all your 1st-level slots. Functionally it ahs the same effect, doubling your 1st-level casting slots.

19 hours ago, ahungry said:

5e casting (in mod or as the dedicated module) had issues similar to sphere system, in that I had mod incompatability issues - spells from spell_rev or other mods wouldn't work as they were not known by the special casting system - this caused spell selection to be limited and cumbersome

Just to clarify: that mod 100% works perfectly with Spell Rev. 100%.  IWDification, and any mod that adds spells to SPELL.IDS or adds wizard scrolls to learn added wizard spells. It is basically only Olvyn Spells that I am aware that gives partial incompatibility, because that mod insists on adding spells it its own proprietary way.

19 hours ago, ahungry said:

Some of the Tome and Blood abilities are confusing/undocumented (or I missed them) - I see some casters have improvised casting or something, but

The documentation is here. Specialists get the listed bonuses, and get an innate ability that can convert memorized spells into spells from their specialty (so if you have only Fireball memorized but you need to make a quick stealthy escape, an Illusionist can use that slot to cast Invisibility.) This was not working with the 5E mod until very recently, which is why that documentation said "DO NOT INSTALL THIS ALONG WITH THE 5E MOD." Now, however, I believe they work together seamlessly.

Finally:

13 hours ago, Cahir said:

Also, the background descriptions is one thing, the other is the formatting consistency with nom modded EE game and/or other mods. This is something that drives me crazy

I cannot control what other mods a player installs, and tons of other mods have inconsistent formatting. It's just not a big deal to me, as long as the information imparted to the player is 1) accurate, and 2) clear. I generally format spell descriptions to match Spell Revisions, since I think people are nuts to play this game without Spell Revisions. But some players might not install Spell Rev, in which case there is inconsistency. If I matched the base game and players install Spell Rev, then there would be inconsistency. And now Bartimaeus has his own version of Spell Rev out there, which sounds like it deviates even from the Spell Rev formatting, even though it installs the same marker files as Spell Rev so other mods check would be led to believe that Spell Rev is installed... sorry it's just a mess. You say "Bartimaeus gets it 'right,' " but all I see it this:

Edited February 9, 2022 by subtledoctor