Streamlining magic battles

[subtledoctor]

This has been an ongoing concern of mine for a while.  Here's the situation at the moment:

Quote

Vanilla:
- up to 7 layers of protection (Minor Deflection, Minor Turning, GOI, Deflection, Turning, Trap, Spell Shield)
- Breach bypasses spell protections
- Dispel/Remove Magic bypass spell protections
- some protections only work against low- or mid-level spells
- some magic attacks only work against low- or mid-level protections

SCS/SR:
- up to 7 layers of protection (Minor Deflection, Minor Turning, GOI, Deflection, Turning, Trap, Spell Shield)
- Breach does not bypass spell protections
- Dispel/Remove Magic bypass spell protections
- some protections only work against low- or mid-level spells
- some magic attacks only work against low- or mid-level protections

My concern became sharper when I found out that different Deflection spells stack with each other; the number of 'levels' of spells they block stacks, and they also stack as multiple layers of protection.  So for example, in Spell Revisions, all of the Turning spells are changed to use the Deflection effect.  You can cast Minor Deflection + Deflection + Greater Deflection + Spell Shield, for 4 layers of protection.  If an enemy mage casts Khelben's Whip at you, it will only peel away 3 of those layers and you'll still have some protection left.  That, to me, seems to be pretty plainly contrary top the intent of the concept.  Moreover, I'm pretty sure I've never seen enemy mages stack those protections; they tend to use the best one available and replace it if it is removed.  I see enemies with Deflection/Turning + Shield + Globe of Invulnerability, while the player can add 2 more layers of Deflection/Turning for 2 more layers of protection.  That's not fair.  (Somebody please correct me if you see different behavior!)

There are more issues: consider that low-level protection removal spells only work against low-level protections.  So if the enemy has a Greater Deflection up, and you hit it with a Spell Thust, your attack will fizzle entirely.  It would be more effective to throw a Dire Charm at it - the Dire Charm will be blocked, but it will knock down 3 'spell levels' of protection, whereas the Spell Thrust would not even do that! That doesn't make sense; even if the Spell Thrust is not effective against the removal, it should at least be better than a non-abjuration spell of the same level...!

I have previously tried to deal with this by de-emphasizing the layers of protection, and instead emphasizing the number of "spell levels" each proctecion provides.  Basically none of the removal spells actually remove anything, instead they just cast no-effect subspells that strip away extra 'spell levels' of protection.  In theory it was nice, but in practice I'm not sure how well it worked.  And I'm not sure that it covered every different variant of removal spells. 

SO... how about going in the other direction?  Instead of spell levels, focus on the layers of protection that you can raise and/or tear down.  My current idea would look something like this:

• All protection spells can block spells of every level.  So a Minor Deflection can block a Finger of Death or Energy Drain. But anything higher than 5th level will burn it away in one go. 
• All protection spells work identically: each one blocks 5 spell levels.
• High-level protections simply cast the lower-level ones alongside themselves.  So if you cast Greater Deflection, it also automatically casts Deflection and Minor Deflection at the same time.  So you get three layers of protection from the one spell... this benefits the enemy AI by giving them extra layers of protection.
• Removal spells all work more or less like Warding Whip does now: they will be differentiated by how many layers of protection they remove.  Spell Thrust can remove 1, Secret Word can remove 2, Pierce Magic can remove 3, and Pierce Shield can remove 4.

This will allow more progressive effects.  If you cast Greater Deflection + Globe of Invulnerability, you get 3 layers of Deflection and 1 layer of Globe.  If I cast Secret Word against you, it would remove the Globe and 1 layer of Deflection; you would still be protected, but only by 2 layers/12 spell levels.  One more Secret Word or two Spell Thrusts would expose you to magic effects.  In this way multiple casting of low-level spells could chip away at even high-level protections, instead of being completely useless.

I have to run, I'll discuss more in a bit.

Edited January 6, 2020 by subtledoctor

[subtledoctor]

In case it’s not obvious, this basically assumes SR; either it would only work in top of SR or it would implement something very similar to SR. Specifically, it assumes that the Turning effect is useless, because it never makes sense to cast against a mage with Turning, and SCS in its wisdom never casts against a player with Turning active. If spells never actually get Turned against their caster, then all Turning really does is give you full protect until it is removed. In that case there is no functional difference between Turning and Deflection; so we should just officially combine them.

Spell Shield is still different and special here, because while Pierce Magic (for example) can take down 3 layers of Deflection and/or Globe, all 3 such removals will be absorbed by the Shield. So the power of Spell Shield is to blunt the power of all removal spells equally.

 

[Jarno Mikkola]

Well, I would have to try the system and game at it and see if I can poke my holes at it, to really look how it works.

And nope, the system is not as simple as that... as you don't have 7 layers of protection... you have illusion spells, making you untargetable. Abjuration spells that make you undamageable. Abjuration spells that make you magic protected(the above 7 layers). Alteration spells that make you better at dealing with what ever you are dealt to. Conjuration spells that help you avoid damage, or take damage instead of you. Necromancy spells that add chaos, and enchantments that do that too.

The wording in the abjuration spells distinctively says that they would protect you from the removal spells you are under, and because the spell to remove illusions is a level 5 one, a level 1 spell would make you untargetable and thus not able to be Breach-ed, and so unkillable by ANYTHING, except general area of effect damage.

Now, the wording is wrong in those spells... or at least their effect is not as it's said, and so the illusion spells aren't OP as hell. And the vanilla AI doesn't use them because they restrict themselves by not adding overthetop protections on top of themselves.

As Liches are meant to be immune to level 1-3 spells, they don't cast those spells on themselves either, say invisibility, haste, non-detection. Raksasha are immune to level 1-5 spell, so they don't cast illusion spells that are under that. And this also is reflected on why the Demi Lich only has 1 spell prepared, he doesn't need protection spells as he is immune to all but the most powerful ones(9th level), that wouldn't protect him much, unless one would just want to cheese the fight more than it already is, by requiring more level 9th spells from the player that should realistically not have any.

[kjeron]

The layer's you mention do not apply to multiple defenses of the same type for their normal function.  If you have both Spell Deflection and Minor Spell Deflection active, both will lose levels to blocked spell, at least in the unmodded game, so there is some trade-off for stacking them.  The same happens with Spell Turning and Minor Spell Turning.

Adding extra layers to the higher level spells just makes you more susceptible to non-spell-removal spells than to spell-removal spells.  In your example (Greater Deflection + Spell Shield), a single non-removal level 6 spell (or 2 level 3 spells) will remove all 3 layers of deflection, at which point you can ignore the spell shield.

It might be viable, at least in the EE's, to have each spell cast the next lesser version(s) both when they begin, and if they self-terminate.  This way, your Secret Word would remove 2 layers, and while the L6 generic spell would still remove all 3 deflection layers, it would also trigger the next lesser version of deflection (generating 2 more layers).

Deflection, Reflection, Trap, and GoI can be used to protect each other from non-removal spells, as only one of each group will trigger for any given spell, in the order: Reflect > Trap > Deflect > GoI (provided the spell's level is valid for that defense).

 

[subtledoctor]

16 hours ago, kjeron said:

The layer's you mention do not apply to multiple defenses of the same type for their normal function.  If you have both Spell Deflection and Minor Spell Deflection active, both will lose levels to blocked spell, at least in the unmodded game, so there is some trade-off for stacking them.  The same happens with Spell Turning and Minor Spell Turning.

That's fine; the 'spell levels of protection' part is not really problematic.  We can just say MSD blocks 5 levels, SD blocks 10 levels, and GSD blocks 15 levels.  (And tweak the numbers as needed - maybe 6/12/18 or 7/14/21 or 8/16/24, etc.... maybe depending on whether SR AoE Deflection is installed.)  The result is the same: if you combine all three Deflections, you get 15 spell levels of protection, and as you get hit by spells the lesser defenses will be the first to fall away.  That makes sense to me so far.

 

16 hours ago, kjeron said:

Adding extra layers to the higher level spells just makes you more susceptible to non-spell-removal spells than to spell-removal spells.  In your example (Greater Deflection + Spell Shield), a single non-removal level 6 spell (or 2 level 3 spells) will remove all 3 layers of deflection, at which point you can ignore the spell shield.

As I say, we can increase the spell levels of protection easily to make normal spells less effective than removal spells.  The main thing is, this is not really adding layers of protection to the defenses.  Here, Spell Deflection would auto-cast Minor Spell Deflection, so you would have two layers... but a) the player can already do that in the vanilla game anyway; and b) compare how you need to get past those layers: a single casting of Secret Word or Pierce Magic would destroy both.  Spell Thrust would only destroy one... but a second Spell Thrust would destroy the other, whereas in vanilla/SR Spell Thrust can only ever penetrate MSD and is forever ineffective against SD.  By auto-casting the lesser defenses and thus "adding layers" of protection, all that really happens is that the AI gets the same benefit that the player can have; and crucially, removal spells are all buffed, such that they are more effective than their vanilla/SR versions, and more effective than using normal non-removal spells.

Put another way: you can have three layers of Deflection, but Pierce Magic and better removal spells all remove three layers of defenses.  So against Pierce Magic you effectively have less protection - A single PM can remove GSD, or it can remove SD and a Globe.  My rough hope is that mage duels should be either that same, or slightly quicker, than vanilla/SR.

And they should less often leave you with no tools at your disposal.  Measly Spell Thrust will always be a little bit effective.  Even against GSD, ST will peel away one layer of protection and 5 spell levels of protection, making it a bit quicker to then blast it away with non-removal spells.  Compare to vanilla/SR, where if you have ST memorized and the opponent has GSD up, you will end up blasting him with normal spells instead of the dedicated removal spell.  That doesn't make sense to me.