SubtleMods: Will to Power, a 2E-inspired psionics mod

[mickabouille]

3 minutes ago, subtledoctor said:

Could maybe use the saving throw mechanism for 'non-instant' death - set minimum 1 hp, but if you ever actually have 1 hp, make a saving throw or die. Maybe keep saving every round as long as you have 1 hp, so you can die at any moment unless/until you get some healing. That might be cool. (Kinda reminds me of the 5E death mechanic.)

That's what I was thinking about, the delayed death part (oups, I somehow... survived?), not the death ward-like effect.

[subtledoctor]

Yes, as I was writing I was liking how it sounds. I'll code something up. That covers every discipline so I can move forward and actually make the abilities now.

[Endarire]

I like being able to block multiple attacks per round.

[subtledoctor]

Thoughts about maintainable powers:

I am struggling to balance these things. It worked well when they operated solely on hit point reductions - each ability you maintain drops your max hit points lower, so the more abilities you use at once, the weaker you are overall. The shift to using actual PSPs is good, but it ruins that balance because a reduction in your PSP total doesn't make you any weaker in the instant sense. Steadily draining your PSPs like what happens in PnP would be nice, but it seems to be extremely difficult to achieve at a technical level. (Especially since we can still switch to using hit points, and a steady drain on your max hit points seems less appropriate.) So right now the way they work is, they have an initial cost, and they are maintained for 20 rounds. This means you can protect yourself with Intellect Fortress, Inertial Barrier, Energy Dispersion, Carapace, Camouflage, and Danger Sense - for a 12-point AC bonus, immunity to one attack each round, immunity to crits and backstabs and mental attacks, and damage resistance and elemental resistance - by expending 52 PSPs. For a mid-/high-level psion, that is not that much.

So, I have two ideas to rein in the power of maintainable abilities:

1) Try to limit the number of maintained abilities that can be active at any time. Give each psion a limit of, say, 1 per 5 experience levels. And if you are at your limit, just disable the rest of the maintainable abilities in the UI until the psions cancels one that is currently being maintained.

Problem #1: this would not be very visible to the player and they might not realize in the thick of battle why they cannot use all of their powers.

Problem #2: while totally possible, this would be fairly complex and would take a while to create.

2) Maybe just increase the cost of maintainable abilities. Increase the cost of maintainable abilities by 50% over single-use abilities... but give 50% of the initial cost back when the power is canceled. If the real cost of maintaining powers is to tie up PSPs, then just tie up more PSPs while they are maintained. So in the example above, using all six of those protective powers would cost 78 PSPs instead of just 52. So you would need to be much higher level to do that.

That might need normalizing the power costs a bit, so that the 50% increase is still divisible by 2. So maybe devotions would cost 4 PSPs, maintainable devotions would have an initial cost of 6 PSPs, sciences would cost 8 PSPs, maintainable sciences would have an initial cost of 12 PSPs, and high sciences would cost 16 PSPs, and maintainable high sciences would have an initial cost of 24 PSPs. (And since all of these numbers are lower than they currently are, we could reduce overall PSP growth to account for it.)

Edited April 23, 2022 by subtledoctor

[Ebonslayer]

Not sure how feasible this would be, but perhaps they could take up, instead of a flat amount of PSP, a percentage? Psychic Blade, for instance, could take up maybe 10% PSP, Inertial Barrier 20%, ect?

[Endarire]

How much does this matter compared to a well-buffed caster who can be highly resistant to or immune to most harm much of the time barring dispels?

[subtledoctor]

Okay looking at the proposed new science in the Biokinesis discipline, Metamorphosis: in PnP this ability does not let you change your mass, so you have to become an animal with roughly similar mass to a humanoid, i.e. "size M." From the Faiths & Powers druid shapeshifting code, I can grab several animals right away that fit this restriction:

• dire wolf
• leopard
• wild boar
• giant snake
• giant beetle
• giant spider

The question becomes - as the question always is with shapeshifting in BG2 - why do this? Why change shape and give up your magic sword and magic armor etc.? I mean in a tabletop RPG there is a ton of reasons to do this, but in BG? Where you are literally stuffed to the gills with magical garments and magical weapons? It would be nice if each form gave you very particular advantages, so you could be strategic in choosing which one to take at any given moment. Maybe a beetle is resistant to crushing damage? Maybe a spider is immune to Web? Maybe... eh, I'm running out of ideas. With druids at least we can change to very small or very large size, so we can do interesting things like become a rat and escape enemies' notice... but if we must stay the same size we lose those kinds of options. So, how to make this go from merely "psychometabolism window-dressing" to an actually interesting and useful ability?

Edited June 15, 2022 by subtledoctor

[Greenhorn]

14 hours ago, subtledoctor said:

Okay looking at the proposed new science in the Biokinesis discipline, Metamorphosis: in PnP this ability does not let you change your mass, so you have to become an animal with roughly similar mass to a humanoid, i.e. "size M." From the Faiths & Powers druid shapeshifting code, I can grab several animals right away that fit this restriction:

• dire wolf
• leopard
• wild boar
• giant snake
• giant beetle
• giant spider

The question becomes - as the question always is with shapeshifting in BG2 - why do this? Why change shape and give up your magic sword and magic armor etc.? I mean in a tabletop RPG there is a tone of reasons to do this, but in BG? Where you are literally stuffed to the gills with magical garments and magical weapons?

Considering that Ranger/psion is one of the top candidates for my future BG EE run and I follow this mod with great interest here is my humble opinion. This mod is not limited for BG2 only but for BG1 and EET as well. Don't know precisely in which part you are supposed to gain them but besides warrior types there is also thief/psion and especially mage/psion who could benefit greatly  from this forms regarding their melee capabilities. 

[mickabouille]

That's not easy to answer.

For a devotion, the fighting abilities (STR/CON/DEX, natural weapons, resistances etc.) alone would have been a sufficient reason to use metamorphosis, at least on the early levels.

As a science, with these forms, some additional reason would be needed, I think. probably circumstance based? Like a snake can avoid entanglements ? A spider avoid webs? That still seems a bit weak...

Edited April 25, 2022 by mickabouille

[subtledoctor]

Well if you focus on Biokinesis you can get your first science at 4th level, so this is definitely in play for BG1. But I do also want most of all of these abilities to still be useful in BG2.

2 hours ago, mickabouille said:

For a devotion, the fighting abilities (STR/CON/DEX, natural weapons, resistances etc.) alone would have been a sufficient reason to use metamorphosis,

Sort of, but... we already have a Haste devotion for APR and a DUHM devotion for STR/DEX/CON, so changing into the form of an animal for stats or APR seems redundant.

Frankly shapeshifting in general seems redundant in these games, which is the root of the problem. (Ha.)

2 hours ago, mickabouille said:

(STR/CON/DEX, natural weapons, resistances etc.)

Okay highlighting that because it made me think. I suppose we could go a different way. Maybe instead of Metamorphosis we could implement the Biofeedback ability. In PnP this is basically just an AC bonus - you "control the bleeding" around wounds, so you don't take hits as often? Weird. But in this context, it makes a good case for physical damage resistance.

Of course there are two problems with that. 1) Balancing DR is hard, because with various items in the game like the defender of Easthaven, we don't want this to be a one-button weapon immunity. Throw armor mods like YARAS/IR/FPPS into the mix and it gets even more complicated. 2) This steps on the toes of Inertial Barrier, which currently mixes AC and DR bonuses. Confoundingly, Inertial Barrier in turn steps on the toes of Energy Containment by giving some elemental resistance. Maybe the answer here is to put Biofeedback in the Biokinesis discipline for DR, and change or replace Inertial Barrier.

Maybe Inertial Barrier could change to incorporate what the (no longer used) Repulsion ability did. Give complete missile immunity, and physically push people away using the Wing Buffet mechanic. Except maybe instead of repeating every 6 seconds like Repulsion, we could make it repeat every second or so, with a smaller push-back, so that it has the effect of just holding enemies at bay, rather than flinging them far away. That might be tricky to tune to perfection... but it should be possible. Do a wing buffet plus op165 "pause creature" for a 1-second duration, and make the wing buffet have a very slow/small pushback strength. Apply it every second to all enemies in a small range - maybe 5-10 feet. You could stand next you the party mage to protect them from aggressors. Of course there would be a save each time, so really strong and persistent attackers might be able to close the distance.

Need to think about this.

[Enigmajazz]

I think that not everything in the game has to be there because its powerful. There is a place for fun and interesting abilities to allow people to play how they want even if it's not optimal. As long as they are not so much of a detriment that it takes away from the fun.

[Endarire]

What about simply allowing more forms for this shapeshifting based on character or caster level, power points spent, etc.?  That’s what other shapeshifting abilities do.

[subtledoctor]

On 4/25/2022 at 8:35 AM, Greenhorn said:

Considering that Ranger/psion is one of the top candidates for my future BG EE run and I follow this mod with great interest

Ha ha, I'm about to start a run with a ranger/psion myself. I have the BGEE portion almost fully installed and ready to go, but I have backtracked and now I'm waiting to complete the install until I update this mod.

Meanwhile, I've successfully made a version of Inertial Barrier that I like, which incorporates aspects of the now-defunct "Repulsion" power. It pushes people away every second, and it only affects people who are fairly nearby and it only pushes them a tiny bit away. But the effect is noticeable. In my quick test in Caandlekeep, an angry guard was successfully kept away from me for most of the time he was attacking me, which gave me noticeable room to breath. But he also got close sometimes, and conveniently for him he uses a long-reach weapon. So he still managed to hit me some of the time. The incidence of hits was less than usual, but it has nothing to do with thac0 or AC. It's an interesting and notably different take on defense, using space instead of stats. Almost like "kiting in place," or something. It will be particularly useful for a thief/psion or a mage/psion, who will like to stand back and have breathing room to attack from range.

This makes space to implement Biofeedback with physical damage resistance. That is probably the way I'll go, since it will be a lot easier than adding 5 or 7 shapeshift forms. Maybe I'll switch to shapeshifting in the future (different forms could have different DR, to achieve the same result as Biofeedback) but I'll probably save that for the future, in the interest of getting this update out the door sooner. For the moment, animal shapeshifting can remain druids' special thing.

Edited April 26, 2022 by subtledoctor

[Quester]

That sounds like a cool effect. Maybe it could also be incorporated into an arcane spell for non-psions / those without Will to Power?

[subtledoctor]

1 hour ago, Quester said:

That sounds like a cool effect. Maybe it could also be incorporated into an arcane spell for non-psions / those without Will to Power?

Spell Revisions has the ‘Repulsion’ spell, which replaces ‘Repulse Undead’ and applies to everyone including non-undead. In fact SR’s spell was the inspiration for this. But SR’s spell is a bit different, pushing enemies far away and only firing once per round. 

Maybe in my Random Spell Tweaks mod I can make the SR spell work like this.