Subtledoc's Random Tweaks

[Jarno Mikkola]

16 hours ago, subtledoctor said:

So the question is, what would be the best alternate item slot?  A quick-item slot?  Perhaps the gloves/bracers slot?  (How can you play a harp while wearing Gaunlets of Ogre Strength??)  Any other ideas?

Well, if it's an instrument is supposed to be in the quick item slot then make sure it's in there. There's .cre fixer that fixes this in a megamods, but usually assigning them in to wrong slots is a very bad idea. F.. it up enough and your AI mod won't install. Which is why the fixer was made in the first place.

@subtledoctor, so what's your conclution of the correct resistances then ? Cause you have to remember that for example the Skeleton Warrior don't even have 90% piercing/missile resistances, only 50% and 60%... cause you need to be CONSISTENT about that, if you intend to "Fix" things.

Edited March 9, 2020 by Jarno Mikkola

[Luke]

16 hours ago, subtledoctor said:

Like, a 4+3 HD Ogre might have its STR set to 9, but have its thac0 hard-set to 13 instead of 16, and carry a special weapon that does +6 damage.

@Jarno Mikkola Could you provide a concrete example? As far as I know, there's no such thing...

Edited March 9, 2020 by Luke

[Jarno Mikkola]

2 hours ago, Luke said:

@Jarno Mikkola Could you provide a concrete example? As far as I know, there's no such thing...

Creature Thac0's, numbers of attacks, their hit points, non class creature classes, items.

Specifically in IWD:EE, hmm... <goes to open Near Infinity> ... I see here adran.cre, a mage who has an effective AC of -5, he has a robe of evil archmage(AC set to 5), a +2 ring of protection(AC -2) and Dexterity of 18(AC -4), a +3 cloak, so that's AC of -4... where the hell does he get the rest of it No where. That's with your standard stats.

But let's go back to the very first standard creatures... ad1sklm.cre, he has a typical undead table of resistances: 100% cold, 100% magic cold and then slashing and piercing resistance of 50% ... but he also has this item called ring95.itm, the box-standard undead ring, that priovides it with also the 100% cold resistance. And as that's applied by an item, you can't ever get rid of it, ever. Let's not forget that most of the spells in the IWD games use projectiles to show that they effect the surroundings. And what sort of damage do they do... in the case of ice storm, cold damage, not slashing/piercing or blunt damage, but only cold. I bet if you get hit by a snow avalanche, you don't first think that it was good that you put warm cloths on... cause you'll be burrien in feets of snow, sharp objects and rocks. Or just like the characters in the game would be in ice shards. No slashing damage ? What in the cheese is this ?

Of course you can learn to abuse this by summoning undead and using them with your ice storms... but that's ... abuse.

Edited March 9, 2020 by Jarno Mikkola

[Luke]

31 minutes ago, Jarno Mikkola said:

Specifically in IWD:EE, hmm... <goes to open Near Infinity> ... I see here adran.cre, a mage who has an effective AC of -5, he has a robe of evil archmage(AC set to 5), a +2 ring of protection(AC -2) and Dexterity of 18(AC -4), a +3 cloak, so that's AC of -4... where the hell does he get the rest of it No where.

Yeah, the same holds for the elemental resistances of Andris and Davaeorn.

But as far as monsters are concerned, there's no such thing. For instance, IWD:EE shadowed ogres have 9 Strength and deal 1d10 (Slashing ) damage via "S1-10M2.itm" (they're flagged as SPECTRAL_UNDEAD, but I don't think this should imply dealing less damage than a standard ogre...)

[subtledoctor]

BG2EE seems to be in pretty good shape in this regard - I just checked a bunch of large/high-STR creatures (giants, umber hulks, dragons, vampires, golems) and they seem to be okay, at least as far as STR scores go.  I also wrote this little bit of code to check for issues:

<<<<<<<< inline/cre_str.2da
CRE		CLASS	HIT_DICE	LEVEL	THAC0	STRENGTH

>>>>>>>> 
COPY ~inline/cre_str.2da~ ~override/cre_str.2da~

COPY_EXISTING_REGEXP GLOB ~^.+\.cre$~ ~override~
  READ_SHORT 0x26 hp
  SET hd = (hp / 8)
  READ_BYTE 0x273 clss
  READ_BYTE 0x234 lvl
  READ_BYTE 0x52 thac
  READ_BYTE 0x238 str
  INNER_ACTION BEGIN
	ACTION_IF (clss = 2) && (str < 13) BEGIN
	  APPEND ~cre_str.2da~ ~%SOURCE_RES%	%clss%	%hd%	%lvl%	%thac%	%str%~
	END
  END
BUT_ONLY

COPY_EXISTING ~cre_str.2da~ ~override~
  PRETTY_PRINT_2DA
BUT_ONLY

That will populate a .2da file with every creature with the Fighter class who has STR lower than 13 (shouldn't most fighters have higher STR?), and you can compare their level/HD versus thac0 to find hints of mis-matches.  Thac0 + level or HD should add up to 21 according to the general rules. 

E.g. in BG2EE I see C6ELF1.cre, an elven fighter with 9 Strength.  Judging by hit points it is a 13 HD creature; but the level is coded as 14.  That should mean a thac0 of 7 or 8, but the listed thac0 is 5.  This might be the devs trying to simulate high strength with a thac0 bonus rather than setting a proper STR score.  (That CRE also only has 1 APR - I'm not sure whether warrior APR bonuses from WSPATCK.2da are automatically added to AI NPCs?  Also it has no proficiencies so it may be attacking with combat penalties with the long sword + 2 it is carrying.)  Another one that jumps out is ICLIZ01.cre, "Lizard Man Elite."  It is level 2, but seems like 4 HD, and has 16 thac0 with 9 STR.  That thac0 should be 19 or 17, so again the game may be trying to simulate high STR here.  There is also KALWRK01.cre, "Circus Performer," a 3+3 HD with level = 6, STR = 9, and thac0 = 5?  No idea what's going on there.  MS7UMBH.cre, a summoned umber hulk, has 8 HD, is level = 9, STR = 9, and thac0 = 11.  That seems screwy.  (Probably shouldn't have class set to fighter, too...)  RETHUG01.cre is 7 HD, 8th level, has 12 STR, but has thac0 19 for some reason.

Etc. Etc.  You get the idea.

For use with monsters and/or in IWDEE, might want to remove the conditional for checking "clss = 2."  That will generate a much bigger .2da file to look through, but it should still be fairly easy to find stuff like this.

FWIW I do not plan to fix all this stuff.  Like I said, I'm just curious if there are things that scream out to you as wrong when you are playing.  I could fix creatures in that much more limited group.

20 hours ago, Jarno Mikkola said:

, so what's your conclution of the correct resistances then ? Cause you have to remember that for example the Skeleton Warrior don't even have 90% piercing/missile resistances, only 50% and 60%... cause you need to be CONSISTENT about that, if you intend to "Fix" things.

My conclusion is that if people want those 1 HD skeletons to be "fixed," then I could make them the same as all the other 1 HD skeletons in the game.  Pretty simple.

[Jarno Mikkola]

38 minutes ago, subtledoctor said:

My conclusion is that if people want those 1 HD skeletons to be "fixed," then I could make them the same as all the other 1 HD skeletons in the game.  Pretty simple.

Then go a head and set the creatures hit points to 4 will you ... as that's the avarage it would get. Not the 8 hit points it currently has.

[Luke]

2 hours ago, subtledoctor said:

MS7UMBH.cre, a summoned umber hulk, has 8 HD, is level = 9, STR = 9, and thac0 = 11.  That seems screwy.  (Probably shouldn't have class set to fighter, too...) 

Yeah, it even has multiple opcode #233 giving it some weapon proficiency points (as if it were a real Fighter...). Unfortunately, it's not the only one (that's partly why I started modding summoned creatures...)

[Grammarsalad]

On 3/9/2020 at 11:25 AM, Jarno Mikkola said:

Then go a head and set the creatures hit points to 4 will you ... as that's the avarage it would get. Not the 8 hit points it currently has.

Don't undead have d12 HD? Or am I thinking 3ed?

[Jarno Mikkola]

33 minutes ago, Grammarsalad said:

Don't undead have d12 HD? Or am I thinking 3ed?

Well, the standard monster have a d8 for their hit point calculations, the 5th edition also supports that. Same as a cleric. So I don't know. And yes, SCS uses that too... but it uses it's max value as the minimum.

Edited March 10, 2020 by Jarno Mikkola

[subtledoctor]

An idea I just had for Protection from Magic Weapons:  look at a similar protective spell at the same spell level: Anti-Magic Shell.  It blocks incoming magic, but it prevents the caster casting magic spells as well.  What a similar trade-off was applied to PfMW?  Not as much, but something like, the protective effect that stops incoming enchanted weapons would also weaken any spells cast by the protected person.  Maybe a casting level reduction, maybe an outright chance of casting failure, maybe giving enemies a chance to resist/avoid the effects... something like that? 

Basically, blunt the power of the spell in a way that doesn't require adjusting AI scripts.

Edited March 11, 2020 by subtledoctor

[Jarno Mikkola]

4 hours ago, subtledoctor said:

An idea I just had for Protection from Magic Weapons...... something like that? 

Well the obvious thing is that he wouldn't be able to attack at all with weapons. Or with dragon claws. But for that, I prefer the switch with the penalty that the original Globe of Invulnerability had, where the users walking speed is set to zero. Making him a perfect target to area of effect spells. And yes, under that they can teleport still, but the price is guite high to move at all. Another spell of quite high level... this would solve most problems I have with the spell.

Edited March 11, 2020 by Jarno Mikkola

[subtledoctor]

Okay, I've got a new version of Iron Skin almost ready for testing.  Here's the proposal:

• 1 stoneskin per 2 levels, same as SS; and while any skins are up:
• All secondary effects of weapons are blocked (no fire damage/poison/applied spell/etc. to disrupt casting)
• All missile weapons are blocked (no draining the stoneskins by peppering the mage with arrows)

This would take the place of Mantle, at 7th level.  Is that good?  Good enough?  Could add more to it, basically if we think the AI needs it to be better:

• A few rounds of immunity to weapons with less than +3 enchantment (so basically all of the above added to vanilla Mantle), OR
• Immunity to normal weapons while any stoneskins remain (so only enchanted weapons can remove skins)

Thoughts, before I code it up?  Any other or contrary suggestions?

Edited March 12, 2020 by subtledoctor

[Bartimaeus]

Alternatively, make it one skin per caster level. The missile protection is nice, but even a 20th level caster still is only protected from 10 melee hits before that wears off, which can potentially go by much faster than the 4 rounds of Mantle. This is all experimental anyways, so you might as well see how things play out!

Edited March 12, 2020 by Bartimaeus

[subtledoctor]

47 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

Alternatively, make it one skin per caster level. The missile protection is nice, but even a 20th level caster still is only protected from 10 melee hits before that wears off, which can potentially go by much faster than the 4 rounds of Mantle. This is all experimental anyways, so you might as well see how things play out!

That's why maybe give the original 4 rounds of immunity to +2.  Then you get the same protection as the vanilla spell against low-enchantment melee weapons, and some protection against higher-enchantment weapons.

Problem with doing more skins than Stoneskin is that, if the caster casts Stoneskin after this, the weaker spell with fewer skins will replace the better spell with more skins.  AI scripts won't know not to do that.  Having them give the same number of skins means it doesn't really matter if you cast one then the other.

I suppose I could add 206 vs. SPWI408 while you have any Iron Skins active... the AI might still try to cast it, and it would be a wasted spell, but at least it wouldn't be actively worse...

[subtledoctor]

Now also thinking about Neutralize Poison... SR makes it into a long-duration immunity to poison effects.  But what about broadening the scope, make it an umbrella cure for things other than hit points and experience levels?  Something like "Restore Vitality:"

• Cure poison
• Cure diseases
• Cure fatigue
• Cure drunkenness
• Cure stat drain
• ...

?