Subtledoc's Random Tweaks

[Grammarsalad]

On 4/21/2020 at 6:32 AM, Luke said:

Thank you very much for sharing!

I decided to remove the fake weapon and give them this effect. I also replaced your 'no filter' check with an INT check. In particular:

• Shadow Monsters: if the attacker has 'INT >= 16', then it will automatically disbelieve. Otherwise ('INT < 16'), it will disbelieve only upon a successful Save vs. Spell.
• Demi-Shadow Monsters: if the attacker has 'INT >= 17', then it will automatically disbelieve. Otherwise ('INT < 17'), it will disbelieve only upon a successful Save vs. Spell at -2.
• Shades: if the attacker has 'INT >= 18', then it will automatically disbelieve. Otherwise ('INT < 18'), it will disbelieve only upon a successful Save vs. Spell at -4.

To sum up, these creatures will deal full damage unless the attacker realizes (via making a Save vs. Spell) it's hitting an illusionary creature.

Let me know if you need more details about how to implement this mechanic (it's a little bit different from yours...)

I love it! And my pleasure! I love talking about different implementation ideas!

I'm working on a tweak that implements pnp high int illusion immunities, which will implement something like this, but require higher Int levels. I'm also going to do a variant that gives wis like bonuses to saves vs illusion (and maybe other spells that make sense), as well. And, I'll also be doing the pnp wis bonuses to saves. 

I'm interested in hearing more about your implantation. The way I would (and probably will)do it is by using different 326effects based on the Int stat. Let's see...

This is a work in progress to implement save bonuses for exceptional attributes. I'll use similar, but more complex code as the initial 326s will need to target the caster and account for this component (and vice versa--oi!!), for save penalties based on caster attributes. 

Edit:

The actual link:

https://github.com/Grammarsalad/Proficiencies/issues/42

 

Edit 2: I don't think it's complete. As I recall, I got a bit burnt out.

Edit 3: lol, I got off track. I actually don't remember how I implemented the disbelieve mechanic--the details, I mean. I remember not being totally happy with it. I would love to know how you did it

Edited April 23, 2020 by Grammarsalad

[Luke]

@Grammarsalad So:

Spoiler

Starting point: opcode #232 (timing = 2, res = "SPL_1")

SPL_1:

• Set BIT14 (Ignore dead/wild magic – offset 0x18) to 1, Innate, Spell level = 1.
• Extended Header: type = 1 (Melee), location = 4, target = 1, required level = 1, projectile = 1, range = 100 (an arbitrarily large value is needed here. The range of the spell is what causes the "One of your spells has failed" message...)

SPL_1 => Effects:

1. opcode = 318, target = 2, parameter2 = 49 (Allies), duration = 1, resource = "SPL_1" – Friendly fire shouldn't trigger the Disbelieve mechanic...
2. opcode = 139, target = 2, parameter1 = "Attempting to disbelieve", timing = 1 – Optional
3. opcode = 326, target = 2, parameter1 = 16, parameter2 = 128 (INT >=), timing = 1, resource = "SPL_2"
4. opcode = 318, target = 2, parameter1 = 16, parameter2 = 128 (INT >=), duration = 1, resource = "SPL_1"
5. opcode = 318, target = 2, parameter1 = 16, parameter2 = 129 (INT <), duration = 1, resource = "SPL_1", save type = BIT0 (Save vs. Spell)
6. opcode = 326, target = 2, parameter1 = 16, parameter2 = 129 (INT <), timing = 1, resource = "SPL_2"

SPL_2:

• Set BIT14 (Ignore dead/wild magic – offset 0x18) to 1, Innate, Spell level = 1.
• Extended Header: type = 1 (Melee), location = 4, target = 1, required level = 1, projectile = 1

SPL_2 => Effects:

1. opcode = 139, target = 2, parameter1 = "Disbelieves illusion", timing = 1 – Optional
2. opcode = 141, target = 9 (Original caster), parameter2 = 16 (Illusion air), timing = 1 – Optional
3. opcode = 168, target = 9 (Original caster), timing = 1

 

[subtledoctor]

Another idea.  I always liked the way Wizard Staffs work in the More Style for Mages mod, with a Magic Missile item attack.  It is the inspiration for my own 'Cantrip Wands' in Tome & Blood.  MSfM has an option to give the same kind of ranged attack to the Staff of the Magi, which is cool... but I feel like it should be better.  Like, maybe the SotM should have an unlimited ranged item attack that mimics Chromatic Orb? 

Cool?  Useful?  Or underwhelming?

[Cahir]

43 minutes ago, subtledoctor said:

Another idea.  I always liked the way Wizard Staffs work in the More Style for Mages mod, with a Magic Missile item attack.  It is the inspiration for my own 'Cantrip Wands' in Tome & Blood.  MSfM has an option to give the same kind of ranged attack to the Staff of the Magi, which is cool... but I feel like it should be better.  Like, maybe the SotM should have an unlimited ranged item attack that mimics Chromatic Orb? 

Cool?  Useful?  Or underwhelming?

Hmm, maybe give it a couple of different attacks to choose from. For instance you can switch from Chromatic orb to Magic Missile or to something more. In PnP Staff of the Magi is an artifact IIRC and it seems that it should be very versatile item, that a mage can use to defend himself in very different situations. So giving it a couple of 1st level spells to chose from as a range attack would be cool. But this could make it OP, so maybe not unlimited but a resonable amout of daily uses, not to much and not to few, so it can be useful.

[Mythalar]

On 4/28/2020 at 5:14 AM, subtledoctor said:

Another idea.  I always liked the way Wizard Staffs work in the More Style for Mages mod, with a Magic Missile item attack.  It is the inspiration for my own 'Cantrip Wands' in Tome & Blood.  MSfM has an option to give the same kind of ranged attack to the Staff of the Magi, which is cool... but I feel like it should be better.  Like, maybe the SotM should have an unlimited ranged item attack that mimics Chromatic Orb? 

Cool?  Useful?  Or underwhelming?

Pecca was nice enough to do this after I requested it, 'cause having such great staves but no ranged blast on the SotM sounded weird to me.

 

Actually a Chromatic Orb attack would be a sweet possibility since it would be more unique. 

Would it retain the +5 enchant to hit and just mimic the effects without cast the actual spell? +1 to this !

Mimic the max level version, or perhaps max damage and a random effect to each hit? -> I don't think it would be so unbalanced due to the saves, and it would retain the possibility to produce a "happy hit"           (Does petrify still destroy items? that would not be cool -_- )

Edited April 29, 2020 by Mythalar

[subtledoctor]

Another idea:

There is a leather armor that, in Item Revisions, is called "Skin of the Forest."  IR basically applies while-equipped Barkskin, but that seems boring; it just turns leather armor +2 into leather armor +5.  So... why not just make it leather +5?  Two ideas to make this more interesting:

-- if you are hit, the extra barkskin effect is removed for 1-2 rounds.  Like, the weapon strike knocked off the extra 'bark' and it must re-grow.

-- Instead of an AC bonus that can be removed, how about a Stoneskin bonus, similar to the Carapace psionic ability in Will to Power?  The 'bark' in the armor springs up acting as one 'skin' per round.  So it would protect you from up to one hit each round.  (Would need to make sure this doesn't override the actual Stoneskin/Ironskin spells, though...)

[Mythalar]

2 hours ago, subtledoctor said:

-- Instead of an AC bonus that can be removed, how about a Stoneskin bonus, similar to the Carapace psionic ability in Will to Power?  The 'bark' in the armor springs up acting as one 'skin' per round.  So it would protect you from up to one hit each round.  (Would need to make sure this doesn't override the actual Stoneskin/Ironskin spells, though...)

That would be quite nice.

AC bonus are very common but a real hit protection would add an interesting additional layer of protection (and would make an item of choice for frail classes)

[subtledoctor]

An Another Thing:

Poison!  Poison is kind of stupid in these games.  I was just perusing the aTweaks readme, and glanced at PnP fiends: imps (imps!) can do poison damage on each hit, which on a failed save does 4hp/second for 4 rounds.  That's 96 points of poison damage.  Which can happen every hit.  That's the same as an Abishai, and fully half as much poison damage as a Pit Fiend does.  By a teeny-tiny imp!!  That's crazy.  And btw from what I can see in Near Infinity, it seems like multiple applications of poison can stack with each other.

In my last BG1 game I saw some (mod-added, worth mentioning) spiders that did 5hp/second... that, in a game where my guys only had about 60 hit points.  Looking at some files, I see a greater wyvern also does 5hp/second.

This is crazy.  What poison works that way??  What poison can kill a dragon in 24 seconds?  I supposed there are some poisons venoms that kill relatively quickly... I want to say box jellyfish, black mamba, that sort of thing.  But even then, it takes a fair number of minutes.  Others more commonly take hours to kill.  Sure, lots of venoms are deadly, but you generally have a fair amount of time to seek help.  Not so in the Baldur's Gate games!  All poisons are designed to kill you dead inside of 30 seconds.  A 2HD enemy can do enough damage in two hits to kill a full-grown dragon!*  It's annoying, and it rings false. 

So, I propose to make a tweak that slows down poisons in general.  I haven't fully figured it out yet, but something like, reduce the damage-per-second by a factor of 3 or 5, and extend the duration of the poison by a similar amount.  Strong poisons might do about 2hp/second... that's enough to kill a full-grown 1st-level human inside of 6 seconds, and a seasoned 9th-level warrior in one turn.  Weaker poisons might act slower.  Could have several tiers:

• strong: 2hp/second for 3 turns (360 total damage if left untreated)
• moderate: 1hp/second for 4 turns (240 total damage)
• mild: 1hp/3 seconds for 5 turns (100 total damage)
• weak: 1hp/round for 5 turns (50 hp total damage)

Duration should be a lot longer: instead of wearing out in just a few rounds, the poison should affect you for several turns.  Plus, it should carry secondary effects: maybe STR (plus DEX/CON?) penalties and chance of casting failure, which can be applied via the Disease opcode.  (I mean, being poisoned definitely makes you weaker, and makes it hard to concentrate...)

Furthermore, theoretically, we could change how it is applied.  Instead of using opcode 25 with hit points deducted over time, we could set up recurring damage effects, using opcode 12 with the damage type = poison. 

What could we do with all that?  Well, with the secondary effects, poison would become more than an annoyance that is eliminated by a Slow Poison spell or an Antidote potion.  Those might stop the damage, but you would still be weakened until you receive a Cure Disease spell or a full day's rest.  (Neutralize poison, as discussed up-thread, would eliminate all effects.)

Further, by applying the damage as repeated effects, we could make Slow Poison actually slow the poison - not eliminate it.  It could stop the damage for, say, 10 rounds... but after that the spell would wear off and the (long-lasting, remember?) poison would begin hurting you again.

We could also do funky stuff like, allow antidotes to weaken poisons, but not eliminate them.  Like, drinking an antidote potion might eliminate mild and weak poisons, but would only convert a moderate poison effect to a weak one, and convert a strong poison effect to a mild one.  The game lets you buy a thousand antidotes for pennies... this would mean you can no longer exploit that to be functionally immune to all sources of poison.

Thoughts?

EDIT - damn, that doesn't take stacking into effect.  Should it stack?  Might have to reduce those damage values if you can be tagged with three or four instances of it.  Three hits from a wyvern would do over 1,000 damage.  I'm inclined to say it shouldn't stack; poison would be a status effect, you either have it or you don't. 

EDIT 2 - I've got a version of this that installs... need to test it.  Probably will move it into Scales of Balance, as it is a fairly major overhaul of a substantive game subsystem.

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

* Speaking of dragons, I think I'll also include a component to increase dragons' hit points.  The only way I know to do this is via SCS, and that component only has one setting (200% increase), and it perforce includes other stuff I don't like, such as making dragons' spellcasting uninterruptible.  I can make a few options for hit points alone - say, 50% increase, 100% increase, and 200% increase.

Are there any other monsters that should get a similar buff?

Edited May 14, 2020 by subtledoctor

[subtledoctor]

On 5/7/2020 at 1:13 PM, subtledoctor said:

-- Instead of an AC bonus that can be removed, how about a Stoneskin bonus, similar to the Carapace psionic ability in Will to Power?  The 'bark' in the armor springs up acting as one 'skin' per round.  So it would protect you from up to one hit each round.  (Would need to make sure this doesn't override the actual Stoneskin/Ironskin spells, though...)

I'd love to do this with the actual Barkskin spell also, but unfortunately it could screw up how enemy AI uses Barkskin/Ironskin.  Probably.  Unless... hm.

Okay, yes, I think I'm going to do it for the basic Barkskin spell as well.  It will be like Spell Revisions' 'Reflected Image' spell, blocking one attack each round, except for druids and one level higher.  Of course, unlike Reflected Image, Barkskin can be cast on anyone - like, the party tank.  That might be too powerful for such a low-level spell.  Probably should restrict it to the caster only... that would give druids a (another) interesting combat protection.

Edited May 14, 2020 by subtledoctor

[subtledoctor]

Okay!  I've updated the mod to version 0.5.  This adds:

-- Tweak the Barkskin spell to, instead of granting an AC bonus, it gives you one stoneskin every round, thus blocking one physical attack per round.  This is basically a druidic version of the Spell Revisions version of Reflected Image.  Because this is a very druid-y effect and is more powerful, the spells is changed to only affected the caster.  It lasts 2 turns.  This is compatible with Stonekin/Ironskin... however it has to modify the script attached to the Jugegrnaut Golem in BG2 that makes the golem die if you get hit 5 times... now it doesn't.  So this component makes the Juggernaut Golem better.  If you care.

-- Tweak the 'Skin of the Forest' armor (LEAT14.itm), to do exactly what I described above, except it's a constant effect as long as you are wearing the armor.

-- Increase dragons' hit points by 50%, 100%, or 200%.  Let me know if other monsters need this treatment as well.

Cheers, stay safe.

[4udr4n]

On poison.

I like your train of thought. Here's brain dump from me.

If we're going for better simulation of real life, there are vanishingly few substances (outside of modern synthetic neurotoxins and stuff) that could be used in combat and would have any real short term effect. Those that exist historically are generally rare and expensive (due to difficulty in harvesting, handling or preparing them) and fairly hard to store. They're also often useless on melee weapons, especially outside of duels as by the time you wound someone you're unlikely to have much left on your weapon. We're thinking of stuff like poison dart frogs and curare here, and various animal venoms as you mention. Clearly, magic could be involved to keep them fresh, and magical creatures or plants may produce better toxins, but we should probably still take this into account. Disease certainly seems a better model for most of them.

Therefore, you may want several classes of poisons, mixing any of these effects:

1. Virulent - HP damage (vanilla poison) - probably used for venoms, curare etc. Things that shut down the heart or lungs fast should be here. Remember HP isn't injury, it's a sim for closeness to death.
2. Debilitating - Immediate but temporary fatigue/slowness/ability score decrease. All sorts of stuff does this, like alcohol!
3. Destructive - Eventual permanent loss of Str/Dex/Con/Cha. Stuff like spider bites that can lead to almost inevitable amputations or muscle and nerve damage or mustard gas that causes horrific burns to skin eyes and lungs.
4. Fatal - Eventual death, slow acting but certain. Arguably the poison Marek uses is the most realistic one in BG.

Slow poison effects could slow the onset of effects, good saves/high con (as constitution should really remain the primary stat for surviving poisons, debates on what HP simulate notwithstanding) should help survive, but in many cases the eventual effects will just occur unless the character recieves an antidote.

Side note: I have always disliked the taking damage = spell disruption thing, HP are used to simulate (in my view) how close to death a character is, they are not literal wounds. Taking poison damage would not occur in discrete pangs of agony that owuld stop your chanting and hand waving, in most cases you'd initially just feel nauseous, until you lost consciousness or keeled over unable to move. IMHO vancian magic should be disrupted by things hitting you, or you having to dodge something to prevent it hitting you (and I've always rather felt that you shouldn't lose the memorised spell, but that isn't D&D. Maybe in my own system if I ever finish writing it!).

[subtledoctor]

Right.  Animal venoms and poisons operate in many different ways, but the classic deadly one basically get into your bloodstream and can eventually damage or shut down major organs.  A sting from a box jellyfish might kill you in 5-20 minutes, and cause spasms if intense pain the entire time; a bite from a black widow spider can take ~8 hours, and allow you to walk around (and, in D&D, cast spells!) with no problem.  This is the range of effects that I'm talking about emulating here.  You will go from healthy to dead over a certain amount of time (represented by the hp drain), and your body will likely have an uncomfortable inflammatory response and the poison might also attack the flesh around the site of the wound (taken together, represented by my added STR reduction).

There is definitely room in the game for other kinds - the MnG feat system and Rogue Rebalancing both add a paralytic poison for bounty hunters, and the poisons of Marek and Baron Ployer could represent something slower but harder to cure, like polonium exposure.  I only would not include poisons that cause permanent stat loss, because permanent stat loss affects PCs (who play ~100 hours through the game) differently from enemies (who only appear for 5-20 minutes).  Of course any of this stuff can involve "magic" or "alchemy" in explanations of how they are derived and/or stabilized and/or delivered, this being D&D.  And there could be all sorts of other effects delivered by "poison."

But. Applying different type of poison from different enemies is tough, because how do you do it?  We can't know what .CRE files are in the game, or how they have been modded. The easiest thing, what I have implemented in my current game and will soon be in SoB, is to go through all spells and items that use opcode 25, check a few rough ranges of severity (how much damage applied / how many seconds between being applied) and then replace them with a particular strength of the new-style poison. Liberalizing the types of poison applied would be tough.  Maybe the mod can be iterated over time, to add that kind of complexity.  So far I've just got a v1, which doesn't veer that far away from the original.

1 hour ago, 4udr4n said:

Side note: I have always disliked the taking damage = spell disruption thing, HP are used to simulate (in my view) how close to death a character is, they are not literal wounds. Taking poison damage would not occur in discrete pangs of agony that owuld stop your chanting and hand waving, in most cases you'd initially just feel nauseous, until you lost consciousness or keeled over unable to move. IMHO vancian magic should be disrupted by things hitting you, or you having to dodge something to prevent it hitting you (and I've always rather felt that you shouldn't lose the memorised spell, but that isn't D&D. Maybe in my own system if I ever finish writing it!).

This is why the ToBEx concentration checks are so great!  One point of damage is very unlikely to disrupt your spell, so 10 hp caused by a battle axe is far more likely to interrupt you than 30 hp of poison damage, if that poison works over 30 seconds.  Insects also become less likely to interrupt you.  Unfortunately, last I heard, concentration checks in the current EE engine are buggy. 

Man, I wish there was a setting to eliminate spell interruption altogether!  And instead just apply spell failure chance to various different methods of delivering damage.  Sigh...

Btw I've set up my psion mod so that you don't lose PSPs if you get interrupted while "casting."  But I don't think I can do that for other casters.

[4udr4n]

On concentration checks, how does scales_of_balance:204:SBO - Enable Concentration Checks achieve it?

Edited May 15, 2020 by 4udr4n

[subtledoctor]

31 minutes ago, 4udr4n said:

On concentration checks, how does scales_of_balance:204:SBO - Enable Concentration Checks achieve it?

The EE 2.0+ engine has a simple .2da file that you can edit to turn on concentration checks - switch the setting from 0 to 1.  SoB simply does that, nothing more; basically it's just a Weidu wrapper for the setting that you could otherwise change with NI or a text editor.

[4udr4n]

Thanks, good to know.