Sword Coast Stratagems v33 now available

[Angel]

9 hours ago, DavidW said:

I suppose I should ask: is it actively good that Icharyd dispels defenses? My inclination is not, but sometimes accidents lead to serendipitous results, and if people like it I'll keep it.)

My suggestion would be to move the second part of the battle to a copy of the area map that is always nighttime (and could have some other quirks if you really want to go all out, like having the ruins float in a starry void like Candlekeep during the Spellhold dream in BG2), and give Icharyd access to Remove Magic that could be disabled in the .ini and/or tied to the difficulty.

Edited August 14, 2020 by Angel

[Lianos]

Will the players party spells be refreshed when the second part of the fight begins? Like when they have rested? Then the player would have guaranteed the possibility of rebuffing.

[DavidW]

No, definitely not.

[polytope]

Incidentally, the Icharyd buff-expiration thing also happens with vampires summoned by Limited Wish, which sets the time to midnight. I like Angel's idea of teleporting the party to a cloned "night map" and back instead, which is simple enough to do (editing the TIS to give the "starry void" effect is not).

Further findings from my playthrough, in no particular order:

• Necromancers (can spot them even without a editor, they have no illusionary prebuffs) use minor sequencers with Blindness (not sure if they also have spell sequencers with Imp Invisibility).
• Mages can turn invisible (DW#SILIN.spl) if they are out of your LOS for even a fraction of a second - which happens often in certain maps because they run around - regardless of whether their aura was clear and they would legitimately have been able to cast a spell that round.
• Similarly, certain creatures Teleport Without Error to the party in the same round that they've cast a spell, noticed this with Nymphs, perhaps Fiends would do so, but I'm using aTweaks fiends (with a little TPA modification I give them SCS stat & hp boosts and allow your casters to summon them... I'm reluctant to post the modified files as they're hacks of someone else's work).
• Some enemies waste their round recasting illusionary buffs like Mirror Image even if you're running True Sight, this is most noticeable with Rakshasas (which have few non-illusionary buffs), such behaviour does make sense for a thief trying to sneak in a backstab, but not fighter/mage types.
• NPC assasins lack their correct bonuses, they get opcodes 167 and 286 (missile THAC0 and damage - archer kit bonuses).
• The Shade Lord's hp do not appear to be increased, contrary to previous versions.
• Enemies sometimes fail to identify unhittable targets (on BG2 classic, anyway); these fallen paladins are attacking earth elementals with non-magical swords (they have the regular IMMUNE2.itm).

If anyone cares, I had earth elementals this early in the game (my cleric->mage PC was level 8, and hadn't dualled yet, the Haste spell was from Jan, I swap him in and out of the party while "babysitting" recent dual class characters) because the elementalist druid gets lesser (8 HD) elemental summons as a third circle spell, they only remain for 1 turn though; she also got level 11 during this encounter, but dualling her to a fighter caused CTD, although the elementalist->fighter build worked fine on paper and in testing... I suspect the problem is the way the kit's hp penalty interacts with the stored hp count on characters in a saved .GAM file, I don't think this is an SCS bug though, it's either a kitpack bug or a Polytope bug, but I was able to fix it with DLTCEP and continue this campaign, which so far is no-reload apart from bug induced crashes.

Edited August 17, 2020 by polytope

[DavidW]

Noted in each case - thanks.

[Nachti]

Installed only Stratagem v33.3 (default initialize script + fiends installed).

Loaded a test ToB game, started to cast gate/cacofiend and summon fiend as lawful evil character.

 

The summoned Pit Fiend, Glabrezu and Bone Devil did attack each other when my character moves close to them. Otherwise they dont do anything at all. Even when I summon an ifrit they dont attack it.

 

Note: Too bad that stratagem doesnt work with PnP Fiends from aTweaks. I tried several days to get it working in different setups but i cant reproduce the one time it worked. The bone/flame ring doesnt appear and no fiend is called.

[DavidW]

Thanks, that's a helpfully precise description. I'll see if I can reproduce it.

[Nachti]

To be more precise on Stratagem Test:

•  Actually i meaned Cornugon instead of Glabrezu. The game did summon the correct one.
• I have 2-3 saves i load to test things. But different BG2EE installation folders.
• I think this script bug happens with every alignment and is independant of subcomponents. I had protection vs evil on me.
• I had installed: #5900 (Initialize), 6000 (Better KI) , 6010 (Better calls), 6030 (Mages), 6040 (Priests), 6200 (Spiders) and 6510 (Fiends).

Atweak + Stratagems Test 1:

1. Atweaks PnP Fiends 4.53.
2. Stratagems 33.3 with "no_initial_change_fiend_summoning = 1"  and without "6510: Fiends.
3. #5900 (Initialize), 6000 (Better KI) , 6010 (Better calls), 6030 (Mages), 6040 (Priests)

 

Spoiler

 

Result:

• Spells allow to select a location.
• Conjuration graphic is shown.
• Skeleton/flame ring appears.
• Creature appears.
• Spell Description reflects aTweak.

Chaotic Evil + Protection vs Evil:

• Balor (Gate) becomes friendly. 
• Nabassu (Cacofiend) + Glabrezu (Summon Fiend) stay neutral but attack friendly Balor.

Chaotic Evil:

• Balor (Gate) becomes hostile. 
• Nabassu (Cacofiend) + Glabrezu (Summon Fiend) stay neutral but attack.

Lawful Evil + Protection vs Evil:

• Cornugon (Cacofiend) and Geludon (Summon Fiend) become friendly.
• Pit Fiend stays neutral but attacks friendly Geludon and Cornugons. 

Lawful Evil:

• Cornugon (Cacofiend) and Geludon (Summon Fiend) become hostile.
• Pit Fiend stays neutral but attack. 

Conclusion: 

• Chaotic: Cacofiend and Summon Fiend behavior code get mixed up.
• Lawful: Gate behavior code get mixed up.

 

Atweak + Stratagems Test 2:

1. Stratagems 33.3 with "no_initial_change_fiend_summoning = 1"  and without "subcomponent: Fiends.
2. #5900 (Initialize), 6000 (Better KI) , 6010 (Better calls), 6030 (Mages), 6040 (Priests)
3. Atweaks PnP Fiends 4.53.

 

Spoiler

 

Result:

• Spell allows to select a location.
• Conjuration graphic is shown.
• No skeleton/flame ring appears.
• No creature appears.
• Spell Description reflects aTweak changes.

Conclusion: 

• The spell creates no creature, so issue might be within the spell script. 

 

 

Iam glad that i can help. 

 

I know aTweak is not your concern. I just feel i should whrite it down somewhere.

Edited August 18, 2020 by Nachti

[DavidW]

Noted.

The problem with aTweaks is that it wants to be installed after SCS, but it's not being maintained. I can usually manage compatibility with mods that are installed before SCS via SCS code, but not ones that are after - aTweaks is making assumptions about SCS code structure that are badly out of date.

[subtledoctor]

1 hour ago, DavidW said:

The problem with aTweaks is that it wants to be installed after SCS, but it's not being maintained. I can usually manage compatibility with mods that are installed before SCS via SCS code, but not ones that are after - aTweaks is making assumptions about SCS code structure that are badly out of date.

We should, per folk wisdom, change what we can and accept what we cannot, and hope to know the difference.  Maybe it's worth thinking a bit outside the box:

- Anyone recall why aTweaks wants to be installed later?  What if it (or just the PnP fiends component) is installed first?

- Or if aTweaks really needs to be installed after SCS, would it be feasible to create a post-aTweaks hotfix kind of mod, to address the deficiencies that exist in a normal SCS33->aTweaks install?

[Nachti]

Or integrate the good parts into SCS.

Why I like aTweak Fiend:

• Different Fiends per alignment. (Stratagem also has it)
• Fiends of same alignment dont attack each other. (Stratagem also has it soon)
• Fiends grant XP to the summoner when they kill an enemy.
• Flavour Stuff like like fiendish speech, fiendish gating, devils vs demons.

[DavidW]

2 minutes ago, Nachti said:

Or integrate the good parts into SCS.

There are some nice features of aTweaks that I wished I'd done myself; I didn't borrow them out of courtesy to another mod but I might reconsider that now it's been so longer abandoned. (aTweaks is released under a Creative Commons license, which simplifies borrowing.)

That said, the central idea of aTweaks fiends is to do a faithful reconstruction of 2nd edition AD&D fiends. That's not and never will be an SCS goal - my fiends are a hybrid of 2e and 3e fiends.

[NdranC]

I'm not sure if this has already been fixed by v33 but in the current version I'm playing with SRR, golem curse is not stopping the healing from druid's regeneration type spells.

[NiziNizi]

Report on few details :

- I reported before that Flame Strike still work on Entropy Shield, for V33 it is stated as corrected, but it is not. However this is minor thing and easy to correct.

- I also reported before problem with Impervious Sanctity of Mind and its addition of Spell Shield, as removing it's SH in game, do not remove SpellState SPELL_SHIELD, which can lead to confused AI regarding that. V33 state it as corrected, but still it is not. I did check on few different installs including V33.2 and V33.3.

For what I can see, casting of Impervious Sanctity of Mind use Cast Spell effect with resource DW#ISSS, which is Spell Shield version for Impervious Sanctity of Mind (it is longer duration, same as first spell). DW#ISSS, of course, use effects Spell Type Deflection (BREACH and MAGICATTACK) just as normal SH does, but still with resource SPWI519B.SPL.

SPWI519B.SPL only use Remove Effects by Resource - resource - SPWI519.SPL (Spell Shield). And this is where problem is. I corrected it easily for my install, but I must report it because any creature scripted to look for SH will assume SH is there for all of its duration (which is very long), while actually it may not be there anymore (any spell attack will take it down).

 

- GOI (not Minor, as minor do not protect against level 4 spells), Protection from Magic scroll, Potion which grants immunity to 1-5 spells, or whatever which gives immunity to spells from 4 and above, will protect against Fire Shield Red. It will also protect against Aura of Flaming Death (level 7 spell), as Aura uses subspell, which uses effect Damage at power level 4.

But Fire Shield Blue, uses subspell (cast spell on condition) SPPR951D, which uses effect Damage at level 0, so it bypass GOI, Protection from Magic scroll, etc etc.

Fire Shield Red uses subspell SPPR952D, which uses effect Damage at level 4, hence it is blocked by immunity to level 4.

Blade Barrier and Globe of Blades also strikes with damage at level 0, but it may be intended (just my guess, but I would also like to know what is really intended by game). But I suspect that difference between Red and Blue fire shields are actually error/miss.

This is not SCS issue, as I inspected fully clear non-modded install from BeamDog, and same thing is present there. So this is issue which exist from vanilla. If this is not something SCS have to cover, than please ignore my report regarding Fire Shields, but I report it in hope it gets fixed probably.

[Nachti]

Any eta on next update?

Iam planning a full playthrough with SCS, but I like to wait for fixed fiends (not attacking same of kind).