Questions about mod interactions

[Caedwyr]

Here are some questions open to anyone who has experience using this mod with other mods.

1. Treat Mage and Priest HLAs as innate abilities.  Does this take into account any modded kits, or only the base game HLAs?  What about mods like Refinements which replace/rework the base game HLAs?  Also, does this interact with the SCS component to Make Spell Sequencer... learnable by all mages or is the later not needed if I already have teh former installed?
2. Improved Fiends and Celestials. Does this make any changes to Celestials, and if so what is the nature of these changes?  The readme provides lots of details on the changes to fiends, but doesn't give much info on the adjustments to Celestials.  If this mostly does what PnP Celestials does, I'd prefer to just install this one, since I trust DavidW to come up with elegant and balanced solutions over my half-understanding what I'm doing hack job from over a decade ago.
3. Improved Shapeshifting.  This mentions giving a shapeshifting token weapon.  Is this like Weimer's shapeshifter fix, where it handed out a weapon with the shapeshifting fix that could be traded among party members, or is it more like Refinements which did some trickery to give an invisible shapeshifter weapon that couldn't be traded?  Or is it something different from the other two?  The description makes it sound like the Weimer approach.

Thanks!

Edited May 26, 2020 by Caedwyr

[DavidW]

1. It should be able to handle any simple mod changes, e.g. new HLAs. But this is a fairly complex and delicate area of the Infinity Engine, so I wouldn't swear that there are no problems if some other mod does something more sophisticated.

2. Yes, this should be better documented. Celestials get the same boosts to casting speed and hitpoints as fiends (i.e., instant casting at TACTICAL+, 50% hp boost at HARDCORE+). Otherwise, their abilities aren't changed from the vanilla game - they're just scripted to use them better. Compared to PnP Celestials, there's probably a worse fit to PnP spell-like abilities, but somewhat smarter AI - but I haven't looked at that mod for ages.

3. It's the Weimer approach. The tokens are coded to be usable only by druids, and the description tells you they're usable only by the creator, but that's not enforced. I view swapping the tokens between party members as an exploit, and I have a don't-block-exploits policy - if someone wants to play that way, they're welcome. The main difference with Weimer (beyond details of implementation, and the actual abilities granted) is that my tokens block spellcasting.

[Caedwyr]

1. There are two components in SCS dealing with spell sequencers.  One gives them to all mages and the other one makes them innate abilities.  Will both components install, or does it result in a mish-mash?
2. I think either Galactygon or hlidskialf did the scripting.  I recall one of the outcomes, is that the celestials' scripts function much the same way as SCS did in its early days, where they don't use 'cheat scripting', but instead just make full use of their toolkit (which is pretty extensive since I made it match the 2e bestiaries.  On lower difficulties, you could pretty much just summon one and get an extra party member who was smart enough to help carry the party through a lot of fights.  Feel free to use whatever you want from the mod.  I'd be fine if it ended up being subsumed into/superseded by another mod, since I most just did a bunch of spell and item edits in DLTCEP, hacked together a weidu installer and then smarter people helped me with the hard stuff like scripting and making the install a bit more dynamic and not just a simple copy/paste of the new .spl and .cre files.

 

Edited May 26, 2020 by Caedwyr

[Bartimaeus]

I used to use P&P Celestials, but I think the Big World Project marked it as incompatible with SCS (or maybe SR?) at some point so I stopped since I used to use that to determine general mod order install and didn't feel like dealing with issues. Plus I usually never make it through ToB to see the Celestials anyways because ToB is not very good or fun, so I never figured out if they were actually incompatible or not. Still a cool idea.

Edited May 26, 2020 by Bartimaeus

[Caedwyr]

SCS Improved Fiends and PnP Celestials pretty much does the same thing on the Celestials side (though apparently SCS doesn't give them their full set of abilities).  As to which one gives a better game experience, I couldn't tell you at present.  Maybe once I've had a chance to go through the game with SCS's component installed I'll be able to report back.

[DavidW]

12 hours ago, Caedwyr said:

1. There are two components in SCS dealing with spell sequencers.  One gives them to all mages and the other one makes them innate abilities.  Will both components install, or does it result in a mish-mash?

 

The first isn't a component, it's just part of the default spell-system changes. It won't do anything if you install innate sequencers.

[Guest fan]

Feel free to correct me, but am I the only one having the weirdness that you cannot select more than once the HLA when using this mod and Refinements together? 

I mean: You level up many times
When you want to level up you click the button to level up
You can choose each HLA only one time making you unable to use all the points you have.

 

[DavidW]

What is an example of an HLA that you ought to be able to take multiple times but only get to take once?

[Caedwyr]

I'm wondering if this is related to the component that turns HLA spells into innate abilities.  Previously I recall being able to load up with multiple HLA spells and this component sounds like they now each become 1xday so you can't just drop 5 Dragon Breaths on your problems anymore.

[Bartimaeus]

I was always surprised that didn't remain an option. It's broken as heck, of course, and I'd never use it, but people do love their cheese.

[DavidW]

I could do an ini override if there's demand. But yes, seriously broken!

There are other mods that make HLAs innate and don't restrict to 1/day. SCS actually pays attention to that setting, so if you install that mod then enemy liches (etc) will also get to do it. Turnabout is fair play...

(Fun SCS testing/debugging story: I once had someone complain that SCS liches were just permanently casting timestop and never letting them get an action in. It turns out that player had installed a mod where spells you cast returned to your memorized spell list after a few rounds. Liches were benefitting from this too! I suggested that I should probably let the lich pause for a round after, say, the thirtieth timestop to let the damage from its fifty-odd Horrid Wiltings and Dragon Breaths come in, before going around again if there were any survivors...)

[Bartimaeus]

Wow, that's amazing. Yeah, I don't see that concept being a good match with SCS...or really, any system where you can cast a few Time Stops in a row.

Edited May 27, 2020 by Bartimaeus

[Jarno Mikkola]

1 hour ago, Bartimaeus said:

Wow, that's amazing. Yeah, I don't see that concept being a good match with SCS...or really, any system where you can cast a few Time Stops in a row.

You don't... well, I'll just say that I still keep up the mods upkeep. The original is from igi by the by. ... and now, I'll just say that I updated the mod so that you can select the refresh time based on the cast spells level and it would return it's own level spell, not the highest the caster has as the original*, as the effect it applies to every spell as it is based on the opcode 261. Yes, the original was OP as a lot if you made the timer too short, but you can set it to how you like, to not screw things up. And it's balanced.

Answer me this, how are you refreshing your spell list after each combat, with SCS installed ? You prefer the rest button... and you won't get interrupted ... or you just reload if you do, is that much more cheating than getting spells refreshed say every 8 hours that go by ?

 

* the original where you cast Magic Missile and it would effectively refresh your highest spell that you have stored in your spellbook, so a Magic Missile spell could refresh your Time Stop each time.

Edited May 27, 2020 by Jarno Mikkola

[Bartimaeus]

Note how I didn't say any of that. In contrast, if I actually was going to use that for actual better gameplay purposes, I'd probably select something like 1 in-game hour - a bit long for BG1, but necessary to make sure it's not too short for BG2. 8 hours would be way too long to really bother with it unless all you wanted was for spells to refresh when traveling between areas, which, hey, if you don't want any real modification to the vancian system, isn't too bad of an idea.

Edited May 27, 2020 by Bartimaeus

[subtledoctor]

Igi’s mod is a nice concept, and it’s awesome that it can be fine-tuned however the player likes. The problem is in opcode 261, which cannot restore a particular spell a set time after it is cast, but only sets a timer for each restoration and then restores spells in alphabetical order. Which is utterly nuts IMHO. (Think about it: you cast Magic Missile, then Larloch’s Drain, then Burning hands... the first spell you get back will be Burning Hands. Cast it again... and then you’ll get it right back again. If you keep casting whatever is available each rounds, you’ll get infinite casts of Burning Hands, and never get another chance to cast Magic Missile. Not cool!)

Now that I think about it, the way it could actually achieve its true aim is to use innate abilities instead of actual spells - something like my bardic casting system. Now I think about it, it would be pretty simple to add Igi-style timed restoration to my system. Hmmm...

But this is waaaay off-topic, sorry. (And it would not play well with SCS AI.)

Edited May 27, 2020 by subtledoctor