Anyone know how the Saerileth mod prevents spellcasting in the trip to Sigil?

[subtledoctor]

It drives me crazy, and makes little or no sense.  (It's not just a "dead magic" zone... my psionics and other innate abilities with the "ignore dead/wild magic" flag do not work.) 

I'd like to change it.

[Daulmakan]

Watcher's Keep dead magic zone is set by script, whereas Saerileth's areas simply use the Area flag "4-Antimagic Area".

I think the flag never quite worked as intended, since you CAN cast spells if you place them in the quickspell slots. Maybe that's why the vanilla areas went the script way and left the flag unused.

[subtledoctor]

Thanks.  I actually just played through it recently in BG2EE v2.5.16, and I don't think I could cast spells from quickslots.  So maybe Beamdog "fixed" that workaround.

Frankly I don't understand why those areas supposed to be an anti-magic area anyway.  I assume it's supposed to be part of Baator... I've read all the Planescape books and I don't recall anything about spellcasting being disabled there.  (There were a lot of convoluted rules about spellcasting on the outer planes, and using spell keys etc.  But I'm pretty sure they didn't amount to "thou shalt not cast.")  And you also can't cast in Sigil - but can cast inside a bar in Sigil - which makes even less sense.

Also weird/unfortunate that the "ignore dead magic" flag in spells does not in fact ignore the "dead magic" flag in areas.  That's real basic "do what it says on the tin" kind of stuff.  Maybe someone should bring that to Beamdog's attention for the 2.6 patch...

[DavidW]

25 minutes ago, subtledoctor said:

Also weird/unfortunate that the "ignore dead magic" flag in spells does not in fact ignore the "dead magic" flag in areas.  That's real basic "do what it says on the tin" kind of stuff.  Maybe someone should bring that to Beamdog's attention for the 2.6 patch...

To be fair to Beamdog, it's not as if the flags are called that in any official material. It's what Near Infinity calls them. If NI's description doesn't match what the game engine does, that's for NI to fix.  (The writing on the tin was put there by third parties, not the tin owner.) The proper description of the SPL flag would probably be 'ignore the dead-magic settings of opcode 66'. 

(And to be fair to Near Infinity, their descriptions are not intended to be full descriptions, just something short enough to fit in the interface.)

 

[Daulmakan]

45 minutes ago, subtledoctor said:

Thanks.  I actually just played through it recently in BG2EE v2.5.16, and I don't think I could cast spells from quickslots.  So maybe Beamdog "fixed" that workaround.

Frankly I don't understand why those areas supposed to be an anti-magic area anyway.  I assume it's supposed to be part of Baator... I've read all the Planescape books and I don't recall anything about spellcasting being disabled there.  (There were a lot of convoluted rules about spellcasting on the outer planes, and using spell keys etc.  But I'm pretty sure they didn't amount to "thou shalt not cast.")  And you also can't cast in Sigil - but can cast inside a bar in Sigil - which makes even less sense.

Also weird/unfortunate that the "ignore dead magic" flag in spells does not in fact ignore the "dead magic" flag in areas.  That's real basic "do what it says on the tin" kind of stuff.  Maybe someone should bring that to Beamdog's attention for the 2.6 patch...

Yeah, maybe, I was talking vanilla BG2.

In P&P Baator is not an anti-magic area per se, but you need to have the proper spell key. I guess flagging it as a dead magic zone was seen as an acceptable compromise.

 

Side note: in the past I would've quoted you separately for each reply line, seems I can't do that anymore. So may I just say that the new forum software sucks oh so much and makes me not want to post anymore.

[subtledoctor]

I’ve found you can highlight certain text, and a “quote selection” button will pop up, and you can reply to that; then you can highlight other text and rey to it. Took some getting used to but now I actually find it pretty good. 

[Daulmakan]

7 minutes ago, subtledoctor said:

I’ve found you can highlight certain text, and a “quote selection” button will pop up, and you can reply to that; then you can highlight other text and rey to it. Took some getting used to but now I actually find it pretty good. 

I would've NEVER guessed. Seems to work, thanks.