SubtleMods: 5E Spellcasting Rules Conversion

[subtledoctor]

12 hours ago, mickabouille said:

I guess we all care about different things, I wouldn't care much about having duplicated entries in the logs, but you don't have a use for tooltips

Well, I didn't mean to say I don't care about the missing tooltips, only that my version of the game had no way to make me aware of the issue. On balance, doubled entries in the combat log is a bit of a visual annoyance but ultimately harmless; whereas the missing tooltips actually deprives the player of useful information. So when this gets updated I will almost certainly add the spells' names back. As you note, it is a fairly trivial change in the code.

12 hours ago, mickabouille said:

learning to recognize them by memory will probably no happen, at least not in this century

I keep being surprised by how others experience these games, I have always found spell icon identification to be fairly easy, even with spell mods installed. Though note, even if the spells' names are not there, the descriptions still are, so you can always right-click the icon to confirm for yourself which spell you are looking at.

10 hours ago, mickabouille said:

Now, I wonder... this semi_spont module is duplicated in many mods you maintain, I guess I'll have to edit all of them

Yes.  And it means any changes I make for the sake of one mod entails updating about five different mods. Not ideal, but OTOH, allowing various different mods utilize a single library of functions for their own purposes is super handy.

[ahungry]

First off - I LOVE your mods - so much fun, thanks for all your hard work on them.

I had just begun trying them out in the last week or so after scanning various forums/recommendations, and have been trying out in roughly this order (this isn't a request to troubleshoot, just general feedback of my particular experience):

 

<bunch of non-Unearthed Arcana stuff - ascension, scs (I change mods too often to put this at the end and wait for the slow install each time), mostly npc/story mods - SCS adds some IWD spells, item_revs, spell_revs>

<Unearthed Arcana in order: Tome and Blood, Monastic Order (btw, I have a fix for qdmfist.itm, the hand doing 1-2), Faith and Powers, 5E spell casting (neat!), Might and Guile, Magic Battles Revised>

<bunch of non-UA tweak mods, aTweaks, Anthology Tweaks>

<UA Scales of Balance>

EET_end

 

What I noticed with the bard component (maybe its the metamagic component) in T&B is that when Garrick would join, I could pick 3 spells to memorize with the sorcerer/5E system (before I even installed this 5E magic component), but after rest, he would tend to only have one spell available to pick from - choosing different spells, it seems like maybe some mod revised spells don't show up under this system.

Likewise, this problem extends to mage/clerics when using the 5E system - other than SCS IWD Spells, Spell Revisions, and the UA mods, I don't think anything is touching divine spells in my install, but certain things that (I thought F&P added) like Divine Smite will not show up in the spontaneous casting choices, while other ones such as Cure Wounds, Armor of Faith etc. do show up (and if I only pick those, I can get a proper 3 mem set on my cleric).

 

Lastly, I notice Fighter/Mage/Cleric gives me 1 cleric spell (Cure wounds) and the innate ability to pick a deity gives me something about "NO VALID LINKS FOUND" - so I guess tri-class isn't usable in my current install.

I found the 5E system fun, but in my setup, it's a bit too non-deterministic (also my feats seem odd from M&G - around level 5 a paladin kit randomly got a bunch of pre-chosen feat innates - maybe that's intentional? But some npcs like Imoen have a choose a feat button, and on clicking it, no feat dialog comes up).

 

That turned into a giant ramble - apologies!

Edit: This is all under the steam version of BGEE/BGEE2 2.6 with EET

Edited December 31, 2021 by ahungry

[mickabouille]

9 hours ago, subtledoctor said:

Well, I didn't mean to say I don't care about the missing tooltips, only that my version of the game had no way to make me aware of the issue.

Yeah, that was just me using the wrong word. Didn't mean care, more "focus on different things" or maybe "balance things differently" . Not a native english speaker and all that, sometimes nuances are not conveyed correctly.

[v1ld]

Would this be expected to work in SoD with a save imported from BGEE for Imoen who is a T(5)/M dual?  I'm using it with @jastey's lovely Imoen 4 Ever mod.  I didn't install either of 5e spellcasting or Imoen4Ever until after finishing BG1EE - made a new install folder and reinstalled all the earlier components + a few other mods.

Tested by creating a new mage in SoD with a new game and this mod works exactly as you'd expect.  The mage book shows no circles for memorization and there's a new innate to prepare to learn spells.

But with the imported save Imoen has immediate full access to the mage spell book and doesn't have the new innate prepare spells ability.

Any ideas to make this work would be appreciated.  I'd like to continue using Imoen with 5e spellcasting if possible.

WieDUI log attached.

Edit: I've worked around this for now by making Imoen exportable and then export/importing her as a PC in a copied-to-multiplayer save.  The resulting fresh character is a clone of her T/M dual that does have all the 5e spellcasting characteristics including the new innate ability. 

Thanks again for this excellent mod!

WeiDU.log

Edited January 3, 2022 by v1ld

[v1ld]

Question on #memorized and #cast spells per level.  I have aThief(5)/Mage(9) dual at the beginning of SoD (a clone of Imoen, export/imported into SoD as a PC).

She gets the following casts:

Level 2 has an extra memorized spell and cast because she's wearing The Amplifier amulet that grants +1 2nd level spell.  Taking that out, she has a memorized spell distribution by level of 4 3 3 2 1 which exactly matches the Mage's memorization table.

Given the 4 3 3 2 1 memorization table, shouldn't the #casts also match?  I.e., shouldn't it be 4 casts at level 1, 3 at level 2, etc?  That would seem more natural:  you have the same number of casts as earlier, but you have more flexibility in how you spend them.  This would also give the Sorcerer a little bit more of an edge to compensate for the lack of flexibility.

This would also mean that items like The Amplifier above would naturally add 1 memorization slot and also 1 cast which makes sense.

Evermemory would double the slots and therefore the casts, which are both 8 for a lvl 9 mage in vanilla but 10 casts in this mod right now.

TL;DR:  Have number of casts be equal to the vanilla number of memorization slots at each level, instead of sorcerer - 1 as now.

It's not a big deal but it's difficult to justify using a sorceror as it stands, they're a bit too close.  Keeping #casts == #memorized keeps the decision exactly the same as in vanilla.

Edit: The above is using the following #casts 5 5 4 2 1, which is the dragon disciple equivalent of a 6 6 5 3 sorcerer, dropping the lvl 5 spell since sorcerers lag mages at level 8/9.  A 6 6 5 3 is a level 8 sorcerer. 

Which is to say the mod seems to be using the casts table of a Dragon Disciple one level below that of the caster.  So an 8th level Dragon Disciple for the level 9 mage here.

Using the Mage's native memorization table as the casting table seems simpler and fairer to the Sorcerer to me.  As it stands the mage is picking up 1 2 1 0 0 extra casts here (even ignoring the extra +1 from The Amplifier), which is quite a bit.

Edited January 3, 2022 by v1ld

[subtledoctor]

On 1/3/2022 at 3:41 PM, v1ld said:

Using the Mage's native memorization table as the casting table seems simpler and fairer to the Sorcerer to me. 

Okay, point #1: sorcerers are stupid. It's a stupid class with a stupid design based on a stupid concept. People don't like sorcerers because they are well-designed, they like sorcerers because they get lots of spell slots. Which highlights the principal design failure of mages: they just don't get enough spell slots. Rather than make a whole new stupid class, the better course of action would be to simply fix mages' spell slots. Without recourse to suspiciously fortuitous coincidences involving cast-aside magical rings.

And so I fixed mages' spell slots.

Less snarky version: this is all really good feedback, and I really appreciate it! Here's my reasoning:

Point #2: as stated, the game is too parsimonious when it comes to mages' spell slots. They deserve... not as many as sorcerers, but still more than they get. So I gave them a bit more.

Point #3: however, reasonable minds may differ on the ideal implementation. And I take your point that the mere fact of being more flexible by casting prepared spells spontaneous is in some ways already equivalent to having extra slots. So you are right that this gives mages kind of a double-bump in spellcasting.

Point #4: but please note that your argument only holds true for base-class mages. Unmodded specialists get an extra spell slot at each level, but with this mod they don't. So specialists (and doesn't everyone play specialists?) have the same number of spell slots. They also have cool flexibility with regard to spells in their school.

Point #5: nevertheless, you should not take this as me trying to convince you my implementation is "right." The real question here is, if you are inclined to structure this a bit differently in your game, what can you do? You have several options.

• You can simply decline to install the mod component that lets spell-slot-increasing items work on 5E casting slots. Without that component, the Amplifier would give sorcerers an extra casting slot, and would only give 5E mages an extra memorization slot. It would make mages more flexible but would increase the extent to which sorcerers are differentiated by having more sheer firepower.
• You can edit the table yourself: it is in the mod folder at /5E-spellcasting/data/5E_casting/d5cstwiz.2da. Simply copy the contents of the vanilla mage spell table (mxsplwiz.2da) and paste it into this file, then save the file and then install the mod. Voila: now mages will have casting slots that match their memorization slots. Or change the table to be however you want! (But, again, note that specialists spell slots will be similarly reduced. With this mod specialists don't get more casting slots than mages; instead they get more flexibility in using their casting slots to cast their speciality spells.)

 

[subtledoctor]

Whoa, there's more stuff to respond to that I missed. Sorry:

On 12/30/2021 at 9:11 PM, ahungry said:

when Garrick would join, I could pick 3 spells to memorize with the sorcerer/5E system (before I even installed this 5E magic component), but after rest, he would tend to only have one spell available to pick from

Probably he had too many spell slots when he joined (the .CRE file is coded with the vanilla spell system in mind) and then after resting or levelling up, things equalized to what they should be. Bards don't get many spell slots!

Alternatively, if you are seeing people with two slots too few, then it might be because you installed the "stat-based bonus spells" component of TnB/SoB, and then installed a mod that changed spell tables after it. Stat-based bonus spell slots needs to be installed after all mods that change spell tables.

I'm fairly confident it's one of those two things.

On 1/2/2022 at 8:16 PM, v1ld said:

Would this be expected to work in SoD with a save imported from BGEE for Imoen who is a T(5)/M dual?

NPCs you've met already are kept in your save file; but this mod only affects the game files, not anything in a save file. That's why you're having trouble.

[Gordian]

I've run several tests on 2.5 and 2.6 having only SR or SRR (doesn't make a difference issuewise here), TnB, FnP (spheres or no spheres) 5E and FnP Multiclasses installed (all recent versions, EET (merger only)) but I can't get Cleric/Mage spellcasting to work. Mostly only cleric spells work, or you're just offered the 2 spells "autopopulated" per level (as per character creation - only CLW and Bless on level 1 for instance). It works fine without FnP, at least for vanilla cleric/mage. I've posted a few screenshots and the logs of my big installs here:

 

I just won't start my run before there's a solution.

PS: I do really like most of your ideas/changes. : )

Edited January 9, 2022 by Gordian

[v1ld]

On 1/7/2022 at 12:52 AM, subtledoctor said:

You can edit the table yourself: it is in the mod folder at /5E-spellcasting/data/5E_casting/d5cstwiz.2da. Simply copy the contents of the vanilla mage spell table (mxsplwiz.2da) and paste it into this file, then save the file and then install the mod. Voila: now mages will have casting slots that match their memorization slots. Or change the table to be however you want! (But, again, note that specialists spell slots will be similarly reduced. With this mod specialists don't get more casting slots than mages; instead they get more flexibility in using their casting slots to cast their speciality spells.)

Thanks for the pointer, this is what I'll do.  Appreciate the long response and your reasoning - so having the ability to customize the tables is the best of all worlds.

I do like how you've set up the mod.  Giving specialists spontaneous casting is brilliant, love that.

I completed BG2 soon after its release, but never got to the Bandit Camp back then in BG1.  Just finished BG1 as part of a full trilogy run.  Still somewhat restrained in terms of mods (SCS without improved encounters and a small number of tweak mods is all), but after this full run is done I think I'm going to be installing a bunch of your excellent mods for the next few runs.  Cheers.

[Guest Mod enthusiast]

Hello,

Firstly, thanks for this amazing mod. It's really fun. I actually find spell book management quite difficult and boring, so I might actually finish a run!

Unfortunately I have a problem with my cleric / illusionist. Cleric spells from level 2 onwards are not appearing in my priest spellbook after leveling up. I have slots to memorise spells, but no spells to memorise. Is this a known issue?

I am running this with Tome and Blood (just revised invisibility, illusionary clones, meta magic) and SCS.

Thanks!

[Guest Guest Mod enthusiast]

Just to update on my previous message. I reinstalled all my mods but still have the same issue of not seeing cleric spells after level 1. I tested a single class cleric and they also don't get new cleric spells on level up.

However it was pretty easy to add them myself using ee-keeper.

[subtledoctor]

On 1/19/2022 at 12:30 PM, Guest Mod enthusiast said:

Unfortunately I have a problem with my cleric / illusionist. Cleric spells from level 2 onwards are not appearing in my priest spellbook after leveling up. I have slots to memorise spells, but no spells to memorise. Is this a known issue?

Huh. This is indeed a known issue, I thought it was a solved issue, but reading back through the thread I guess maybe I never got around to it? I could swear I had a working fix for this on my computer at some point, but I don't see it anywhere.

Anywhere, for now, what you need to do is, when you are ready to level up to a level where you get new spells (3/5/7/9/11/14 I think), or to be safe when you are going to level up to any level below 15, you should use the "prepare new spells" ability, and then level up. You should get your new spells that way. Meantime I'll look into fixing this.

[subtledoctor]

FYI in version 1.4 this mod is, theoretically, compatible with Tome & Blood’s Revised Specialists. This strips out TnB’s in-school spontaneous casting system and uses the 5E specialist bonus casting instead; but it retains the other specialist bonuses, like necromancers’ Rebuke Undead and abjurers’ bonus Spell Shields, etc. 

I say theoretically because I coded it but did not test it. It should work fine though, it’s rather simple at a technical level. @Endarire if you want to kick the tires and test the combination, here you go. 

[subtledoctor]

Updated to version 1.5. 

The mod no longer changes the fatigue stat when detecting whether you have rested, using a spellstate instead. This should make it more compatible with other mods that need to detect resting, like various ‘7th party member’ mods. This mod still needs to detect fatigue = 0 though, so other mods that change the fatigue stat can still prevent 5E spell preparation from working. 

Also, more on the questionable compatibility front: now this can be installed alongside the Faiths & Powers component that lets priests choose to cast spells normally (Vancian) or like sorcerers (spontaneously). If that component is installed, the 5E casting will be installed for arcane casters only. So then you can make a cleric/mage that is:

1. Vancian—5E
2. spontaneous—5E
3. Vancian—spontaneous (with TnB)
4. spontaneous—spontaneous

You only do 5E—5E if you do not install the FnP spontaneous option. In that case your choices would be:

1. 5E—5E
2. 5E—spontaneous

And of course without the 5E mod your choices are:

1. Vancian—Vancian
2. Vancian—spontaneous
3. spontaneous—Vancian
4. spontaneous—spontaneous

So among the three mods you have a  LOT of options for how to cast spells!

Edited February 7, 2022 by subtledoctor

[mickabouille]

Hi, with 1.5.1 I get an installation error (not finding mxsplprs.2da). I made a pull request to point what I think is the correct path :  https://github.com/UnearthedArcana/5E_spellcasting/pull/3