Protection from Magic scroll

[Guest mike123]

I'm trying to read some ideas on how to beat Ascension with SCS installed, and I noticed that many guides recommend using a Protection from Magic scroll on Sendai and/or Abazigal.

 

When I try this, it doesn't seem to slow down their spellcasting at all. Is this intentional? Is it due to a specific setting in SCS?

 

I did NOT select the option to allow Spellstrike to break the Protection from Magic scroll. But in any case, Sendai and Abazigal don't even bother trying, they just keep casting spells at me

 

Looking at NearInfinity, it looks like the scrolls do intend to apply a 100% spell failure of priest and wizard spells, so I just don't understand why that's not happening in the actual game. Thanks for any insight you can offer!

[Endarire]

Are these "spells" innate abilities?  If so, that may bypass the antimagic you expected.

[Guest mike123]

I don't know enough about the coding/scripting to really know for sure, but my guess is that they are not innate as that would be pretty cheesy.

[Guest The_sextein]

I've noticed that for a while now.  If you cast protection from magic on an enemy mage they continue to cast as usual.  I appears that magic can't effect the target but they can continue to cast.  I've tested this on my own party as well.  I wasn't sure if it was supposed to be that way now or if it was a mistake.

[Jarno Mikkola]

19 hours ago, Guest The_sextein said:

I appears that magic can't effect the target but they can continue to cast.

Well, now you are getting why you are adviced to use this strategy. Cause if they can't protect themselves from your magical weapons, and you equip them, then what happens ?

[Andrea C.]

Same issue here. It does not appear to block enemy spell casting at all.

[Jarno Mikkola]

14 hours ago, Andrea C. said:

Same issue here. It does not appear to block enemy spell casting at all.

IT IS NOT MEANT TO. It's a protection from magic. So thus, even your own. And if they are the target, their own. How hard is that to conceive ?!?

Edited June 18, 2021 by Jarno Mikkola

[Guest Just a Guest]

Normally. when the player casts it on a party member, the target has 100% spell failure. So it looks like enemies are ignoring that effect. Seems like a rule change that I didn't see in the documentation.  

[Andrea C.]

On 6/18/2021 at 10:30 PM, Jarno Mikkola said:

IT IS NOT MEANT TO. It's a protection from magic. So thus, even your own. And if they are the target, their own. How hard is that to conceive ?!?

Pretty flippant for someone who didn't bother checking the scroll's effects in Near Infinity.

If you had checked, you would have seen 100% spell casting failure for both arcane and divine spells applied to the target:

Edited June 20, 2021 by Andrea C.

[Jarno Mikkola]

2 hours ago, Andrea C. said:

Pretty flippant for someone who didn't bother checking the scroll's effects in Near Infinity.

If you had checked, you would have seen 100% spell casting failure for both arcane and divine spells applied to the target:

Hmm, could it be that there's an effect that can prevent that from effecting the creature ? Opcode 101, with parameter2, being 60. Where did they get that. I don't care, maybe Vocalize. Yes, that might be the most OP 2nd level spell out there. But that's not relevant to the subject in question.

Or maybe, the caster can still try to cast spells, even without the ability to complete them. The Artificial Intellegence is only as as smart as it's base input and output system. 

Edited June 20, 2021 by Jarno Mikkola

[subtledoctor]

Guys, it applies spell failure (should maybe better be called a scroll of Antimagic Shell) but some enemies have silly stuff like ReallyForceSpell in their scripts - silly because it bypasses spell failure, casting interruption on damage, and memorization slot expenditure, among other things. Some enemies use normal scripted spellcasting, some enemies use janky unblockable forced spellcasting. It’s down to how each enemy was originally coded, and whether QA noticed or cared about it before the games’ release. And some modders choose to use one or the other method, according to their whims.

(I’ve noticed that SCS leans toward the latter for fiends, dragons, and pretty much all non-classed casters, which I don’t love. But hey, it’s not my mod. And the difficulty fine-tuning lets us control it to an extent, which is appreciated.)

You might try using the difficulty fine-tuning options to make enemy innate casting interruptible. If that doesn’t work you can either shout your frustration about this off some digital mountaintop, or just try another strategy and keep playing the game. It’s entirely up to you which is more worth your time...

[Andrea C.]

Thank you for clarifying, subtledoctor.

SCS does, by its author's explicit admission, "play fair."

Enemy spellcasters being able to bypass the spell failure applied by the Scroll of Protection From Magic is not fair. If and when DW decides to release an update to SCS, I hope he'll take this under advisement (which doesn't necessarily mean change it; he might as well decide not to because reasons.)

Edited June 21, 2021 by Andrea C.

[subtledoctor]

I’m guessing it’s just a desire to make the spells uninterruptible. Closing off the (let’s admit, pretty cheaptastic) tactic of using a “protection” scroll on an enemy is probably an unintended side-effect. But a fairly minor one, and I doubt it’s worth sacrificing the broader design intent just to make that scroll work in that way. While "SCS plays fair," I don't think Ascension is designed that way.

But that’s just my supposition. All I know for sure is that no one should hold their breath for a change! 

EDIT - although, now I think about it, this completely defangs one of the HLAs in my psionics mod... that’s not great. 

EDIT 2 - immunity to opcode 60 is not mentioned in the IESDP entries for ForeceSpell or ReallyForceSpell, so either I'm wrong, or it is an undocumented aspect of the script action(s).

Edited June 21, 2021 by subtledoctor

[Andrea C.]

1 hour ago, subtledoctor said:

Closing off the (let’s admit, pretty cheaptastic) tactic of using a “protection” scroll on an enemy

You say cheaptastic, I say clever. I see your 100% spell casting failure and raise you a "suck it, enemy mage."

It goes both ways, since you can't use spells against the target either.

[subtledoctor]

3 hours ago, Andrea C. said:

You say cheaptastic, I say clever.

Here's the thing: there's no reason those green protection scrolls should be able to target others.  It would be one thing if they were only usable by wizards, so a wizard had to cast it on a fighter to protect the tank from magic.  But fighters can use those scrolls! So... why not limit them to being self-targeted? Easy answer: because the developers who created the things intended just this sort of scenario.  But in that case, there is nothing "clever" about using the scroll on an enemy.  You are just... doing what the thing does.  It's not clever, and it just makes it seem like the item is poorly named by using the word "protection."  Why not call it a "Scroll of Magic Suppression" and make it clear that it works on anyone? (Well, anyone except enemies scripted by other devs who didn't get the cleverness memo ) 

I suppose maybe the devs wanted to give players the illusion of doing something clever.  But IMHO that illusion is flimsy.  Just design the thing well, and make the item fun for players to utilize!  Try too hard to be "clever," and you end up with inconsistencies.  And here we are 20 years later, with people still being frustrated by that inconsistency.  That's what I mean by cheaptastic - something that exposes a lack of robust, consistent, fun game design.