Sword Coast Stratagems v34 (edit: 34.3) now available

[DavidW]

3 hours ago, jmerry said:

Gotta do that evil run sometime!

Lets, see, Aran Linvail...

Off the top of my head, he's a thief/mage with considerable (but not epic) levels. Generic SCS AI improvements will do quite a bit for that already, but he won't automatically start invisible since he's technically neutral until he speaks to the party. He also has a unique summoning item (djinn); using that in the fight is an obvious option. He also comes with some minions... looking them up ... they're spawned in by the ARNSPW4 script; the air elemental is outside his room, but the five guild members are with him.

Actually, looking it up, the unique summoning item is in a container in the room rather than on Aran himself. Also, he's level 14/14. The only usable items Aran carries in the base game are some potions (invisibility, greater healing, scripted to use) and a wand of fear (not scripted to use).

So, some thoughts on improvements:

- give him the summoning ring, and add the djinn to the fight.

- open with Haste and Mislead in addition to more standard buffs, get stab-happy. Regular haste here, as he only has 1 APR and the timing - only going off when he becomes hostile - should allow it to help his allies.

This looks good - but won't make it to v35, it's closed to new content now.

[DavidW]

4 hours ago, Graion Dilach said:

Okay, I rechecked this as well and my original report is badly worded, although you're confirming the issue: what I seen as "losing a ring" is that Smarter Mages deletes MAGE03 which he has in BGEE in his left ring slot.

That's intentional. MAGE03 is an undroppable item that casts Mirror Image: it's part of the rudimentary way BG does prebuffs. SCS removes those items entirely in favor of its own prebuff system.

[polytope]

On 10/14/2023 at 12:40 AM, Axatax said:

If you side with the vampires, you fight Aran Lindvail and SCS doesn't give any love to this scenario.  This should be considered as a major boss fight.

 

12 hours ago, DavidW said:

This looks good - but won't make it to v35, it's closed to new content now.

Rogue Rebalancing should still be compatible with SCS and improves Aran among others in this questline, but I'm unsure where EE-maintained versions can be dowloaded from anymore.

It should also be mentioned that by default you get substantially less xp from the quest line of siding with Bodhi to get to Spellhold, so I'm not sure if it needs to be equally hard, on the basis that it's also less rewarding.

[Graion Dilach]

29 minutes ago, polytope said:

Rogue Rebalancing should still be compatible with SCS and improves Aran among others in this questline, but I'm unsure where EE-maintained versions can be dowloaded from anymore.

https://github.com/FredrikLindgren/rr is still alive.

[Axatax]

It's more advantageous to side with the vampires because you end up with better items.  Elven Chain, and I think a ring that summons a Djinn (from Aran).  The ring is whatever but the armor is pretty good at this point in the game if you're playing with a party.

 

Edited October 16, 2023 by Axatax

[boof]

I'd be curious (and grateful) if something can be done about the following few scenarios that end up in a game over screen, which I believe are indirectly caused by SCS.

1. Ducal Palace - Doppleganger mage casts chaos on Flaming Fist guards. They attack each other. Everyone goes hostile to the player. Game over.

2. Underdark Exit - Should you decide to return to the Underdark, there is sometimes a group of drow fighting elves here. There is a mage among them. Mage casts chaos/confusion on elves. They attack each other. Everyone goes hostile to the player. Game over.

3. The beholder you are tasked to kill in Ust Natha alongside Phaere and Solaufein can disintegrate/petrify/slay/mangle in whatever other gruesome beholder fashion either Solaufein or Phaere, severely impacting the game if playing with no reload rules, as the entire city immediately goes hostile to the player.

 

#3 is preventable by casting relevant protections on the pair of npcs, but seems like a silly thing to have to do. Not sure if this beholder was capable to doing anything like this in the vanilla game honestly, but I was told it was an intentionally gimped variant that got replaced by the blanket changes to beholders made by SCS.

#1 and #2 are very severe, and very much out of the player's hands, particularly #1. It's one thing if your own party members get confused and attack friendlies, but to have the game end because the npcs attack each other is a bit much.
I don't know how vanilla game handled #2. Was that drow party even there, and if it had a mage capable of casting confusion spells if so.

Regardless, it'd be great to see at least #1 and #2 fixed up in whatever manner you feel is best (either by blocking confusion type spells on these particular mages, or getting rid of the game over screen if friendlies are attacked or whatever).

 

All three of these have happened to me during no reload runs by the way. 

 

[DavidW]

Thanks for these.

(1) and (2) are (hopefully) addressed in v35. (Nonhostile creatures won't go hostile when attacked by confused creatures; this is probably exploitable, but I don't care about blocking deliberate exploits.) In the original game the drow in (2) are all there, but the mage doesn't have confusion (whether he does in SCS is random).

I'm not convinced (3) is a bug. The beholder summoned in the Phaere/Solaufein encounter is a totally standard beholder (udbeho01) with the normal beholder script (behold01), created by block 50 of udphae01.dlg. It is perfectly capable of killing Phaere or Solaufein in the unmodded game. It's much more likely to do so in SCS, because it's much more capable, but that's what you get for installing a component that makes beholders more effective! If you want to gimp it, just turn the difficulty (or just the beholder difficulty) down for that fight: below TACTICAL, beholders normally don't use their death/petrification/disintegrate eyestalks. 

(I'm also not clear why casting protective spells on Phaere and/or Solaufein is 'silly'. They make very clear to you that if you get them killed, even accidentally, you're screwed. Protecting them from harm seems a clearly sensible thing to do.)

[polytope]

10 hours ago, boof said:

#3 is preventable by casting relevant protections on the pair of npcs, but seems like a silly thing to have to do. Not sure if this beholder was capable to doing anything like this in the vanilla game honestly, but I was told it was an intentionally gimped variant that got replaced by the blanket changes to beholders made by SCS.

 

Just now, DavidW said:

I'm not convinced (3) is a bug. The beholder summoned in the Phaere/Solaufein encounter is a totally standard beholder (udbeho01) with the normal beholder script (behold01), created by block 50 of udphae01.dlg. It is perfectly capable of killing Phaere or Solaufein in the unmodded game. It's much more likely to do so in SCS, because it's much more capable, but that's what you get for installing a component that makes beholders more effective!

Yes the beholder is standard for its type, it's just that their original AI prioritizes PCs for eye-power targets, with a few references to summons and nothing about creatures outside the party & uncontrolled, so besides melee attacks it can't do much to either one of them. Now I tend to zap it with a 3x Flame Arrow sequencer before it can try to disintegrate them.

10 hours ago, boof said:

#1 and #2 are very severe, and very much out of the player's hands, particularly #1. It's one thing if your own party members get confused and attack friendlies, but to have the game end because the npcs attack each other is a bit much.

I don't know how vanilla game handled #2. Was that drow party even there, and if it had a mage capable of casting confusion spells if so.

All three of these have happened to me during no reload runs by the way. 

A confused creature will only ever attack the nearest creature, so you can tank them with your best protected party member if you want to avoid them harming each other (even in the upcoming version 35, if it's important to keep an NPC alive), I also don't think Web or Entangle were making neutral NPCs hostile in this last version (probably never came up) but if so this can be used to bind up the confused creatures to avoid them endangering each other.

I've always allowed myself reloads for obvious bugs, like allied NPCs injuring themselves and becoming hostile, as it's clearly not intended, no different to a reload from a crash to desktop imo.

[boof]

1 hour ago, DavidW said:

I'm also not clear why casting protective spells on Phaere and/or Solaufein is 'silly'. They make very clear to you that if you get them killed, even accidentally, you're screwed. Protecting them from harm seems a clearly sensible thing to do.

Because they're big kids that should know what they're getting into fighting an eye tyrant. Either of them getting insta-killed in the first 2 seconds of the opening round isn't the player "getting them killed". I always understood their dialogue as "be careful throwing aoe spells around". But fair enough, this one is easily preventable. It just caught me way off guard the first time it happened.
Glad to hear 1 and 2 might be covered!

Quote

I've always allowed myself reloads for obvious bugs, like allied NPCs injuring themselves and becoming hostile, as it's clearly not intended, no different to a reload from a crash to desktop imo.

Oh 100%, I was reloading both those instances, but it still taints the whole experience a little bit.

Edited October 24, 2023 by boof

[DavidW]

1 hour ago, boof said:

Because they're big kids that should know what they're getting into fighting an eye tyrant.

Well, that's fair. There is a bit of a mismatch caused by the fact that SCS is mostly focused on enemy, not ally, AI. I could get them to buff, but it's a disproportionate amount of work for what is mostly a flavor fight. Do you think it would suffice to prevent the beholder using instakill (slay/disintegrate/petrify/dominate) on them?

[boof]

5 hours ago, DavidW said:

Do you think it would suffice to prevent the beholder using instakill (slay/disintegrate/petrify/dominate) on them?

Absolutely. If the beholder somehow killed one of them with raw damage through all their magic resistance, at that point that's kind of on the player and they should deal or reload.

[Lord_Tansheron]

Not sure if this is caused by SCS, but I found that when fighting in the Shade Lord dungeon (Umar Hills questline) the Bone Golems will crash the game if they walk over lava. Which is a bit of a problem because they tend to aggro from rooms away sometimes (Better Calls for Help module perhaps?) and so you might be busy fighting in one room only to have the game crash because a Bone Golem from somewhere else decided to walk over the long way and crossed the field of lava in the process.

My guess is it's got something to do with the lava damage? Only seems to happen when Bone Golems are involved, I've seen other mobs cross the lava just fine but whenever it's a Bone Golem the game locks up and crashes.

Not sure if it's SCS at fault, but the only other mods I'm running are IRR/SRR and Tweaks Anthology and SCS seems the most likely culprit out of the lot; but I'm happy to be pointed elsewhere!

[boof]

I know this is probably not the place for this, but I need a little help from people that know the game at a deeper level than I do. I've asked experienced players and no one really knows what's going on here.
In this clip Anomen takes massive amounts of instant damage, none of it showing up in the combat log. Anyone have any clue as to what might be happening?

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1967953834  

Nyalee casts nothing at the moment damage is done. She's not attacking. Nothing is logged except the creeping doom that was casted a bit before.
The second time it happens, Anomen's health actually dips to ~10, then immediately jumps back up to ~50. What could be causing this?

Edited November 4, 2023 by boof

[polytope]

2 hours ago, boof said:

In this clip Anomen takes massive amounts of instant damage, none of it showing up in the combat log. Anyone have any clue as to what might be happening?

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1967953834  

Nyalee casts nothing at the moment damage is done. She's not attacking. Nothing is logged except the creeping doom that was casted a bit before.
The second time it happens, Anomen's health actually dips to ~10, then immediately jumps back up to ~50. What could be causing this?

I believe this is actually due to the melee attacks of the shambling mounds accompanying Nyalee.

If struck by one of those mounds and failing any of several saving throws (at +4, +2, 0) then your character's hp are set to 25% with a staggered delay.

However that will also actually increase the PCs hp if it were below that threshold. This looks like a fixpack thing @CamDawg I'm pretty sure the concept is that the target loses 25% of their hp per round (or half-round as implemented) while the shambler suffocates them, so decrement rather than set.

Should also probably add a "dying" icon to their attack, to give the player a clue that they're in trouble if hit and failing a save.

[CamDawg]

I think this is an SCS-exclusive change. In IWDEE they attack with shmblr.itm, which is 2d8 crushing. On 5% (6% without EEFP) of hits it forces a save vs. breath; if failed it entangles for two rounds and only does an additional 1d4 crush damage at the end of both rounds.