RFC: Imprisonment

[subtledoctor]

It's probably worth a real discussion about this before the next version is totally finalized. There have been sporadic discussions about this, but it is probably worth bringing opinions into a single thread. To recap what I think are the issues:

• Vanilla Imprisonment breaks things in various ways, e.g. I seem to recall it breaks romances and other scripted relationships for the victim. This can be frustrating for players since they cannot control who is targeted by the spell and there is no source of protection against it and no saving throw. The original game devs gave us Freedom, a 9th-level spell that does nothing but restore Imprisoned characters (seems underpowered IMHO), but it does not cure the scripting problems.
• The vanilla spell has some weird story interactions in the game. E.g. the Harpers in Athkatla announced a plan to Imprison Charname; but it is implied that Charname must be captured first, and thus a tenuous implication that it involves some kind of ritual or long casting time. Fast forward to chapter 6, and charname and enemies alike can cast it mid-combat. So why did the Harpers not cast it at Charname in the first round of that battle? There is no possible defense against it in Chapter 2, so, it should have been game over. Some have suggested that the Harpers' implied ritualized version could be what we all know as the Imprisonment spell, and the quick-cast combat-oriented version that we ultimately learn later in the game should allow a saving throw.

SR changes Imprison to apply the Maze effect instead of true Imprisonment, and then after a set amount of time, the Maze ends and the character is stricken dead. This gives the player several ways to deal with it: first, while the character is Mazed, you can cast Freedom to restore them. Alternatively, if you waited too long, the character will die and you can use Resurrection to restore them.

However, this implementation gets very fiddly. If the Maze effect lasts a long time you have a greater chance to free the person without resorting to resurrection; but on the other hand, you cannot do an area transition while someone is Mazed. So if you find yourself without an Imprisonment spell (which is pretty rare) then you will not have an opportunity to go get one.

On the other hand, if the duration of the Maze effect is short, you run into the problem I just encountered in my game: I was up against a high-level mage, and I saw the "closing cage" visual effect around Yeslick and then I saw the Maze icon on his portrait. In the thick of battle, I didn't realize he was Imprisoned at all; I thought the enemy has simply cast Maze on him - which is itself a high-level spell and would have been a perfectly sound tactical choice in that moment. A short time, later, though - either before the battle had ended, or very very soon after it ended - Yeslick suddenly appeared, and then suddenly died. This was a little frustrating, because I did have access to the Freedom spell, but no time to use it. Instead I had to use a fairly valuable charge of my Rod of Resurrection.

There are other little bugs that can be introduced by this split-effect spell design, e.g. apparently the IR boots that block Maze and Imprisonment protect against the opcodes rather than against specific spells. So they block the Maze effect of Imprisonment but do not block the subsequent automatic death effect. That is easy enough the patch in, but just an example of the way this design deviation can lead to unintended effects elsewhere.

So in those other conversations, I tried to step back and consider what the spell is supposed to be achieving in the game. I don't think it cannot be changed - Imprisonment may be an "iconic" spell from PnP D&D, but then so is Fly, and that isn't in the game.  It seems like it is kind of supposed to be "the ultimate single-target disabler in completely removing a character from a battle. If it doesn't lead to death or a death-like state, it would not be much different than Maze at 8th level; if it had a saving throw it would not be very different from Finger of Death at 7th level. If it is basically supposed to kill without a saving throw, why not make it a necromantic effect like Finger of Death, with no save? Except that would step on the toes of Power Word: Kill. If we need an "ultimate" spell in the Conjuration school (Imprisonment is conjuration, right?), then we could prevent the target being resurrected until a Freedom spell is applied, makign it even stronger (in a way) than a simple death effect. (I.e. apply a "permanent-after-death" immunity to the resurrection opcode via a subspell, which could be canceled by the Freedom spell...  though, this may merely amount to extra out-of-combat hoops for player to jump through and may not add anything fun to the game.)

I proposed something like an offensive Plane Shift spell - send the target through four elemental planes, doing relatively massive amounts of elemental damage in each one, before returning to the Prime. It would be enough to kill anyone without elemental protection; and the varied damage types would likely kill, or at least badly hurt, someone with partial elemental protection; and someone powerful enough to have full elemental protection (an 8th-level effect itself) would survive, but still be removed from the battlefield for a while as if Mazed, which is not a bad worst-case outcome for a spell.

So as I see it, the options are something like these:

1. keep SR's current implementation, maybe tweaking small aspects of it like the timing of its various effects
2. go back to the vanilla implementation, maybe adding a save, and let players deal with the broken script stuff
3. make it a strong death effect rather than an imprisonment effect
4. creatively come up with some kind of very powerful single-target conjuration attack

As usual, if I feel like it I can easily do something on the more creative side in my own mod. The focus here should probably be conservative, just figuring out how to make this spell (used rather often in the late-game, especially by SCS) work with minimized player frustration. If, of course, there is a conservative way to achieve that.

[Bartimaeus]

2 hours ago, subtledoctor said:

On the other hand, if the duration of the Maze effect is short, you run into the problem I just encountered in my game: I was up against a high-level mage, and I saw the "closing cage" visual effect around Yeslick and then I saw the Maze icon on his portrait.

Am I crazy, or doesn't Imprisonment use a different graphic from Maze? I thought it used the Pocket Plane ability graphic. Let's see here...

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/tlzh9dfesfawxw4/bgmain_UIgG7wZ4EO.mp4

Well, it does in SRR, anyways. Also, it sure looks like a -6 saving throw may not be enough of a malus for my optional "Imprisonment allows a saving throw" tweak. In regards to the issue of the Harpers, I think you could interpret it a little differently - Imprisonment takes a full round to cast, and the game assumes you have party members, in particular Jaheira, to back you up. Indeed, the point of discussion seems to be whatshisface trying to convince Jaheira to support him. To start casting it at the protagonist, and certainly to finish casting it, without explanation or provocation would surely invite an all-out response from the rest of your party...so your party needs to be defeated and the protagonist subdued for the spell to be cast without fear of it being interrupted. That, or they just planned on killing you altogether instead once it became clear you wouldn't acquiesce.

SRR makes it so the vanilla implementation (i.e. the actual imprisonment effect) applies to non-party characters, but the "revised" implementation (aka still broken maze effect) applies to player characters. As with Prismatic Mantle, I don't really love any solution I've ever heard or seen for resolving this, unfortunately, including my own.

Edited March 3, 2022 by Bartimaeus

[ahungry]

Going by the ol' PNP rules - arguably no enemies that aren't story driven (aka, random lich) should be able to even use it, based on a quick skim of the 2nd edition rules:

" The imprisonment spell functions only if the subject creature's name and background are known. "

So, while a story based people, like the Harpers, may know CHARNAME's actual name (beyond "Gorion's Ward") and background ("spawn of Bhaal from candlekeep, yadda yadda") the random lich you just stumble upon should never be able to cast it - given such a heavy RP connotation, to me, it doesn't even make sense in scope of the game, except for a scripted event, or requiring a pre-req, like an enemy successfully cast some diviniation spells on the character they are targeting to first "discover" this info (name/background) - where the player would be able to have said NPC protected from divination.

 

https://adnd2e.fandom.com/wiki/Imprisonment

 

From another source, I think combining some 1st ed and 2nd ed rules:

"This incredibly powerful spell took a whole minute to cast, and could only be cast at opponents up to 30 ft (9.1 m) away. "

 

https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Imprisonment

 

So yea - I don't see how a random goober is ever supposed to be casting it in one combat round (6 seconds?) at charname (who may be known) or secondary chars (who most certainly aren't) as a standard combat staple - it'd have to be a ritualistic ceremony thing, or used by an enemy who can survive being beaten on for a minute of game time/combat rounds - even liches aren't going to live through 10 rounds of being hit and not doing anything but channeling one spell.

 

 

Edited March 3, 2022 by ahungry

[subtledoctor]

16 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

Am I crazy, or doesn't Imprisonment uses a different graphic from Maze? I thought it used the Pocket Plane ability graphic. Let's see here...

Huh. Well I'm not sure what happened in my game (which has SRv4b18 installed)... Yeslick was affected by the Maze visual effect, then disappeared, the reappeared some rounds later and immediately died. I'll take a look at the files when I have a free moment. That visual in your game is nice, I like it in that context.

9 minutes ago, ahungry said:

"This incredibly powerful spell took a whole minute to cast, and could only be cast at opponents up to 30 ft (9.1 m) away."

So yea - I don't see how a random goober is ever supposed to be casting it in one combat round (6 seconds?)

Well, in some earlier versions of D&D there was talk that a combat round is actually supposed to represent one minute, not six seconds, so that's not as clear a difference as you think.

Still, your post reinforces my desire to replace the spell entirely.

[polytope]

On 3/4/2022 at 3:34 AM, subtledoctor said:

• The vanilla spell has some weird story interactions in the game. E.g. the Harpers in Athkatla announced a plan to Imprison Charname; but it is implied that Charname must be captured first, and thus a tenuous implication that it involves some kind of ritual or long casting time. Fast forward to chapter 6, and charname and enemies alike can cast it mid-combat. So why did the Harpers not cast it at Charname in the first round of that battle? There is no possible defense against it in Chapter 2, so, it should have been game over. Some have suggested that the Harpers' implied ritualized version could be what we all know as the Imprisonment spell, and the quick-cast combat-oriented version that we ultimately learn later in the game should allow a saving throw.

Imprisonment has a long casting time in vanilla (9 segments), and it actually can be avoided in at least 3 ways for a party in chapter 2 (besides spell interruption).

For a mage of at least 9th level (or sorcerer of 10th), Spell Immunity, although SR replaces it with dispelling screen

For a berserker, enraging

For any other character (except a vanilla wizard slayer), drinking a potion of invisibility to break target lock, which is my preferred choice when I see a mage targeting a nearby warrior with a slow casting abjuration spell (i.e. which is clearly not remove magic or breach). Obviously this tactic doesn't work if the enemy can see through invisibility, as liches and the cambion warden of the planar prison can.

Then of course there's the much greater inconsistency that neither mage in that group of harpers is high enough level to cast 9th circle spells, or has a scroll of Imprisonment on them. So, their leader makes a threat he's incapable of acting upon, but that's not uncommon anyway. TL;DR, I don't think it's really an in game justification for entirely redesigning the spell.

Also, enemy AI makes assumptions about how Imprisonment/Freedom work. There was iirc one SCS battle in ToB where a certain spellcaster had pre-emptively imprisoned two hostile balors which would be released if the party cast freedom in that area...

[grodrigues]

In the PR Arcane level 9 spell fixes I reworded the description with some fluff to mention the (very important) fact that it kills the imprisoned critter after a set period. I also added a note to put up an RFC with the suggestion of following IRR and adding a save. Never got around to it, so thanks subtledoctor for tackling this.

I have no really good ideas, and I am even skeptic that there is a good solution to this. It is good as a plot point (e.g. as in the cited Harper encounter), but really has no place in a *generic* spellbook. I said somewhere else that this is the ultimate eff you spell if used against the party and cheese if used against the enemy, but given that it is a level 9 spell, it *is* supposed to be powerful.

As far as the options subtledoctor listed go, I do not have any strong preferences, but option 2 of "go back to the vanilla implementation, maybe adding a save, and let players deal with the broken script stuff" is for me the worst idea, as SR has an explicit goal of fixing vanilla spells. It is not clear to me that 1 and 3 are *that* different.

[subtledoctor]

I try to really step back and ask the question, what role is this spell playing in the game? Polytope’s point are taken, but what does it mean for this spell? Yes it’s not far from a death effect, but if it is a no-save death effect then what is Power Word: Kill doing at 9th level? I mean we could just replace Imprisonment with a clone of PW:Kill and all scripts would cast that instead... would the game be very different? 

Right now the difference is, PW:Kill gives you a saving throw if you have >60 hp, and Imprisonment lets you avoid dying if someone casts Freedom within 10 rounds. That seems like a reasonable difference (sort of) but unfortunately Imprisonment has these other wacky side-effects, like not being able to leave the screen or breaking scripts. Basically very similar to the issues with Petrification. 

What about a more radical change to achieve a similar result... what about trying to disable the character as much as possible... apply a transparency visual effect, shrink or remove the selection circle, prevent attacks and magic use, etc. etc. Just do everything possibly within the engine to make the character disappear, while keeping the portrait alive and active in the sidebar. That way the ghostly remnant of the character could move around, do area transitions, whatever... they just could not interact with the world in any way unless a Freedom spell or similar magic is used. (I think this would merit adding a new sectype to handle cancellation in the pre-EE engine.)

Edited March 5, 2022 by subtledoctor

[ahungry]

Some mod (SR or SRR) changed petrification to be an unbreakable hold on my current playthrough, so char isn't removed from party when it happens.

You could make imprisonment like a permanent polymorph - but instead of a squirrel sprite, maybe the floating skull one?  Using your latest idea, they could then roam with party and everything - apply the "min HP can't go below 1" status effect, and ensure their damage is set to 0?