why does Banishment have multiple op177 gender checks?

[subtledoctor]

From what I can see, this happens:

• SPWI605 uses op177 to trigger DVBANISH.eff, conditionally for GENDER=6 (summoned). There is no saving throw.
• DVBANISH.eff uses op146 to cast DVBANISH.spl
• DVBANISH.spl uses op177 to trigger DESTSELF.eff and also plays a visual effect (SPPOWRRD.vvc)... weirdly, the 177 effect is again conditioned on GENDER=6 - while the visual effect is not!
• DESTSELF.eff banishes the creature.

I'd like to add extraplanar summons to this effect, with a saving throw. My first thought was, "this is easy, just add another identical 177 effect to SPWI605, targeting extraplanar beings, but give that effect a save." However after inspecting the files, I see that this would fail in DVBANISH.spl. This seems unnecessary. Why does DVBANISH.spl check the GENDER value again?

I took a look at what Bartimaeus does in his version, and I usually trust his work because he is very diligent with this kind of thing. But his version does the dame thing - it has a checkl in SPWI605.spl for GENDER=9 (summoned demon), and then another check for GENDER=9 in the supplemental DVGATEBA.spl.

Is there a reason for these redundancies, or can I cut some of it out in my mod?

Edited March 10, 2022 by subtledoctor

[Jarno Mikkola]

On 3/10/2022 at 10:52 PM, subtledoctor said:

- while the visual effect is not!

Do you think the visual effect is needed to banish the creature ? Or just show that the creature might get effected if it is hit with the visual effect, AND that it is summoned ? Cause without visual effects, the game gives you no clues for all your spells.

- Why was I hit dozen times with fire damage ? ... it couldn't be just that I can't see fire... <fireball>

Edited March 12, 2022 by Jarno Mikkola

[grodrigues]

@subtledoctor: It shouldn't and in this particular case it is actually incorrect, because dvbanish is also called in the second eff targetting unknown = no-limit summonables. Will make a PR fixing dvbanish the coming weekend.

[subtledoctor]

1 hour ago, grodrigues said:

@subtledoctor: It shouldn't and in this particular case it is actually incorrect, because dvbanish is also called in the second eff targetting unknown = no-limit summonables. Will make a PR fixing dvbanish the coming weekend.

Okay so you see it the same way. Although I must say, in my game I have no summoning limit and it is correctly banishing summons...

EDIT - ah, right, that's because the summoning limit is governed by a .2da file in the EEs, so CDTweaks no longer needs to change the gender of summoned monsters.

Anyway good to know. My thought is to simply remove the op177 conditions from DVBANISH.spl, and call it a day. Keep all the conditional gating by gender or whatever in the original spell.

That way if a modder wants it to work on fiends, or genies, or golems or something, we can simply add new conditional 177 effects to the original spells, with saving throws or not, as we see fit.

Edited March 16, 2022 by subtledoctor

[Bartimaeus]

On 3/10/2022 at 2:52 PM, subtledoctor said:

From what I can see, this happens:

• SPWI605 uses op177 to trigger DVBANISH.eff, conditionally for GENDER=6 (summoned). There is no saving throw.
• DVBANISH.eff uses op146 to cast DVBANISH.spl
• DVBANISH.spl uses op177 to trigger DESTSELF.eff and also plays a visual effect (SPPOWRRD.vvc)... weirdly, the 177 effect is again conditioned on GENDER=6 - while the visual effect is not!
• DESTSELF.eff banishes the creature.

I'd like to add extraplanar summons to this effect, with a saving throw. My first thought was, "this is easy, just add another identical 177 effect to SPWI605, targeting extraplanar beings, but give that effect a save." However after inspecting the files, I see that this would fail in DVBANISH.spl. This seems unnecessary. Why does DVBANISH.spl check the GENDER value again?

I took a look at what Bartimaeus does in his version, and I usually trust his work because he is very diligent with this kind of thing. But his version does the dame thing - it has a checkl in SPWI605.spl for GENDER=9 (summoned demon), and then another check for GENDER=9 in the supplemental DVGATEBA.spl.

Is there a reason for these redundancies, or can I cut some of it out in my mod?

Yeah, the 177s in the subspell is redundant - harmless if they match the 177s in the base spell, but redundant and confounding if you're adding more in the base spell. In my case, I think they're an artifact of SRR's Banishment killing "gated" creatures upon a failed saving throw, which I originally handled with the same subspell and thus I needed separate 177s with different saving throw checks...but as you can see, there are now two separate sub-spells, one for summoned creatures and one for gated creatures, so now it's unnecessary.

Edited March 18, 2022 by Bartimaeus

[grodrigues]

PR is up.