[Bug report] Minor things noticed by David

[DavidW]

I'll create a thread here for things I've seen that seem too small to deserve their own thread.

[DavidW]

In BGEE, Ordulinian (ORDULI) is given clck06 (this is a BGEE addition, he doesn't get it in oBG). This is a well-intentioned attempt to make sure people who give rewards to the party actually have them in inventory. But in this case he gives the cloak via GiveItemCreate() anyway. So you can get two, theoretically, if you kill him (it's unstealable).

[CamDawg]

On 4/9/2022 at 5:19 AM, DavidW said:

In BGEE, Ordulinian (ORDULI) is given clck06 (this is a BGEE addition, he doesn't get it in oBG). This is a well-intentioned attempt to make sure people who give rewards to the party actually have them in inventory. But in this case he gives the cloak via GiveItemCreate() anyway. So you can get two, theoretically, if you kill him (it's unstealable).

Committed.

[jastey]

7 hours ago, CamDawg said:

Committed.

Developper intent was that the cloak can be looted if Ordulian gets killed (instead of receiving the reward)? Which wouldn't be possible with this fix. Just imho.

[CamDawg]

This is one of those 'which is worse' type of fixes.

1. Change the dialogue to GiveItem instead of GiveItemCreate. The player receives the cloak as a quest reward, or can kill him and take the cloak. Either way the cloak permanently retains its unstealable tag.
2. As above, but we also remove the unstealable tag. Now the player can get the cloak via pickpocket, meaning the journal entry and dialogue indicating that he's giving you a cloak as a quest reward no longer make any sense.
3. Remove the cloak. The player still gets the quest reward via GiveItemCreate, but gets nothing for killing Ordulian.

Given that Ordulian is hanging out at Sorcerous Sundries, I think the number of players who opt for killing him is minimal. As such, I've gone for option three as it has minimal downsides in the non-killing paths. Quest rewards appearing out of thin air and not from an NPC's inventory is common.

[jastey]

Makes sense.

[DavidW]

The player-summonable Elemental Princes (ELEMSUNN, ELEMZAAM, ELEMCHAN) grant (quite a lot of) XP, even though they're summoned creatures and the convention for summons is that they don't grant XP. It's probably because they're clones of party-fightable elemental princes (ELEMIMIX, ELEMOGRE, ELEMYANC). It's pretty edge-case since enemies don't use the prince-summoning spells in the unmodded game.

[CamDawg]

Here's the part where Cam gets a Shower Thought, and relies on everyone else to tell him why it's a bad idea:

We did this in BG2FP because there's not really a better way to do it. However, we have ChangeStat in the EEs, so it's conceivable that we could assign regular XP values for summons in the creature file, and then change XPVALUE to zero if they're allies of the party. This allows for the party to earn XP from hostile summons, but prevent the exploit of killing passive/green-circled creatures for XP. There are some edge cases to consider (e.g. make sure charming hostile summons keeps XP) but it seems workable.

[Luke]

53 minutes ago, CamDawg said:

This allows for the party to earn XP from hostile summons, but prevent the exploit of killing passive/green-circled creatures for XP.

Is this intended in the first place...?

I've always thought the party should not earn XP from summoned creatures (whether they're hostile or not...)

[DavidW]

I think it's intentional that summoned creatures don't grant XP.

Scenario 1: a 5th level wizard casts Fireball, then you kill her.

Scenario 2: a 5th level wizard casts Monster Summoning 1, then you kill her and her summons.

In both cases, you've dealt with a 5th level wizard and get her XP for doing so. Killing the summons is part of what's involved in fighting the wizard, not qualitatively different from coping with the fireball. Getting XP for the summons too would be double-counting.

FWIW that's the official rule in 3rd-edition D&D, but I can't find any statement about it in AD&D.

[bob_veng]

seeing how these are unique, named, creatures, i think that an elemental prince being summoned is something that qualitatively changes the encounter. what if a mage summoned another, named, mage? 

[DavidW]

Elemental princes are never summoned by your enemies in the unmodded game (not least because you might accidentally end up with two of them). So the designers can't have intended that you get experience for fighting enemy-summoned princes. The only function that their XP serves is that the player can summon them specifically to kill them. (In BG2EE, they won't even fight back.) It seems really unlikely that that's intentional, especially since the elemental princes are obviously clones of actually-fightable princes and it's extremely easy to see how the XP could have been left in place.

[jmerry]

On 6/2/2022 at 7:34 AM, CamDawg said:

... but prevent the exploit of killing passive/green-circled creatures for XP. There are some edge cases to consider (e.g. make sure charming hostile summons keeps XP) but it seems workable.

No such exploit exists. If you summoned the creature and it hasn't changed allegiance, killing it doesn't grant XP. Just try it with a planetar or deva (20K XP to kill on the CRE).

[Bartimaeus]

16 hours ago, DavidW said:

I think it's intentional that summoned creatures don't grant XP.

Scenario 1: a 5th level wizard casts Fireball, then you kill her.

Scenario 2: a 5th level wizard casts Monster Summoning 1, then you kill her and her summons.

In both cases, you've dealt with a 5th level wizard and get her XP for doing so. Killing the summons is part of what's involved in fighting the wizard, not qualitatively different from coping with the fireball. Getting XP for the summons too would be double-counting.

FWIW that's the official rule in 3rd-edition D&D, but I can't find any statement about it in AD&D.

Disclaimer: I don't really want to try to mix real world sense with game mechanics, and I think I would just leave it at "all of the mage's spells, summons included, are a direct extension of the mage, so you get the appropriate amount of XP you should get for dealing with her and whatever magic she brings forth, whether it's conjuration or necromancy - after all, you don't get additional experience if she happens to hit your party with a Horrid Wilting instead". Nevertheless, your line of thinking made me think of the following:

What's the fundamental difference between casting a Fireball at a mage and her summons that kills them all in one fell swoop...versus casting a Fireball at a mage and her summons and also some non-summoned xvarts that happen to also be in the area? For that matter, you might well not be using a Fireball, and instead your fighters are having to actually physically fight each individual summon, which in a real world sense, is obviously literally a form of valuable fighting experience for them. And also, what is the difference between fighting temporarily "summoned" creatures via normal summoning spells that the player can use themselves versus whatever "permanent" summons exist in various areas? Like, I'm thinking of Melkrath who has a bunch of mephits in his little sewers lair that he presumably summoned and currently controls, but the game treats those kinds of monsters as not being summoned by giving you XP for them even though...well, aren't they summoned?

I think all of this can be pretty safely discarded, though - way too much overthinking of what should purely be game mechanics, whether it be for BG or P&P.

Edited June 4, 2022 by Bartimaeus

[Almateria]

I think that we're all bonking our heads against the fact that in any D&D game, a mage is so much more powerful than any other class that it's not even funny. They make a joke of the action economy and the only way to really balance it at all would be to remove summons