Issues with Unholy Blight

[DavidW]

The IWDEE version of Unholy Blight is described as giving -2 to saves, attack rolls, and damage rolls. The actual spell grants -2 to saves, attack rolls, and AC. I'm inclined to think that the description (which goes back to oIWD) is correct and the spell should be changed to fit.

The BGxEE version of Unholy Blight describes itself as giving -2 to 'all rolls' but doesn't reduce damage. That's more borderline.

The IWDEE version displays the string 'weakened' but doesn't display an icon, contra the normal principle that any effect on the character is labelled by an icon. There is, however, no 'weakened' icon iirc. One could use the 'enfeebled' icon, or clone that icon to a new 'weakened' icon.

The BGxEE version neither displays a string nor provides an icon: it just silently weakens the character. 

Incidentally, I think extant FP code already rebuilds BGxEE's Unholy Blight to work IWD-style rather than through a pile of 177s, so any fixes here need to go after that.

[CamDawg]

Right, the actual effects are easy enough to fix. The issue about icons is a little trickier.

Option 1 is to leave it without icons. The second easiest option is to re-use existing icons: closest for BG/BG2 would probably be 'Bad Luck', which is used for creatures impacted negatively by something like Chant. IWD also offers us the 'cursed' icon from the Curse spell. Alternatively, thanks to the flexible icon system, we can create Holy Smite/Unholy Blight portrait icons (from the spell icons, presumably) and apply those.

Thoughts?

[DavidW]

What's the maximum number of speldesc entries?

If it's 256^2 or 256^4, let's just add Holy Smite and Unholy Blight icons. If it's 256, that starts to look a bit profligate.

[CamDawg]

OK, this is in with a new Unholy Blight portrait icon. Since Holy Smite just blinds, it continues to use the Blind icon.

As a test, I padded out the portrait icons with a thousand entries, and Unholy Blight worked fine as icon #1214 so we're fine extending the table.