Is it my imagination, or has SCS gotten easier in many respects since the early versions?

[polytope]

Many casters are dramatically reduced in level, Mekrath for instance used to have Horrid Wiltings or demon summons, he's now only level 12. Mages tend to have less complete layers of protective spells, although they do also have unexpected things like contingencies with Improved Invisibility, or Spell Triggers with triple Cone of Cold (makes Protection from Energy actually useful, as blanket defense against damaging magic when you're unsure what a particular mage has up their sleeve). Demons are much less resilient than they used to be (although I can't really complain about summoned demons, because they give me no xp for fighting them). The IWD spells are more of a boon to the player (particularly the Emotion: Hope to get your saves negative) than they are a useful weapon for the enemy AI, as well as providing a lot more spell damage options for players at every level. Fire Giants don't seem to have or use HLA's as frequently as they used to. The enhanced lizard men in Abazigal's lair no longer have improved casters etc.

On the side of increased difficulty dragons have more offensive antimagic and diverse spells, and Abazigal in the final battle at the Throne of Bhaal is also a lot more dangerous.

ETA: I should say that conceptually I don't like dragons (including Abazigal in his human form) being fighter/mages with a typical complement of F/M spells rather than monsters with a handful of spell-like abilities, and it changes the feel of the Ascension finale to have up to three Time Stop capable enemies (rather than just Melissan and Sendai). There are other ways I would have gone about increasing their challenge, but it's DavidW's choice rather than mine.

Edited October 16, 2022 by polytope

[subtledoctor]

8 hours ago, polytope said:

Mages tend to have less complete layers of protective spells

I think there was a conscious effort to make the use of spell and combat protections a bit random, rather than giving every single mage the same, “complete” or “correct” complement of protections. (Which would tend to make BG2 content quite repetitive.)

[mickabouille]

Isn't there also a difficulty slider, which will affect whether opponents will use HLAs or not?

[Labyrinthitis]

On my latest playthrough it felt easier than usual, but I also usually fine-tune settings a lot more. One thing that stood out was that it felt like enemy mages were using the mantle spells more often when before PFMW was almost always used.

[polytope]

15 hours ago, subtledoctor said:

I think there was a conscious effort to make the use of spell and combat protections a bit random, rather than giving every single mage the same, “complete” or “correct” complement of protections. (Which would tend to make BG2 content quite repetitive.)

It's not about each enemy mage having the exact same buff list so much as the necessity of every one having some protection from single target spells, whether Spell Trap (Minor)Spell Deflection, (Minor)Spell Turning, Spell Shield, or Spell Immunity:Divination + Illusions, too many of them were open for Breach, followed by death in less than a round.

On a related note, the spell Acid Storm does far more damage than it should per the description, even though it's supposedly nerfed in terms of ongoing round by round damage, this matters little when it's an AoE which kills so many spellcasters (who usually lack acid resistance) instantly. With IWDification Flame Strike has the same problem, but it's fire damage.

15 hours ago, mickabouille said:

Isn't there also a difficulty slider, which will affect whether opponents will use HLAs or not?

Yes, and I possibly faced the fire giants with difficulty on core rather than maximum for some reason. It does feel strange that they aren't actually improved in their abilities on the default difficulty setting though.

[Isewein]

The level issue may also be due to early versions adjusting abilities to vanilla in-engine levels (which were often absurdly high as a convenient way to boost spellcasters' HP), while later versions are more realistic about what the intended level of e.g. Mekrath was supposed to be.

[ahungry]

is it getting easier, or are you getting better?

[polytope]

17 hours ago, Isewein said:

The level issue may also be due to early versions adjusting abilities to vanilla in-engine levels (which were often absurdly high as a convenient way to boost spellcasters' HP), while later versions are more realistic about what the intended level of e.g. Mekrath was supposed to be.

I don't think that's the case, level is only tied in a linear fashion to hit points for party members when leveling them up. Creatures outside the party can and often do have hp totally out of proportion to their level, i.e. the dwarf fighter in the Seven Vales has 155 + constitution bonus hp, the legitimate maximum base hp for a 14th level fighter should be 105.

I also don't think that a 16th level mage encountered by himself is really an inappropriately tough challenge for an early SoA party. Now, a 20th level mage would be too much because of a protection they simply can't remove (Spell Trap), summons that they couldn't deal with (planetars or balors), and a spell which they can't reverse the effects of (Imprisonment), but 16th is not outrageous for a difficulty enhancing mod.

In much earlier versions of SCS there were some spellcasters who were assigned inappropriately high levels relative to their intended challenge in the stage of the campaign they were encountered, because in the vanilla game they knew (but did not cast!) high level spells, but that's long since fixed. Looking at their creature files, a lot of vanilla game mages turn out to have been copied from a few high-level templates (including Elminster) and just stripped of a lot of their firepower, with only cosmetic changes to their animation and name.

15 hours ago, ahungry said:

is it getting easier, or are you getting better?

Probably both? It's a long time since I discovered this mod, it'd be a shame if I hadn't improved at all.

Edited October 19, 2022 by polytope

[jmerry]

Specifically in the case of Mekrath, here are his vanilla stats:

- Level 12. THAC0 and saves are consistent with that.

- Conjurer kit. Doesn't have any divinations memorized so it's at least not blatantly illegal.

- Spell memorization goes up to level 8; 5/3/2/2/4/3/3/1 slots used. A level 16 generalist could almost match that with 5/5/5/5/5/3/2/1 slots available.

- Combat script MAGE16M. Which actually does use those spells at level 7 and 8 (Mantle, Finger of Death, Ruby Ray of Reversal, Maze)

Current SCS takes enemy mage levels as they are, except when specified in an "override" list that the mage AI component checks. Mekrath does not appear in that list, so the game leaves him at level 12 and removes his high-end spells rather than improving him to level 16. I don't know about older versions, but it's quite plausible that the mod improved him in the past.

[subtledoctor]

Huh. If he acts like a 16th-level mage in the unmodded game, and has a script overtly for 16th-level mages, then probably SCS should treat him as a 16th-level mage and he should be included in that list.

But that's not SCS "getting easier," it's more likely one instance of something slipping through the cracks. (Or not slipping through the cracks! Maybe we should take Mekrath's level at face value and treat his 8th-level spells as a bug. That's also a valid interpretation.)

[polytope]

1 hour ago, jmerry said:

 I don't know about older versions, but it's quite plausible that the mod improved him in the past.

Iirc, many things changed dramatically when SCS I & II were merged into Stratagems and then tweaked for EE (so that for some time I kept playing the older versions for stability if nothing else), yet on the other hand updates have also slowed down a lot because DavidW is busy irl.

• SCSII v7 - early 2008
• SCSII v21 (the last before merging) - July 2012
• SCS v28 - Nov 2013
• SCS v34.3 - today

And I was on a pretty long hiatus from playing this game period until coronavirus quarantines back in 2020.

54 minutes ago, subtledoctor said:

But that's not SCS "getting easier," it's more likely one instance of something slipping through the cracks. (Or not slipping through the cracks! Maybe we should take Mekrath's level at face value and treat his 8th-level spells as a bug. That's also a valid interpretation.)

I'd think the original devs playtested most of these encounters at least once. Thus if a mage uses spells he should indeed be high enough level to cast them. I remember a counterexample, vanilla Nevaziah is a 20th level lich, but with an intentionally curtailed spellbook and script, because he's encountered early if you have Edwin in your party.

Edited October 20, 2022 by polytope

[subtledoctor]

On 10/19/2022 at 11:44 PM, polytope said:

I'd think the original devs playtested most of these encounters at least once. Thus if a mage uses spells he should indeed be high enough level to cast them.

Agree. Ultimately it's a discretionary judgment call and DavidW can go whichever way he wants to. But if it were up to me, I agree with your judgment.

Edited October 28, 2022 by subtledoctor

[WanderingScholar]

Just thought I'd chime in... I'm also noticing some disparities in the latest release of SCS and previous versions. 

On a number of tests I've run the AI is behaving rather strange, especially for certain casters (max settings).

The Shade Lich, for instance, was almost completely idle during some of his timestops, cast spells at his own fallen planetar, and tried to melee with 90% of his spellbook still intact. 

I'm going to revert to v33.4 for my next install to run some more tests, and see if I can confirm some of my suspicions. 

I'm playing on classic BGT with SR+SRR installed, so maybe this has something to do with it and SCS isn't at fault here. 

[polytope]

11 hours ago, WanderingScholar said:

On a number of tests I've run the AI is behaving rather strange, especially for certain casters (max settings).

The Shade Lich, for instance, was almost completely idle during some of his timestops, cast spells at his own fallen planetar, and tried to melee with 90% of his spellbook still intact.

This sounds like the bug with psionic maze (spin774) permanently setting stat 500: DO_NOT_TARGET_SPELLS, discussed in this thread with a hotfix attached, unless you've already got it fixed.

[DavidW]

Very belated comments:

- it's certainly true that the more recent versions of SCS haven't been tested by full playthroughs, which early versions were. Time constraints, alas.

- in recent versions I've leaned a bit into variety, even at the expense of optimality

- I have tried to adjust SCS's leveling code to avoid ridiculous level increases, but inevitably some babies may have been thrown out with the bath water