Update to PfMW, Mantles, and Absolute Immunity

[subtledoctor]

1 hour ago, polytope said:

Are poisoned throwing daggers magical in your game?

Honestly never bothered to check. The whole "is it magical?" question has always been somewhat without rhyme or reason. And I don't think I've ever faced an SCS mage who didn't buff with ProMissiles, and I don't like using poison weapons. (Sometimes it seems like the whole fkin game revolves around application of poison...) And anyway, the whole "hit him with a folding chair" vulnerability of PfMW is in fact part of the problem that needs solving here, because it gives the player a 'key' to those encounters, a key which the AI cannot use (apart from one mod-added fight). God, when I think of the time and effort younger me spent to cart a set of unenchanted weapons around BGT...

Edited October 29, 2022 by subtledoctor

[morpheus562]

It's also incredibly unfair when you're fighting a lich who is immune to normal weapons and they pop PfMW.

[polytope]

1 hour ago, subtledoctor said:

The whole "is it magical?" question has always been somewhat without rhyme or reason. And I don't think I've ever faced an SCS mage who didn't buff with ProMissiles, and I don't like using poison weapons. (Sometimes it seems like the whole fkin game revolves around application of poison...) And anyway, the whole "hit him with a folding chair" vulnerability of PfMW is in fact part of the problem that needs solving here, because it gives the player a 'key' to those encounters, a key which the AI cannot use (apart from one mod-added fight).

More than one mod-added fight, but it really is up to authors to give their AI some way of handling a player's defensive spells, Improved Invisibility alone breaks vanilla game AI.

As for SCS mages, most use ProNM, but necromancers in my games did not. This is strange, because they can soak less hit without Mirror Image and have worse AC without Blur and II, but apparently a deliberate choice. More to the point, many mages, if stripped of their buffs, instantly fire a Trigger (or Contingency) containing ProMW but not ProNM, throwing daggers are useful to prevent a mage's recovery, if you see what I mean.

I'm actually fine with party members having a workaround for ProMW cast by normal enemy mages, because they still face exactly the same problem as AI controlled opponents when a lich, rakshasa or demon casts ProMW. It's also the selling point of the wizard slayer kit to be able to disrupt a mage under stoneskin and ProMW.

[subtledoctor]

6 hours ago, polytope said:

It's also the selling point of the wizard slayer kit to be able to disrupt a mage under stoneskin and ProMW.

This is exactly the kind of thing that can be improved by the technique I described above. And now I finally have an actually good idea for how to improve the Wizard Slayer kit. Thanks!

[subtledoctor]

22 hours ago, morpheus562 said:

Sadly, my initial excitement over blocking spell interruptions was ill placed and it's not working as intended. Back to the drawing board on that one.

Can I asked what problem you had? I have another idea of how to do this, but when I tried to reproduce my test of op101->170, now it doesn't seem to  work...

[morpheus562]

I tried blocking both op 138 and 170, and the only time it works is if 100% of the damage is blocked. This means any elemental damage or reduction in damage is still damage and causes an interruption. 100% resisted damage and using op 101 to block 138 or 170 will ensure no spell interruption.

[subtledoctor]

Damn, thought I was on to something there. So frustrating - I swear I saw it work with a basic quarterstaff, but now i can't reproduce it.

If it really was the  animation,  then I could see why elemental damage would cause issues, because each elemental damage type has a distinct animation of its own.

Edited October 30, 2022 by subtledoctor

[Endarire]

Sword Coast Stratagems has an option to avoid interruption at 100% damage resistance.

[morpheus562]

4 hours ago, subtledoctor said:

Damn, thought I was on to something there. So frustrating - I swear I saw it work with a basic quarterstaff, but now i can't reproduce it.

If it really was the  animation,  then I could see why elemental damage would cause issues, because each elemental damage type has a distinct animation of its own.

It works on basic weapons if all damage is blocked. If only, let's say 99%, of damage is blocked then it will cause spell interruptions. 

[jmerry]

Elemental damage guarantees spell interruption. Physical damage is a maybe; it does sometimes but not always. And then there's the thing about some creatures not getting disrupted if they're facing in certain directions ... spell interruption is a messy and buggy system.

23 minutes ago, Endarire said:

Sword Coast Stratagems has an option to avoid interruption at 100% damage resistance.

The SCS option edits spells with an immunity filter to block the damage effects if the target has 100% or more resistance to that type. In 2.5 and earlier, spells could be interrupted by packets of zero damage, which this component deals with. I think the underlying issue was fixed in 2.6 so that zero damage no longer causes interruption, which would render that component unnecessary.

[polytope]

1 hour ago, jmerry said:

Elemental damage guarantees spell interruption. Physical damage is a maybe; it does sometimes but not always. And then there's the thing about some creatures not getting disrupted if they're facing in certain directions ... spell interruption is a messy and buggy system.

I have seen mages complete a spell despite being damaged by a fire AoE. The main criteria seems to be not the damage type but the direction they were facing. For this reason, if an enemy caster is ignoring hits I tend to run the character which I think he's targeting around to get him to face a "disruptible direction", not really a bug exploit, more of an anti-bug tactic.

Edited October 30, 2022 by polytope

[subtledoctor]

6 hours ago, jmerry said:

then there's the thing about some creatures not getting disrupted if they're facing in certain directions ... spell interruption is a messy and buggy system

Yeah that’s why I’m trying to see if it can be eliminated altogether. 

I tried applying op165 as a global effect to replace the casting time, and reduce the actual casting time instead. But no-go: any damage taken while paused by op165 still triggers the damage animation when the pause ends, and it interrupts the spell. 

[morpheus562]

The recent update to EEex now allows for proper spell interruption checks. Just need a small update on EEex side to get the amount of incoming damage, and then I think the updates to these spells is something that can be done.

[morpheus562]

The update to EEex allows me to add checks to prevent spell interruption when hit and it works very well, thanks to @Bubb. I'm only going to release the updates for PfNW and PfMW in my next release and keep mantles and absolute immunity the same. The biggest thing that now needs to be figured out is how to handle carsomyr and similar dispelling weapons. Is there a way from simply blocking the effects from a weapon from occuring or outright blocking a weapon?