Hardiness Targeted by Breach

[suy]

I'm not sure how you see it, but to me, an HLA like Hardiness, Evasion, etc., should have a feeling that it's something non-magical, even though you activate it with an innate ability that for some classes might be a spell (e.g. Lay on Hands, Storm Shield). It should look like Defensive Stance, Enrage, Defensive Spin, etc., but even more powerful.

To me it doesn't make any sense that those abilities:

• Can be stopped by dead/wild magic areas.
• Can be dispelled by Dispel/Remove Magic.
• Can be breached.

I'm pretty sure we can find plenty of inconsistencies, but they should be somewhat coherent, and till today, even with all the chatting/reading/watching/playing that I've done, I've never realized that Hardiness is breachable. CamDawg also has found that Assassination is affected by Breach, which is another "fun" finding, but again, it totally seems to me like non-sensical from an in-game perspective. As jmerry said, it's a warrior thing, not a magic thing. Breach has no business with that.

On 11/1/2022 at 10:33 AM, polytope said:

Secondly, basically every temporary duration spell or spell like ability (except the EE Dwarven Defender's stance) that increases resistance to any form of damage is classed as a "specific protection" or a "combat protection" and hence stripped by Breach

Even if this is true, seems a bit like focusing on just one part of the data, hence, skewing the conclusion. Breach also removes Resist Fear or Shield. Enrage also protects against fear, and Defensive Spin also improves AC. How do you see Breach affecting those kit abilities?

[Guest Lowman]

Based on a subjective understanding of what breach is simulating in game, I tend to think it's representing magic, pointed disruption of other magically structured defenses.  As has been pointed out earlier, there is not continuous logic in the game between what is and is not affected.  For example, Rage, Berserk, Defensive Stance, Defensive Spin are all class specific innate, activated abilities, which provide combat protection, but are incapable of being breached.  On an intuitive level, it makes good sense to me that Breach does not remove any of these. In order to do so, the scope of its simulated effect would be significantly broad to a point of obscurity or myriad interpretation; for instance: it could be a calming spell used against the raging Barbarian or Berserker, it could be a clumsiness spell against the defensively dancing Blade, and it could be a suggestion spell ("stop") against the Dwarven Defender attempting to stand defensively.  Given how Breach is described in game, we're really done no favors in how to interpret what specifically is occurring, being simulated, to accomplish the end state of removing combat protections.  To me, it's not really important (or possible) to understand the logic of spellcraft/magic in an RPG, but it is important that it's contiguously applied and sensible in pattern.  This would follow to either a broadening of applications of breach, to abilities that do not have a magical origin (some of which are listed above), but conform to classification as combat protection, or a restricting of breach (hardiness for example, but there several other HLAs of a non-magical origin which do provide combat protection) only to combat protections provided through magic.  Based on the subjective understanding I listed above, for what I see Breach simulating, I tend toward going with the latter course of action.  The strongest rationale, which I can offer is it leads to a more intuitive, concrete understanding of what the spell is simulating to accomplish its effect, such that you avoid the confusing interpretations of how it removes effects that were manifested from skill/expertise (the myriad interpretation part above, where breach becomes a suggestion/calming/clumsiness/level drain-like spell all in one).

If we make the assumption that the ability to breach a large range of HLA combat protections (thematically derived from skill, expertise of a character) were intentionally made that way, but simultaneously the game's scripts were intentionally not coded to detect these abilities to drive use of anti-protective effects like Breach, then it feels safe to assume it was done to the benefit of the player--and would only be to the player's detriment when such means of detection happened to coincide with "Breach-able" targets, who also had effects like hardiness active.  So, I don't know that this was per se an oversight or bug--it could have been a perk offered to the player to allow counterplay/ease-of-use, while not being immersion breaking/confusing by having the enemies cancel out someone's knowledge of how to dodge fireballs and lethal sword strikes (avoid death), or forget every cut that laid him down until he found the will to weather the storm beyond comprehension (hardiness).

Practically speaking, as a dude who plays a lot more of this game than he should, this isn't a high priority target to fix, because of how the game typically behaves.  I might have the game cancel out an HLA protection once or no times in a whole saga clear.  That said, I think establishing the origin of the protection (magic) as a basis for applicability, provides a great deal of clarity to the player as to what they're intended to be simulating in the game without needlessly broadening the range of simulated methodology of the spell to ambiguity.

[Sam.]

4 hours ago, morpheus562 said:

don't understand the idea of an elite, olympic level athlete who perfected their agility and ability to move to all of a sudden lose it if a Breach is cast. Characters, in my opinion, should not lose their skill nor their physical training because of a Breach.

This.

 

Separately (and I recognize this part isn't overly fixpack material), I've always been a bit skeptical of HIGH LEVEL abilities being dispelled/removed by comparatively low level spells.  HLAs in general seem to represent the pinnacle abilities and skills (whether physical, magical, or divine) achievable by (demi)human(oids).  These shouldn't be trivially overcome by mid-level spells or opponents with a fraction of the experience required to use these HLAs. 

[subtledoctor]

7 hours ago, morpheus562 said:

Thief HLAs Evasion, Greater Evasion, and Avoid Death are all listed as COMBATPROTECTIONS - 7 and appear to be susceptible to Breach. I don't understand the idea of an elite, olympic level athlete who perfected their agility and ability to move to all of a sudden lose it if a Breach is cast. Characters, in my opinion, should not lose their skill nor their physical training because of a Breach.

4 hours ago, CamDawg said:

dispel magic shouldn't make you stop dodging or performing any skill, why would a dispel magic(breach in this case) spell affect them?

4 hours ago, suy said:

to me, an HLA like Hardiness, Evasion, etc., should have a feeling that it's something non-magical ... I've never realized that Hardiness is breachable. ... it totally seems to me like non-sensical from an in-game perspective. As jmerry said, it's a warrior thing, not a magic thing.

3 hours ago, Guest Lowman said:

what breach is simulating in game, I tend to think it's representing magic, pointed disruption of other magically structured defenses. 

2 hours ago, Sam. said:

This.

I agree wholeheartedly with these assessments. Everyone seems to agree that Hardiness (and similar thief HLAs) should not be Breachable.

But, that doesn't convince me that their being Breachable was not intentional. Bad design? Consensus says yes. To the point of being outright wrong. Yes. But bug? ...I don't think so. The best argument in favor of this being a bug is this:

3 hours ago, Guest Lowman said:

the ability to breach a large range of HLA combat protections (thematically derived from skill, expertise of a character) were intentionally made that way, but simultaneously the game's scripts were intentionally not coded to detect these abilities

But it's a bit of a stretch.

Still, if the FP wants to slightly broaden its definition of what constitutes a bug that needs addressing, in order to get it right in this case, I'm A-OK with it. Just attach a proviso like they did in Bush v. Gore, that no one is allowed to cite this as precedent for being more loosey-goosey in other "is it a bug?" decisions.

[polytope]

I notice that nobody who thinks the Hardiness HLA shouldn't count as a combat protection has given an explanation of why the devs classed the Resist Magic HLA as a spell protection. It's not just that it has a sectype, it's that the sectype isn't the same and was deliberately chosen to be removable by different things. Now, you might dislike this and prefer unbreachable Hardiness, but it shouldn't be presented as a bug fix instead of a modification to change the function of the game to your tastes, i.e. falling under the category of tweak mods.

That said, Assassination being a combat protection is obviously a bug, it should be typeless like (Greater)Whirlwind, Critical Strike, as I said some things were accidentally assigned the wrong sectype.

12 hours ago, suy said:

Even if this is true, seems a bit like focusing on just one part of the data, hence, skewing the conclusion. Breach also removes Resist Fear or Shield. Enrage also protects against fear, and Defensive Spin also improves AC. How do you see Breach affecting those kit abilities?

Hello Suy, there is a commonality in the blade's Defensive Spin and the Dwarven Defender's Defensive Stance: both have a disadvantage of restricting movement rate (although the blade's spin is obviously worse and I think very few players use it because it disallows Offensive Spin for the duration), so Breach-ability would remove both negative and positive aspects (i.e. Breach your berserker right before his rage lapses so that he can re-enrage immediately and doesn't have to wait five rounds). Also, they were developed by a different design team.

On that subject, berserker and barbarian rages increase the warrior's fighting power (moreso for the barb really, the berserker gets just a flat +2 THAC0/damage), spells like Chant and Haste also keep the recipient alive, but are not purely protective, I think that's the underlying metric as to what can be Breached. Another good example, the Priest of Lathander's Boon special ability is not removable by Breach, even though it improves saves and prevents level drain, because it has an offensive function in making the priest a better fighter, generally, spells or spell like abilities with such multipurpose function seem to be exempt from breaching. The exception I guess are Fireshields which are more useful for slaying attackers than for avoiding damage, then again, a Fireshield only harms attackers, and so possibly falls under the remit of protective spells.

Incidentally, strictly by 2ed rules, Emotion:Fear should counter a berserker's rage, not scare him away, just snap him out of the rage prematurely so that he's fighting normally from then on, clearly wizard spells can negate a warrior's innate abilities.

Guest Sigmundur's comment:

Quote

dispel magic shouldn't make you stop dodging or performing any skill, why would a dispel magic(breach in this case) spell affect them?

Indeed the Hardiness ability is not, and should not be dispellable because it's not magic. But Breach is not the same as Dispel Magic, it makes the target more vulnerable by removing temporary protections, regardless of the source. If you conceptualize Breach as causing protective buffs to prematurely expire - rather than draining magic - it makes more sense. Another fifth level wizard spell, Lower Resistance, will lower a target's MR regardless of whether it was innate to the creature type, from a class or kit ability (monks and wizard slayers) or from a spell, potion or item. Should monks be immune to Lower Resistance?

10 hours ago, Guest Lowman said:

If we make the assumption that the ability to breach a large range of HLA combat protections (thematically derived from skill, expertise of a character) were intentionally made that way, but simultaneously the game's scripts were intentionally not coded to detect these abilities to drive use of anti-protective effects like Breach, then it feels safe to assume it was done to the benefit of the player--and would only be to the player's detriment when such means of detection happened to coincide with "Breach-able" targets, who also had effects like hardiness active.

Tbh, the vanilla game enemy caster AI is written really, really badly in most cases, the complexity of the spell system and the arduous work of making AI controlled spellcasters able to evaluate and choose the most appropriate spell to counter the PC's tactics is not simple at all (look at the length of SCS mage's scripts compared to unmodded), so most enemy casters would just randomly throw their highest level, then second highest level, then third highest level etc. offensive spells without regard to protections.

7 hours ago, subtledoctor said:

Everyone seems to agree that Hardiness (and similar thief HLAs) should not be Breachable.

My, you are passive-aggressive.

Edited November 3, 2022 by polytope

[suy]

15 minutes ago, polytope said:

I notice that nobody who thinks the Hardiness HLA shouldn't count as a combat protection has given an explanation of why the devs classed the Resist Magic HLA as a spell protection. It's not just that it has a sectype, it's that the sectype isn't the same and was deliberately chosen to be removable by different things

I think this is simply because Resist Magic was copy/pasted from Magic Resistance (the Priest spell), then changed accordingly as needed, and this bit was forgotten. Given how spells and items have to be "copy/pasted" from others, and can't use some for of classification where one effect might get defaults from some templates (a bit like in object oriented programming, or like some file formats support), this kind of issues are common.

Let me just add that I totally understand the position of "we cannot get enough hints that this wasn't intended". If this in the end is part of the "optional but cool" part of the EEFP, and we can use it to have a more consistent game, I'll be happy. It makes sense that maintainers of the EEFP don't want to add things that might be controversial, and might deter people from even using the mod.

26 minutes ago, polytope said:

Indeed the Hardiness ability is not, and should not be dispellable because it's not magic. But Breach is not the same as Dispel Magic, it makes the target more vulnerable by removing temporary protections, regardless of the source. If you conceptualize Breach as causing protective buffs to prematurely expire - rather than draining magic - it makes more sense. Another fifth level wizard spell, Lower Resistance, will lower a target's MR regardless of whether it was innate to the creature type, from a class or kit ability (monks and wizard slayers) or from a spell, potion or item. Should monks be immune to Lower Resistance?

Interesting POV! But I don't see this as a good analogy. IIRC, some enemies like Firkraag have the "Reduce Fire Resistance" spell, so it's like some magic is able to target both natural and magic qualities that a creature might have, permanent (e.g. Cavalier or equipped items) or temporary. I see Lower Resistance like that. think both Dispel Magic and Breach should only cancel magic effects. I think that is the most common behavior, and IMHO is the intended behavior, and the occurrences that don't apply are the bugs.

[polytope]

4 minutes ago, suy said:

I think this is simply because Resist Magic was copy/pasted from Magic Resistance (the Priest spell), then changed accordingly as needed, and this bit was forgotten. Given how spells and items have to be "copy/pasted" from others, and can't use some for of classification where one effect might get defaults from some templates (a bit like in object oriented programming, or like some file formats support), this kind of issues are common.

Fair point that the Resist Magic HLA was perhaps made by cloning in this fashion (although cloning a priest spell to an innate when the innate has far fewer effects in the extended headers seems like much more work than cloning another innate with one extended header and including the MR opcode in the feature block), but it still doesn't explain why Hardiness is classed as a combat protection contrary to most warrior HLAs which with the exception of Resist Magic are typeless, Smite, War Cry etc.

Evasion was plausibly cloned from Hardiness i.e. a combat protection and erroneously (though irrelevantly) a transmutation, and other thief HLAs subsequently cloned from Evasion (these also are wrongly classed as transmutations), I do think there's a strong case to make thief HLA's apart from Evasion, Greater Evasion and Avoid Death typeless and irremovable.

[subtledoctor]

1 hour ago, polytope said:

My, you are passive-aggressive.

Relax, brother. Stow that internet-enhanced hostility. I’m actually not, by nature, passive-aggressive. Just forgetful sometimes. Here I was referring to all the recent posts. And your earlier posts were a bit unclear as to your view: you didn’t seem to be arguing that Hardiness should be Breachable all else being equal; rather, you were pointing out that all else is not equal. 

Speaking of unclear:

1 hour ago, polytope said:

nobody who thinks the Hardiness HLA shouldn't count as a combat protection has given an explanation of why the devs classed the Resist Magic HLA as a spell protection. It's not just that it has a sectype, it's that the sectype isn't the same and was deliberately chosen to be removable by different things.

This is clear, and pretty convincing. It’s not just that the game is coded the way it is; it is evidence that it was done so intentionally. Hardiness by its nature and description sounds to a lot of people like it should not have a sectype, but here is evidence that one was applied and that the devs knew what they were doing  

1 hour ago, polytope said:

That said, Assassination being a combat protection is obviously a bug, it should be typeless

Wait wut?

Come on dude. You can have it one way or the other. Clearly Bioware was overzealous when applying sectypes to HLAs, but as someone recently argued, it seeming wrong does not mean it was a bug.

[polytope]

2 hours ago, subtledoctor said:

Wait wut?

Come on dude. You can have it one way or the other. Clearly Bioware was overzealous when applying sectypes to HLAs, but as someone recently argued, it seeming wrong does not mean it was a bug.

There is a big difference, much as Ironskins being misclassed as a spell protection on the original engine was fixed by EE and SCS long beforehand.

Assasination cannot be considered a combat protection, since it turns all of a thief's melee attacks for that round into backstabs; a purely offensive buff with no protective side effect for the user. Both the combat protection subtype and transmutation school of Assasination were obviously inherited by copying it from another HLA, probably Greater Evasion or Hardiness.

Hardiness can be considered a combat protection, because it makes the warrior more resistant to physical attacks, as do other spells and spell like abilities classed as combat protections.

The arguments I've seen so far against Hardiness being strippable by Breach are that:

1. It's an innate warrior ability that shouldn't be removable by abjuration magic, but it's already undispellable, only Breach, which makes creatures more vulnerable by removing temporary protections will work, likewise, the innate kit bonuses of an archer are effectively removed by a Power Word:Blind.
2. A relatively low level spell shouldn't counteract a HLA, but, you know, a 20th level fighter could fail their save against Hold Person from a 3rd level cleric.

Neither seem to be strong enough for the criteria of a fixpack, rather than being design choices for someone's tweak mod, and this proposed fix does have a substantial effect on how both the spell and the HLA can be used in game.

Edited November 3, 2022 by polytope

[morpheus562]

55 minutes ago, polytope said:

The arguments I've seen so far against Hardiness being strippable by Breach are that:

1. It's an innate warrior ability that shouldn't be removable by abjuration magic, but it's already undispellable, only Breach, which makes creatures more vulnerable by removing temporary protections will work, likewise, the innate kit bonuses of an archer are effectively removed by a Power Word:Blind.
2. A relatively low level spell shouldn't counteract a HLA, but, you know, a 20th level fighter could fail their save against Hold Person from a 3rd level cleric.

 

You are leaving out the following:

1. Similar abilities to it are not removed by Breach
2. Breach, Ruby Ray, etc. do not list Hardiness, Evasion, Greater Evasion, Avoid Death, or Resist Magic as what they take down AND these spells are very explicit in what they state they target
3. Hardiness and the like are not provided opcode 328 for BUFF_PRO_DAMAGE and BUFF_PRO_SPELL so base AI in the game are not meant to deal with them as if they should be removable

Additionally, Resist Magic has a power level of 1. If it was meant to be removed via Ruby Ray and similar spells for being a spell protection, then it would have the power level set appropriately (i.e. power level 9) which would have it removed in competition with Spell Trap. Does that make sense and do we want that? If we target an enemy player loaded with spell protections, do we want Ruby Ray to go after that Resist Magic since it is an HLA spell protection and should therefore be priority #1 for that spell to remove?

[subtledoctor]

3 hours ago, polytope said:

Both the combat protection subtype and transmutation school of Assasination were obviously inherited by copying it from another HLA

And you don't think the same couldn't be true of Hardiness? I mean, show me another nonmagical warrior innate ability that has the casting animation of a wizard spell. Resist Magic is the only one. You think the thief HLAs having wizard casting animations is clearly a bug, but the fighter HLAs having wizard casting animations is clearly intentional? That's bonkers. All of these resources were cloned from existing ones and modified on the fly with, as we know, rather poor QA. These abilities were created for an expansion pack for a game full of already-existing files, and the deadline to get the expansion pack out the door was extremely tight. This story has already been told.

This equally fits your logic: "Hardiness and Resist Magic were probably cloned from Stoneskin, just look at their school and casting animation. So the sectype was probably carried over by mistake." Except, that's complete speculation. This speculation about what was cloned from what carries no water without explicit confirmation fromt he original devs.

3 hours ago, polytope said:

Assasination cannot be considered a combat protection, since it turns all of a thief's melee attacks for that round into backstabs

You're just arguing that it's wrong, and so should be considered a bug. But this is no more or less valid than others' arguments that Hardiness being breachable is wrong.

3 hours ago, polytope said:

much as Ironskins being misclassed as a spell protection on the original engine was fixed by EE

Yes, because it was deemed wrong. So if consensus deems Breachable Hardiness to be wrong, why shouldn't a putative 2.7 patch correct it? In which case, why shouldn't the FixPack?

3 hours ago, polytope said:

Hardiness can be considered a combat protection, because it makes the warrior more resistant to physical attacks, as do other spells and spell like abilities classed as combat protections.

Yes, just like Defensive Stance and Berserk Rage. Except oh, wait.

3 hours ago, polytope said:

The arguments I've seen so far against Hardiness being strippable by Breach are that:

1. It's an innate warrior ability that shouldn't be removable by abjuration magic but it's already undispellable, only Breach, which makes creatures more vulnerable by removing temporary protections will work

Straw men don't get us anywhere. The argument is that Hardiness is not a "temporary protection" laid over a warrior like a spell, but rather something a warrior does, just like positioning yourself in a special defensive stance or getting riled up into a berserk rage. Breach is supposed to "dispel" protections - it's right there in the spell description - not make targets more vulnerable than they normally would be. in this way it is distinctly unlike other debuffing spells such as Lower Resistance or Slow. (Funny enough, PnP's "Breach Defenses" could make targets more vulnerable than they normally were. But that is neither here nor there.)

FWIW the Breach spell description also states:

Here is a complete list of all the specific protection spells that are dispelled by Breach:

And Hardiness ain't on there. Now, I play with a lot of mods and there are lots of extra Breachable spells in my game, and so I don't like the idea of relying on a list in a static spell description. But as far as dev intent goes, "here is a complete list" is actually fairly strong evidence. That is unnecessarily strong language, that did not come from the PnP game. Bioware devs wrote that quite intentionally. Yes, the original Breach description was written before TOB was created, so maybe the description is wrong, but that means it was left wrong by every single game patch in the last 20 years. One way or another it seems like there is definitely a bug either in the Hardiness sectype or in the Breach spell description.

Separately from that, are the various questions of whether each of the following is wrong, and if so, wrong enough to be considered a bug:

• Hardiness being Breachable
• Assassination being Breachable
• Defensive Stance not being Breachable
• Berserk Rage not being Breachable

Your answers seem to be not wrong, wrong, not wrong, not wrong... and while I'm not sure any of those answers is individually wrong, you have to walk a very narrow logical tightrope to have that particular set of answers.

EDIT to add: in case anyone's temperature gets too high over this, worth saying again the stakes are exceedingly low here. This will ahve almost zero effect on any actual game. Trying to arrive at a consensus is probably worthwhile (...? in the abstract?) but if there is none, it's not a big deal.

Edited November 3, 2022 by subtledoctor

[CamDawg]

One of the fun things about working on a fixpack is that you can never predict which seemingly innocuous change is going to spiral into a multi-page fight discussion about mechanics.

edit: I don't mean this in a bad way. Discussion and engagement are good things!

Edited November 3, 2022 by CamDawg

[morpheus562]

Either way it goes, I believe changes will need to be made around how these HLAs are handled. As such, I see it going one of two ways:

1. Subtype needs to be made to None for these HLAs
2. Subtype remains unchanged and spell states will need to be added to the HLAs so AI scripts will handle them appropriately. Please note: Resist Magic will then need to be tracked as a level 9 spell instead of the level 1 spell it currently shows. This would ensure it is dispelled at the same level as Spell Trap and other similar level abilities. Additionally, I would posit we need to update Breach and similar definitions since they clearly cover more than what the definitions state it covers.

Are there other paths that this can go, and if so, what would those be? My personal opinion for the reasons others and myself have stated is to go with option 1.

Edited November 3, 2022 by morpheus562

[Sam.]

5 hours ago, polytope said:

A relatively low level spell shouldn't counteract a HLA, but, you know, a 20th level fighter could fail their save against Hold Person from a 3rd level cleric.

The difference is the save.  With Hold Person, you get a save which means the greater the disparity between the levels of the low level caster and high level target, the less likely the target is to be affected.  The mechanic is fair.  By contrast, Breach (as one example) bypasses MR and gives no save.  That's fine for affecting abilities/spells at a similar or lower level than itself, but the mechanic becomes unfair if it works equally against the highest leveled abilities and spells that a mortal or demigod can obtain.  Doing so invalidates the level disparity, which seems broken to me.  Keep in mind that my view that HLAs shouldn't be trivially counteracted by comparatively low level spells isn't the primary topic at hand, nor was it my primary argument for why Breach specifically shouldn't work on Hardiness.  This was:

 

17 hours ago, Sam. said:

23 hours ago, morpheus562 said:

don't understand the idea of an elite, olympic level athlete who perfected their agility and ability to move to all of a sudden lose it if a Breach is cast. Characters, in my opinion, should not lose their skill nor their physical training because of a Breach.

This.

[polytope]

19 hours ago, morpheus562 said:

Additionally, Resist Magic has a power level of 1. If it was meant to be removed via Ruby Ray and similar spells for being a spell protection, then it would have the power level set appropriately (i.e. power level 9) which would have it removed in competition with Spell Trap. Does that make sense and do we want that? If we target an enemy player loaded with spell protections, do we want Ruby Ray to go after that Resist Magic since it is an HLA spell protection and should therefore be priority #1 for that spell to remove?

On the original ToB engine - back when these HLAs were designed - any innate usable by PCs must have a spell level of 1 (power level is separate and only matters in the feature block), otherwise it will not appear as a choice under the special ability button, and will crash the game if cast from script... but only if cast by the Spell() action, not for instance ForceSpell() which many monsters used to cast innate spell-like abilities that often had some value other than 1 in the spell level field.

This explains why Resist Magic is lower level than you'd guess a HLA to be considered, and it would thus have needed to cast a separate lvl 9 subspell for that purpose..

The scenario of spell protection removal vs a fighter/mage with Resist Magic in addition to Spell Turning, Spell Immunity, Globes etc. is a scenario I've just never seen happen in game. Anyone capable of casting arcane spells has better ways of protecting themselves than the Resist Magic HLA with its 4 round duration and magic resistant set to 50%, not even incremented but rather set. Even most single class high level fighters pass on that HLA as a choice.

18 hours ago, subtledoctor said:

You think the thief HLAs having wizard casting animations is clearly a bug, but the fighter HLAs having wizard casting animations is clearly intentional? That's bonkers. All of these resources were cloned from existing ones and modified on the fly with, as we know, rather poor QA. These abilities were created for an expansion pack for a game full of already-existing files, and the deadline to get the expansion pack out the door was extremely tight. This story has already been told.

This equally fits your logic: "Hardiness and Resist Magic were probably cloned from Stoneskin, just look at their school and casting animation. So the sectype was probably carried over by mistake." Except, that's complete speculation.

That's not my argument at all, don't put words in my mouth. The casting animation is cosmetic and irrelevant for a fixpack, the SCHOOL is stored differently, as is the secondary type and these have real game mechanical effects.

The casting animation and SCHOOL, WHICH IS A DIFFERENT FIELD IN THE HEADER of Hardiness and Resist Magic probably were inherited from some wizard or cleric spell turned to innate. And yet, regardless of which one was converted first, they have different sectypes, which seems to have been either a deliberate choice, or less probably, due to converting two different spells to innates one of which was an alteration and combat protection, the other coincidentally also an alteration and yet a spell protection (as Suy said, the 5th level priest spell Magic Resistance fits these criteria, and is really the only spell that does). Apply Occam's razor.

18 hours ago, subtledoctor said:

Yes, just like Defensive Stance and Berserk Rage. Except oh, wait.

I've already explained what the difference is, to me, a berserker or barbarian's rage grants him a lot of immunities but also better offense, thus is not purely a protective buff and doesn't fall under the purview of things removed by Breach. The Defensive Stance of the DD kit... I don't think it was very well thought out in the first place and few arguments can be based upon it, Defensive Stance arbitrarily didn't stack with Hardiness either, and there's no in-game explanation of why besides the obvious that it would be easy to get 100+% physical resistance through it. They wanted an extra tough fighter kit and this is the result, that's all.

18 hours ago, CamDawg said:

One of the fun things about working on a fixpack is that you can never predict which seemingly innocuous change is going to spiral into a multi-page fight discussion about mechanics.

edit: I don't mean this in a bad way. Discussion and engagement are good things!

Perhaps we can at least reach a consensus that Assassination isn't a combat protection, it's too suspicious that it shares both sectype and an extraneous wizard school with Hardiness, Evasion etc, despite being an offensive ability, and this seems a pretty clear case of a copyover bug.