Hardiness Targeted by Breach

[subtledoctor]

1 hour ago, polytope said:

fantasy magic, not real world effects based on the principles of logic and causality, things like intent and mindset clearly do matter sometimes

I'm with you...

1 hour ago, polytope said:

Detect Invisibility doesn't counteract blindness by default, although being blind the wizard is equally unable to see his enemies

I'm with you...

1 hour ago, polytope said:

Breach doesn't calm down a raging berserker or barbarian, even though they're harder to kill while in their frenzied state and ignore many disabling effects and charm type magic

Sure but then why would it make vulnerable a Hardying (hardinessing?) warrior whose super-tough state lets them ignore much physical damage? From an 'intent' perspective, a Berserker going into a frenzy and a warrior becoming Hardy seem identical to me. Or: why does Breach distinguish between a cleric using a magical spell to make someone immune to panic and a wizard using a magical spell to make someone immune to panic? They are just people using magical spells, that are equivalent in both application and effect.

I don't take any issue with your idea that this ultimately is translating events occurring in the theater of the mind guided by a tabletop ruleset into pixels moving on a screen governed by 1990s computer code. So you seem to be saying that there is necessarily a subjective element that enters the analysis. Something with which I agree.

But then you seem to be going further and saying that your subjective idea about how this works is better than anyone else's subjective idea - something with which I very much disagree.

Further, your subjective ideas seem to line up precisely with the way the game files already are, and I suspect this is not really a coincidence. You have played these games a lot, you have modded the game files and inspected their underlying structure and characteristics. You seem unsurprised at the fact that Remove Fear is not a specific protection and I surmise that you're a savvy-enough player and modder that you might even take advantage of that in your games. In other words, I suspect that 20 years of becoming familiar with these files has influenced your subjective idea of why they work the way they do. That would explain why your posts sometimes seem to me to be tautological: you have gotten to know the way these files work, and you have incorporated that into your subjective vision of events in the theater of the mind as you play; and then you put forth this very subjective vision to justify why the files are as they are.

Whereas I never looked at Remove Fear in NI, I always assumed it is a specific protection because of course it must be, it does precisely what spells with the specific  protection sectype do. And when I find out that the spell lacks that sectype, it seems like an obvious oversight to me.

So, I'm not trying to deny the subjective element here, or your particular subjective vision. But given differences between subjective visions, I try to set aside the subjective side of things and focus on the basic logic of any inconsistencies. Because competing subjective visions can never be reconciled on their own, but it's possible (not guaranteed, but possible) that the underlying logical framework can find consensus. That's why I've been focused on reconciling inconsistencies.

[polytope]

21 hours ago, subtledoctor said:

Sure but then why would it make vulnerable a Hardying (hardinessing?) warrior whose super-tough state lets them ignore much physical damage? From an 'intent' perspective, a Berserker going into a frenzy and a warrior becoming Hardy seem identical to me.

The description of the Hardiness HLA says only this: "Calling upon hidden reserves of strength during times of danger, a warrior can use the Hardiness ability to gain 40% resistance to all forms of physical damage." there's no further clarification on how it enables a warrior to weather would-be lethal hits besides the intent - staying alive in battle. Breach foils temporary protections intended to protect the recipient from various sorts of harm, how it does so is just as mysterious as the actual mechanic of Hardiness (The fighter just takes hits better? He flinches away just in time to receive only a grazing wound?).

The berserker in his frenzy is just that, frenzied (and afterwards exhausted), harder to kill yes, besides being more dangerous and proof against mind affecting magic but not because he's carefully protecting himself, this is why, to my mind, breachability of Hardiness makes sense and breachability of the enraged state doesn't.

21 hours ago, subtledoctor said:

Or: why does Breach distinguish between a cleric using a magical spell to make someone immune to panic and a wizard using a magical spell to make someone immune to panic? They are just people using magical spells, that are equivalent in both application and effect.

...

Further, your subjective ideas seem to line up precisely with the way the game files already are, and I suspect this is not really a coincidence. You have played these games a lot, you have modded the game files and inspected their underlying structure and characteristics. You seem unsurprised at the fact that Remove Fear is not a specific protection and I surmise that you're a savvy-enough player and modder that you might even take advantage of that in your games.

Actually, I really do think clerical Remove Fear being unbreachable is a bug, because it has not only identical functionality but description and concept to the wizard spell, although I could sort of see why a cavalier's aura of courage might be unbreachable (as his inherent immunity to fear is). I also think Protection from Evil being classed as a specific rather than combat protection is a bug (it penalizes attack rolls) although a largely irrelevant one in a basic game where sectype removal usually strips both or neither of these sectypes, and I've already discussed Blade Barrier and Assassination. So no, I do not base my idea of appropriate sectypes on the vanilla game files unless these make sense.

[morpheus562]

4 hours ago, polytope said:

Breach foils temporary protections intended to protect the recipient from various sorts of harm, how it does so is just as mysterious as the actual mechanic of Hardiness (The fighter just takes hits better? He flinches away just in time to receive only a grazing wound?).

Breach is explicitly clear in that it removes spells: The combat protection spells dispelled by Breach are...It's a spell cast that dispells other spells on a target. 

4 hours ago, polytope said:

The berserker in his frenzy is just that, frenzied (and afterwards exhausted), harder to kill yes, besides being more dangerous and proof against mind affecting magic but not because he's carefully protecting himself, this is why, to my mind, breachability of Hardiness makes sense and breachability of the enraged state doesn't.

The berserker gains a +2 bonus to AC. That sounds like they are doing something to better protect themself since they are literally being harder to kill. In plain english, they are using an activated ability that provides direct physical protection in combat.

4 hours ago, polytope said:

I also think Protection from Evil being classed as a specific rather than combat protection is a bug (it penalizes attack rolls) although a largely irrelevant one in a basic game where sectype removal usually strips both or neither of these sectypes, and I've already discussed Blade Barrier and Assassination. So no, I do not base my idea of appropriate sectypes on the vanilla game files unless these make sense.

Assassination shares the same primary school, Transmutation, and sectype, COMBATPROTECTION, as Hardiness and the other defensive HLAs being discussed. I view this as an all or nothing thing, so if Hardiness does not have the sectype altered then neither should Assassination. Either they are all a bug for having EXACTLY the same primary school and sectype (i.e. copy paste bug) OR they were all intentionally made to be this way.

Edited November 10, 2022 by morpheus562

[subtledoctor]

6 hours ago, polytope said:

The berserker in his frenzy is just that, frenzied (and afterwards exhausted), harder to kill yes, besides being more dangerous and proof against mind affecting magic but not because he's carefully protecting himself, this is why, to my mind, breachability of Hardiness makes sense and breachability of the enraged state doesn't.

So, I don't think there's anything wrong with your "headcanon" - your idea of what is going on "behind the scenes" as these mechanics play out on the screen. It is entirely reasonable. But, it is also totally subjective, and there are naturally competing subjective ideas of how these things work which are equally valid - as Morpheus points out, a frenzied Berserker is harder to hit - literally dodging melee attacks - and so can easily be seen as adopting a protective mindset or tactics. (Others, arguing against me, have claimed the Berserk rage can be seen as a "quiet fury" or "calm frenzy" etc. I don't like this idea and I always thought Berserking should be more... well, berserk. But the game presented a frenzied Berserker as having full tactical control, able to do such uncharacteristic things as running away from battle.) Further, there is still the issue of Defensive Stance and Defensive Spin very clearly being intentionally protective tactics, so there needs to be a conceptual addendum attached to the idea of Breach, to wit, that any kind of hindrance associated with the protective measure inures it against being Breached. And if the protective measure is easy enough to be used 24/7 (like Kensai/Swash AC bonuses) then it likewise cannot be Breached... etc. etc. I think it's been made clear that not everyone is willing to buy in to the same permutation of conceptual restrictions on the Breach spell.

So I don't really see anyone's particular subjective ideas on this stuff winning the argument. (Save for an explicit declaration of the subjective ideas of Bioware or Beamdog devs.)

I think consistency is an important goal - a player should be able to read about and play the game, and in  doing so come to an intuitive understanding of how the game mechanisms work. An exhaustive list of how every spell interacts with every other spell and ability should not be required inside each spell description, if for no other reason than it is likely to be wrong. (As the spell description of Breach is wrong in both BG2EE and IWDEE. I haven't checked it in BGEE/SoD.)

Still, the point of a FixPack is not to improve consistency, but to correct oversights. Inconsistencies can be evidence of an oversight, but do not necessarily prove one.

I think this debate is great because competing views on one minor ability, which has almost zero impact on actual gameplay, has led to the recognition of a small slew of other potential inconsistencies that may need addressing. Now I find myself asking, if there are oversights here, how could they be  addressed with the lightest touch possible? And I think that would look like this:

• Assassination should have its sectype changed or removed. It is so far outside the category of other combat protections that it must be an oversight. The ancillary characteristics (spell school, casting animation) support this, even if weakly.
• As Morpheus notes, Hardiness shares the ancillary characteristics of Assassination supporting the idea that its sectype is misplaced; and the Breach spell description uses verbiage in several different places supporting the idea that it is intended to counter magical protections. And vanilla combat scripts don't treat Hardiness as breachable. So there is at least some evidence of a developer oversight. Further, if Hardiness were made non-Breachable, this one change would not only make Breach's behavior match its description, but would in one fell swoop make it conceptually consistent across all of the games. This is the simplest and easiest solution to several potential problems.

Separately, I think Remove Fear's not being a specific protection is an oversight. The description suggests it was originally an instant-duration spell, and given a longer duration at some point during development. It is easy to imagine that setting its sectype was forgotten in what may have been a last-minute change. (I mean the player-facing spell description wasn't even updated! It seems like the devs were once planning to do interesting things with the Morale mechanic, and then when the game was released they let it fall by the wayside and focused on using the Panic opcode instead.)

Edited November 10, 2022 by subtledoctor

[Angel]

On 11/10/2022 at 6:15 PM, subtledoctor said:

Separately, I think Remove Fear's not being a specific protection is an oversight. The description suggests it was originally an instant-duration spell, and given a longer duration at some point during development. It is easy to imagine that setting its sectype was forgotten in what may have been a last-minute change. (I mean the player-facing spell description wasn't even updated! It seems like the devs were once planning to do interesting things with the Morale mechanic, and then when the game was released they let it fall by the wayside and focused on using the Panic opcode instead.)

Mm, that also explains why BG has Cloak of Fear but not its reverse, Cloak of Bravery.  Resist Fear basically already does that.  I'm tempted to change that for my spell pack. ^^