What's the reason mage have planetars?

[polytope]

21 hours ago, Thacobell said:

Yes, and we are talking about BG2. In-universe in BG2, this is exactly how gate works.

...and this returns us to the question of whether it makes sense for a mage to be gating in planetars. The game lets you do so, not providing much information on what they are, and why you can. Without reading external sourcebooks you can't assert that it is or isn't appropriate.

Just like historical fiction, without knowledge of the actual historical figure characterized, you cannot say that it's a faithful representation, in order to determine whether something in-game makes sense in the context of the fictional world you need to look outside the game.

[subtledoctor]

6 hours ago, polytope said:

..and this returns us to the question of whether it makes sense for a mage to be gating in planetars. The game lets you do so, not providing much information on what they are, and why you can. Without reading external sourcebooks you can't assert that it is or isn't appropriate.

That's... ridiculous. You can't assert whether something is or is not appropriate?  Of course you can. You have to back it up with reason, of course. But look: Baldur's Gate is not D&D. It is not a role-playing game. It is a real-time tactical squad-based battle game that uses the D&D rules as its foundation. Plenty of those rules get thrown out the window - there is no Climb Walls skill for thieves or Fly spell for mages, as the game is in two dimensions. Move silently is meaningless except as folded into a general stealth skill, as there are no dynamic sound effects. Many spells don't exist because they only have application for proper role-playing or storytelling, which Baldur's Gate lacks - Alarm, Audible Glamour, Change Self, Comprehend Languages, Mending, Message, Read Magic, Taunt. Those are only 1st-level ones. They are hugely important in the D&D RPG and they literally have no place in Baldur's Gate. Which is fine - it's just not that kind of game. The D&D rules can be faithfully adapted to many different kinds of games including, famously, a Streets of Rage-style side-scrolling beat-em-up game. The adaptation necessitates changes at a mechanical level, which is fine. Spending a week performing rituals to summon a demon with no expiration date would make no sense in this game. There are allusions to that sort of thing happening - Ardulace is one, the Fishing for Trouble mod has another. But the version of Gate that is used in gameplay differs from the PnP version for the simple reason that it could not otherwise be used in gameplay. Does it deviate from the setting lore? Yes, in several respects. But it is forgivable - appropriate, even - because it is in service of bringing the D&D rules into this particular style of game.

Mages summoning planetars to do their bidding is inappropriate, as noted above, even within that context. It is inconsistent with the patterns already existing in the game itself. And it is inappropriate in the context of external sourcebooks, because the setting does not present celestials as something particularly to be called upon by mages in particular. The HLA is not appropriate for being a spell change in service of the gameplay, because - again, as already noted above - Bioware could have used a much more lore-appropriate choice that would have served the gameplay equally well. The way the HLA works is inappropriate no matter which lens you view it through, except perhaps the "PI + multiple planetars to cheese Demogorgon lol" lens.

And of course one can assert that.

On 11/29/2022 at 3:55 PM, Jarno Mikkola said:

It's time for you to kick the bucket and make a mod out of this.

I already did, some time ago! It exists right now. Here's how it works:

On 11/28/2022 at 2:40 PM, Angel said:

I would suggest the following:

• Change the various demon summoning spells to spells that summon creatures corresponding to the caster's alignment.
• Make an innate Summon (Dark) Planetar for the protagonist, granted upon first reaching the pocket plane.  Maybe gain one or two additional uses as challenges are completed.
• Change the Summon (Dark) Planetar wizard HLA to something more appropriate, like a noble djinni/efreeti.
• Keep the cleric and paladin Summon (Fallen) Deva, as there are some cannon spells that call upon devas.  Maybe tone down the deva a bit.
• While at it, change "Summon" to "Call" as I agree, devas and planetars are called, not summoned.

Attempting to make it more consistent, more sensible and not as wildly lore-inappropriate - with the lightest touch and least amount of work possible - means simply re-skinning planetars as djinni/efreeti by changing the .CRE file's animation and the equipped weapon, and... that's it. They can keep all their stats and magical abilities, which are not lore-accurate anyway, and this way the changes are entirely compatible with all other mods.

19 hours ago, Guest Aasimon said:

A Djinn HLA would have bored me,

Sorry

Edited December 1, 2022 by subtledoctor

[jmerry]

On 11/29/2022 at 10:57 PM, Guest Aasimon said:

That Planetars regenerate like crazy is a Beamdog thing, they die fast otherwise.

It's not, actually. Lots of ToB critters have powerful regeneration effects on them, and have always had those effects since the original release. These effects don't work. They've never worked. Beamdog hasn't fixed them either. Whatever balance testing was done in ToB was done with those effects not working.

Some mods may look at those effects and fix them - but that's a change to the game that doesn't match any official version.

[polytope]

22 hours ago, polytope said:

Without reading external sourcebooks you can't assert that it is or isn't appropriate.

 

16 hours ago, subtledoctor said:

That's... ridiculous. You can't assert whether something is or is not appropriate?  Of course you can. You have to back it up with reason, of course.

No, you don't know what you're talking about. Assertions like yours that something makes sense or doesn't rely on expectations derived from external sources as justifications for the sensibility of the subject or lack thereof.

Does it make sense that Pi is an irrational number? It is, and there is no external frame of reference in which Pi is ever anything else from which you might develop the expectation that the Pi we deal with would be expressible as a ratio of two integers.

Does it make sense that knights in chess cannot move as far in one action as bishops? That's how it is in the game system, if you had different expectations on the ruleset, it was based on something other than chess.

If you want to ignore the published sources available around the time this game was written and consider the game alone, only internal inconsistencies and contradictions could be considered nonsensical.

16 hours ago, subtledoctor said:

Mages summoning planetars to do their bidding is inappropriate, as noted above, even within that context. It is inconsistent with the patterns already existing in the game itself.

I see no such contradiction, prior to ToB (and even after it, if anyone ever bothered to cast it) the Gate spell cast by both mages and clerics gates in a pit fiend, and only a pit fiend. Come the expansion mages and clerics were both gating in celestials through a different HLA. Indeed, the Gate spell should always have been more versatile, and the creature that steps through probably contingent on factors like alignment & level for NPCs and some combination of alignment, level and reputation for the party, but claiming that it makes no sense for a wizard to be able to create Gates to the upper planes, where lorewise planetars are from, is baseless.

[subtledoctor]

Dude choosing to be more offensive while making less sense will not get you anywhere. 

21 minutes ago, polytope said:

I see no such contradiction

Squeezing your eyes shut and churlishly refusing to acknowledge something does not mean it’s not there. 

[suy]

If you kill a fiend in the prime material plane... do you really kill it?

I thought you actually destroy a "shell" of a body there, but then it returns to its own plane, and you would need to kill them there to actually destroy them for real.

I assumed it was the same for a Planetar or Deva: you just destroy a body in the Prime, not the creature for real. I'm saying this because it was mentioned the "problem" of a good-aligned character treating them as disposable. Well, you don't really send them to death.

 

[suy]

Edit: forum glitch? It was posted twice.

Anyway, an addenda: what I don't remember is what was the lore when you summon a creature via a low level spell, like the pack of Gnolls, etc.

 

Edited December 2, 2022 by suy

[Angel]

6 hours ago, suy said:

If you kill a fiend in the prime material plane... do you really kill it?

I thought you actually destroy a "shell" of a body there, but then it returns to its own plane, and you would need to kill them there to actually destroy them for real.

I assumed it was the same for a Planetar or Deva: you just destroy a body in the Prime, not the creature for real. I'm saying this because it was mentioned the "problem" of a good-aligned character treating them as disposable. Well, you don't really send them to death.

 

6 hours ago, suy said:

Edit: forum glitch? It was posted twice.

Anyway, an addenda: what I don't remember is what was the lore when you summon a creature via a low level spell, like the pack of Gnolls, etc.

If I remember my lore correctly, a summoned creature is sent back where it came from along with all gear it had when it was summoned when it is killed or dismissed.  Any ongoing spells it has cast will also end when this happens.

A gated creature when slain is not sent back and leaves a normal corpse, and ongoing spells it had cast run their normal duration.  However, powerful outsiders like angels and fiends cannot be permanently killed outside their home plane and will resurrect in their home plane eventually.  This canonically takes a few decades though, I think it was 60 years or so.  That would also explain Belhifet appearing in SoD. ^^

[polytope]

11 hours ago, subtledoctor said:

Dude choosing to be more offensive while making less sense will not get you anywhere...Squeezing your eyes shut and churlishly refusing to acknowledge something does not mean it’s not there. 

You persistently belittle and insinuate in backhanded fashion and act as the aggrieved party when someone else responds in kind. Telling someone that their ideas are "ridiculous" or "bonkers" is no less "offensive" than noting that you don't know what you're talking about. If you really want to be offended, not only do you not know what you're talking about, you really love the sound of your own voice to the extent of writing walls of pointless word salad:

On 12/2/2022 at 3:08 AM, subtledoctor said:

But look: Baldur's Gate is not D&D. It is not a role-playing game. It is a real-time tactical squad-based battle game that uses the D&D rules as its foundation. Plenty of those rules get thrown out the window - there is no Climb Walls skill for thieves or Fly spell for mages, as the game is in two dimensions. Move silently is meaningless except as folded into a general stealth skill, as there are no dynamic sound effects. Many spells don't exist because they only have application for proper role-playing or storytelling, which Baldur's Gate lacks - Alarm, Audible Glamour, Change Self, Comprehend Languages, Mending, Message, Read Magic, Taunt. Those are only 1st-level ones. They are hugely important in the D&D RPG and they literally have no place in Baldur's Gate. Which is fine - it's just not that kind of game. The D&D rules can be faithfully adapted to many different kinds of games including, famously, a Streets of Rage-style side-scrolling beat-em-up game. The adaptation necessitates changes at a mechanical level, which is fine. Spending a week performing rituals to summon a demon with no expiration date would make no sense in this game. There are allusions to that sort of thing happening - Ardulace is one, the Fishing for Trouble mod has another. But the version of Gate that is used in gameplay differs from the PnP version for the simple reason that it could not otherwise be used in gameplay. Does it deviate from the setting lore? Yes, in several respects. But it is forgivable - appropriate, even - because it is in service of bringing the D&D rules into this particular style of game.

????

What does any of that have to do with being able to adjudge whether it makes sense for mages to be able to call upon celestials with or without references to the external literature?

[Guest Aasimon]

On 12/1/2022 at 7:16 PM, jmerry said:

That Planetars regenerate like crazy is a Beamdog thing, they die fast otherwise.

It's not, actually. Lots of ToB critters have powerful regeneration effects on them, and have always had those effects since the original release. These effects don't work. They've never worked. Beamdog hasn't fixed them either. Whatever balance testing was done in ToB was done with those effects not working.

Some mods may look at those effects and fix them - but that's a change to the game that doesn't match any official version.

It really is a Beamdog thing. I have both editions installed unmodded: Beamdog didn't fix the bugged status effect, they only fixed Planetars (by giving the effect a 2147483647 seconds duration, because its "permanent" mode still actually uses a duration when directly attached to the CRE). They did not fix any of those enemies with super high (but broken) regen like Demogorgon.

Whatever balance testing was indeed made with the Planetar not having any regen in original edition, but they've been violently boosted by Beamdog.

[jmerry]

Huh. I stand corrected. The summonable planetars and the ones associated with Dorn's quest got their regeneration effects "fixed", while the enemy version a Wish can call up didn't.

[Guest Aasimon]

So they get a 48 HP regen per round thanks to their perma-haste, that's 44% of their max HP. No wonder people raise an eyebrow lol. I've been playing the original edition for the longest time and Planetars don't stand out so much over there.

[InKal]

On 12/2/2022 at 1:07 PM, subtledoctor said:

Dude choosing to be more offensive while making less sense will not get you anywhere. 

Squeezing your eyes shut and churlishly refusing to acknowledge something does not mean it’s not there. 

hahah, dude 

let me guess, when you actually play the game (on your phone, right?) first hla you pick for yuor mage is suprise!! Summon Planetar

and then you log in the forums and blah blah balh nbl;ah blah