SCS : dealing with mage Invisibility

[subtledoctor]

7 hours ago, polytope said:

but not okay to break kits that were working well previously.

Does SR actually break anything here? Don’t Conjurers work similarly in the unmodded game? For that matter, aren’t Conjurers supposed to have access to the school of “Minor Divination?” That was a PnP rule; was it not implemented in BG2?

Speaking of which:

8 hours ago, polytope said:

the best solution in my view for specialists and critically important spells would be to allow spells of the opposition school up to 3rd level

This is an excellent idea, and would fit very nicely with my alternative opposition school options in Tome & Blood. 

But for SR on its own, we should remember that we are still running through betas/release candidates for v4. My recommendation for the full v4 release is 1) allow spell attacks to bypass invisibility the way SCS does, and/or 2) rework Nondetection to be defeated by Glitterdust and maybe even fully change it to a proper “Pro Divination” in both description and effect.

I’ll tag @grodrigues and @Bartimaeus in case the brain trust wants to actually move forward with these options  

I personally think option 2 is ideal, because IIRC this complaint is specifically about the SR+SCS combination. And that combination can be addressed by petitioning @DavidW to change the behavior of SCS v35, to wit, to enable spell attacks to bypass invisibility regardless whether SR is detected. 

(I’ll probably add the “Glitterdust beats Nobdetection” in my own tweaks as well, so it will be an immediate option. I see it as a “low-tech” workaround, like throwing paint on someone or splashing them with water and then watching for their wet footprints.) 

[polytope]

14 hours ago, subtledoctor said:

Does SR actually break anything here? Don’t Conjurers work similarly in the unmodded game?

Yes, but Conjurers will practically never encounter a similar problem without mods, given how illusion-stripping-divinations worked in vanilla; for that to happen the Conjurer would need to be the only spellcaster in the party, with no thief or even somebody who could use the Dragonslayer sword with its Detect Invisibility special.

It wouldn't be a problem for a solo Conjurer either, because he or she will level up fast enough that Remove/Dispel Magic becomes a reliable way to strip Improved Invisibility, and with SCS depending on the version spell protection removals (to strip SI:Abjuration) either bypass invisibility or have an AoE. Of course the higher level conjurer probably mainly wants to strip weapon protections rather than illusions from a mage who's then open to practically instant death from Energy Blades or summons (the one niche where your mage will make use of Energy Blades is when solo and dueling other mages, as a long duration reusable attack that gets around the 1 spell per round limit and prevents recovery).

14 hours ago, subtledoctor said:

This is an excellent idea, and would fit very nicely with my alternative opposition school options in Tome & Blood. 

But for SR on its own, we should remember that we are still running through betas/release candidates for v4. My recommendation for the full v4 release is 1) allow spell attacks to bypass invisibility the way SCS does, and/or 2) rework Nondetection to be defeated by Glitterdust and maybe even fully change it to a proper “Pro Divination” in both description and effect.

I’ll tag @grodrigues and @Bartimaeus in case the brain trust wants to actually move forward with these options 

Thanks, I had the idea to publish these along with some other low key modifications of vanilla classes and kits but my mods don't have the same audience reach as new versions of the better established ones.

[grodrigues]

Apologies if I am missing something, but the *balance* problem is that Conjurers (e.g. Edwin) cannot strip spell protections from mages with Invis + Non-Detection? Presumably the retort of (1) use area bombing with maybe some summons like Nishruu (or whatever is his name) that see through invis plus (2) bring along someone that can do precisely that, is not satisfying.

As concrete proposals, we have (and once again, correct me if I am wrong):

1. Allow specialists to cast spells from the opposition school of up to 3rd level. In this context, this means allowing Conjurers to cast Detect Invis.

2. Allow spell protections to pierce invis. In EE this can be done by setting the can target invis flag; on old BG2?

3. Rework non-detection to be more like the old Spell Immunity: Divination instead of what it is now (anti-invis buster). This gives Conjurers Glitterdust.

My gut feeling is that 1. and 2. are not good solutions and 3. is the best option.

[polytope]

58 minutes ago, grodrigues said:

1. Allow specialists to cast spells from the opposition school of up to 3rd level. In this context, this means allowing Conjurers to cast Detect Invis.

2. Allow spell protections to pierce invis. In EE this can be done by setting the can target invis flag; on old BG2?

3. Rework non-detection to be more like the old Spell Immunity: Divination instead of what it is now (anti-invis buster). This gives Conjurers Glitterdust.

My gut feeling is that 1. and 2. are not good solutions and 3. is the best option.

Targeting improved invisible actors is possible on oBG2 with ToBEx, but I honestly preferred spell protection removal simply having a fast projectile and AoE, it made no sense to me that some single target spells would just disregard the visibility requirement out of convenience.

Glitterdust has the problem of its power level of 2, useless against any mage running a (Minor) Globe of Invulnerability unless you can strip him with the (by default) single target antimagic in the first place (i.e. requiring that he's not under the effects of Improved Invisibility and/or you're not a Conjurer) also useless against rakshasa and liches.

If anything Non Detection probably should be defeated by Glitterdust, a physical means of revealing unseen creatures, but should also protect even against a thief's detect illusion skill. Unfortunately, this is difficult to code, not least because anything protecting from a thief's detect illusion skill needs to be done with opcode #101 vs various effects unless someone has softcoded it. Any #101 protection versus opcode #220 (spell school removal) is also incompatible with my mod revising Dispel Magic.

The changes to specialists would be (part of) my own solution and need not be packaged Spell Revisions.

Edited July 28, 2023 by polytope

[subtledoctor]

2 hours ago, grodrigues said:

As concrete proposals, we have (and once again, correct me if I am wrong):

1. Allow specialists to cast spells from the opposition school of up to 3rd level. In this context, this means allowing Conjurers to cast Detect Invis.

2. Allow spell protections to pierce invis. In EE this can be done by setting the can target invis flag; on old BG2?

3. Rework non-detection to be more like the old Spell Immunity: Divination instead of what it is now (anti-invis buster). This gives Conjurers Glitterdust.

So far, I think these are the proposals. #1 is outside the scope of this mod, I think. But I will definitely implement it elsewhere so players have it as a choice. 

#2 I am agnostic about - I don’t feel strongly in favor of it, but at the same time I don’t think it will hurt anything, so why not? 

#3 I am on the record very much in favor of. Just set Nondetection to provide immunity to the DivinationAttack sectype. For purposes of this particular discussion, I think it is the most narrowly targeted way to address Conjurers specifically. And in a way that comports with existing precedent (some spell attacks being outside the Invocation school, like Ruby Ray; some direct-damage spells being outside the invocation school, like Flame Arrow/Acid Arrow/ADHW; etc.). The fact that it would address Bart’s concerns about Nondetection’s incorrect description text is icing on the cake. And it comports with Demi’s vision of pulling out the former SI:____ subspells and putting their effects into existing spells. 

[subtledoctor]

On 7/27/2023 at 5:03 AM, polytope said:

Honestly the best solution in my view for specialists and critically important spells would be to allow spells of the opposition school up to 3rd level

Okay, I have added this to the various options in Tome & Blood. Regardless which opposition school system you prefer (IWD/BG2/PnP), there is an option to keep spells of up to 3rd level as universal and available to anyone. And if you know your way around a .tp2 file, you can pretty easily change that from 3rd level to another spell level.

Everything in TnB is modular, so you can just use that component if you like. It can be installed after SR and it will work on all SR spells. Should even work on games in progress.

[guyudennis]

9 hours ago, subtledoctor said:

Okay, I have added this to the various options in Tome & Blood. Regardless which opposition school system you prefer (IWD/BG2/PnP), there is an option to keep spells of up to 3rd level as universal and available to anyone.

This also means for the majority of BG1 portion, players don't see much difference (apart from saving throws) between the specialist mages, unless he/she also install the specialist tweaks component. Don't know if you want to mention that in the description of this component.

[polytope]

1 hour ago, guyudennis said:

This also means for the majority of BG1 portion, players don't see much difference (apart from saving throws) between the specialist mages, unless he/she also install the specialist tweaks component. Don't know if you want to mention that in the description of this component.

Yes, I suggested it only as a partial solution as there should be other distinctions between kits.

In any case, even though specialist wizards may now seem to lack a disadvantage compared to the parent mage class bear in mind that:

1. So it was/is with cleric kits.
2. It's fine for kits to exceed the power of the base class because kit benefits are the reward for progressing as single classed, rather than a dual or multi class with all its emergent perks and powerful synchronizations.
3. Single class mages below 7th level are weak.

On that last point, compare a mage (not specialist) with 40,000 xp to a f/m multi or even a bard of the same experience.

• 6th level mage: Spell slots; 4 first level 2 second level, 2 third level, HD 6d4 (+12 max from con), THAC0 19
• 5th/5th level fighter/mage: Spell slots; 4 first level, 2 second level, 1 third level, HD (5d4)/2+(5d10)/2 (+20 max from con), THAC0 16
• 7th level bard: Spell slots; 3 first level, 2 second level, 1 third level, HD 7d6 (+14 max from con), THAC0 17

Then we get into the better armament of the F/M and even the bard, probable weapon specialization and not unlikely exceptional strength for the F/M etc.

At 6th level the mage can't even cast Stoneskin, can be one-shotted by a backstabbing thief (very relevant with SCS), a skeleton with a heavy crossbow can crit you for 20ish damage... and all the single class mage NPCs you can recruit in BG1 are specialists.

[subtledoctor]

14 hours ago, guyudennis said:

This also means for the majority of BG1 portion, players don't see much difference (apart from saving throws) between the specialist mages

12 hours ago, polytope said:

Yes, I suggested it only as a partial solution as there should be other distinctions between kits

Yup. This option sits among several, including one to have no opposition schools at all, which is how I play. 

TnB also has a component that adds much more noticeable distinctions to the specialist kits, and 5E Spellcasting also makes them play quite differently. 

[DavidW]

On 7/27/2023 at 6:15 PM, subtledoctor said:

And that combination can be addressed by petitioning @DavidW to change the behavior of SCS v35, to wit, to enable spell attacks to bypass invisibility regardless whether SR is detected. 

Should I assume I’ve received this petition? Happy to make the change if so. (As always my ability to support SR is limited by the fact that I don’t use it myself and need SR fans to advise me in how to incorporate it.)

[polytope]

44 minutes ago, DavidW said:

Should I assume I’ve received this petition? Happy to make the change if so. (As always my ability to support SR is limited by the fact that I don’t use it myself and need SR fans to advise me in how to incorporate it.)

I think this one is essentially a Spell Revisions problem, not an SCS problem.

However if you want to change it I'd support one or two AoE antimagics like Ruby Ray as opposed to "can-target-invisible" even if it's the "outdated" concept.

Spell Revisions currently tries to give some uniqueness to Detect Invisibility & True Sight in that those allow the targeting of Improved Invisible creatures, which disappears if all antimagic spells also have that property.

[subtledoctor]

1 hour ago, DavidW said:

Should I assume I’ve received this petition?

I think so - I’ll tag @Bartimaeus to be sure - didn’t we agree it is best for SCS to be consistent in this regard? And were even talking about having SR work this way on its own?

32 minutes ago, polytope said:

this one is essentially a Spell Revisions problem, not an SCS problem.

Spell Revisions currently tries to give some uniqueness to Detect Invisibility & True Sight in that those allow the targeting of Improved Invisible creatures, which disappears if all antimagic spells also have that property

Well, currently this acts as a special carve-out for SR. But my recollection is that it causes some inconsistency or very slight problems. Maybe it was that, with SR + SCS, the AI can cast spell attacks through invisibility by players cannot? I think my position is, SCS should just do this how SCS wants to do it. The exception for SR is not needed. 

The stakes are low, I think - because I am only talking about spell attacks. Whether you cast [Pierce Magic -> Detect Invisible -> other spell] or [Detect Invisible -> Pierce Magic -> other spell] is of little consequence… as long as other spells (Breach, in particular) do not bypass invisibility. 

Edited September 15, 2023 by subtledoctor

[polytope]

19 minutes ago, subtledoctor said:

The stakes are low, I think - because I am only talking about spell attacks. Whether you cast [Pierce Magic -> Detect Invisible -> other spell] or [Detect Invisible -> Pierce Magic -> other spell] is of little consequence… as long as other spells (Breach, in particular) do not bypass invisibility. 

It feels very strange and awkward, to me at least, much like the casting time of (Chain)Contingency, that the "rules" and expected behaviour are suddenly suspended.

I have much less problems with some of those spells (NOT Pierce Magic, because it has other effects) simply gaining a small AoE, fast projectile and low casting time.

[subtledoctor]

4 minutes ago, polytope said:

feels very strange and awkward, to me at least, that the "rules" and expected behaviour are suddenly suspended.

I actually agree with you. But for better or worse that’s the decision SCS makes. Take SR out of the equation and SCS is still suspends the rules in this regard. If someone wants to play with SCS, they are choosing to tolerate that. 

Worse, with SR+SCS, these rules are suspended for enemies but not for players. To me this is an even more jarring suspension of rules. 

AoEs are problematic - SR tried this with Spell Thrust and I found it to perform so poorly that I made a mod to change it back. 

Ultimately I don’t feel strongly. I like SR’s system and would prefer SCS scripts to work with it, even for enemies. But if that makes more work for DavidW, it’s not super-important. The status quo seems fine to me as well - the disparity between enemies and players, while rule-suspending, doesn’t bother me much in play. As I say, when it solely a question of the order in which a divination and spell attack are cast, as long as both spells are still necessary, the stakes are low. I’m in favor of whatever makes AI scripts perform better. 

[polytope]

58 minutes ago, subtledoctor said:

AoEs are problematic - SR tried this with Spell Thrust and I found it to perform so poorly that I made a mod to change it back.

I remember this edition of SR (barely) the problem was that the projectile wasn't fast enough and the casting time too long so that the enemy wizard often wanders out of range. Ruby Ray could use a cone-shape projectile actually, or even a line like Lightning Bolt (for EE anyway) instead of a round AoE, that would fit the spell description better.