[Feature request] A few other spell power modifications for your consideration

[RoyalProtector]

I really like the spell power tweaks you made.  I don't know how much you want to overhaul, but I have some extra suggestions:

- Make Bless last for longer. 6 rounds is just too short to justify casting it, specially for its long casting time. I would suggest increasing it, maybe 1 turn plus 1 round per 2 levels, or something like that. It's similar to NWN, although +1 bonus to attack is much more meaningful in these games compared to NWN.

- Make spells that add a magical weapon to your char always grant you extra attacks. I find that it's usually a worthless spell unless you have fighter levels, and the difference increases the higher your level. Maybe 1/2 or 1 extra attack. Or maybe set to 2 if higher.

- Make Glyph of Warding inflict half damage instead of no damage on failed saved. I don't think the spell is worth much if there's a good chance it does nothing. It's virtually useless at high levels.

-  Make Cloak of Fear act as an "aura" that recasts the spell every round for say, 1 turn. I don't think it's worth ever memorizing. Maybe only because it bypasses Minor Globe, but that's a pretty poor selling point.

- Standardize Finger of Death: The priest version inflicts much more damage if save succeeds. Maybe the difference is actually desirable, but may be worth considering...

-  Add more ways of inflicting sleep for wizards. The level 1 spell is useless after the half point of BG1 and of course BG2 entirely and the Power Word suffers a similar fate.

-  Standardize Hold Person. The priest version lacks the -1 save bonus that wizards have. Same as Finger of Death, maybe it's desirable, though I would change this personally.

-  This is not a full idea as much as an idle thought. I feel like there's not much difference between picking Flesh to Stone and Disintegrate. They both do the same thing, the save type is the same. In most circumstances, you probably want the former because you can avoid losing items from enemies later. Maybe Disintegrate could be changed to be more like NWN2, and inflict a lot of damage, and possibly disintegrate (kind of like your modified Harm spell for wizards).

- Make BBOD (Black Blade Of Disaster) unsuitable for backstabs. Since it's a 2d12+5 weapon, backstabs are pretty goofy with this weapon, and essentially devastatingly broken. It also means that to get huge numbers in backstabs, going for a pure rogue is not advised.

- Make Wail of the Banshee inflict side effects even if save succeeds (deafness, weakness, fear? I don't know if there's something in the lore anyway). It's difficult to justify memorizing this spell. It sounds great, and if you're a necromancer, you have better chances of landing it. Or it may do absolutely nothing in ToB and a wasted spell slot. I've seen references to doing 3d6  "psychic" damage on a failed save.

- Make Meteor Swarm do more baseline damage. Fire Storm does it better, because at level 20 it inflicts 22 guaranteed dmg. Meteor swarm instead can inflict single-digit damage numbers if you're unlucky. Again probably not a great level 9 spell choice that could be better.

- EDIT: Change Holy Power and Tenser's Transformation such that they can achieve a THAC0 of 0 at max level, which was probably intended. After all, the description states that your THAC0 will adjust to that of a figher of the same level.

 

That's all for now and thanks for reading. Thoughts?

Cheers

Edited December 8, 2023 by RoyalProtector
correction

[RoyalProtector]

A few other things on closer consideration occur to me:

- Goodberries. It can have a limited use in some BGEE hardcore run where you may have to manage things very tightly but I think generally speaking its usefulness disappears very fast. I would suggest changing it into an effect that stays useful throughout the saga. Like very slow regeneration, or just a higher yet still small healing, say 2d4.

- Negative Plane Protection could probably last longer, although some people would argue that it's a feature of the spell for challenge purposes against vampires.

- Earthquake. I don't have any solutions for this one, but has anyone ever used this spell seriously? I find it difficult to justify considering the high chance of becoming unconscious yourself, without any counter to it other than chugging very expensive potions beforehand. Maybe making it party friendly would be better. Thoughts?

Cheers

 

Edited December 8, 2023 by RoyalProtector
typos

[subtledoctor]

Almost every one of these suggestions is already available thanks to the diligent effort of hardworking modders… 

[RoyalProtector]

6 minutes ago, subtledoctor said:

Almost every one of these suggestions is already available thanks to the diligent effort of hardworking modders… 

Okay, but SCS also includes tweaks like these, and it has a section on power adjustment for spells, so I don't think it's out of place to suggest this.

What are those mods? I'm not interested in things like spell revisions, I'd rather have more modular options.

Edited December 8, 2023 by RoyalProtector

[WanderingScholar]

3 minutes ago, RoyalProtector said:

Okay, but SCS also includes tweaks like these, and it has a section on power adjustment for spells, so I don't think it's out of place.

What are those mods? I'm not interested in things like spell revisions, I'd rather have more modular options.

Yeah many if not most of these changes are done with Spell Revisions. You can pull out the individual spell files if you want just a few changes, but just make sure you know what you're doing. It'll depend on the spell, but you'll have to make sure all the resources for it are being included. 

Alternatively, you can edit out most spells from Spell Revisions pretty easily without issue. 

[RoyalProtector]

1 minute ago, WanderingScholar said:

many if not most of these changes are done with Spell Revisions

I'm not sure what you're saying here.

[WanderingScholar]

1 minute ago, RoyalProtector said:

I'm not sure what you're saying here.

I mean the tweaks you listed in the first post.

[RoyalProtector]

Well, nevermind then.

[Connelly]

And if you don't want to look into Spell Revisions, I'd point you to Subtledoctor's signature, with links to ie Tome and Blood, which adds sorcerer kits and reworks the specialists, and Spell Tweaks, which modularly changes the schools of more spells than SCS does now (with a configurable .ini file), how different spells work, or add cantrips. The site also has the P&P Celestials, which affects the respective summon spells. There's also the spell pack from the Made in Heaven thread, which besides more spells also tweaks the powers of some classes, or the effects of Timestop and Meteor. And in Beamdog Forum you can find Tresset's thread with individual mods to make Call Lightning work indoors or Luck stronger and longer lasting.

 

[subtledoctor]

Look for SubtleD’s Spell Tweaks in the miscellaneous mods section. Probably up your alley and completely modular. 

Not sure what the problem with SR is, as that mod pretty clearly shares your sensibilities with regard to Bless, Sleep, Glyph of Warding, Cloak of Fear, NPP, Disintegrate, Finger of Death, Earthquake, and more. It’s, like, everything you are asking for. (Not modular like my mod is, admittedly… but let’s be real, DavidW is not going to do this stuff in a modular way either.)

More generally, it’s pretty disheartening to see players say stuff like “sure I know this other mod has X, but I’d rather it be in SCS” and then it goes into SCS and everyone is like “wow! SCS has X feature, it’s so amazing and inventive!” and I’m like why tf do I even bother. 

[RoyalProtector]

10 minutes ago, subtledoctor said:

Look for SubtleD’s Spell Tweaks in the miscellaneous mods section. Probably up your alley and completely modular. 

Not sure what the problem with SR is, as that mod pretty clearly shares your sensibilities with regard to Bless, Sleep, Glyph of Warding, Cloak of Fear, NPP, Disintegrate, Finger of Death, Earthquake, and more. It’s, like, everything you are asking for. (Not modular like my mod is, admittedly… but let’s be real, DavidW is not going to do this stuff in a modular way either.)

More generally, it’s pretty disheartening to see players say stuff like “sure I know this other mod has X, but I’d rather it be in SCS” and then it goes into SCS and everyone is like “wow! SCS has X feature, it’s so amazing and inventive!” and I’m like why tf do I even bother. 

I mean no offense, I wasn't even aware all my suggestions were already included in that mod. I'm aware of your Spell Tweaks mod and have used it in the past though. I just like what David has done so far in this mod, and I thought my suggestions would fit in the theme of power rebalancing that he's been adding lately.

I had looked through Spell Revisions a few years ago, and to me it looked like it overhauled things too much for my taste. I did not agree with many of the choices they made and I don't want a "complete overhaul" either.

I don't know how to modify it so it installs only what I want. If someone can give me a guideline of how that works without breaking the installation, I would appreciate it.

Edited December 8, 2023 by RoyalProtector

[RoyalProtector]

31 minutes ago, Connelly said:

And if you don't want to look into Spell Revisions, I'd point you to Subtledoctor's signature, with links to ie Tome and Blood, which adds sorcerer kits and reworks the specialists, and Spell Tweaks, which modularly changes the schools of more spells than SCS does now (with a configurable .ini file), how different spells work, or add cantrips. The site also has the P&P Celestials, which affects the respective summon spells. There's also the spell pack from the Made in Heaven thread, which besides more spells also tweaks the powers of some classes, or the effects of Timestop and Meteor. And in Beamdog Forum you can find Tresset's thread with individual mods to make Call Lightning work indoors or Luck stronger and longer lasting.

 

Thanks for those links. Cool stuff in there.

I love what Tome and Blood does to mage specialists too. I always hated how the game handled specialists, where some choices are undeniably vastly inferior.

[DavidW]

Thanks for these; I'll consider. (Though there are already quite a few new spell modifications in v35 so I'm not really looking to change them in the short term.)

On SubtleDoctor's point: I don't think it's a problem when mods overlap. Not everyone wants to do a 100-mod install and even when two changes are described the same there are often differences in implementation. (Similarly, if other people want to do their own versions of SCS's Smarter Mages or similar that's absolutely their prerogative.) I don't actively copy ideas from other mods but I don't make much effort to check whether something I want to do is also done elsewhere.

For spell tweaks in particular, I generally write SCS AI on the assumption SCS spell tweaks are installed. The combinatorics get unmanageable when you have to allow for possible tweaks from other mods.

[RoyalProtector]

Great, thanks! Yes, that's another point that makes me prefer SCS when choosing tweaks, if possible. SCS is a core part of all my modded installations, and the contents integrate well with each other out of the box.

Cheers.

[DavidW]

On 12/8/2023 at 12:53 PM, subtledoctor said:

but let’s be real, DavidW is not going to do this stuff in a modular way either.

I missed this. I'm slightly confused as to what you mean: the spell tweaks in SCS are completely modular, via the ini.