You shouldn't be able to vorpal a dragon?

[boof]

I could've sworn this was part SCS's improvements for dragons, making them immune to death effects, but now I can't seem to find it in the readme anywhere.

Am I crazy or have dragons always been vorpal-able?

In any case, this just happened

Any way to give him vorpal immunity through Near Infinity?

[jmerry]

Vorpal hits are opcode 13 "kill" effects. Basically the only stuff out there in vanilla that blocks that are death ward effects and full immortality effects. No items grant just the death ward part without other side effects, so you'd have to either add effects to the creatures directly or modify the general "dragring" immunity item.

And yes, earlier versions of SCS did give dragons immunity to instant death. Here's a snippet from v34's dragon_shared.tph:

//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
////   Baseline patch for dragons
//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

DEFINE_PATCH_FUNCTION dragon_general BEGIN
 LPF check_ini STR_VAR ini=bypass_dragon_immunity_changes RET value END
 PATCH_IF value=0 BEGIN
   PATCH_MAKE_PATCH
      delete_effect=>~opcode=193~
      add_effect_inline=>~opcode=>193 parameter2=>1~
      immunity_to_opcode=>~74 13 55 211 19~//immunity to blindness/slay/death/imprisonment/Mind Flayer
      immunity_to_string=>~1474 32089 14674~ // blindness, devour brain
      immunity_to_spell=>~%WIZARD_IMPRISONMENT%~
   END
   PATCH_IF !is_iwd BEGIN
      SPRINT $patch_data("immunity_to_spell'") "%DRAGON_WING_BUFFET%"
   END
   LPF apply_patches STR_VAR edits=patch_data file_ext=CRE END
 END
 PATCH_MAKE_PATCH
      class=>"if enhanced_edition then no_change else FIGHTER_MAGE_CLERIC"
      strip_scs_scripts=>null
 END
 LPF apply_patches STR_VAR edits=patch_data file_ext=CRE END
END

//////////////////

And in v35 ... no changes to this section at this time. Which means that the likely cause here is changed library functions requiring different syntax for the same effect. Either that, or this particular SCS-added dragon didn't get the function applied for some reason.

[boof]

20 minutes ago, jmerry said:

Vorpal hits are opcode 13 "kill" effects. Basically the only stuff out there in vanilla that blocks that are death ward effects and full immortality effects. No items grant just the death ward part without other side effects, so you'd have to either add effects to the creatures directly or modify the general "dragring" immunity item.

And yes, earlier versions of SCS did give dragons immunity to instant death. Here's a snippet from v34's dragon_shared.tph:

And in v35 ... no changes to this section at this time. Which means that the likely cause here is changed library functions requiring different syntax for the same effect. Either that, or this particular SCS-added dragon didn't get the function applied for some reason.

Does this look about right?

I just copied one of the other many immunity effects on the ring, though I don't know what to do with the "Unused" portion. It seems to be different across different effects.

[jmerry]

Yeah, that looks right. The full death ward package includes a bunch more immunities, some of which you may also want. (For example, the "vorpal hit" string)

As for the "unused" segment of the effect block, it's just that - unused. Whatever's in there can be anything, as it's not read in an opcode 101 effect. That segment is used for a resource name when the effect refers to some specific resource, as in the opcode 206 effects that ring also have.

[boof]

Thanks for the help.

[Opipo]

Vorpal is a really bad effect. It's pointless on trash mobs and it robs you of an epic fight during boss encounters. This is not a darn MMO. Luckily it's only present on like .. 3 weapons and none of them are meta, so i just avoid it. Shame about the Axe tho. Come to think of it.. instead of patching the dragons, one could patch the weapons instead, for the ultimate solution.

[DavidW]

On 1/12/2024 at 10:29 PM, jmerry said:

And in v35 ... no changes to this section at this time. Which means that the likely cause here is changed library functions requiring different syntax for the same effect. Either that, or this particular SCS-added dragon didn't get the function applied for some reason.

It's the latter. (The library functions here are 1st edition SFO, which I'm not really updating any more - if I need to adjust something, I'd normally record in SFO2e).

What's going on is that Brimstone is a clone of the generic (vanilla-unused) red dragon DRAGRED, presumably because I thought cloning the actual Firkraag (FIRKRA02) was too dangerous. (Which it is.) DRAGRED and FIRKRA02 are basically identical from a combat POV in the unmodded game, but only FIRKRA02 gets the SCS dragon patches (applied in the Smarter Dragons component).

The simplest fix is just to have Smarter Dragons apply the Firkraag dragon patch to DRAGRED as well as FIRKRA02. That's a one-line fix in Smarter Dragons: on line 120 of stratagems/dragon/dragon.tpa, replace ' creature=firkra02 ' with ' creature="firkra02 dragred" '. (Not yet tested.)

Incidentally, checking earlier versions of SCS I see that I used to patch Brimstone properly, and broke it for some reason in v32. At a guess, I was planning to implement the solution in this post and forgot to edit dragon.tpa, though I've no memory of it.

[boof]

4 hours ago, DavidW said:

replace ' creature=firkra02 ' with ' creature="firkra02 dragred" '. (Not yet tested.)

Is it " or ~
Because I see other entries that have multiple creatures have ~ and not ".

[DavidW]

It doesn't matter. WEIDU allows either ~~ or "" to delineate strings.

[boof]

cool, thanks