[QUESTION] Studded Leather of Thorns appears broken?

[a.greene]

Studded Leather of Thorns (Leat23.ITM) from BG2EE does not appear to be working properly. CastSpell on Condition doesn't appear to be triggering...

I'd like to try and fix it, as I would like to use this mechanism, any assistance would be appreciated.

Please and thank you

[jmerry]

Which game version? And what, exactly, did you observe? Like other fireshield effects, this should only work against sufficiently close targets. And in patch 2.6, that failure from longer distance is silent. Also, it's a rather short distance - shorter than most fireshields. In my quick tests, the retaliation failed against a full-reach staff attack but succeeded against a dagger attack. And a double-mirror short sword attack (Imoen with the armor and a short sword attacked a Dragon Disciple who had cast Fireshield Red; the feedback loop dropped her to minimum so she left.)

The 2.6 version of the fireshield mechanic uses projectiles to define the range. Trap size 42 for the projectile that the SLoT uses, trap size 59 for the projectile that most fireshields use, trap size 85 for the projectile that a few "big" effects like the balor fireshield use.

Edited February 1 by jmerry

[jmerry]

Actually, I just noticed something about the ranges. The description says "6 feet" for the armor and "5 feet" for the standard fireshield spell. In patch 2.5, they appear to have had the same range. There's no good reason for the armor to have a shorter range in 2.6.

And then I run a quick test. Give a fighter-mage both the armor and a fireshield spell. Have a partner walk up and attack them. Staff (range 2) - no retaliation. Club (range 1) - no retaliation. Dagger (range 0) - no retaliation. What?

Retry that with only the armor. Staff hit gets retaliation. Club hit gets retaliation. Dagger hit doesn't get retaliation. Uh ...

All right, only the spell, then. No retaliation on any of the hits this time.

All of this was on an essentially vanilla BGEE 2.6 installation, with fresh characters created in ToB.

The more I test, the less I think I know. Fireshields appear to be inconsistent, in a way I just don't understand.