Impervious Sanctity of Mind vs Wand of Spell Striking

[gatperdut]

Clerics get an instance of Spell Shield with Impervious Sanctity of Mind which can be brought down with e.g. Spell Thrust or Secret Word cast from memory or scroll. However, the Pierce Magic ability from the Wand of Spell Striking (effectively a Secret Word + weaker Lower Resistance combined) will not bring it down, which in my opinion is an oversight. Note that I'm only addressing the Spell Shield part, not the other benefits that ISoM provides. 

Furthermore, the wand description states that its Pierce Magic ability "removes one spell protection" (of any level?), while it behaves like the actual Pierce Magic spell - that is, like a Secret Word, in that it will bring Spell Turning down (lvl 7), but not Spell Trap (lvl 9). So it looks like a description innacuracy. 

Edited February 9 by gatperdut

[jmerry]

Let's see - how do the pieces here work?

The spell shield portion of ISoM is a tweaked clone of Spell Shield; one level of deflection against the MAGICATTACK sectype. The vanilla version of the wand ability has the ABJURER and MAGICATTACK types. So that would run into the effect, use up the deflection, and then the shield gets removed. (This part required a fix in v35, because the cloning process didn't update everything it needed to)

SCS, in the spell tweak for Breach, externalizes the effects of the wand to actual spells. The "Pierce Magic" spell becomes a clone of Pierce Magic, modified to always reduce MR by 20 instead of depending on caster level. And ... oh. That's the catch.

In the process of externalizing the spell, the wand's Pierce Magic ability ends up with exactly one effect. That's a "cast spell" effect, newly created, with power 0. And since the ability still has the MAGICATTACK sectype, the spell shield deflects this carrier effect. The subspell never gets cast. And that drains zero levels of deflection, because that's based on the first effect in the ability being deflected. The spell shield is not used up.

Have you tested the wand's Pierce Magic ability against the original Spell Shield? If I'm right, that should have the same issue. And so should the Breach ability; that ability also has the ABJURER and MAGICATTACK types, and its content gets replaced by a "cast spell" effect.

Recommended fix: remove the types of the carrier abilities when editing the Wand of Spell Striking in modify_breach.tpa. The subspells interact properly with spell defenses, so the carrier abilities should pass through everything.

As for the description - that's not something SCS changes. The wand uses abbreviated versions of the descriptions of Breach and Pierce Magic, and the level limit for Pierce Magic happens to be omitted here.

Edited February 9 by jmerry

[gatperdut]

You are correct, mage Spell Shield blocks and is consumed by memorized Breach/Pierce Magic, and it blocks but is not consumed when the source is the wand.

[DavidW]

Thanks. Fixed locally, will be in ToF beta 7 / SCS v35.11.

[gatperdut]

Awesome, thanks!