BettaGeorge

Ah, that's too bad. Thank you! I guess I'll go with a workaround for now, like a targetable special ability with 0 casting time.

Hm, any idea where I can find help on the lua integration?

Hm, if I cannot find out which object is under the cursor, then how do hotkeys like Ctrl+Y ("kill creature under cursor") work?

Hello wise modders! Yes, I have seen the Tutorial section. I have also worked through the Weidu readme, but that seems to have a different focus. What I cannot quite find is how to execute a block of (creature-independent) code when a hotkey is pressed. Looking at some mods that do have hotkeys, I need to do something with a menu file? Maybe? At a very basic level, I would like to know how to display a hardcoded string in the battle log when the player presses a certain key. I work as a programmer, so writing code is fine with me. I just have no idea how the IE works. Thanks in advance for any pointers! PS: I am on BG:EE. Apparently there is now Lua stuff in addition to BCS files? At least the init file changed from .ini to .lua for some reason. If there is a "newer" way to achieve the desired effect that only works on the EEs, I am fine with that. PPS: if you are truly bored, here are some stretch goals: * can the hotkey be made configurable via the ingame "Assign Keys" menu? * can I interpolate a global variable into the string? Do I need to use tokens for that? * can I get a reference to the object that is currently under the cursor?

Update: just for laughs, I turned autopause off and redid the same fight, and saving throws worked this time around. Thank you for the hint, jmerry! Guess I must have been very unlucky before with the timing.

Unfinished Business, the NPC Project, Balduran's Seatower, and some UI tweaks. Maybe the latter mess with something they shouldn't?

Well that's a bummer. None of the other mods even touch the spell files, so I'm not sure where this comes from. In case it is the autopause, what is the best way to get around this issue?

I have not been active here for a while, so some of the ideas in this post might already have been discussed. I apologize in that case. In order to motivate the following ideas, let me preface them with a story from one of my recent playthroughs. I switched to hardcore difficulty for SCS 34, and for this playthrough I decided to stick with just a conjurer Bhaalspawn and Imoen, no further party members. To help Imoen with her backstabbing (as one of the only ways this setup can deal substantial damage before lvl 3 spells), I decided to go pick up Varscona, along with some welcome extra EXP for helping Prism. Now, the obvious problem with this fight is that it occurs out of a cutscene, which a) makes pre-buffing very hard and b) positions your characters for you in a way that is very undesirable. After some thought, I came up with what I thought was a brilliant plan to mitigate this. I cast Invisibility on Imoen, triggered the cutscene, then immediately cast Invisibility on myself. Greywolf has no way of breaking through invisibility effects, so I could take my time repositioning and quaffing potions, then start the fight on my terms. Except Greywolf outplayed me. He stood there flabbergasted for one round, then said "screw this" and went straight for Prism. One-hit killed the sculptor and ruined my chances of completing the Prism quest. I thought that was fantastic. Greywolf beat me not by having insane stats, not by quaffing his potion of hill giant strength, not even by cleverly applying his combat skills. Instead he beat me by doing something completely unrelated to force my hand. I then started trying this on different opponents to see how they would react. Sadly, what I found is that Greywolf is an outlier and that against most enemies, this tactic just completely dumbfounds the AI. Two examples: Mulahey's minions are clearly afraid of invisible mages, because they react by huddling around him in one big hugball, just waiting to be hit with an AoE attack. Even worse, Mulahey sees no one to fight, so he defaults to casting every single buff spell he has memorized. Result: the Bhaalspawn waits for the buffs to run out, because invisibility lasts all day. Nimbul is so fixated on his task, he does not even care that half the Nashkel garrison is pelting arrows at him. He just stands there, patiently, waiting for his mark to return. Sure, the guards only hit him on a 20 because Amnian army training yields very few EXP, but eventually the damage accumulates and he goes down without a fight. This got me thinking that it would be nice if the AI had more ways to deal with instances of their opponents vanishing. For example, in the (considerably younger) game Divinity: Original Sin 2, when a party member becomes invisible, the AI proceeds to lob an AoE spell at their last known location. That alone does a lot to level the playing field – as a player, if the NPC becomes invisible, I do not stand around and wait for them to backstab me. Neither should they, when the tables are turned. Many opponents in populated areas could learn from Greywolf. In a Pen&Paper DnD round, Nimbul might even take a commoner hostage until the PCs reveal themselves. He is chaotic evil, after all. If that is too harsh/too hard to implement, it would be nice if he at least defended himself against the Amnian soldiers instead of solemnly awaiting his death by a thousand cuts. Any good-aligned party should be unwilling to let enemy NPCs accumulate collateral damage on their behalf. Mulahey casting a buff spell while he has the time is fine, but once he realizes the fight is not happening, he should stop and save some of those spell slots. When I play with a party of six and the enemy spellcaster becomes invisible, the first thing I do is spread out. Why? Because the Forgotten Realms are filled to the brim with horrible, battle-ending area of effect spells. Mulahey would stand a chance if, when the party vanishes, his minions spread out over the cave instead of sharing body warmth like a bunch of undead penguins. Even taking a random-walk would make for a better position. Which segues into my next idea: when an enemy goes around a corner to hide in shadows, what I do is go search for them. I do not stand patiently until they reach exactly the position they want. After all, they might fail their hide in shadows roll if I am in sight, giving me a significant advantage. Most enemies, when you vanish, give up doing anything at all and just stand frozen in place. It would be a lot scarier if they defaulted to searching the vicinity – after all, I sometimes have a squishy party member squirrelled away just around the corner. We all know that Villains Act, Heroes React. There is no reason for the SCS enemies to turn the tables on that. Right now, the default state is that the enemy waits for the heroes to do something, then reacts accordingly. If the heroes do nothing, then nothing happens. Ever. It would make for much more interesting fights if the enemies took the initiative, forcing my hand at times. Another example that would do this is if upon noticing that the heroes are gone, Nimbul proceeded to become invisible himself. (He has the spell, he just uses it exclusively as offense right now.) Again, that would force my hand: I can either leave Nashkel and come back another day to be essentially at square one, or I can bite the bullet and make someone visible to draw Nimbul out of hiding. After all, my invisibility is going to run out six seconds before his does. I have some additional ideas, but I have already rambled on for quite some time. The point is, I play SCS to make fights interesting and fun to play, and it is always more fun when enemies force my hand in unexpected ways rather than waiting for me to force theirs. There are multiple scenarios that essentially deprive the AI of valid targets (some party members around a corner, Hide in Shadows, Invisibility, Sanctuary), and the reaction can probably be improved.

The last time I played stratagems was a few versions ago, so I am not quite sure where to post this. I installed v34.3 on BG:EE with SoD, and now whenever an enemy spellcaster uses a charm effect, it seems to have a 100% success rate. I sometimes get the "[Name]: Save vs Spell: 17" text in the console, only for [Name] to be charmed/dominated anyway. I have checked that even with the modifiers for e.g. Mental Domination, the character's save vs spell should have been low enough to resist with the roll shown. On a related note, enemies on hardcore are apparently smart enough to keep attacking a charmed/dominated character to deal some damage before the charm wears off. This is fine and a valid strategy by the AI, but for some reason it does not break the charm effect. When I attack a charmed enemy (and the spell description says as much), the spell is broken. These two effects together effectively make any enemy spellcaster who happens to have memorized Charm Person capable of killing any one party member of their choice, with no defense except trying to interrupt their cast (as Charm Person is available waaaaay before Minor Spell Deflection). Is this an intended effect of the difficulty setting? Mulahey in particular was only beatable when I figured out that I can time my Invisibility cast such that my mage becomes invisible and dominated at the same time, which stopped Mulahey from mercilessly executing her. I then went to make myself some coffee while waiting for the domination effect to run out. PS: Apart from this, I am really enjoying hardcore difficulty. It is only fights against spellcasters with charm spells where I feel like I have absolutely no chance. I do not look forward to the sirens at all. PPS: Note that Mental Domination bypasses the elven charm resistance, which takes away the last layer of defense that still may have existed.

In case Google ever leads someone here: You can cheese this fight at least on Tactical difficulty by pausing the instant you are teleported to the board, then queuing up your entire party to hit the center of the board with Fireballs or potions of explosion. Unpause to let the dialogue trigger. Close the dialogue. Everything but the king dies. Occasionally a knight survives, finish it off with missiles or whatever. Cross the board to dispatch of the lone king. Terrible from a roleplaying perspective since you have to know what to do in advance, but after the fifth reload, I don't care anymore. The key, by the way, is the pausing before the dialogue triggers, since queuing up the Fireballs after the dialogue will miss the hasted knights, meaning 36d6 less initial damage.

Sounds sensible, thanks

Then maybe I am doing something fundamentally wrong. Even if I get an entire buffed, invisible and lightning-immune party across the board, surround the king and have at him, the other pieces still take me out before the king dies. Sarevok was a cakewalk compared to this.

I love this mod, but bloody Hades is that chess game ever brutal. I've never liked it much to begin with because it teleports you into a fight without a chance to prepare, but with SCS installed, is there actually a way to win this thing without cheesing or flat out cheating? (I found some forum topics on this, but they're from 2007, so like thirty SCS versions ago.) For reference, I am going in with a level 8 group headed by a Kensai and Minsc, with Imoen, a cleric and two mages. I do not usually have to reload at all (though Durlag's Tower really is a lot more challenging than in the vanilla game). I start the chess fight by chucking in three or four simultaneous fireballs (and fireball-like objects), which all but wipes out the rooks and disrupts the casters. But almost before that's over, those hasted knights (? the ones with the swords) reach CHARNAME and absolutely destroy her. Sure, my armor class is only -4, but I was still surprised at how quick they take me out. They also seem to have absurd saving throws, making it impossible to disable them. The only time my main ever survived the first two rounds of combat was when I chugged a potion of invisibility right off the bat. Of course, the knights then proceeded to tear through my casters, and I still had no way of killing the enemy king. Am I just doing this wrong, or is this fight super unfair with SCS? I usually love the tactics involved in the SCS fights (especially against mages), but there seems to be next to no room for tactics here as I'm not able to freely move my characters without getting fried by lightning bolts. There is also no time to prepare, because as soon as you finish the fourth enemy from the third level, you are teleported to the chess board and the dialogue starts, and as soon as the dialogue is finished, all the chess pieces rush you at once. The tactic that worked best so far was making my main invisible, then running across the board and just attacking the king in melee. But by the time I managed to get him Near Death, the knights had killed four of my remaining party members, which I feel is not a good enough trade. Anyway, I'm confused and a little annoyed by this encounter. So far, every battle in SCS was somehow solvable by doing reconnaissance with an Invisibled character in advance, then choosing a suitable strategy before going in. In contrast, this one just feels unfair.

There can never be too many Boo jokes. There's a reason I never have the heart to kick Minsc out of the party. If you need any logs or something, give me a shout. For now, I'm keeping the little buggers safe in my pocket. (The little boogers? No, that's not what I keep in my pocket.)

So, this time I made sure I have the current mod version installed (v21 from the github page). However, there is severe strangeness in the Hamster Dilemma quest. When you first ... acquire Tai (as I've dubbed Boo's beau, you know, the hamster lady he's booholden to), the merchant tells you he is going to the Friendly Arm inn, then leaves. However, three days later he reappears at the Nashkel carnival. The conversation he offers there is clearly meant to be had at the Friendly Arm. If you return Tai at this point, the merchant vanishes for good. This seems like a bug to me. The second thing also seems like a bug, but maybe it's intentional. No idea. If you keep Tai long enough for your miniature giant space hamster to bamboozle her (sorry) and create your own little Boo Zoo, then return her to the merchant, the quest is marked as done but he drops her before leaving. You can pick her up and have a second irremovable hamster in Minsc's inventory again. (By the way, is there anything I can do with the hamsters besides give them all to the little boy at the carnival?)

This raises a followup question though: How are mods' quests stored? Reinstalling all mods seems to have erased all non-vanilla quests from my journal. Are they stored somewhere other than the usual save files?

Installing the newest version of UB did indeed resolve my problem. Thankfully I still had a save where I had not entered the map yet.

Thank you! Serves me right for downloading from anywhere other than the project repo, I guess. I'll report back once I finish reinstalling, which due to SCS might take a good while.

Ah dang, I had already scrubbed my game files to do a clean install when I read your message. I have attached the new weidu log. Upon installing, UB still asks me whether I want to install the Prism fix. I replied no this time. This leaves me with the "'twas all for naught" outcome. (I do have the correct mod version, right? I downloaded UB from pocketplane because I could not find a git repo for it.) Edit: Never mind. I found the github project page, and my UB version is horribly outdated. I am so sorry for bothering you. I'll go stand in a corner while it reinstalls. weidu.log

Odd, that is the version I have installed. Might have to try again without mods at some point.

Is it really fixed in BGEE? If I uninstall the "Prism and the Emeralds Tweak" component, I just get the "Alas, it was all for naught" ending where Prism wanders away and vanishes, leaving the sculpture unfinished. PS: I have also tried meeting Prism without any party members who interject into the conversation, but without success.

Hi all! Does anyone have experience on running the NPC Project alongside Unfinished Business? I am currently unable to help poor Prism complete his sculpture. After Greywolf's death, Prism simply becomes unresponsive, uttering [PRISM 2] from the .tlk file ("Soon... my work will be done"). Nothing else happens. Though if I pickpocket him at this point, then give back the gem, I can summon another Greywolf, thus farming an unlimited number of Varsconas. Which, don't get me wrong, is nice, but I would much rather see Prism's life's work complete than have six characters dual-wielding Varscona into the mines. As far as I can tell, the only mods I have that modify the prism.dlg are the NPC Project and Unfinished Business, so I'd wager there's some incompatibility here? I installed Unfinished Business first, which I think its readme suggested. I'll attach my current .dlg file just in case someone here is fluent in IE (which I am not). I'd be thankful for any help! For now I'm just leaving poor Prism alone. prism.dlg