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Absolutely. If the beholder somehow killed one of them with raw damage through all their magic resistance, at that point that's kind of on the player and they should deal or reload.

Because they're big kids that should know what they're getting into fighting an eye tyrant. Either of them getting insta-killed in the first 2 seconds of the opening round isn't the player "getting them killed". I always understood their dialogue as "be careful throwing aoe spells around". But fair enough, this one is easily preventable. It just caught me way off guard the first time it happened. Glad to hear 1 and 2 might be covered! Oh 100%, I was reloading both those instances, but it still taints the whole experience a little bit.

I'd be curious (and grateful) if something can be done about the following few scenarios that end up in a game over screen, which I believe are indirectly caused by SCS. 1. Ducal Palace - Doppleganger mage casts chaos on Flaming Fist guards. They attack each other. Everyone goes hostile to the player. Game over. 2. Underdark Exit - Should you decide to return to the Underdark, there is sometimes a group of drow fighting elves here. There is a mage among them. Mage casts chaos/confusion on elves. They attack each other. Everyone goes hostile to the player. Game over. 3. The beholder you are tasked to kill in Ust Natha alongside Phaere and Solaufein can disintegrate/petrify/slay/mangle in whatever other gruesome beholder fashion either Solaufein or Phaere, severely impacting the game if playing with no reload rules, as the entire city immediately goes hostile to the player. #3 is preventable by casting relevant protections on the pair of npcs, but seems like a silly thing to have to do. Not sure if this beholder was capable to doing anything like this in the vanilla game honestly, but I was told it was an intentionally gimped variant that got replaced by the blanket changes to beholders made by SCS. #1 and #2 are very severe, and very much out of the player's hands, particularly #1. It's one thing if your own party members get confused and attack friendlies, but to have the game end because the npcs attack each other is a bit much. I don't know how vanilla game handled #2. Was that drow party even there, and if it had a mage capable of casting confusion spells if so. Regardless, it'd be great to see at least #1 and #2 fixed up in whatever manner you feel is best (either by blocking confusion type spells on these particular mages, or getting rid of the game over screen if friendlies are attacked or whatever). All three of these have happened to me during no reload runs by the way.

No one's experienced this? Can someone look and see what in my mod loadout could lead to something like this? https://pastebin.com/UbUPPppQ

Anyone else notice issues with summoned demons, from the line of various gate spells? They tend to often just do nothing, especially when summoned by enemies. Protection from evil doesn't really do anything, as they just generally won't attack anyone. Their whole "attack anyone who isn't protected by evil" AI seems to be gone. 9/10 times an enemy summons a demon, it will just stand there, or maybe walk around a bit. Now occasionally they will fight, making this whole issue really weird and unpredictable. They also love to fight each other. At first I thought it was the whole tanna'ri vs baatezu thing, but same demons will fight each other. Up until now I just didn't care enough because it really doesn't come up too much during the game (though it is sad when it does), but now I'm doing a caster run where I'm considering finally making use of the demon binding grimoires, and this behaviour is really putting me off of it. I am running an atweaks component (~ATWEAKS/SETUP-ATWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #310 // Distinctive creature coloring: v4.53) that changes the appearance of demons slightly, among other creatures. It is installed after SCS. Could that be messing something up, assuming others haven't experienced what I described above in their games. Here's a small sample of regular gating, and a bit with the grimoire learned.

So you think installing the kobold component first, then running scs again and installing the rest would fix him? Not that I'm going to bother, just curious. That particular kobold is strong enough as it is, though the whole cast one spell then run around trying to melee does annoy me a bit.

He's got three scripts, two of which are under race and default, and are super long. Then there's this one under general script called mage5.bcs It actually has mention of an icelance in there, but yeah... the icelance isn't in the book.

Running into a strange issue. The kobold shaman you fight at the bottom of Nashkel Mines always used to cast a lightning bolt when encountered. Today on a new run, he cast an icelance. I looked him up in near infinity and... he doesn't even have an icelance memorized. The kobold shaman that's in my game is dw#kbash.cre This is the same install I've used previously, the only thing being different is a voice pack or two that have been installed at the end of the install order. I've tested it out with a few different characters (all scs settings max) and it's always icelance (which he shouldn't have) or melf's acid arrow. Which leads to another strange thing which I've only noticed now. After his mirror image prebuff, he only casts one spell and then just chases you around trying to shank you. Intended? To be fair if he actually used all the spells he was supposed to have , it would be a bit on the insane side for this stage of the game. Anyone that knows scripts mind looking into this? I'm mostly very confused by the icelance when there is no icelance in his spellbook.

Cool stuff, thanks. I have the fixes to a lot of the things I listed - your spell shield fix being one of them - but just thought I'd outline it here so we can maybe get it fixed within SCS itself one day.

Dumping some more feedback. This will more or less just be a random collection of notes I've made as I've played over the months, along with some suggestions. - Mages are casting spell thrust against priests with entropy shield. At first I thought they were trying to remove the spell shield effect from impervious sanctity of mind, but I've consistently seen them casting it on just entropy shield. This of course does nothing, as spell thrust removes lvl 5 and below protections, and entropy shield is a lvl 6 spell. - Continuing with entropy shield, mages regularly and repeatedly cast missile type spells at priests that have this buff. Spells like magic missiles, Melf's acid arrows and others. Entropy shield gives you immunity to missiles. This results in a lot of wasted actions on the enemy mages' part. - Speaking of entropy shield, this is another spell that went way overboard on how much power it adds to the players' hands. I can understand its need for the sake of enemy priests, but what it does for the player is so over the top. Just to go over it, it gives: 50% all res, 6 AC, 2 all saves, immunity to missile attacks/spells, and protection from remove magic/breach. All in one spell. If this spell did ONLY ONE of any of those things (save for maybe the missile immunity, though that too can be very situationally useful) it would be worth picking up. Something to think about. - Spell shield and Impervious sanctity of mind provide indefinite protection against mind flayer ballistic attacks and beholder anti-magic ray attacks. - Mages continue to cast confusion/chaos on to party members that have the exaltation buff. - Mages will repeatedly try to cast sleep on characters that have dual-classed at level 4 or below, but have reached level 5 and above in their active class (thus becoming immune to sleep). - The AI does not seem to know how to use the spell Mordenkainen's Force Blade. It is a spell that summons a magical weapon in your hand, but the AI uses it as if it was a targetable damage spell, trying to cast it over and over. Suggest removing the spell from enemy spell books, unless the AI fix is easy. - Suggest removing or greatly decreasing occurrence of the Control Undead spell in enemy spell books. I've often seen enemy level 7 spell slots jam packed with this useless spell. - There seems to a weird preference for the AI mages to use low level spells, especially during time stops. The number of times I've seen an enemy spam magic missiles, chromatic orbs, shouts and other garbage at me while having very solid high level spells of similar damage types available is really just plain old disappointing. - I'd like to suggest an increased occurrence of the SI: Abjuration precast. Parties with Haer'Dalis, Keldorn, and even just a slightly higher level cleric begin to trivialize all mage encounters with their dispels. SI:Abjuration will at least give them an extra round of screen time. - While the randomized spells on install do add some flavour to generic and low level encounters throughout the game, please consider making pre-set/hand picked spell books for the truly climactic encounters. At least for the top end difficulty settings. When half my liches come packing and spamming suffocates, bone guards, mordenkainen's force blades and control undeads, it is just... so lame. My previous install's Kangaxx spammed demon summons. Between that, the dispels and trap the souls (trap the soul also needs to be fixed by the way) it was super chaotic and fun. My current install he casts a few horrid wiltings and like 5 suffocates, and then transitions to chromatic orbs and cloud kills. So disappointing, and reinstalling the mod over and over again until I get a lucky high percentage on the high level mages not having trash spells is not something I'm up for. - On a similar note, I've noticed that "invoker" type high level mages never come with a planetar. I can understand having them have a preference for some of the other HLAs first, but to never give them one, regardless of how high level they are? The difficulty difference between fighting a mage that comes with a planetar (every type except invoker) and one that doesn't is enormous. It's not a flavour or a "mixing it up" type of thing. A third/half the high level mages in my current install seem to be invokers with no planetars. Kind of a snooze. Especially paired with the issue I went over above, where they're more than likely going to end up spamming shouts, magic missiles and other low level nonsense at me. - Speaking of high level casters, I think the game is in dire need of more high level clerics. The number of high level mages you encounter in the game (primarily SoA) is in a pretty solid spot. On the other hand, you will see just about zero high level clerics. How many times do we see a Deva or an Implosion get cast on us throughout the trilogy? Just about never. I suggest bumping some clerics up so we at least see the occasional priest HLA in SoA (while being careful not to blanket increase levels and overpower druids. Seeing druid HLAs while doing the druid grove would not be a good time.) I think that's all I've got for now. If I had to pick one thing to be changed for the future, it would be a hand-picked spell book - or several variations of spell books if you'd like to maintain some level of randomness between installs - for high level mages. Having lame and weak climactic encounters is really a downer.

Completely forgot I made this post. Thanks for the info and testing it out. Shame that's how it works.

May not be the correct place to post this but, has anyone noticed that the priest Poison spell and druid Dolorous Decay spell never actually do the damage over time effect when applied to enemy mages? (maybe even priests, can't remember) For the Poison spell, the initial damage will land when the caster doesn't save and from then on it doesn't apply any poison damage. Dolorous decay I've never, ever seen apply its poison damage vs casters, even when they fail their saves. The damage over time works fine vs other, non caster enemies and party members including casters. Could someone else check in their game if the behaviour is similar?

On one hand it makes it easier by giving you "free" level 9 spells that don't take up memorization slots. On the other hand, a planetar can more or less solo majority of the game for you, and being able to have multiple casts of it per rest makes the game stupidly easy.

Thanks. Yeah the indentation happened only once I pasted it into pastebin. It doesn't look like that in the notepad.

This look right? If you could double check it I'd really appreciate it before I set out on yet another reinstall. edit: For anyone that might be wondering, did a quick test where I reinstalled the game with just scs and loaded up an old save, and this seems to have worked. Ah, I'm sure it's doable, but it's a bit much and I would rather not have it in my game.

Some months back we found out that the "trap_the_soul.ssl" file was completely empty, resulting in the two demiliches in the game no getting their "Trap the Soul" ability. Someone in this thread posted the following, saying it should be pasted into the ssl before installing. Well, I recently did a new install and did exactly that. The good news? The demiliches got their trap the soul. The bad news? literally every other lich got it as well. These are the results when doing a search for "trap the soul" in all scripts. Maybe even more than just liches got it as well, unless there are more liches in the game than I can remember off the top of my head. I'm going to be deleting all the blocks containing "trap the soul" from the scripts, but can anyone explain why this happened in the first place? I guess the trap the soul ssl was empty for a reason. If I made an install like before with an empty trap the soul ssl, and then pasted the above blocks of script that reference trap the soul into the two demilich scripts, would that grant them the ability to use it?

This was going to strictly be for bg2, and the rest of that I would've had to play and see how bad it would be. I suppose an unholy blight or flame strike by one of them at that stage would kinda hurt. No matter though, I forgot that this change would affect druids, and that's a headache I can do without, so I just won't bother with this (even if you can limit it to only clerics). DavidW if you read this, try and inject some more high level cleric action across SoA in a future update, at least on the insane+ settings. Yeah good point. This is turning out to be more trouble than it's worth. I just got a bit too excited for a moment at the thought of more devas and less circle of bones.

Going by Stalman, and some other clerics in the Underdark, I think a flat 6 level increase would probably be fine. This would probably bump most clerics out of the level range where they would use circle of bones, so that problem might solve itself, though I would still like to remove that spell for good from everyone. So just to be clear, if I add a planetar to hlas for invoker type mages, that won't be be enough for them to use it? What else do I need to do exactly?

Hey there, I was going through the old SCS thread, and came upon this. You think you'd be interested in making a tweak like that? I'd certainly be interested in having it in my game. Or a tweak that makes wing buffet blow through all spell protections, and not get blocked by a myriad of things. Year later and I'm still trying to give dragons a bit more bite that isn't just more hp/damage.

I'm doing a new install of SCS, and am looking at toying around with some of the pre-install variables in the various .2da/tph/ini files. My understanding of this stuff is pretty minimal to non-existent, so I'd appreciate if someone could confirm a couple of things for me. 1. I'm interested in removing a spell or two from casters' prebuffs. For this example, it's Circle of Bones . Would simply removing each line that contains circle_of_bones do the trick? Or replace it with another null? Or is it likely to break something? 2. On a similar note, I'd like to remove some god awful offensive spells. Specifically Mordenkainen's Force Blade, as the AI has absolutely no clue how to utilize that spell, and will often cast it repeatedly. Will simply deleting it from the pool do the trick, and result in the mod filling the mages' books out with spells that remain? Or will a script from somewhere else still end up instructing the caster to use the spell? 3. I believe the readme stated that adding spells to the pool of spells the mod draws from (from the spellchoices .2da files) when distributing them upon install will not result in those spells being used. Does this also apply to HLAs? For example, I'd like to add a planetar for invokers into the pool of HLAs . Will simply adding it to the end of each line not do the trick? I'd like nearly every high level mage to have one, and not get "lucky" by having my install get populated by invokers. 4. Priests in the game are generally lackluster. You almost never see a deva get summoned or really any other priestly HLA, even though the pool of HLAs has it all. My guess is that priests are just generally too low level and not as numerous as high level mages. I'm considering using the variables to add levels to priests, or scale them by a percentage. Do you guys think that would be a good idea, and if so, what would you say a reasonable boost would be? I don't want to be getting imploded and deva'd on every time I see a priest, but it would be nice to occasionally see it, especially in SoA. Related to that, how would this affect cleric multiclass npcs? Probably not a hell of a lot of those in the game, but I do know that Sendai is one. Would her priest level simply disproportionately be raised, or would it potentially break the character? Thanks in advance for any advice/info.

Beautiful, exactly what I was hoping for and it works. Thanks a lot for this. I'll definitely get the spell shield component and a few others from your mod, thanks! Sad to hear this. I'll definitely be bumping this back up to 100 for Demogorgon, but as for the rest I really can't be bothered. Way too many creature files. Wow I had no idea they used to be immune to all elements in the base game. Now I feel dirty about my standard tactic of fighting mindflayers under a firestorm shower. Immunity to elements with 90% magic resistance may have been overboard, but just stripping all elemental resistance to 0 is as well.

JTweaks eh? Thanks for the suggestion, I'll check it out. I'm actually in the process of doing a fresh install and am looking to maybe add a mod or two, though I'm a bit spooked by the potential of messing up the install order. The magic battles revised mod looks interesting but changes things a bit too much for my current taste. Do you maybe know if there's an easy way to change the ballistic attack added to mindflayers by scs so it's not blocked by spell shield in something like NI? Like just changing the type of attack it is or something like that, because that's the extent of my expertise of fiddling with this stuff. On another unrelated note, could people that have ascension installed check their demogorgon's resistances for me? This is my demogorgon with ascension and scs installed: Demogorgon It does not match what's written on the wiki about the modded Demogorgon, and the ascension/scs readmes never specifically state the changes they made to him, at least regarding stats like resistances. Here are the stats the wiki lists out for the ascension/scs Demogorgon (scroll about halfway down) I'm most confused about the 50 fire res. How does that happen? Even the unmodded Demo should have it maxed, no? Supposedly immune to level 1-7 spells with a few exceptions. Not in my game. Supposedly has 99% magic damage resistance. Not in my game. Is something in my game busted, or are other people's Demos like this too? This is my current weidu log https://pastebin.com/2H3EsVQ5

Thanks for confirming the bug. I don't know what this "breach component" you keep referring to is though. I see no such thing in my weidu log. The only "spell component" I've installed are IWD spells through the SCS package. Headaches around spell shield and its clone keep piling up. First it was the infinite beholder anti-magic ray absorption, then blocking wing buffet, then being able to block mind flayer ballistic attacks and now this...

There seems to be something strange going on with the spell Impervious Sanctity of Mind and I'd like some people's insight on this issue. ISoM adds a spell shield like effect, among other things, but it seems to be doubly effective than a regular spell shield spell. I've always noticed during my games that very high level clerics seemed strangely difficult to strip of their spell protections; they always seemed to have some left over despite me thinking I've accounted for everything. I decided to mess around a little bit and noticed that it probably has to do with ISoM. Take a look at this video: https://streamable.com/inhhx5 I put up ISoM and 4 protections. In total that should be stripped with 5 secret words, but it takes 6. Repeat the same test but instead of ISoM, I use spell shield, and it works as expected, taking 5. Am I missing something, or is this not working as intended?

It stacks with both hardiness (if used before transforming) and AoF in my game. Even if it didn't, with the tokens it gives you instant access to 50% phys res at any time, for as long as you want, for an investment of 1 HLA, as the token is permanent. If it required multiple HLA points for every time you want to switch back to elemental form, I might agree that that would be balanced. But that's only assuming it didn't stack with hardiness and AoF, which it does. In any case, thanks for pointing me to the relevant files. I can just edit the shear.itm in NI to something more sensible, as I would still like to be able to use the transformation instead of just outright pretending it doesn't exist.