Demivrgvs

mmm. traditionally fire is a way to clear spider webs. what do you think of fire shield including immunity to web? would benefit efreeti and other fire creatures.

I thought about that too - it's very fitting and PnP kosher, but I wonder if it will be difficult to implement. Anyone holding a flame weapon (MMM, Flame blade, certain items etc.) or having a fiery aura should really be immune to Web if these are the flammable PnP webs. Would be nice if the AI could use this counter too in that case. Otherwise, we'll have to accept that this is simply not your father's Web spell.

 

EDIT: On second thought, if Webs were flammable, you shouldn't be able to combine Incendiary Cloud and Web either so... I guess we can't have it all. Maybe it's simpler to just keep BG webs non-flammable. That way, djinn and efreet also get different immunities. Efreet in an Incendiary Cloud seems like a powerful tactical option, but so does Djinn in a web/grease/cloudkill matrix.

Aren't fireballs dispelling Web and Insects even now in SR3?

No they don't within SR V3, because refinements such as this require custom secondary types. We started discussing them and their potential only when V3 was about to be released and I decided to leave such things for V4.

 

Speaking of "fire vs web", I'm still uncertain about it mainly because such feature would make much harder to "draw a line" between what we should/could do and what we shouldn't/can't. I think it's cool to have fireshield protect from web and insects, but I'm less sure about letting a simple flaming blade grant such immunity, whereas some players may start to ask it as soon as the former is implemented. In vanilla such doubts don't exist because there were no similar small details/refinements. Before SR no one would have complained about small things such as Entangle affecting incorporeal or flying creatures, whereas with SR we started to discuss all these small details and having a fire elemental destroyed by dehydrating spell like Horrid Wilting suddenly becomes unbearable.

 

Long story short, I like what we managed to accomplish and I'm favourable to continue in that direction, but I have to ponder if adding too many small refinements may end up being "a problem" rather than an asset.

Spiders: Immune to cloudkill (poison) or immune to cloudkill (entirely) or vulnerable (entirely)?

Within V4 I'll probably remove their immunity to posisons for consistency with in-game spiders.

 

Genies and Mordy Swords: Immune to grease and web (flying)?

As previously discussed Mordy Sword needs many refinements (it's almost as per vanilla right now), but it should indeed be unaffected by Entangle, Web and Grease imo.

 

Genies are not identical. Within SR you can easily distinguish them by their animation, as the flyining genie with no legs is the djinni, whereas the walking genie is the Efreeti, whereas vanilla game was inconsistent on this matter if I'm not wrong (it still is for in-game genies). Long story short, djinn are flying creatures, and thus are unaffected by Entangle, Web, Grease and Earthquake, whereas efreet are affected by all of them (though they are not affected by fire-based spells).

 

On a side note, Mordy is not the only creature needing small refinements, because I just noticed djinn are not immune to Gust of Wind (and they should), and they should probably be immune to cloud spells too (shouldn't they? ).

 

Planetars: Immune to grease and web? They are winged and very large, but I don't know if it's that clear cut.

Actually they aren't "very large" within SR because they don't share Solar's animation anymore. Right now they are not considered "flying" despite their wings, but you have a point, I may add such immunities.

 

Also, I wonder what will be of secondary effects from elemental damage spells when a creature is only partially immune. For example, Efreet ignore Inciendiary Cloud entirely, but what about planetars that have 50% fire resistance?

Creatures with 100% resistance to an element are considered immune to such element rathen than resistant, whereas creatures with limited resistance simply absorb part of the damage, nothing else.

Spiders being immune to Cloudkill's "deadly poison" isn't mandatory, I give you that, but it makes sense indeed, and it may help improving spiders appeal and the variety of possible tactics. If that causes any issue (e.g. SCS AI uses Cloudkill to kill spiders) then I can back off from this.

 

I don't think so.

 

(As an aside, this is an interesting example of how what people think of as "realism" is so varied. I have mild realism angst about creatures being immune to an inhaled toxin just because they use an injected one, and exterminators across the world can testify that poison gas works on poisonous invertebrates. But I can't say it's something I'm going to lose sleep over.)

I thought you had a problem with "immunity to poison = immunity to Cloudkill" while instead I now realize you have a problem with "creature use poison -> creature is immune to poison". I do agree the latter is not true, in fact I don't always give for granted that a poison dealing creature is immune to poison (e.g. SR's wyverns are not immune to poison). In this particular case the fault is mine, because I was giving for granted BG spiders are immune to poisons, which is not true. In the end it seems like I have to remove such immunity rather than refining it.

I think Ardanis and I are of the same opinion, and to expand:

a) elemental resistance gained from armour, weapons, rings and what have you reaching 100% would give full immunity to damage but still suffer the side effects (slowed, LOS, etc)

b) if magically protected with a Pro[energy/element] you should be totally protected (hey, it's magic!)

I second this.

 

 

Btw, how are you keeping track of all these little nitpick changes that your players are incessantly suggesting? Are you coding them into the hotfixes as the thread goes along, or do you have a long "v4 wish list" that's getting longer and longer?

I'm leaving spell changes out of the hotfixes unless they are semi-fixes, but I have both a separate install to test new things, and a to-do list to keep track of things I have/wish to do.

 

 

* they currently does, but they probably shouldn't (I can easily make all spiders immune to Cloudkill)

Great, I think that's very appropriate.

I don't think there's any need to (though: feel free to do so if you've got other reasons to). There's more than one kind of poison.

Spiders being immune to Cloudkill's "deadly poison" isn't mandatory, I give you that, but it makes sense indeed, and it may help improving spiders appeal and the variety of possible tactics. If that causes any issue (e.g. SCS AI uses Cloudkill to kill spiders) then I can back off from this. In theory I also need the "full immunity tweak" to make spiders immune to Cloudkill's dmg animation (which is a must), but it seems like ToBEx will handle that anyway.

Not sure I like the second hack, as it breaks an established rule (you cannot target an II creature), but David will probably love it.

It doesn't break any rule, actually, it just gives others the option to break it.

Isn't it the same? If you use it, you do it to break a rule, it has no other purpose.

 

Are you going to use this instead of the previously discussed tweak to make creatures under TS able to target II creatures? If yes, which spells will have this feature? I suppose all spell removals.

 

 

On a side note, this great hack doesn't make my work on ProEenergy serie of spells completely redundant because of spells secondary effects (e.g. SR's ProCold grant immunity to Ice Storm's slow effect), thus the question is: should I keep this features or not? I'd keep them to enhance the appeal of these protecion spells, but it may be just me.

...

 

If this is the approach taken, will it be applied consistently or considered for each effect? For example:

*Will a Sword Spider have to save vs. death in a Cloudkill?

*Will you be immune to blowback from Dragon's Breath if 100% fire resistant? What about if an actual red dragon breathes on you?

*Would your sight still be obscured, slowing you though immune to acid, in an Acid Fog?

*If incendiary cloud works as per the v3 description, and a non-protected mage stands 12 feet away from an Efreeti (both are in the cloud), will the Efreeti be able to target him but not the other way around?

* they currently does, but they probably shouldn't (I can easily make all spiders immune to Cloudkill)

* I've currently left DB out for balance purposes but I'm not much against making ProFire grant immunity to it

* V3 ProAcid makes the affected caster immune to all Acid Fog's effects

* within V3 yes, SR's Efreet are immune to all fire based spells, and their LOS isn't affected by Incendiary Cloud

 

I really like the damage animation fix. But it will require TobEx, and thus a windows platform, correct? Or will it be incorporated into SR somehow, and thus be platform and TobEx independent?

As of now it isn't something strictly needed by any SR spell, especially if I keep the current system for ProEnergy spells. Any game will greatly benefit from it imo, but I don't have much reasons to force such hack into SR. The only one I can foresee could be a separate component to add an entirely new "concentration checks" system to BG.

Both of these hacks probably deserve at least a topic of it's own, maybe both here in IR. But I'll just paste the reference here and see where it goes

 

No casting interruption if no damage (100% res) is taken (huge!)

Flags for spells/item abilities to allow targeting of invisible characters

Just wow. Stoneskin + ProEnergy = no more dmg animation and spell disruption even from elemental weapons! Cool.

 

On a side note, this great hack doesn't make my work on ProEenergy serie of spells completely redundant because of spells secondary effects (e.g. SR's ProCold grant immunity to Ice Storm's slow effect), thus the question is: should I keep this features or not? I'd keep them to enhance the appeal of these protecion spells, but it may be just me.

 

Not sure I like the second hack, as it breaks an established rule (you cannot target an II creature), but David will probably love it.

A bit late, but I like having to cure diseases by casting cure disease spell or visiting a temple (and not by resting). Though temples don't have cure disease as their list of services, just restoration spells, which are pricey for not being level drained. I don't see what the big deal is. It really becomes a non-issue at higher levels when priest gain more spell lots.

I think one of aVENGER's mods revises temples granting them more and better services. Ardanis also did a similar revision which will be part of IR V3.

 

Would non-rest-cured diseases be possible as an component Demi?

I'll think about it.

 

 

The spell description for break enchantment is inaccurate in that it doesn't cure feeblemindedness (which is cured by a successful dispel magic). I haven't checked for curing sleep effects or confusion though (also cured by dispel magic). It does cure effects from curses such as the nasty curse I got from the deck of many things, so yay for that.

This is a bug report rather than a suggestion. Anyway, the spell works fine against feeblemind, but it seems like it doesn't remove feeblemind portrait icon. I'll fix it asap.

Conjuration spells bypassing magic resistance

...the list of spells that would be buffed isn't so long to drastically alter the school's appeal, not to mention I have plans for other schools as well (e.g. Evocation will probably get quite few spells with the underused cold and electricity energy type).

 

Currently the complete list of offensive Conjuration spells is:

* Grease

* Glitterdust

* Melf's Acid Arrow

* Flame Arrow

* Maze

Pretty thin don't you think?

Not really, see the BG2 as a game has one elemental thing, and that's Edwin, who not only has +1 to all spells per level, but a +3 with(the +2 comes from) his amulet.

Sorry I don't get how Edwin's absurd amount of spell slots is connected to my statement.

 

What comes to the Melf's Acid Arrow and Flame Arrows, how do you think the caster is going to launch them, so they always hit... little hint; the mages Thac0 is the worst the game offers, which means that the answer is: Magic. Resistable magic.

My thought exactly, but that is just another reason the spell shouldn't belong to Conjuration, because launching real arrows with perfect accuracy sounds more like telekinesis, but surely it's not part of a school which is simply supposed to conjure/summon/create objects and creatures. At least 3rd edition Acid Arrow requires a 'to hit' roll. Long story short, to be true Conjuration spells Acid/Flame Arrows should work more like MMM imo, creating real arrows that can be thrown. The way they work in BG makes them Evocation spells imo.

 

That being said, I'm not particulary convinced of either "solutions" (making them bypass mr, or changing their school to Evocation).

 

Something I did was make the missile damage bypass MR but not the fire/acid damage. And I've made PfMW protect against those two spells as well.

Did you added missile dmg to Acid Arrow? Anyway, it would create a kinda noticeable exception to the rules followed by all other spells: either the spell's effects bypass mr or they don't. I'm not sure I like this solution.

 

Regarding PfMW protecting from them, it indeed makes sense if they are conjurations (thus real projectiles). For the very same reason I made SR's Protection from Missiles protect against these two spells.

(It's also likely that the next SCS release will be significantly more sensitive to whether SR is installed, so that's also a reason to err on the side of being gung-ho in changes.

This is so awesome I'm getting all tingly thinking about it

Me too.

 

 

Just my two cents. Demi, no pressure or nothing, but I sincerely hope you don't get burnt out on modding in the near future. I'm looking forward to the day I can play a near perfect BG experience with IR,SR,KR (QR, CR?) and SCS.

I can assure you that despite my usual delays (they are my trademark!) I have no intention of stopping before at lest SR V4 and KR V1. As long as Ardanis is willing to work on it with me I would even dare to promise a QR/CR in the distant future, maybe this summer.

 

 

Conjuration spells bypassing magic resistance

While I also believe Conjuration spells should bypass MR in a perfect world, I fear this change would make Conjuration magic really stand out as the most effective school of magic by far. Since Conjuration is, in my opinion, already one of the most effective schools of magic, granting their spell such a strong feat as bypass MR might unbalance things (I, for once, would immediately create a specialist Conjurer )

Well, the list of spells that would be buffed isn't so long to drastically alter the school's appeal, not to mention I have plans for other schools as well (e.g. Evocation will probably get quite few spells with the underused cold and electricity energy type).

 

Currently the complete list of offensive Conjuration spells is:

* Grease

* Glitterdust

* Melf's Acid Arrow

* Flame Arrow

* Maze

Pretty thin don't you think? (also see below)

 

Are you sure that arrows should be conjurations? If there were a physical arrow which after casting appears in your equipment, no problem. But both spells works as a bolts already targeted on enemy. It looks a bit more Evocation to me.

Eh, you're preaching to the choir on this matter. I really never understood why Acid Arrow should be considered a Conjuration, especially considering that it doesn't deal any physical dmg (at least vanilla's Flame Arrow dealt a small amount of piercing dmg), and it isn't fired with a bow (in PnP it requires a 'to hit' roll, but how the hell did the caster fire it? With bare hands?!?). The concept behind these two spells surely strikes me as an Evocation, as they simply are a variant of Magic Missile with a different energy type. The only reason I'm reluctant to change Acid Arrow's school is that it has always been a Conjuration spell in every D&D edition.

 

Expanding this discussion, I always thought Web should instead be a Conjuration spell as per 3E rather than an Evocation. Why should it be an Evocation? I really don't think it's made of "magic energy" else spiders would be affected by it! Then, even most cloud spells strikes me as conjurations rather than Evocation (in fact, they all are within 3E), at least Stinking Cloud which cleary isn't made of any energy type.

 

On a side note, I've always noticed a particular pattern regarding acid based spells: almost none of them are Evocations. Acid Arrow, Vitriolic Sphere (which looks like an Evocation even more than Acid Arrow), and Acid Fog to name a few, are all Conjurations. Should I assume that within PnP acid is more "real" than "magical"?

 

Think about Insect Plague as a creature, not as a spell.

Exactly. Summoned animals don't have to bypass magic resistance to bite their targets, and insects are just like that, it's only that being hundreds of minute beings they don't roll a dice to hit your AC because it's given for granted that at least some of them always hit if the target is within the swarm, and they don't have an AC value because it's given for granted that you can't kill with a sword hundreds of flying small insects (thoguh you can instead damage many of them at once with a simple flaming torch). PnP explains very well this whole matter.

 

Well, if it is only magical in the summoning act then why is there a spell duration for summons and would there be specific abjurations for dealing with them?

The way I see it a Banishment spell doesn't directly affect the creature, but rather the link between him and its plane of origin, or the mental link between him and the caster. The spell's duration doesn't indicate how much the creature lives, but rather how long the caster can maintain the gate open (conjuration) and/or how much his mental influence can keep the creture on his side (summoning).

Regarding many PnP things being broken and unbalanced I obviously agree, but tweaking it seems more smooth than reinventing the wheel. Anyway, that's my opinion, not the established and absolute truth.

IMO it's blown out of proportion. SOME things being broken/unbalanced is a far cry from making the entire 2E system broken, that is simply nonsense.

I never said the entire 2E is broken, nor would I think something so radical, else I wouldn't spend half of my modding time reading 2E books (despite having played only 3E in my youth) and I wouldn't always try to stay as close as possible to PnP in general.

 

P.S Nap isn't included in the official AD&D Spell Compendium,

Yes it is. Volume 2 of the Priest Spell Compendium. And I don't think it's that big of a deal. IIRC there aren't that many deities with access to the Time sphere, and most that do have access to it are restricted from other useful spells from different spheres.

 

Of course, introducing it into BG2 would clash with the ingame implementation of Wish, given the nature of the game. But complaining against something that hasn't been done seems moot.

My fault, I was thinking we were talking about arcane spells. Found it. It would have some limits compared to Wish, because it wouldn't be usable during a fight (the targets really sleeps for 1 hour) and cannot be used more than once per day...still, a 2nd lvl spell which grants full rest and refreshed spells/abilities to the entire party is outstandingly broken imo (especially in BG because its limits would count nothing in such environment).

Slightly off topic, I was also wondering what the limitations of Grease is - more specifically which summons are unaffected by it (the description mentions something about larger creatures being immune, but dragon-large or skeleton warrior-large?)

Giants and dragons are immune to it, skeleton warriors are not (though their insane mr makes them almost immune to it anyway).

Does MR work against Grease? IMO that shouldn't be the case, the greasy surface is there ("real") whether you are immune to magic or not. Case in point; Dispel Magic doesn't remove the greased surface.

Eh, I do agree with you but this is a long story. The short one would be: I didn't do this kind of tweaks for "AI friendliness".

 

If you ask me all Conjuration spells should ignore magic resistance, and such feature is indeed addressed in 3rd edition, but I don't know if I can implement it without running into more "conflicts" with either AD&D purists or SCS scripts (which cannot take such changes into account unless David really have the time and willingness to work on it).

 

Not long ago I also suggested to make Insect spells bypass mr, and in that case it's even more obvious imo because those insects are summoned creatures, it's only that they attack in a different way (no to hit roll).

 

The only two spells I'd be unsure of are Acid Arrow and Fire Arrow (though the latter even had partial physical damage, reminding its "physical" nature and setting it apart from Evocations).

 

Obviously such change would have to be taken into account when it comes to balance those spells, because bypassing magic resistance is a HUGE asset for any spell.

 

Let's say I'm open to discuss this matter for SR V4.

Regarding the whole PnP thing, I thought it was clear I wasn't saying "if it's in PnP go for it", but "if it's in PnP many players are familiar with it, thus are more likely to accept it". Anyone familiar with my mods knows that I don't feel so much restricted by PnP rules and books if I think something there is broken or can be done better, but still I do look there everytime because I'd feel uncomfortable inventing "ex novo" too many things. For example, if I add Snilloc's Snowball Swarm I doubt anyone would find it odd (it's a spell for the specific setting BG is based on, FR, and IWD has it too), but if I add an invented "Glacial Prison" spell which "kills" the target by turning it into ice many D&D players may feel uncomfortable with it, and it would be even worse if I make it replace Flesh to Stone. That's it, only a matter of "familiarity".

 

Regarding many PnP things being broken and unbalanced I obviously agree, but tweaking it seems more smooth than reinventing the wheel. Anyway, that's my opinion, not the established and absolute truth.

 

P.S Nap isn't included in the official AD&D Spell Compendium, and as urdjur says expansion books are the worst nightmare of DMs (though it's easily resolved by telling players: "NO"). Whatever the source of that spell is, the spell is beyond OP. If it's from an official book than it's a good example of how PnP can be seriously broken.

 

Please don't change damage types of powerful spells beyond the existing ones. Having a spell that bypasses all immunities (such as Protection from Energy) is bad for both sides IMO.

I haven't changed it exactly because of that, and specifically because I know SCS heavily relies on Pro(Magic)Energy to counter ADHW.

 

When you speak of air elementals, do you include Invisible Stalkers?

Good question. I don't because even if they belong to the same plane, they aren't air elementals. Just like fire salamanders are not fire elementals.

 

Slightly off topic, I was also wondering what the limitations of Grease is - more specifically which summons are unaffected by it (the description mentions something about larger creatures being immune, but dragon-large or skeleton warrior-large?)

Giants and dragons are immune to it, skeleton warriors are not (though their insane mr makes them almost immune to it anyway).

 

Regarding SR's ADHW not affecting constructs, undead and incorporeal beings it's both for PnP and realism's sake. I'd personally add to this "variety", because I like spells to have some uniqueness. Horrid Wilting isn't a simple damage dealing spell like most Evocations, it's a dehydrating effect, which doesn't deal direct damage (I wanted to replace magic dmg with lower hp a la IR V3's vampiric effect, but it would have caused issues with the AI), and shouldn't affect creatures that doesn't depend on water at all.

 

P.S Speaking of which, I just noticed ADHW still affects fire/air/earth elementals, and it shouldn't imo. I'll "fix" it asap.

The problem with this is that none of the AI (not SCS, not Tactics, not vanilla) knows this, and so it all treats ADHW as what it game-mechanically is (and how it's used in vanilla BG2): a straightforward, magic-damage-inflicting attack. This isn't critical, but it's likely to be visible, and it's certainly exploitable, accidentally or deliberately. (Swords remain my most pressing concern.)

I know, but unless I'm seriously understimating the whole thing it's not a game-breaking issue. The entire party and most summons are still affected in the same way, and SCS itself prioritize other ways to counter the sword (e.g. Death Spell and Magic Missiles). I do hope I don't have to revert it for SCS sake, because having a dehytrating spell destroy a sword made of magic energy is really unbearable for me.

 

On a side note I've made it dispellable, and SCS seems to use Dispel/Remove Magic, especially early on during the encouters, which means any pre-cast sword is likely to get dispelled too. I know it's not intentional on SCS side, but it's probably effective anyway. No?

there's a 2nd level spell that counts as a full night's rest including refreshed spells.

Which spell would it be?

 

"PnP says so" is a very good argument imo, as long as we don't blindly take it as god's law. It's only a matter of using a standard setting most players can feel comfortable with. Then, home made changes over it are indeed fine, and PnP itself is far from being immune to criticisms, but going "wild" isn't a good idea imo. Ignoring PnP might really appeal some players (e.g. IA is an example), but the majority of D&D (and BG) players generally prefer to remain more true to the system they are familiar with.

 

Regarding SR's ADHW not affecting constructs, undead and incorporeal beings it's both for PnP and realism's sake. I'd personally add to this "variety", because I like spells to have some uniqueness. Horrid Wilting isn't a simple damage dealing spell like most Evocations, it's a dehydrating effect, which doesn't deal direct damage (I wanted to replace magic dmg with lower hp a la IR V3's vampiric effect, but it would have caused issues with the AI), and shouldn't affect creatures that doesn't depend on water at all.

 

P.S Speaking of which, I just noticed ADHW still affects fire/air/earth elementals, and it shouldn't imo. I'll "fix" it asap.

One thing though, please don't use those couple of free 9th lvl slots to unleash 3 Pit Fiends at once on players.

Note to self: when casting multiple Gate spells, keep Demi happy by summoning Balors.

Jokes aside, my point was that having the AI summon a Pit Fiend with 100% chance of it not turning hostile to his summoner is fine, but three would make really hard to believe imo.

 

Is SCS still treating it as a summon, as in trying to attack it even though it's immune?

Afaik I haven't done any change which requires particular handling on AI side. The AI won't use Dispel Magic against it (and without the abovementioned fix such feature works only for the AI - thus none has it right now ), and SCS probably simply use Death Spell or a Spell Matrix with 2x Magic Missile.

This is largely right, but I do use ADHW against swords on occasion too.

Sadness. At least ADHW has a huge AoE, thus even if cast upon Mordy it will probably take most of the battlefield.

HLAs

I'm not so worried about players becoming more effective. But I think this will be seriously useful to enemy wizards. 9th level spell slots are a fairly significant constraint on my scripting.

Good for your scripts then! If the AI takes advantage from something players can use I don't see any problem. Within IR V3 I think I'm giving non-spellcasting characters A LOT more tools to counter spellcasters (e.g. not dispellable potions above everything else imo), and within KR I can try do do something if we think mages rule the battlefield too much.

 

Having enemy wizards spam Spellstrike could be a serious threat for PC mages, but as long as we restore Spell Shield it should be ok.

 

One thing though, please don't use those couple of free 9th lvl slots to unleash 3 Pit Fiends at once on players.

 

(That's only an issue as and when I take SR properly into account, but doing so has got most of the way to the top of my to-do list.)

Cool!

 

 

Horrid Wilting & Mordenkainen's Sword

crucial things such as making it not affected by Horrid Wilting

Whoa! This is excellent news. I reckon this is because ADHW isn't supposed to be pure magic damage, but rather an evaporation effect, meaning constructs and undead are immune?

Exactly.

 

So this should mean that Magic Missile and Skull Trap are the only ways to actually deal damage to the Sword?

They are not the only ways because Disintegrate can now be used too (right now it's not a 100% sure counter because the sword takes only 5d6 dmg on a successful save - but I'll add an EFF to make it always destroy the sword as per PnP), a Black Blade of Disaster can destroy Mordy quite easily, and now even a Dispel Magic spell can destroy it (as per PnP - though I just noticed I haven't included the workaround we needed to use for Nishruu's similar weakness, will fix asap). On the other hand, Skull Trap is a grey area because in PnP it unleash "negative energy" dmg (aka it shouldn't affect undead beings - though it still does in BG), and I don't know if Mordy can be harmed by it in PnP, but I've not added any mentioned of it within the revised description, thus it still works against Mordy.

 

Mordenkainen's Sword is not a summon but an Evocation.

I'm mostly interested in its immunities. Does this imply immunity to Death Spell? Charm/hold/sleep/paralysis etc?

It's immune to all mind affecting spells, and it should be immune to pretty much any spell that doesn't work on incorporeal beings (e.g. polymorph, petrification, etc.). I've checked it right now though and noticed I have to seriously refine it to match V3 standards because it's currently missing a bunch of immunities that it should have imo (e.g. entagle, grease). Right now the sword and its immunities are almost identical to vanilla.

 

Death Spell shouldn't work on it, but to not break the AI I've left this unchanged. That being said, within V4 Death Spell resource will be turned from a necromantic spell into an abjuration one, Banishment. This way such spell will keep its anti-mordy and anti-undead properties without so blatantly ignore its concept (a death spell which kills undead beings and a sword made of energy? )

 

Is SCS still treating it as a summon, as in trying to attack it even though it's immune?

Afaik I haven't done any change which requires particular handling on AI side. The AI won't use Dispel Magic against it (and without the abovementioned fix such feature works only for the AI - thus none has it right now ), and SCS probably simply use Death Spell or a Spell Matrix with 2x Magic Missile.

Just noticed Mordenkainen's Sword is missing from the summons documentation here on the forum - it would be nice if it was added for completeness and ease of comparison. Thanks.

Mordenkainen's Sword is not a summon but an Evocation. It doesn't have physical and mental stats nor a HD value (well, it has for technical reasons within BG, but you should consider it as it doesn't). Afaik I haven't tweaked it much (except for relatively small but crucial things such as making it not affected by Horrid Wilting), and the in-game description in not standardized like summoning spells on purpose. That being said I might add it to the on-line documentation anyway.

 

Also, I noticed planetars hit as +3 which seems a bit weak considering Mord Swords and demons hit as +4. I also wonder if neutral mages can choose to summon both planetar types (more useful now with the greater variety between the two in SR), or if you pick one and have to stick with it.

Most fiends are supposed to be more powerful than celestials when it comes to raw melee power (though planetar's vorpal weapons are a serious threat in melee), and just so you know +3 weapons work on pretty much any BG creature (except 3-4 unique beings). Neutral characters has to choose between one of the two celestial for obvious roleplaying reasons.

What would making 10th level spells innate abilities entail, Demi? Would they still consume 9th level slots? What would the practical difference be? Uninterruptable?

In NWN epic spells weren't consuming any slots. Same here - you pick an epic spell, it appears in your innate bar, while all 9th slots are used for memorizing 9th only spells.

Careful with this change. Wizards could end up with a lot more high-level spells, and they're arguably powerful enough as it is.

Well, the fact is that such change belongs as much to SR as to KR. With a revised HLA table (or even Refinements one) we're not going to cause any absurd increase of power at all. Mages within KR will have various non-spells HLAs to consider like additional spell slots (this may take 2-3 HLAs - note that within KR I won't use the "unnerfed" spell table), scribe scrolls (unless we do prefer aVENGER's solution) or innate permanent features, and in a normal game a single class mage has only 6-7 HLAs choices.

 

Even without KR few additional high lvl spells per day aren't game breaking imo, even more so with things like aVENGER's PnP scribe scroll tweak which can grant mages much more high lvl spells than a bunch of HLA choices. It's not crucial how many spells per day a mage can cast imo, because during important battles you cannot rely only on slow high lvl spells that take an eternity to cast and the first 3-4 rounds generally decide the fate of a duel between two archmages, thus having four 9th lvl spells is more than enough to cover the them even if we assume that mages cast only them (which is not true imo - things like RRoR and Breach are too much important).

 

If you ask me, the change will simply allow players to finally use some 9th lvl spells they never used like Energy Drain, Spellstrike (especially with SCS), Absolute Immunity, and so on. Mages will be slightly more effective yes, mainly because they could have a more different spells at once, but I don't see them becoming more dominant then they already are. I could be wrong though.

The party friendliness of a spell should not depend on the expertise of the caster, in my opinion. And that's because it's up to those affected by the spell that should try and defend against it. Or should we think that a fireball cast by a high level mage could just present itself with some holes here and there conveniently created by the skilled mage in order to spare his companions from the effects of the spell?

That's exactly how a party friendly Fireball is supposed to work in PnP when cast by an Archmage with the Mastery of Shaping feat. It doesn't make much sense indeed though.

on an only marginally-related note, i wonder if it wouldn't be better to just make some NPC-only AoE spells that are (their) party-friendly. i'd love it if the bad guys could use Cone of Cold or Fireball without range and ally-proximity checks.

I'm obviously with Dakk and Salk on this matter. In fact I consider SCS/SR tweak to Blade Barrier an almost mandatory tweak because it had really no sense for such spell to be "friendly" only when used by the AI (which wouldn't be able to handle an unfriendly BB), despite the fact that BB concept seems to leave little space for "friendliness". Within a SR game I really don't want a spell to work in a different way when cast by the AI (for example SR's Protection from Evil is an inevitable consequence of SCS work on summoned fiends).

 

I do thought a couple of times about this "problem" and there's little I can do imo, though something (little) may be doable. The thing is that some spells are really not suited to be 'party friendly' (and the two spells you mention are amongst those) because of their concept and/or their animations. I dwelled quite a lot over the fact that 3rd edition Archmages can cast party friendly Fireball and Cone of Cold, but I don't know how much I could like something that looks so wrong (in fact I hate that DB is party friendly). Am I the only one that would find "strange" a party friendly Fireball even if cast by a 21th lvl mage?

 

On the other hand Ice Storm could work as SR's Fire Storm, which I tweaked to have PnP's small unaffected area around the caster. Meteor Swarm could probably be fine as a party friendly spell within SR because of its new animation and concept. In PnP it's more or less a 4x Fireball, whereas I've turned it into a rain of minute meteors, and the caster may be able to make them fall only other selected areas. That being said, unless SCS can make good use of these things I'm not too much into it. It did with a bunch of SR's "friendly changes" like Lightning Bolt, Symbols, Glyph of Warding, and perhaps Silence, but I don't know how much David is willing to take into account our deliberate changes.

On another note: Sunfire. I realize the no MR was an oversight in the original game and that SR v3 does away with it. But consider this:

 

Lvl III: Fireball - 10d6 - MR yes - Not friendly

Lvl V: Sunfire - 15d6 - MR yes or no? - Not Friendly

Lvl VIII: ADHW - 20d6 - MR yes - Friendly

Lvl IX/X: Dragon's Breath - 20d6 -MR no - Friendly, extra effects

 

If you consider Dragon's Breath to be balanced as compared to ADHW, one could argue that a no-MR Sunfire is balanced against Fireball. I think you've done a great job balancing all the lvl III damage spells against each other, but the current yes-MR Sunfire has little appeal IMO. Making it party friendly would be another way of making it more attractive. Even if it was level III, I'd still take Skull Trap over it as it reads now (even at 20d4/12d6 of SR/SCS-II). Cloudkill is an offensive spell worthy of level 5 - Sunfire isn't.

You have forgot to mention that I've lowered Sunfire's casting tme from to 3 to 1, making it an "instant spell". This is a kinda huge advantage imo. That being said, I do thought about making it use d8 instead of d6, but I'm not sure. I based it upon PnP Fireburst (Spell Compendium), which goes up to 15d10, but it's from 3rd edition, where mid-high lvl characters have more hit points. I also reduced its AoE from 30 to 15 (making the spell identical to PnP) which makes it more friendly imo. With instant casting time and medium AoE a skilled player can easily position the caster and quickly hit all opponents without hurting party members, whereas with vanilla's huge AoE and slower casting time it was really difficult to properly use it in many circumstances. Long story short, I do think this spell is really fine right now (except perhaps a slight increase to its dmg output), but I'm always open to discuss everything.

 

On a side note:

* Skull Trap vs Fireball has always been a pain to handle. The former has same casting time, higher dmg output in the long run (it was simply INSANE before SR/SCS nerf), better dmg type (magic instead of fire), and can be used as a delayed trap. The advantages of Fireball are its long range and larger AoE (large unfriendly AoE isn't always a good thing, but it works well with a long range spell), but I'm not 100% sure they are enough to make it on par with Skull Trap (though its shorter range can seriously limit its use in many circumstances imo).

* Horrid Wilting uses a better dmg type compared to Dragon's Breath, but yes DB is way better overall. Anyway, DB is an HLA not a 9th lvl spell, and for V4 I'll make it work as an innate (which will also help to justify an Evocation which bypasses mr). In theory you'd have to compare ADHW to Meteor Swarm (aka party-friendliness vs outstanding dmg output).

I've just started out using SR and thinks it's a wonderful mod! I play a solo sorceror game mostly, so here are a few suggestions from my perspective:

Cool, I feed on feedback.

 

*The MS 1 hobgoblins are great, but run out of arrows pretty quickly (long before duration expires). I don't think it would be unbalanced if they had enough arrows to more or less last 3 turns of constant firing (60 arrows each, no?)

Actually I have reduced their arrows from an initial 20 to 10 for a reason. The Hobgoblin Shaman you get at 12th lvl goes in melee after casting a bunch of buffs, and I wanted his allies to go with him instead of leaving him alone and continue to fire arrows from afar. Perhaps I can script them to follow him in melee even if they don't run out of arrows. I'll try to test them a little when I get back to SR.

 

*The SR documentation on familiar state that some familiars like the rabbit can "find/remove traps" when they can in fact only find them. I thought SR upgraded the familiars to also remove traps, but I now have to find another way to handle traps as a solo arcane caster. I like it this way though - it makes no sense that a rabbit can disarm a trap.

Sorry for the misleading document, but yes, it's intended they don't disarm traps like thieves.

 

*As it is now, your familiar will set off a trap, but a summoned creature will not. This is completely unrealistic and not PnP-like. It wouldn't unbalance the game IMO if this was allowed, no more than the Knock spell. It also gives you a high level use for low level summons (always welcome for a solo sorceror). You would still need a thief to F/R traps on containers though, so this tactic doesn't make the thief obsolete (it also costs you a spell to accomplish). Before SR, I used PS: Mustard Jelly to safely trigger traps as a solo arcane caster, but the rebalanced PS in SR (which I otherwise prefer) negates this tactic.

 

(Note: There is another mod allowing NPCs and summons to set off traps, but I'd rather not use it as I find it unrealistic and potentially unbalanced that NPCs would set off their own traps. It'd be much more elegant if it was a property of the summon itself).

Mmmm... If it's a safe change that doesn't cause issues I may be fine with it, but I'm not sure.

 

Speaking of traps and allowing mages to partially handle them I might do something about it for V4 if I manage to make Ruby Ray of Reversal work as per PnP, where it does A LOT more things than in BG, like reverting polymorphed creatures to their natural shape (implementing this can make it the only counter to Shapechange's Iron Golem), dispelling illusions and setting off traps.

 

*Melf's Minute Meteors (and I'm assuming Energy Blades too) does not allow a strength bonus to damage, despite being a thrown weapon. Was this intended? IMO, if the missiles have weight, the bonus should apply. If they don't, it shouldn't.

It's intended, because both spells are Evocations, and thus made of pure energy. If I'm not wrong I've made them have no weight. For V4 I was gogin to suggest to either make MMM a Conjuration spell or to make them deal fire dmg only (they currently do physical missile dmg too).

 

More later as I get more familiar with the higher level spells...

This is a bit moot, as I'm not keen to have Breach not affect Stoneskin.

Also, I don't think Stoneskin needs any more buffs. It is appealing enough for a spell slot already.

Fine with me, I do said I was probably daring too much. That being said, I wasn't suggesting it as a boost for Stoneskin, but rather as a nerf for Breach. Stoneskin is sligthly overstimated imo because its effectiveness is much higher when used by players, as AI warriors rarely have weapons with elemental dmg or on hit abilities that bypasses it, whereas any party can have tons of such weapons, forcing the AI to heavily rely on PfMW. My mages very rarely need PfMW because Stoneskin and Mirror Image are more than enough, whereas an AI mage is pretty much doomed without PfMW protecting him/her from Carsomyr, Celestial Fury, and so on. Not too mention my spellcasters generally have a much better AC than AI ones. Just my 2 cents, but I can live with Breach affecting it, and surely Stoneskin already is one of the best 4th lvl spells.

 

On a side note, I suggested ages ago to turn Stone to Flesh spell into a multi purpose spell and amongst its effects allowing it to work as a Stoneskin usable on other targets, but I just discovered that both Stoneskin and Ironskin could be cast on others within AD&D! Would add such feature to druid's version of this spell be a bad idea? In theory it would "justify" its higher lvl slot compared to wizard's version.

 

There's another huge difference in PnP between wizard's and druid's version of this spell, but it's not implementable, and it doesn't even make much sense imo. Wizard's Stoneskin could be teared down even when attacker's "to hit" roll is failed. I mentioned it for the sake of completness, but sometimes being 100% true to PnP clearly isn't the best thing to do.

Sanctuary

...my point was that this way players would see AI clerics vanish in an instant (as per Invisibility spell) which is clearly not what you'd expect from Sanctuary.

Well, it is what you'd expect from sanctuary if you've installed a tweak that says that.

Point taken. Then I assume the tweak will more or less consist of splitting the spell in two different spells:

* player's version will still use 'sanctuary' opcode (with the animation)

* AI version will be an Invisibility spell

Right?

 

For SR I could handle everything within sppr109.spl via 177 but I may as well do nothing to player's version (like you suggested) and you can use DW#op109.spl for the AI.

 

There's still a small problem for me, I wanted to make Sanctuary unaffected by Divinations, but if you turn it into an Invisibility spell it's hard to do. Perhaps you can handle it using a non-detection opcode via script. This assuming you care about this feature...else I guess I'll have to live without it.

 

Party-unfriendliness is much less of a problem for the player, because they can just get out of the way. My own experience playing against Sanctuarying clerics says that iterated Fireballs (and the like) are a pretty effective counter.

But considering the large AoE of most of these spells is the 'invisibility' state going to really help? Unless you plan to have the cleric run away (and fast) from where he cast Sanctuary it's not going to be hard for players to still guess where to cast those spells...and if they guess right it's even better for them if the cleric ran away because they are even more free to use non-friendly spells.

 

 

Non-SCS tweaks for SCS

(*) have you ever thought about taking advantage of IR's revised potions? Some of them could greatly enhance your possibilities imo.

Having said all of which, it's also interesting to work in other peoples' frameworks, which is why I'm generally quite keen (in principle) to write AI that makes allowance for SR. That probably goes for potions too, in principle, but it would always be as some additional step, not as part of the core project.

It's more than enough for me to know that there's at least a small chance you'll take those things into account.

 

 

Priests effectiveness

I think I've given the wrong impression in some of this discussion. I am interested in improving priests' effectiveness, but I intended to convey that as an interesting puzzle and to seek insight into what makes it difficult, possibly with a view to very small shifts that might make things more interesting, possibly just in the hope of getting good suggestions. (The Sanctuary thing falls into the former category, especially now I realise that it already has an Invisibility effect when the player casts it.) It's not the kind of thing that makes me want to make big changes in vanilla's status quo.

 

The point about fighter/clerics is well taken. I do play with cleric/mages a bit, but they're quite hard work and also I'm not really comfortable making in-game clerics into cleric/mages, given the flavour is so different.

Ok, it's just that sometimes it's difficult for me to understand when a tweak is "minimalist" or not (e.g. tweaking Breach to affect liches is worse than tweaking Shield of the Archon to be more like PnP for me). Thus sometimes I might be tempted to suggest things thinking they are fine for SCS too when they're not, other times I suggest things thinking I'm daring too much and instead they are widely accepted (e.g. tweaking Breach to reduce the huge amount of spells it removes).

 

If you want to stay almost completely true to vanilla there isn't much to say about making boss-like priests much more effective...they can't be very effective (I'd probably fear more an enraged epic Berserker).

 

Cleric: as we already said fighter-cleric class is much much more effective than a plain cleric for a solo character. Many divine buffs are not affected by Breach but most of them are kinda weak too in vanilla. Ironically 2nd lvl DUHM is the most powerful in vanilla and have a very fast casting time, but Righteous Magic is quite good too. In combo they're pretty effective, but they are both short lasting, and the latter has a very long casting time, thus the AI may find difficult to properly buff unless using Sanctuary. If you tweak Breach then Blade Barrier can be a real pain, and you may use Armor of Faith to absorb some damage in the heat of the battle considering its instant casting time. If you make use of Sanctuary I might also suggest trying to cast Chant as it's an extremly powerful spell (in fact it's A LOT more powerful than its PnP version), but once again it shines on encounters with tons of creatures, not for a boss-like cleric unless he/she has plenty of summons (the only good summon in vanilla is the Skeleton Warrior, but it's more than good, it's outstanding). Other than that, the real problem is that within BG system it's quite hard to have a solo cleric cast offensive spells without being interrupted. Physical Mirror could help, but it's far from cheap, and covers only ranged attacks. Long story short, if the cleric is a boss-like solo character than I'd dare to say that unless we're talking about a fighter-cleric (as we exclude cleric/mages) he's not going to be threatening at all.

 

Druid: here we have less buffs and you don't have Sanctuary too (though a Potion of Invisibility can do exactly the same if necessary, especially after your tweak) but we have Stoneskin (Ironskin in vanilla) which is one of the best. I'd dare to suggest making Breach not affect Stoneskin too, because that would drastically increase the chances of druids being able to cast the vast arsenal of offensive spells at their disposal (though weapons with elemental dmg are kinda common mid-late in the game). With vanilla's resources we're pretty much done discussing what a solo druid can do imo (just hope he/she manages to cast an Insect Plague while under Stoneskin).

Regarding the current discussion of spell protections and Sanctuary, much seems to revolve around ability to target II (as far as I understand it). Could this from the TobEx wish-lish possibly help:

* Flags for spells/item abilities to allow targeting of invisible characters

This should be possible.

The discussion around Sanctuary is not tied to the ability to target II, but that hack could probably interest David indeed for anti-magic purposes.

 

while we're turning clerics into mages so they can solo vs the party, give mages some healing spells, too.

Healing potions are enough. Jokes aside, I've only mentioned PnP spells (Shield of Lathander can be found in IWDII too), I'd never suggest things like Stoneskin for clerics or Contingency for druids. Rest assured I'm quite strict when it comes to these things, SR isn't going to go wild on new spells. For example there actually is a 6th lvl cleric spell, Immunity to Weapons (starts as a PNW spell and improves with caster lvl up to Mantle-like status) within AD&D Spell Compendium, but in theory it's for Oriental Setting's shukenja (aka kara-tur clerics). I haven't mentioned it just because of that "oriental flag" in its description.

Sanctuary

For (iii) I may add that for such tweak I should also have to remove 'sanctuary' opcode and its hardcoded animation (only the latter if possible), else players would still see it, and the whole invisibility thing would be pointless. If I'm not wrong, turning Sanctuary into a self cast Invisibility is exactly what we are discussing.

 

This reminds me that in my to do list I have something like 'II-spells make the caster immune to spell overlays', though I'm not sure it's fully doable. I do hate those supposedly invisible caster walking around with visible, sparkly animations (e.g. Spell Deflection/Turning/Trap).

Agreed (this is on my to-do list too). But actually, the awkwardness in both cases is that ideally the animation should be visible when the player casts it but not when enemies do. But implementing that in SR is probably impossible. (I can do it in SCS because enemies can use modified versions of the spell.)

 

If you like, leave the invisibility off Sanctuary and the graphic on, and I'll offer it as a tweak, for enemies only, in SCS. I don't think enemy spellcasters in vanilla use Sanctuary anyway.

Fine with me, but my point was that this way players would see AI clerics vanish in an instant (as per Invisibility spell) which is clearly not what you'd expect from Sanctuary. Are AoE spells so problematic? I know players could counter this spell by casting them AoE spells but their options are relatively thin imo. Most offensive AoE spells aren't party friendly (e.g. Fireball), thus I'd assume in most cases they should rely on disabling spells (e.g. Hold Person/Monster, Confusion/Chaos) but you could easily protect the priest with a Potion of Clarity (though vanilla's one is easily dispelled *). I mean, Sanctuary obviously isn't the perfect solution to all your problems for making boss-like priests more effective (see discussion below), but it's a 1st lvl spell after all, and it still offers you quite a lot of potential anyway, no?

 

(*) have you ever thought about taking advantage of IR's revised potions? Some of them could greatly enhance your possibilities imo.

 

On a side note, why do you think animations should still be visible under II for players? Is there a negative effect I'm not aware of? I usually play with feedback options set to zero (e.g. no green circle under party members) and I actually like my characters to really become almost invisible when they hide. As Gal and Ardanis say I can use 177 to limit the effect on AI opponents, but my real problem is another: I can handle the whole thing easily for II spells, but handling normal invisibility (e.g 2nd lvl spell) is a real pain (specifically, the problem is that you'd need to make all animations reappear as soon as the creature attack or cast an offensive spell/innate). Long story short you'd need to do a huge revision much like the one I was suggesting for Sanctuary (sec type, and patch every attack/spell to remove it).

 

 

Priests effectiveness

@David, I've given a thought or two on this matter and I'd gladly try to offer my help on this matter.

 

First of all something non-SR related, give boss-like priests a good class. A plain cleric is supposed to be used to enhance a party (and they truly shine when correctly used this way imo), not to fight alone against a full party (they suck at it). Instead, a high lvl fighter-cleric can be a different story (especially considering most of his offensive buffs are not affected by Breach), and a cleric/mage can be even more deadly than a plain mage (e.g. I think Sendai is a good example). The latter solution is not always viable for roleplaying reasons (e.g. Nyalee is a druid, and other boss-like priests may clearly not have a C/M "background"), but the former is almost always viable, and I can hardly imagine players complaining because of it.

 

Then, speaking of things I may do within SR. What is you need the most? I guess PfMW-like spells and spell protections (mainly for anti-Breach purposes), right? You'd also like contingencies/triggers but it seems you agree with us that such spells really don't (and shouldn't) be part of priest's repertoire.

 

For PfMW-like spells it might be possible to do something. There are two PnP spells I know of that are almost identical to this kind of spell, Shield of Lathander and its greater version (and I planned granting Mantle to KR's Watcher's of Helm). Leaving aside for a moment the details, what I'm trying to say is that these spells kinda fit this class (they might even fit clerics more than mages imo), and if they are crucial to you we may try to do something about it.

 

That being said, you probably need spell protections more than PfMW-like spells, am I wrong? On this matter I can say a few things too, for example that AD&D Shield of the Archon (evil priest should have Shield of the Tanar'ri instead) is much much more powerful than this lame copy of Spell Deflection, or that priests do have Spell Immunity (though PnP SI is a 4th lvl spell, and it's much less effective than BG one).

 

Long story short, I can do some research and suggest various solutions, but all of them would obviously involve changes to vanilla's "status quo", thus the question is, are you interested in some of the above mentioned things?