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Dakk

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Posts posted by Dakk

  1. IR has this to say about the ring:
    Ring of Energy

    Special Abilities (once per day):

    Energy Blast: inflicts 2D6 points of magic damage to one target

    Equipped Abilities:

    Magic Damage Resistance: +25% bonus

     

    Notes: I've only added the energy resistance.

    Item Revisions changes the item from the original and as such can not and should not be used to describe the item in question when talking about an unmodified (barely modified) game that does not include the mod which this information comes from.

     

     

    <rant> some people need to learn to read what a particular thread is discussing before bringing in irrelevant outside information -.- </rant>

    Wow, get agitated much? As it seems you're not able to let this go, let me remind you that the original questions was "what is the deal with the Ring of Energy?" and "does it really have limited charges?". IR, as you so astutely points out, is a mod, but Demi notes the changes he's done to an item compared to vanilla; hence the quote I posted answered both questions. At least that was my understanding.

     

    If it turns out that I still was mistaken, then *GASP* someone was wrong on teh interwebs!!1!

  2. IR has this to say about the ring:

    Ring of Energy

    Special Abilities (once per day):

    Energy Blast: inflicts 2D6 points of magic damage to one target

    Equipped Abilities:

    Magic Damage Resistance: +25% bonus

     

    Notes: I've only added the energy resistance.

  3. Cool! I just love it that the SR spell descriptions do exactly what they say :)

     

    EDIT: oh cool I actually didn't notice at first read that sword-prof will provide benefits, nice!

  4. From SR spell descriptions:

    Energy Blades

    Level: 10

    School: Evocation

    Range: Personal

    Duration: 5 turns

    Casting Time: 5

    Area of Effect: Special

    Saving Throw: None

     

    An energy blade is a discus made of pure energy. The discs are thrown with a +10 bonus to THAC0, inflict 1d4+5 missile damage as well as 1d10 additional electrical damage, and are considered to be of +5 enchantment to determine what they can hit. This spell creates 20 energy discs and sets the caster's number of attacks per round to 9 as long as the discs are held.

    Are the +10 bonus to the base unarmed THAC0, and no proficiencies apply?

     

    Black Blade of Disaster

    Level: 9

    School: Evocation

    Range: Personal

    Duration: 1 round/level

    Casting Time: 5

    Area of Effect: Special

    Saving Throw: None

     

    This spell enables the caster to create a black, blade-shaped planar rift, about 5 feet long. It jumps into the caster's hand and is used as a normal sword, remaining there for the duration of the spell. The caster wields the blade as if it was a long sword but he suffers no penalty for non-proficiency, and brandishes it with a base THAC0 of 0. The sword deals 2d12 damage per strike, and acts as a +5 magical weapon in all regards, including hit and damage bonuses. With each hit, there is a 15% chance the victim must make a save vs. spell at -5 or be disintegrated (20d6 points of magic damage, 5d6 on a successful save).

    So the caster/wielder have THAC0 set to 0, with an additional +5 to hit (as quoted in bold) bonus on top (for a THAC0 of -5)? Do other boni apply, like STR and from items that grant bonus (gauntlets, bracers etc)?

  5. Now, it's my turn. :) Something a little more radical which would hugely improve Deafness without removing its core concept would be to "replace" it with a 2nd lvl implementation of another PnP spell, Sonic Blast. We also thought about the much more common Sound Burst, but it's bard-only in PnP, and it stuns instead of deafening. Similarly another Spell Compedium's spell was Thunderclap, a 3rd lvl spell which both stuns and deafen.

     

    Great idea, but I would prefer Shout. Has a much more classic PnP feel to me.

    Shout is indeed a real classic!

  6. Now, it's my turn. :) Something a little more radical which would hugely improve Deafness without removing its core concept would be to "replace" it with a 2nd lvl implementation of another PnP spell, Sonic Blast. We also thought about the much more common Sound Burst, but it's bard-only in PnP, and it stuns instead of deafening. Similarly another Spell Compedium's spell was Thunderclap, a 3rd lvl spell which both stuns and deafen.

     

    Long story short, the daring suggestion is to turn Deafness into an Evocation spell, Sonic Blast, with a small 10-15 feet radius AoE, making it inflict a small amount of damage (4d4?) and forcing targets a save to avoid being deafened. What do you think?

    Absolutely. As you said, no one would use Deafness even if it were a 1st lvl spell.

  7. Friends

    I think it might JUST be usable if you seriously extend its duration to 8 hours or something.

    I've got a (surely) crazy suggestion. What if the duration was extended to, say, 8 hours, and another effect was added? From the description:

    Those who view the caster tend to be very impressed with the spellcaster and make an effort to be his friends and help him [...]; attacking orcs might spare the caster's life, taking him captive instead.

    If we interpreted this as an hesitancy to strike the caster, we could add a minor AC-bonus, like +1 vs melee weapons. Then, in comparison:

    Friends:

    8 hours [debatable]

    +4 CHA

    +1 AC vs melee weapons

     

    Mage Armour:

    8 hours

    base AC 6 (improves with level)

     

    Shield:

    5 turns

    Immunity to Magic Missile

    +2 AC (+4 vs missile weapons)

     

    Be gentle on me :)

     

    Blindness

    Only thing I don't like about this is its drastically reduced range of vision. Now just hear me out: Any effect which highlights shortcomings in the AI is bad, and here we have an effect which is so much more debilitating for AI than for the human player. Also range of vision surely must also represent other senses like hearing right?? And -10 thac0 is pretty hefty penalty as it is.

    More on the subject here.

  8. Cure Wounds

    Thinking again about it...it may actually work (if we can find tables that more or less work like that)...I have to spend some more time looking at the whole picture.

    Don't put too much effort into it Demi, the current (SR) system is excellent. :cool:

  9. Do you think it could be a good idea to reduce the speed of magics missiles in order to avoid this spell to be an insta disrupt spell?

    I remember that in BG1, missiles go very slowly.

     

    The extreme speed (casting and execution) is a trademark of the Magic Missile spell and I wouldn't alter it.

    Agreed, Magic Missiles is THE famous spell of D&D - and it's renowned for the speed of casting and (auto)hitting.

  10. Invisibility spells
    For example, in BG1, it's fairly common to get a random encounter in which your party is completely surrounded by enemy archers (usually a dozen bandits or skeletons). These guys can easily take down a low level character in just 1-2 hits.

     

    As pictures sometimes speak louder than words, here's a nice screenshot which illustrates my point:

     

    http://i961.photobucket.com/albums/ae98/Gr...nk/Baldr038.jpg

     

    It's almost impossible to survive such an encounter at low levels without using invisibility before traveling, unless you reload the game of course. :)

     

    I think the problem in this case is a poor scaling of random encounters rather than SR's reduction of Invisibility to 8 hours (which is a good choice, according to me).

    Agreed with Salk (and Demi), the problem is not the 8 hour duration of invisibility - but the poor scaling of random encounters. Rather than lament the "nerfed" (I prefer "fixed") duration, have a look at BGSpawn instead, it might be what you are after! :)

     

    BGSpawn changes all the “spawns†you may face in all the areas around Baldur’s Gate. Now, with the new system, you won’t have always the same spawned creature(s) as in the past. This will bring, hopefully, some freshness to the game and some longevity also. Moreover the spawned creatures now are based on the number of your party members and your levels. So you won’t see anymore in a party of 6 character at 6th level a single wild dog approaching you, it really doesn’t make sense to me.
  11. Or is tactically unwise: most of my testing was with prebuff on, at least for clerics. But in any case, this isn't SR's problem as it's true in vanilla too.
    Out of curiosity; do you play with prebuff option 1 for clerics and 2-3 for mages? I seem to recall quite a lot of discussions on the SCS board that clerics don't have "enough staying power" - would option 1 help noticeably (I'm considering those settings myself)?
  12. Chant

    I think casting chant in IWD or was it IWD2 made your priest slow. That was a fine drawback to a good spell.

    It actually put me off using it at all (in IWD). Move slow and can't cast any other spell during the duration? No thanks.

  13. ^This. Streamlining on a high level of detail might be the best compliment SR could get. It means you've already sorted out the big problems and we can start thinking about harmonizing aesthetics. Before, players we're complaining we had no roofs on buildings - now we're thinking about if the carpet should be burgundy or oxblood.

    Demi: bringing perfection to BG - carpet by hand knitted carpet ???

  14. 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!)

     

    ???

  15. 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.

    I agree, keep those features ???

  16. So the ADHW's nature of not being magic damaging spell is not enough for you, right? It's because your precious mages with advanced AI prefer to cast it on Mordies (thus exploiting a bug) or what?

    Let's not turn (a so far rather humorous) discussion into an argument... For the record, SCS(II) mages isn't really DavidW's precious mages, they're precious mages for a whole slew of people.

  17. 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.

    That's actually a pretty compelling argument... ???

  18. (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 :D???

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