Bartimaeus

So as a pretty staunch proponent of the original games, I need to build an EET game because I'll be playing it online with a couple of friends and do not want to deal with the original BG2 netcode disaster. I presume that online multiplayer is much better for the EE games - if it's not, please let me know right now, . From the last time I tried playing a BG2 game multiplayer, I remember that it's a pretty terrible every time you want to try to reload on top of being horrifically laggy even for extremely close connections...hopefully that isn't the case with the EE games? ANYWAYS, as it's not really an area of expertise for me, I really don't know much about building an EET game (pretty much all I know is only what I've learned from testing out my own stuff on BG1/2EE) - it will probably be a relatively simple and minimalist install, but is there anything be aware of or know about as someone that has only played like half of BG1:EE back when it initially released? I know that the installs will need to be synced exactly and that shouldn't be an issue since I'll just build the install, zip it up, and host it online on my Dropbox or something. If it's relatively the same process and I don't need to worry about too much, that's good to know as well.

This is what the script of the creature has to say about it: IF Global("DeathKnightControl","LOCALS",0) OR(6) CheckStatGT(Lastsummonerof(Myself),18,INT) CheckStatGT(Lastsummonerof(Myself),18,WIS) CheckStatGT(Lastsummonerof(Myself),18,CHR) CheckStatGT(Lastsummonerof(Myself),20,LEVEL) CheckStatGT(Lastsummonerof(Myself),20,LEVEL2) CheckStatGT(Lastsummonerof(Myself),20,LEVEL3) THEN RESPONSE #100 FaceObject(Lastsummonerof(Myself)) Wait(2) LeaveParty() ChangeEnemyAlly(Myself,ALLY) SetGlobal("DeathKnightControl","LOCALS",1) END IF Global("DeathKnightControl","LOCALS",0) THEN RESPONSE #15 FaceObject(Lastsummonerof(Myself)) Wait(2) DisplayStringHead(Myself,12663) Enemy() SetGlobal("DeathKnightControl","LOCALS",1) RESPONSE #85 FaceObject(Lastsummonerof(Myself)) Wait(2) DisplayStringHead(Myself,7841) LeaveParty() ChangeEnemyAlly(Myself,ALLY) SetGlobal("DeathKnightControl","LOCALS",1) END From what I can tell, it seems to suggest that if the summoner is level 21 or more, or if one of their Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma is 19 or more, it's automatic allegiance. If none of those conditions are true, then you have a 15% chance of it going hostile.

That particular option hasn't been a part of either the IR or IRR installers for many years now AFAIK, but the option still exists in settings.ini under "armor_free_casting". The settings.ini options will only be effective if you change them before installing IR/R, though. Failing that, you can use what Graion Dilach suggested.

Oh, that's much smarter - thanks!

Presumably because Jaheira as a druid isn't supposed to have Revive Dead at all, but BioWare wanted her to have it...just at a slight cost to make the "cheat" a little less egregious, I suppose. I ended up being dissatisfied with the previous implementation I mentioned and instead made it so that the caster would suffer a -3 to physical characteristics, which I think works a lot less troublesomely.

With RoyalProtector now further clarifying what kind of effect they intended, my solution is obviously even more inappropriate - definitely need to use a melee effect gated through a conditional self-targeting .eff for that sort of thing (but it still won't be limited to just one weapon).

The simplest (but not perfect) solution would probably be to add bonus damage to the equipped effects of the item via class-targeted .effs (opcode 177 on the equipped effects -> opcode 73 .eff), but it would unfortunately apply to both hands.

I'm not exactly sure what temnix was trying to get at there with that weird statement, but there does seem to be a phenomenon where people go through a stage of life where they want a lot of deep, dark, and/or very complex media that distinctly establishes itself as being more "adult" than what they enjoyed previously...and then after too much of that over too long of a time, will revert to just wanting and enjoying much more simple (but still good) stuff aimed at a younger age group (whether it's about children, teenagers, or adults). I know for myself with movies and shows, I'm primarily looking just for characters that that feel at home in their setting with good roles, and if I also get a good plot and themes out of it as well, that's great too...but not usually the primary concern when I'm starting a new show or movie. Not unless it's about something that I already have a vested interest in, like with very particular subjects or historical events. It's possible that was what temnix was trying to say, but if so, the way he stated it...um, well, sure didn't sound like it. Also, his intelligent response to you, a moderator verbally warning him, sure didn't help his case any.

Disclaimer: I don't really want to try to mix real world sense with game mechanics, and I think I would just leave it at "all of the mage's spells, summons included, are a direct extension of the mage, so you get the appropriate amount of XP you should get for dealing with her and whatever magic she brings forth, whether it's conjuration or necromancy - after all, you don't get additional experience if she happens to hit your party with a Horrid Wilting instead". Nevertheless, your line of thinking made me think of the following: What's the fundamental difference between casting a Fireball at a mage and her summons that kills them all in one fell swoop...versus casting a Fireball at a mage and her summons and also some non-summoned xvarts that happen to also be in the area? For that matter, you might well not be using a Fireball, and instead your fighters are having to actually physically fight each individual summon, which in a real world sense, is obviously literally a form of valuable fighting experience for them. And also, what is the difference between fighting temporarily "summoned" creatures via normal summoning spells that the player can use themselves versus whatever "permanent" summons exist in various areas? Like, I'm thinking of Melkrath who has a bunch of mephits in his little sewers lair that he presumably summoned and currently controls, but the game treats those kinds of monsters as not being summoned by giving you XP for them even though...well, aren't they summoned? I think all of this can be pretty safely discarded, though - way too much overthinking of what should purely be game mechanics, whether it be for BG or P&P.

I was certain that SR only has 4 - am I crazy? Well, let's find out...I just installed SR onto an otherwise unmodified BG2EE game, and then checked against my current SRR ToBEx game. https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/md56qze8ujq9yab/Baldur_8OxBWvYeZw.mp4 Four levels for SR, five for SRR it seems to me. Not that it really matters too much, but hence why I was thinking of a few differences like this being potentially confounding between the two versions. I'm pretty sure I moved Polymorph Other down to 4th level for druids as well...but SCS probably doesn't use that even for the "just SR" setup, so it probably doesn't matter.

Sorry, I was more or less just thinking aloud about SRR having 5 levels of Cure/Cause/Regenerate wounds (as opposed to SR's 4) and whether that would muck up anything with SCS's IWD spells - wasn't meant as a rebuttal to anything you said there, more just thinking perhaps I have made a few changes that might affect the behavior of these mods working together. (e): I guess six if you also want to count the "Mass" versions of those spells - same difference, though.

Since they're magically summoned weapons, I believe you can just change the item type and proficiency so they're not counted as not being weapons at all - the character will still use them as a weapon since it's in the slot with a valid weapon extended header, but proficiencies won't come into play. Don't quote me on this, but I think that's what IR/SR does - stuff like the troll weapon for IR's polymorph troll has its proficiency set to 0x0, and the item type to something like "hand to hand", I think. (e): I don't know why I posted this, I should've just let Luke respond instead of having a bunch of "I think"s.

I wonder how SRR impacts this, given that SRR has Light, Medium, Moderate, Serious, and Critical cause/cure wounds spells. SRR handles spell icons a little more safely than SR does/did - new spell icons that SR adds are added with the "DV" prefix instead of the "SP" prefix, so they don't overwrite original spell icons and also won't get overwritten by other mods, so I would think that this issue does not apply to SRR+SCS unless SCS also changes the actual .spls to use the old icons...if it does, there's probably not too much I can do about it since I don't really think it makes sense to go back to the no prefix system.

I do believe it is supposed to be possible to mix SR and SCS's IWD spells, so I don't see any reason it shouldn't also be possible with SRR since it's fundamentally the same, but I can't guarantee perfect results - if you see strange stuff, feel free to report them here. From what I understand, this will also currently result in SCS favoring its own spell system instead of SR's (i.e. with just SR/R, SCS balances what it has spellcasters memorize around which spells are good in SR; with SR + IWD, it instead ignores SR's changes and balances it around vanilla + IWD). Installing SR first means, I believe, that SCS shouldn't try to duplicate IWD spells that SR already handles - if you do see any duplicates, that should definitely be something reported. What I might suggest is finishing your install to the exact point where the SCS IWD spells are installed but not going any further, and then making a max level cleric, druid, and sorcerer to see if there any obvious problems that need to be solved.

We will now commence the Airing of Grievances.

Not a bug, but it would be great if the P&P tables were a part of Tweaks Anthology. For some reason, I didn't think to investigate P&P when I made my own rebalanced wisdom bonus spell table.

@RATKID The protagonist gets an innate ability that allows you to change them on a wide-scale or setting-by-setting basis.

Yes, with the caveat that it seems like it would make more sense to me to have the blizzard troll use the snow troll animation instead of the ice troll animation, but if another game has them use the ice troll animation, then that's the way to go. Either way would be an improvement.

Most everything that isn't SCS in that list is pretty quick to install, but I do use a hacky weidu.exe trick to automate the majority of it - only items whose lines start with "*" need to be manually installed. In my particular install, that's only BGT and BGGRAPHICS. Yes to SRR as well.

Yes, it's IR -> SR -> CDTweaks -> SCS. Here's my (fairly plain) weidu.log from the last time I built a game if it's at all helpful: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/77r0ih50ls9kq7t/WeiDU.log Master is always my suggestion - some people like to only use the latest "release", but I intend for master to always be functioning. See here: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/etg0rpbs1nksgv2/firefox_A0xg9vNjJA.mp4

That could be a little obnoxious if you're intentionally wearing a non-weapon cursed item, but I guess the impact is pretty small overall.

Not appropriate for a fixpack, as you said, but Item Revisions already makes modifications to cursed items along those lines. Some of them still aren't much good, but others are.

If you're set on redefining the entire concept of Invisible Stalkers to actually be humanoid-esques armed with bladed weapons, the shadow thief animation is not too bad of an idea...although won't that animation make ill-fitting sounds? I don't know too much about animations, but I was under the impression there are certain sounds tied to animations.

No disagreement re: tieflings - I think it would be silly if a 95% demihuman couldn't be healed. Also, what you're saying about it being racially driven seems to be correct according to the Manual of the Planes: No disagreement there either - more just musing on my part.

Does anyone know if curing spells not working on extraplanars is specific to their current status as an extraplanar to the Prime Material...or would a celestial be able to be healed in its own home plane, and would a mortal not be capable of being healed on that same plane? Looks like I found my answer, and it's "yes" to both questions - a celestial would not have the extraplanar subtype when it's in its own plane, while Primes would have the extraplanar subtype when not on the Prime Material: Guess that would mean if this idea were implemented, technically speaking, you would not want the player to be able to use healing spells when in e.g. the Planar Sphere hell realm. Though I now also question what it takes for a particular plane to be considered your "native" plane - would a human born in the Abyss have that plane as their native plane and thus be extraplanar when in the Prime Material, or are they considered to be the same matter as their parents and thus they and all of their children and their children's children and so on also be considered Prime? Would this also mean Tieflings are not on their native plane if they're born in and live their entire lives in the Abyss...or can you have multiple native planes? The thought that the player character may be technically considered extraplanar when in the Pocket Plane is a funny thought - even if the player is a special exception, the rest of your party shouldn't be.