Bartimaeus

36 minutes ago, pochesun said:

@Bartimaeus I found the file, thx for directing me  "Override" folder completely escaped my mind.

@Nehreis mentioned (alongside Tenser Transformation issue) an issue with Devine Power spell setting base thac0 of 1 at high level instead of 0 (as i assume is supposed to be). I think i also encountered that issue too but just forgot to report it. Doing it now just in case  

SCRL6I.ITM 322 B · 0 downloads

I don't believe there's an issue with Divine Power, as Divine Power mentions that it stops scaling at level 20 in its description, and level 20 fighter would have a base THAC0 of 1, so it makes sense it would stop at 1 and not 0.

Icelance: SPWI323.spl is Icelance in your game. But...you've been making sure to pull all previous files that I've asked for out of your override, right? Because if you had been pulling them out of, say, the item_rev\ or spell_rev\ folders...that would mean all the files you've previously attached for me are the unmodified install files and not what your game is actually using (i.e. they would be what I already have on my own end, and thus of no help). What's in your override is what your game actually uses, and so files should always be pulled from there unless otherwise indicated.

1 hour ago, Nehreis said:

Strange, I don't see any reference to non-magical weapons in PfMW in-game description (also, not fan of this choice to include them).

Assuming you are playing with SRR and not SR (they are different!), this should be the exact description of Protection from Magical Weapons: "This spell creates an immobile, faintly shimmering magical sphere around the caster that cannot be penetrated by magical or non-magical weapons; all such weapons are harmlessly deflected (missile weapons strike the sphere, then immediately fall to the ground). This includes weapons that are blessed or enchanted as well as attacks of especially powerful monsters. Due to this spell's short casting time and duration, it is mainly used to buy the wizard a few rounds in the thick of combat."

While SRR makes a great many deal of changes both small and large with relation to SR, there are certain things that SR decided upon that I am not willing to touch unless the official version of the mod does so as well for fear of creating potential issues, and this would be one of them. If SCS thinks PfMW is supposed to grant blanket protection against magical and non-magical weapons because the official SR version of the spell grants it and SCS formulates its spellbooks and spellcasting priorities around that particular fact, then I cannot even consider changing it no matter the arguments for/against it.

20 hours ago, Nehreis said:

Thanks for the great mod! I liked the new armor system, the modified item stats and the relocations.

I have two minor things to report :

- Spectral brand "dark swarm" ability didn't seem to work at all

- I *think* I never found Serpent shaft

2. Serpent Shaft should be on Azamantes (Watcher's Keep final seal guardian) if you did not install Store Revisions. If you did install Store Revisions, it's at the drow weaponmaster store in the Underdark.

1. For some reason, all ten of the summoning effects are zeroed out. Weird. Hmm. In my opinion, this ability...uh, kind of sucks? Like, it seems as though it really sucks, but maybe I'm wrong. You get Spectral Brand in the middle of Watcher's Keep, where all enemies are going to have enchanted attacks, as they all do in ToB. Regular shadows only have 34 HP, have 15 THAC0, and 7 AC. They're going to be killed in two hits that are going to hit 95% of the time. Worse, by default, the summoning cap applies to these shadows, so...like, they prevent you from summoning anything else and all ten of them cannot be summoned at the same time anyways unless they're being immediately killed as they're being summoned every round. This just doesn't seem very useful.

On 9/23/2023 at 8:33 PM, pochesun said:

I failed miserably in attempt to find that file (scrl6i.itm), lol  I only found scrl06.itm but i am afraid its not it. Just in case i attach it here.

scrl06.itm 218 B · 0 downloads

scrl6i.itm is the scroll that both SR and SRR use for Icelance. Unless you've biffed your game, it should be in your override.

16 hours ago, Nehreis said:

I just finished a 7 months run, I tried SRR for the first time and really liked it, thank you very much! I even used Larloch's energy drain.

These are some minor problems I encountered :

- I *think* magic armor went to AC 5 at level 4 rather than level 5 (no big deal)

- protection from magical weapons protects also from normal weapons (quite frustrating)

- Tenser transformation doesn't seem to work as described, the base thac0 is set at 9 at best when cast by a high level mage. The similar spell Divine power gives a base thac0 of 1 at high level (I guess it should be 0, but no big deal).

1. Yep, you're right. Even more, AC 4 kicks in at level 8 instead of 9. Odd. Thanks, fixed!

2. The description of PfMW mentions it, which is the only difference between SRR's and SR's version of this spell (i.e. SR's PfMW also protects from non-magical weapons...but doesn't mention it in the description). Presumably, this was to prevent the player from completely trivializing the protection by just whacking mages with unenchanted weapons while the AI has zero ability to work around it.

3. I completely forgot about the Tenser's issue: https://github.com/BartyMae/SR_Revised/issues/22

Quote

Thanks, will take a look into it and update.

I am a certified liar.

16 hours ago, Mordekaie said:

Just for clarification and to make it clear about new spells:

- If you just install a new spell from any mod, the new spell can't be used by the ennemies ? I wasn't aware about that. In a R&P perspective, it is quite unfair.

- A mod like SCS will make spells from SR an IWDification usable by ennemies.(i guess SRR is also included?)

Adding a spell to your game doesn't make other spellcasters suddenly have it in their spellbooks, or know what they do or how to use them or their level of effectiveness relative to other spells. SCS 'knows' SR and IWDifcation enough that if those mods are installed at the time of SCS being installed, SCS will use spells from them (yes, including SRR which SCS does not see as being distinct from SR).

57 minutes ago, polytope said:

I'd therefore propose to other modders that item changes to vorpal weapons specifically be packaged as a separate component to more global item rebalancing, which minimizes the extent of cross-mod conflict, this way the player can decide on install which version they want. Tagging @Bartimaeus and @morpheus562 , since after all this pertains to more than just my own modifications of vorpals.

I'm afraid I don't seem to understand. @Connelly wants FA's additional damage for a failed/immune vorpal blow (which IRR also implements for some but not all vorpal weapons) combined with polyvorp's general revisions of the vorpal mechanic...so the solution is "FA and IR/R should not install their own changes to vorpal weapons at all"? How does that follow or in any way solve Connelly's issue?

Anyways, as IR adds additional vorpal effects to weapons (Heartseeker and Impaler) that polyvorp makes no attempt to account for, I'm not really sure it's the best idea to try to combine these mods in the first place - it will just result in either items not having the effects that they're supposed to (if they're not installed) or inconsistency in how they're applied (if they are). Either situations would be very undesired.

18 hours ago, pochesun said:

Could you direct me where to fing that file?

As a new spell (and not a spell that replaces another), Icelance's resource name is dynamically added to the game as "spwi3xx.spl" where the "xx" could theoretically be anywhere between 01 and 50, I believe. If it were me, I'd use DLTCEP or Near Infinity to search/peruse through the list of spells and see which spell in the spwi3xx range has the Icelance name/icon. But if you don't have those tools or know how to use them...uh, probably the easiest method would be to open up scrl6i.itm (Icelance's scroll) with a plaintext editor (e.g. Notepad) and see what it lists at the end:

2 hours ago, pochesun said:

I dont think its the Protection from Cold scroll issue, i believe its Icelance spell issue (at least in my current installation), because it does not matter how a charachter acrrues 100%> Cold resistance (for instance i used 50% from boots and 50% from Potion of Energy Protection, so it gives 100% Cold resistance total) but still when i cast Icelance - no effect at all and log says "Unuffected by effects from Icelance". I could give you Icelance spell .spl if you want but as i said i am using 5 months old installation so presumably its somehow already been fixed. I will report if i face this issue with renewed installation. Just in case, i forgot to mention, i tested Icelance in BG 1.

Regarding Goblet: wanted to ask if its possible to somehow make other hostile creatures "effuse"  specific fear aura (maybe with different opcode than regular fear) which is activated when the Goblet is activated by the imbiber? 

I guess you can send me your Icelance as well, but I wouldn't expect to find anything interesting unless some other mod has royally screwed with it, but it doesn't hurt to take a look. I don't know for sure what its resource code is in your game, since there's a possibility of being dynamic upon install, but it might be SPWI323.

Durlag's Goblet: I think any attempt to do something like that would be ratchety as all hell. It'd probably be best to use an opcode 272 ("Apply Effect on Condition") with a 1 round frequency that casts an opcode 232 ("Cast Spell on Condition") with condition 1 ("Enemy Within Sight") that just casts a 7 duration fear effect, which should theoretically lead to a seamless chaining of fear effects whenever an enemy is within sight of your 'cursed' character.

16 hours ago, pochesun said:

My issue with Goblet is it is supposed to be a cursed artifact, and the curse was put on it by some truly evil forces of Durlag Tower (and from Durlag's past life that was filled with hatred and fear). So presumably the curse should be quite strong and malicious. But making it easily dispellable like any level 1 spell turns that curse into a mere trifle. When i was talking about Goblet change i meant a change where the curse effect should be more aggrevating and the range of means dealing with the curse, in my opinion, should be truncated, not the opposite. 

Yes, it would be neat, but as previously discussed, it's really not technically possible to implement it like that, so to have the effect avoidable and dispellable by every method besides a general dispel would seem awfully strange to me. The only way I can really see making it stronger and having it be relatively consistent is by having it apply a total dispel on use (getting rid of any temporary fear immunity...along with everything else) and then protecting against any new attempts to provide resistance to fear...but that still wouldn't prevent Cavalier's innate immunity to fear or Kiel's Helmet from working. Eh.

16 hours ago, pochesun said:

Attached another file.

Still no dice even using your version of the scroll: BG2EE, cast Protection from Cold from SCRL04.itm, cast Icelance on myself, I receive the piercing damage + am held.

3 hours ago, pochesun said:

Are we talking about Icelance spell?  Because Protection from Fire would have not affect Icelance in anyway. I was talking about Protection from Cold and Icelance interraction however. Just in case i attached file you requested.

Oops, sorry, I meant SCRL04.spl, Protection from Cold, not Protection from Fire.

3 hours ago, pochesun said:

hen honestly i dont get the idea behind it. I thought Goblet was supposed to cause more aggrevating issues (from Lore point of view as well) and with effect being dispellable now it has become less aggrevating. At least before target under Fear effect from the Goblet could only be brought back to normal state by Remove Fear, and now negative effect is even more easy to deal with. Though i have to admit, cast Dispell on your buffed party member, especially during fight, might be ill advised

Because there's no way to get it to mechanically work like a curse (and is in fact easily removable by level 1 Resist Fear or any other source of fear resistance/removal), it would seem inexplicable to me to not have it be generally dispellable, especially given its 8 hour length. Interestingly, though the positive effects of potions in IR are considered "alchemical" and thus not generally dispellable in nature, the negative effects of "strange"/cursed potions are dispellable. Hmm. To be honest, I'm not the hugest fan of those potions always having negative effects...always felt like "strange" potions should have a 50/50 chance of either doing what they're supposed to do or something bad.

7 hours ago, DavidW said:

This is helpful.

(1) isn't going to happen: handling antimagic attacks is really complicated and deeply embedded into SCS, and I've been clear since Demivrgvs that I wasn't going to write a whole new version for SR. (I would consider it if someone actually coded it for me, I suppose.)

(2) is reasonable but more complicated than it looks. SCS actually doesn't contradict the vanilla rules, because vanilla EE also lets antimagic spells bypass invisibility! Of course that's not a coincidence - Beamdog intentionally copied SCS, and liaised with me about it. On an EE install, SR is actually overwriting the original-game behavior. But it wouldn't be difficult to cancel that overwrite. 

Do people agree with SD that this would be a good idea? If so I'll implement it.

Yes, but I would personally prefer it if SR took a more definitive stance on exactly what it's trying to accomplish (preferably in a fair and cohesive manner!) with regards to the combined issues of improved invisibility/Non-Detection/anti-invisibility spells/the anti-magic spell system: it shouldn't be SCS's responsibility to try to patch up the problem that SR is needlessly creating. But...in the face of no agreed upon way forward for SR, it would at least mean that SCS players can expect fairer play between SR and SCS until/if something is decided. Over the years, there have been a number of threads like this one as well as posts within the SRR thread complaining about how these systems interact, which is why I added the option of patching the "can penetrate improved invisibility" flag back to anti-magic spells for SRR, so I do think it is important that the situation be improved in some manner.

6 hours ago, pochesun said:

You mean undispellable?

No, dispellable: you may dispel it. There's no way to get that fear effect to act anything like a true curse, so it may as well be dispellable, particularly with how annoying the "causes immediate morale panic" effect is. Honestly, the berserking effect would make a lot more sense and work better, but it doesn't really go with the lore.

6 hours ago, pochesun said:

-  i am not sure if its important, but when a character tries to save for not being held the log says "save vs. Death" while Icelance spell description states " save vs Paralysis".

In AD&D/2E, vs. paralysis/poison/death all use the same base saving throw, though unlike in the IE games, bonuses/penalties could be weighed in on individual types (e.g. a necklace charm granting a bonus to saving throws vs. poison would only apply to saving throws vs. poison, not paralysis and death as well). So no issue.

6 hours ago, pochesun said:

-  i found when i cast Protection from Cold scroll (green one) the game log says "We are not here as mercenaries, we are here to save Grand Dukes from assasination". And when i cast Protection from acid scroll (green one) the game log says "You must excuse me, but i am teribly busy right now". Bad strings again.

Thanks, should be fixed with the latest repository version.

6 hours ago, pochesun said:

Again, i tested all these on my current installation that is about 5 months old so take it with a grain of salt, probably you already mended some of the issues i discribed, but feel free to test Icelance with this post in mind  Anyway i will report any deviations with Icelance, if any occur, after i fresh install the mods.

I just tested it on both oBG2 and BG2EE again, and the piercing damage always applies even when I have Protection from Fire applied. If you still have a copy of it from that install, give me your SCRL06.spl so I can take a look at it, as that's about all I can think of to do.

Strongly against the "specialists can use 3rd level or lower spells of their opposition school" idea as a solution: no real argument against it, I just don't like it. I would honestly favor eliminating opposition schools altogether before that.

I don't know if anyone else has had this thought, but I really am starting to think that the whole mechanic of improved invisibility preventing direct spellcasting targeting but not indirect spellcasting targeting or ability targeting or melee targeting or ranged/missile targeting but only just direct spellcasting targeting...is flat-out kind of dumb to begin with. Honestly, if we're talking about trying to find "least bad solutions", get rid of the mechanic by setting every spell to be able to target through improved invisibility en masse. I think it would solve the following issues:

1. The Non-Detection problem, which is a whole other thing that still needs to be resolved in of itself...but all spells being able to pierce through improved invisibility would mean that you can get rid of the "can see through improved invisibility" opcode and let Non-Detection truly protect the stealth/invisible/improved invisibility states without issue, further eliminating the AI's current advantage of always being able to see through invisibility when they have Detect Invisibility/True Seeing running even when the player can't.

2. Conjurers not having a way to pierce invisibility, which you don't need to fix if their general spellcasting can always pierce improved invisibility.

3. The AI, assuming it's aware of it a la SCS, would no longer ever need to worry about whether it needs to cast (or perhaps even memorize!) Detect Invisibility or True Seeing before going into its normal spellcasting against an improved invisible target.

4. Invisibility Purge is no longer hot garbage in comparison to Detect Invisibility (and actually would be stronger, as it probably should be at 3rd level spellcasting compared to Detect Invisibility's 2nd level); also, other spells like Glitterdust probably don't feel quite as bad to memorize anymore.

However, there are four issues of varying importance that I feel it would introduce: one, non-SCS AI would presumably not be aware it can use spellcasting against improved invisible creatures, allowing the player an advantage if they have SR installed but not SCS (how well does the vanilla AI and vanilla spell memorization handle dealing with improved invisibility in the first place?); two, any spells installed after SR would be unaffected (...unless it's put in a secondary component installed much later a la the other secondary components); three, improved invisibility gets marginally weaker (but IMO not really, because SCS is always having its spellcasters memorize invisibility-piercing spells, and this mechanic doesn't affect anyone but spellcasters); four, anti-illusory divination spells get weaker (but I'm not exactly sure how much - I feel like there's still good cause to memorize both Detect Invisibility and True Seeing even if they don't allow you to directly pierce improved invisibility, but...).

Just now, pochesun said:

@Bartimaeus hello, i am about to make a fresh installation of mods and i was wondering if you fixed Flame Arrow, Acid Arrow (or protection scrolls against those spells for that matter) and Icelance spell i mention about 2 months ago?

Also wanted to ask if you decided to somehow change the effect of Durlag's Goblet? Also curious if its the unique item for BG1 or it is present in BG 2 as well?

Yes, and I totally didn't just fix it seconds before posting here:

1. Durlag's Goblet: Removed the cursed icon in exchange for a fear icon, duration of fear lasts for 8 hours instead of 12, fear is dispellable, and the goblet itself is unsellable. A vendor being able to refill this unique cursed goblet of blood and open up the possibility of a player with immunity to fear abusing it for full heals makes zero sense, particularly in the face of there being no way to counter a player being immune to fear...but I'll let the player abuse it for the six charges that it comes with (six, one for each member in your party presumably?). The item is only used in BG1, but is more or less intact for BG2 (...the identified name changed to "Blood of Quallo's Friend", but is otherwise the same - IRR will set it back to Durlag's Goblet).

2. Protection from Fire and Protection from Acid no longer directly protect against Melf's Acid Arrow and Flame Arrow respectively.

3. I never experienced your Icelance issue: if it happens again in your new installation, it will need further investigation.

That sounds like it would be even more problematic for the AI than it is for the player, which is already substantial when you're talking about how frustrating it is to cast a high level spell that completely misses its intended target because the target randomly decided to wander off in the middle of you casting the spell and you have no way to adjust where you targeted once you've started.

Has there been any talk of migrating projects elsewhere? No way to recover all the invaluable discussion that was lost, of course, but closing in on six months of no communication would seem to portend a rather grim outcome. Though I thought a similar situation recently with another site of mine that had been missing its lead for over six months before then going down for an entire month and a half with almost no communication basically meant the end of that site too, but I was proven wrong.

In this day and age, it's extraordinarily rare for an official company's online presence to be in any way seriously threatened by downtime: even for relatively smaller companies like Beamdog, it's pretty much pocket change for companies to do things right to ensure that downtime is pretty minimal. It's when you're just an individual or a small group of individuals and you just don't have the time, expertise, and/or money to needlessly burn on keeping something running that is where things can get dicey as soon as something goes wrong...

I just tested on a vanilla oBG2 install, and polytope is correct:

1. Haste + Slow = Normal

2. Slow + Haste = Normal

3. Haste + Slow + Slow = Slow

4. Slow + Haste + Haste = Haste

5. Haste + Slow + Haste + Slow = Normal

Though interestingly, simply installing the BG2 Fixpack will somewhat break the interaction as a result of introducing 206 opcodes (Protection from Spell), intended to prevent the stacking of the effects of spells but also incidentally preventing e.g. a Hasted character from being Slowed twice in order to both negate and replace the Haste.

Yeah, Slow is brutal, which makes sense: the Slow opcode is the Haste opcode's opposite in all the worst ways.

40 minutes ago, subtledoctor said:

The vanilla behavior is too swingy IMO, and can incentivize holding onto your Haste or Slow spells, because whoever casts it last, wins. Of course, the AI will not consider such details. The AI will cast it whenever its script says to, allowing a patient player to completely override the AI’s spell. It is just another instance of the player having an incontestable advantage. By contrast, if Haste and Slow merely neutralize each other, then every casting has value - even if your Haste spell gets neutralized, you still have the benefit of not being Slowed. 

O.K., I think you've convinced me. I would definitely not be against it being an option, and I don't think either implementation would much change how the AI would approach situations (if at all), which makes it the perfect candidate for a "player's choice" setting/component. Implementation for the original engine, on the other hand...well, the slow and haste sectypes already exist in SR, it's just a matter of making them do what you want them to do. I, too, am not currently in a position to do much at this particular moment, but I will write in my to-do for now so I don't forget it entirely at least.

Though there's still the larger issue of how Haste should work in the first place...which I have not had much input on because I haven't loved any of the proposed solutions nor have I been able to think of anything I like better myself. I suspect, like a number of things over the years, it will become a matter of choosing "the least worst" option...

(e): How did SR players feel about single-target Haste back when it was a thing anyways? Though balance is important, if players at large don't like something, it's probably a bad idea to go through with it even if it means letting something stay poorly balanced. I would personally never even dream of changing Haste to single-target unless the official version of SR has already done the same - it's just too big of a change to a fundamental spell.

Merely negating, whether you're casting Haste or Slow, feels too much like you're casting a really lousy dispel that only affects haste/slow - particularly problematic for Slow, which is already gated behind a saving throw.

8 minutes ago, jmerry said:

Fighter/druids in vanilla can already use all armor (unless they have a kit that restricts it). If a component does anything there, it would be adding restrictions, not removing them.

You're right: the cleric component is "Loosen Equipment Restrictions for Cleric Multi- and Dual-Classes", but the druid component is "Change Equipment Restrictions for Druid Multi- and Dual-Classes" and allows it to go either way, either loosening (less weapon restrictions) or tightening up (more armor restrictions). Ideally, I'd like to enable both options (as I don't think multi-class druids should be weapon-restricted but I do think they should be armor-restricted), but I don't know if you can with just Anthology Tweaks.

1 hour ago, Janvitus said:

Hi, I don't know if it's the right thread for this question.

 

Item Revisions:

Remove Cleric Weapon Restrictions from Multi-Classed Clerics

PnP Equipment for Druids

Tweaks Antology:

Loosen Equipment Restrictions for Cleric Multi- and Dual-Classes

Change Equipment Restrictions for Druid Multi- and Dual-Classes

 

Both components do the same things or differently?

Thanks

I believe IR's component only affects weapons, which is what the Anthology Tweaks component for clerics does as well, but the Anthology Tweaks druid component does additional stuff such as making dual/multi-class druids able to use e.g. plate armor. My personal choice is to use IR's loosen weapon restrictions for druids only option: unlike clerics whose gods specifically forbid it, druids can already (albeit rather inexplicably to me) use certain types of bladed weapons such as scimitars, so I don't really get the restrictions against some but not others.

(e): I also use the PnP Equipment for Druids option, as it doesn't make sense to me that a multi-class druid could suddenly start to wear plate. So...better weapon options, worse armor options is the net result for druids in my game.

39 minutes ago, Salk said:

Thanks for the report, jmerry.

Hopefully something can still be done about it.

It's been fixed: https://github.com/BartyMae/SR_Revised/commit/4901111d40838e9020c70a8cc785c9c7e391f615

Thanks to you both for bringing it to my attention.

9 minutes ago, Fjodik said:

Thank you for your reply, I will ignore that and hopefully nothing breaks

EDIT: what is really weird, I am playing BG1EE and those items seem to be from BG2, same for spells.....

Oh. My knowledge of installing SCS in a BG1-only game is pretty much nil, unfortunately.

6 minutes ago, Fjodik said:

Hey, I am sorry to bother you but I have received certain warnings when installing SRR together with SCS. I believe most of them are harmless (e.g. identifying non-existant weapon SW2HDEAT.itm, B3-18.itm and B3-18M3.itm, someone having ranged but not melee weapons, etc) but couple of them indicate that some spells do not exist in game, particularly CDBREAK1, CDBREAK6 and CDBREAK9. Would you be able to identify which spells are these and tell me if you think this may cause problems? I would really appreciate if you have a time to look at that. Both mods represent a cornerstone in my install.

I do not have any other mod installed, only SRR and SCS, WeiDU log attached. Debug file is too big so I cant attached it here.

Many thanks for your help and your tíme.

WeiDU.log 2.81 kB · 0 downloads

Isn't the "CD" prefix used by Anthology Tweaks? Let's see here... Ah, yes, the CDBREAK series of spells are added by Anthology Tweaks' "Gradual Drow Item Disintegration". In truth, I'm not sure why SCS is concerned about mod-added spells not existing in your game. I don't use the Gradual Drow Item Disintegration component myself, but I can't remember ever seeing any errors about not having it while installing SCS either. And on a side-note, I believe those items you listed are all items that should exist in a vanilla oBG2 or BG2EE game (they're all monster weapons), so I don't know why it would be complaining about them not existing either...